Over the next two weeks, we fall into the most delicious routine. It's as if we're actually a couple, which makes me giddy if I think about it too hard.

Tristan wakes me each morning with kisses and a rock-hard erection. I eagerly accept him into my body, doing all the things he's taught me. Now I know exactly what he loves, what will tease him into a loss of control, what will make him emit that sexy, low roar when he comes.

Hint: he loves when I play hard to get. And he also loves when I slide a well-lubed, index finger into his most forbidden place. He's patient and filthy and I love every second.

The things I'm doing, good God. It's hard to believe I'm the same woman as before.

When we're finished with sex in the morning, he makes us breakfast — it's always at the crack of dawn — and I shuffle into the kitchen, bleary-eyed.

He goes off to work and I write, or try to. The words aren't coming as quick as I'd like, but they're coming. (Because I'm coming. Often).

In the afternoons, I take Ozzy to Central Park, where we walk and play. I'm even jogging a little, running in the spring drizzle with my head held high and my ponytail swinging, like I'm one of those privileged Manhattan girls I used to envy. Or I visit Mom in the nursing home, and try to tell her that everything's going to be okay. Of course, I gloss over the details. She doesn't need to know that I've entered into this arrangement.

I'm not sure she understands anything. I hope she does.

At night, Tristan returns. Sometimes we watch a movie together, other nights he takes me to a play or an event. He seems proud to show me off, always with his arm around me, always introducing me as "his dear friend."

Almost always, the night ends in sex. If not sex, then some sort of foreplay, kissing, sensual touching.

Everything is going perfectly. Well, almost everything.

There's just one glitch: I've fallen for Tristan Black.

As careful as he'd been in drawing up the contract, in making sure I was on birth control, in providing everything I could possibly want so I could write without distraction, he didn't anticipate this one possibility.

Tonight, we're having a quiet night in after three nights of events and plays and one company happy hour. It's raining again — it seems to have poured during our entire relationship — and we're sitting in the sumptuous library.

He's reading a hardcover written by a politician, and I'm studying a book on becoming a better writer.

His phone pings, and I'm acquainted with him enough to know that it's the sound that he's assigned for his business partner's calls. Considering his partner is in London, and it's the dead of night there, we both glance up with quizzical expressions.

"I'll need to take this in the other room."

I go to rise, but he holds out a hand as he stands. "You stay."

He presses the phone against his ear. "Hello, Jackson?" That's his partner's name, and he manages Blackmoir Publishing's newspaper division in the U.K. His voice fades as he walks out of the room and down the hall.

While petting Ozzy, who loves sitting on the sofa next to me, I continue reading.

A half hour passes, and Tristan returns. He rolls his eyes. "My dear, I'm sorry. I must go to London tomorrow. Jackson's got a situation with one of the newspapers we own. Apparently the editor there has authorized a handful of reporters to hack into politicians' voicemails. It's turning into a huge scandal, and I'm needed. My apologies."

My jaw drops, and I'm searching for the right response. Ozzy jumps off the sofa and Tristan sinks next to me.

"You may stay here and work on your book." He gently pulls my book out of my hands. "I had hoped our time together would be uninterrupted, but unfortunately, I can't ignore this situation."

"Of course not."

A little voice inside my brain wonders why he isn't asking me to join him. But despite how much I've pleaded for his sexual affections, there's no way I'll beg to fly to London with him.

I run my fingers through his thick, dark hair. "I'll be here writing. And thinking about you, of course."

He cracks a smile. "All dirty thoughts, I hope."

I nod and lean in to kiss him. First I crawl into his lap, then I slide to the floor on my knees and beg to please him. He pulls out his dick and roughly slides it into my mouth. Instead of feeling warm and fuzzy and intimate like it has these past several days between us, the act seems diminished. Cheap, even.

Like I'm in his life for one thing: sex.

Which I knew. But I'm only now accepting our relationship for what it is.

____