Bedmates Soulmates

The Perfect Counterparty

Austyn's face and shirt were drenched, thanks to Kira's amateurish breaststrokes.

'Help me, Daddy!'

Austyn cursed.

She was soaking wet now.

Her long hair was plastered to her face.

The t-shirt had turned almost transparent.

It clung to her fair skin, giving away her curves and leaving nothing to the imagination.

She was panting.

Her chest heaved against his leg as she grabbed hold of him like a drowning person hanging on to a piece of driftwood.

Austyn swallowed.

Kira grasped his thigh and tried to climb up him.

Her lips were trembling and her face had gone pale.

'Okay, I think that's enough punishment for now,' Austyn said to himself as he turned off the tap.

Kira didn't notice.

She was clutching his thigh with both hands.

'Get up,' Austyn said.

Kira's lips moved, but he couldn't catch what she said.

Her eyes were screwed shut.

'Do you want to spend the rest of the night in the tub?' Austyn lifted his knee.

Kira pulled him back down..

She blinked, then her eyes fluttered open, unfocused.

'Dad...' Kira held her husband closer.

Austyn cleared his throat and looked away.

Hearing her call him like that made him both horny and guilty.

His knees would have buckled if she called him 'Daddy."

'I'm not your father,' Austyn said through gritted teeth, still not looking at her. 'Get up!'

'Dad. Dad. Dad... she was sobbing. 'Dad, please wake up. It's been more than a year. Every day I went to the hospital, I thought, today must be the day. But it never was. You never opened your eyes, never smiled at my jokes, never asked me how my day was. Daddy, please, you've rested long enough. It's time to

come back. You're scaring me...'

Austyn stopped moving.

He turned back to watch Kira.

The Perfect Counterparty

2/4

'Dr House said patients in a vegetative state could still wake up after ten, twenty years. But I don't want to wait that long. I don't want you to miss my graduation, my first job...' Austyn placed a hand on her shoulder and gently stroked her hair.

I want you there when we move into the big house I'm going to buy for us. I know you like rooms with a lot of windows...Please, Daddy, you have to wake up. I can't do this without you...' Austyn's pants were wet.

He couldn't tell if it was the bath water or her tears."

Her face was buried in his lap.

He could feel the vibration in her chest as she wept and poured her heart out.

She never shared those thoughts with him when she was sober.

The M Group's germophobic president stood stock-still and let his wife use his pants as a wiping cloth.

He didn't want to think what else she was wiping away.

'I'll let it go just this once,' he said, more to himself than to her, 'considering you're a drunk blubbering mess at the moment. But as soon as you sober up, you're hand-washing this shirt and this pair of pants.' Austyn glanced down. 'And the shoes."

Kira's weeping subsided to sniffling, interspersed with her on-and-off soliloquy.

Austyn had twisted the stopper at the bottom of the tub.

Water was draining out.

Kira's eyes grew heavy.

Her voice trailed off.

She let go of Austyn's leg and rested her chin on the lip of the tub.

She drifted off.

Austyn lowered his head to stare at the woman's face.

When she wasn't blabbering, she looked serene, almost angelic.

Drops of water clung to the ends of her long, curly eyelashes.

Austyn snatched his Gieves & Hawkes linen suit from a rack nearby and tossed it over the girl's head.

Then he turned around and left the bathroom.

Standing on the balcony, Austyn lit a cigarette and took a long pull.

The night air was thick with the fragrance of blooming cowslip creepers.

Last summer, he'd spent many a night on the balcony, smoking.

But back then, there wasn't a drunk, incoherent woman in his bathtub.

Had it really been more than a year?

That was what she said.

Austyn couldn't recall the exact date of their marriage.

Kai was the one who handled the application for a marriage certificate.

The feriect Counterparty

Austyn had business to tend to.

To him, it was a marriage of convenience.

He was almost thirty, the right age for marriage.

There had been some familial pressure.

'You're not getting any younger,' as a certain someone put it.

Treating it like a business problem, he confronted it with a business approach.

He did his research, identified a suitable target for acquisition, approached the target, and made her an

offer she couldn't refuse.

He found Kira Hewitt living with two others in a basement.

Dirty, dark, damp, not to mention there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.

The girl was a pitiful sight.

Scrawny to the point of almost being emaciated.

Wearing a t-shirt washed so many times that it had turned threadbare.

All her belongings could not fill one suitcase.Owned by NôvelDrama.Org.

But her eyes burned with a fire that no vicissitudes in life could extinguish.

Austyn outlined his proposal in succinct sentences.

Party A would settle all of Kira's father's medical bills, if Party B would agree to be Party A's legally

wedded wife.

Kira pounced on the offer.

She was nodding before he'd finished saying 'medical bills.'

'Where do I sign?' she asked.

During their first year of marriage, Kira discharged her duties with a level of conscientiousness that impressed even him.

She was quiet when he needed her to be.

Obedient but not to the point of being servile.

He could tell she was impressed, even awed, by the opulence of his villa when she first stepped foot

inside.

But she never coveted anything that did not belong to her.

Elsie and the other employees at the house couldn't say enough nice things about her.

She was the perfect counterparty for a marriage contract.

Austyn congratulated himself on his excellent choice.

She would retain the title of Mrs McCarthy for as long as she continued holding up her end of the bargain.

He would fulfil his contractual obligations as well, of course.

But he wouldn't love her.

Not now.

Not in the future.

That was what he thought.

Till tonight.

When she threw herself into his arms.

When she poured her heart out like he was the only one she trusted in the whole wide world.

When her tears stained his shirt and left indelible marks on...his heart.

There was a strange sensation in his chest.

A stirring.

A dull ache that seemed to only let up when he held her close.

A scalding pain on his finger jolted Austyn back to the present.

The cigarette had burned out.

Frowning, he flicked the butt into an ashtray.

Austyn left the balcony.

He headed into the bathroom.

The bathtub was completely drained.

His linen suit was balled up on the floor,

Kira wasn't there.