by Lynda Chance
His lips pressed softly against her shoulder before he spoke again, in a raspy whisper. "Did you know that I graduated from UTD?"
His words sank in and totally floored, Jessica rolled over until she faced him. His hand went to cup the side of her face. "No way." UTD was only a mid-size college, and a fairly new one at that. You didn't run into people every day who were alumni. Sure, around this particular area of DFW, you ran into students from the school everywhere, but Jessica hadn't known he lived this close. She still didn't know where he lived.
He smiled as his hand played with her hair. "Sure. Computer science undergrad, and I did my MBA there as well."
"Why haven't you told me that before?"
"I don't know." His mouth flattened into a thin line and his eyes became hooded once again in a look she recognized. It was as if a mask came over his face and Jessica's stomach sank. "Go to sleep," he ordered, and before he could see the pain that came over her face, she flipped back over and tried to fall into a sleep that she knew would only elude her.
****
If her nights were spent with Connor, Jessica spent her daytime hours applying for any and all scholarships, no matter how small, as well as searching for a job close by.
She carved out a few lazy hours a week by the swimming pool, working on her tan. She hung out with Eric and his friend Travis a lot, out by the pool, and found out that Eric's cousin was beginning to get desperate for a place to live. Jessica kept that information rolling around in the back of her mind, although she couldn't commit to anything in her current situation.
But then two things happened at once that almost blew her mind. They for sure rocked her world, knocking her off the semi-balanced axis she'd been floating on.
The first happened while she spent a cloudy day inside, on the Internet, searching for a job.
All the good summer internships were already taken, but that didn't mean she couldn't get a job and earn some money during her free time. That is, if she could find a job close enough.
She spent a lot of time online that particular morning, and made a note of three job possibilities, and then she began making phone calls. Two of them were too far away to even consider, but the third was certainly within reason. It was at a large chain grocery store, and the lady she spoke to explained they needed someone immediately and full time. When Jessica told her she was a student at the university and could only work full-time during the summer, the other woman sounded impressed with her credentials and almost promised her the job if she'd only come in and apply in person.
Jessica didn't waste any time. She walked the half block to the bus stop and within twenty minutes she'd scored the job.
Only after accepting the position, did she find out about the hours she would need to work. It concerned her and she knew she needed to speak to Connor about it. Two of the shifts she would need to cover would be in the evening, and not only would they bleed over into the time he always visited her, but she was concerned about walking from the bus stop to the apartment complex in the dark.
Maybe she could get some mace or something.
And then the second miracle happened. When she let herself back into the apartment, she checked her email and almost fainted. Fainted in a very, very good way.
She'd received the five thousand dollar scholarship from the petroleum company. She read the email through five times, and every time it came up the same. As she silently calculated, she figured she'd have enough money from the scholarship to pay her fall tuition and fees, and have a little bit left over. Her mind began to race. She had five grand. She had a job. She had a roommate if she wanted one.
Holy crap. She could make this work. She could survive for at least one semester without Connor's money. And a plan for one semester was all she really needed for the moment.
As much as she was starting to feel for him, she hated their arrangement. She didn't want to give him up, she truly didn't. But she wanted to give up his money, in a big way.
She pulled out her copy of the lease agreement he'd made her sign and file away, and she studied it, trying to understand it. The lease was in her name, but he'd co-signed it. That meant he was on the hook to pay for it, but if she began paying for it with the money from her new job, as well as what a roommate would bring, then she couldn't be kicked out. At least that was her understanding.
She worried over what to tell Connor. She didn't want to lose him; she wanted to keep seeing him. But she wanted their relationship to be a normal one, and for them to be equals, and she didn't know how he would react to that. She knew he was coming to care for her, as much as he tried to hide it. But he kept himself so closed off from her. He never volunteered any information about himself, and anytime she got too emotionally close, he would shut down and edge away from her again. It was for that exact reason that she still slept with her t-shirt on, and she'd never allowed him to remove it, except for that one magical time of make-believe. If he needed his self-protection, then so too, did she.
While she considered what to do and how he would react, she spent the rest of the day doing a quick clean on the apartment, and by seven that evening she had only just finished her bath and was a bundle of nerves as she waited for him to show up.
By eight o'clock, Connor still wasn't there and Jessica was getting worried and angry. He came at seven every night, and when she began to really worry about him, it made her angry at herself to realize she'd allowed herself to care that deeply about him.
Pushing the disturbing thought from her mind, she realized she needed to eat something, so she defrosted a piece of pizza and ate it in front of the television. At ten o'clock, she assumed he wasn't going to show, so she brushed her teeth and hair and went to bed. She was beginning to get a headache, and she tossed and turned for hours, trying to find the sleep that she needed.
****
Connor had a late meeting that night, and when he found himself having to grit his teeth to make it through it, he became pissed at himself. After little more than a month, his body was already accustomed to Jessica. His internal timing knew when seven o'clock came and went, and when he got out of the meeting at nine, all he could think about was driving straight to the apartment and sinking inside her tight little body.
As he idled at a stoplight, the memory of her scent both hardened him and alarmed him.
Why the hell would he remember her scent? Why would it be going through his mind, messing with his insides and fucking him up so badly? When exactly had he gotten it so bad for her? The pull he felt coming from her direction was almost magnetic. He received a charge from her positive energy he couldn't fight against.
But he found himself trying to fight against it now. He made a quick decision, and instead of continuing on to her apartment, he turned left and drove to a downtown bar that he used to frequent before he met her.
He attempted to rationalize with himself. He was a grown man, and he was in control of his actions. There was no fucking way in hell that he was going to allow himself to get hung up on a tiny little virgin turned prostitute. But the very second his brain came up with that description for her, his stomach almost rebelled against him. He felt like he was going to throw up. She wasn't a prostitute. At worst, she was his mistress. But it still just wasn't going to fucking happen. Goddamn it all to fucking hell. He'd been married for five fucking years and he hadn't felt this way about his own wife. His wife had been in love with him, madly, completely. And he knew, deep down in the recesses of his doomed soul, he hadn't loved her back. At least, not the same way that she'd loved him. And now what? He was going to repay that love, that loyalty by falling for a twenty-year-old he was paying to have sex with him? How the hell fucked-up was that? All he'd wanted was an arrangement. A simple fucking arrangement. He'd wanted an arrangement like this for the express purpose of not having to seek out sex when he didn't want to.
Well, maybe tonight he wanted to. Maybe tonight he wanted to forget about Jessica, forget about the guilt cutting him in half.
Feeling searing nausea run through his gut, he walked into the bar and ordered a drink. It was Friday night, and as he glanced around from his seat on the barstool, he saw several women eyeing him up. Not much more than thirty fucking days ago, any one of them would have done just fine.
As he looked over the available merchandise, he felt his cock twitch and swell in his pants. But before he could even figure out which woman was making him hard, with a sinking feeling he realized what lay just below the surface of his consciousness. A tight little pussy with trimmed hair. Tan lines in the shape of a triangle. The hem of a t-shirt covering up everything above the perfect, vertical slice of her navel.
Just as he realized who the goddamn hell was making him hard, a woman who was more confident and cocky than the rest of them walked up to him and slid onto the empty barstool beside him.
Her cloying scent enveloped him, and just as smoothly as she laid her hand on his shoulder and swiveled to face him, he rose from his seat, slammed his glass on the bar in front of him, and stalked from the building.
Connor drove around for hours, fighting himself. It was as if he were two people, two people who were in an almighty battle.
He was pissed at himself for even thinking of Jessica as a prostitute. He'd taken her virginity, goddamnit. Virgins weren't prostitutes.
He was pissed he hadn't taken the slut in the bar and fucked her blind. He was pissed he only wanted to have sex with Jessica. And there was the difference, after all, right? The slut in the bar had been just that, a slut.
And Jessica was anything but. She was a sweet girl, a good girl, and he had a sudden and ferocious feeling that if he hadn't been such a fucking dick and hadn't pushed her into doing what she'd done, she'd have found another way to get the money.
So maybe it was all his fault. He hadn't set up her online profile, true. But he'd made it easy for her. It wasn't conceit to acknowledge that he wasn't a bad-looking guy, he was young, and always seemed to attract women. So wouldn't it follow that she'd have caved under his demands and gone ahead and done the damn thing she shouldn't have? He knew--he fucking knew in his goddamned heart, that she wouldn't have done this with anybody else. She wouldn't have opened her soft, sweet, virginal body to one of those old, horny fucks on that fucking website.
He hated that website.
But worse than that, he hated knowing he'd gone and done what he wasn't supposed to do.
He'd found a fucking woman that evidently, he couldn't do without, and now the guilt from that was going to eat him alive.
****
Around midnight, Connor gave up, if only for the night, and let himself inside Jessica's apartment.
A light was shining from her bathroom door, and she was asleep in the middle of the bed, the covers a tangled mess around her where it looked liked she'd had a major struggle with them.
He left the light on, but closed the door until there was only a small wedge of light spilling into the bedroom. Shucking out of his clothes as fast as he could, he crawled into the bed as carefully as possible and took her into his arms. He moved slowly; it was his intention to wake her, but he didn't want to scare her out of her deep sleep.
She let out soft sigh and he nuzzled her neck above her collarbone. Shit, there was that scent again. His cock swelled immediately and as she began rousing from sleep, he slipped her panties down her legs and pressed his palm against the place he'd been aching for all fucking day and night.
Chapter Eight
At first, Jessica thought she was dreaming. She thought she was having a sweet, sweet dream. Connor was there with her; he'd finally gotten to the apartment. He hadn't had an accident, nothing bad had happened to him. He touched her between her legs, and she opened for him without hesitation, wrapping her arms around his neck and sighing in contentment.
But then the dream turned dark, and from nowhere at all, a bad feeling crept through her veins and landed in a cold knot in her stomach. The dream downgraded from there, moving swiftly into the realms of a full-blown nightmare.
Someone else was in the bed with them. Another woman. Another woman was in their bed and it was sending panic and fear down her spine like a river of ice water. Her confused mind, somewhere halfway between sleep and consciousness, tried to understand what was happening. Hadn't Connor told her that he wouldn't sleep with anyone else? She'd thought he had. She thought that's what he meant when he'd said she didn't need to worry about not using condoms. What else could it have meant? She was on birth control, at his instigation.
But now she was having a nightmare because another woman was in bed with them. Surely not. He'd promised she wouldn't have to do a threesome.
With that thought, Jessica's eyes flew open and she came fully awake, as her circumstances and their agreement came rushing back to her in a stream of guilt and pain.
But at least he was here. And it had been just a bad dream. Nothing more. There certainly wasn't another woman in bed with them. Thank God. He was okay, he hadn't been in an accident or anything. He was holding her gently in his arms, and he was kissing her softly, running his hand up and down her thigh.
She was just about to fall into his kiss when her brain became alert, and her faculties began working fully. She took a deep breath, a haze of pain and agony coming over her as she realized what it was that had made her think of another woman. Before he could make a move to stop her, she slipped away from him, slid off the bed, ran to the bathroom, and locked the door behind her.
Her stomach heaved, and in seconds, she was bent over and losing everything in her stomach to the toilet. Almost immediately, Connor began pounding at the door.
"Jessica! Open the door!"
She sat back on her haunches on the other side of the door and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand as she flushed the toilet. "Go away."
"I can't go away, you're sick."
She couldn't control it, rage colored her tone. "I'm not sick. You're the sick one."
There was silence for an abbreviated second. "You're mad at me? What the hell did I do?"
"Go the fuck away, Connor!"
His hand began a steady knock on the door. Not loud. Not enough to bleed through the walls of the apartment and wake the neighbors. But it was steady and relentless, and she knew he wasn't going to give up.
All she had on was the t-shirt she usually slept in. He'd already taken her panties away from her. She didn't keep any clothes in the bathroom, and for once in her life, she was mad at herself for being such a clean freak. She couldn't have one damn pair of shorts lying around on the floor?
Taking a moment to brush her teeth as he continued the knocking, she finished up by wrapping a towel around her hips and walking out of the door. Amazingly, he let her pass, and she didn't look at him as she pulled a clean pair of panties and shorts out of the chest of drawers. She knew he'd never let her go back in the bathroom now, so she turned her back to him and did her best to slip her clothes on underneath the towel.
Within seconds she was dressed again, and she walked to the living room, and flipped on all the lights.
Her brain was still in a state of shocked confusion. For whatever reason, she really didn't think he'd go out and get laid by someone else. She really hadn't thought he would. And knowing that she'd been worried about him, worried he'd gotten hurt when all he'd really been doing was drinking and getting laid . . . she felt like an idiot on top of the annihilating pain she was experiencing.
Purely for something to do, Jessica walked over to the French doors and looked out at the swimming pool beyond her courtyard. There were a few people milling about in the late night, she recognized Eric and Travis. Several other people were sitting around the patio tables, laughing softly and having fun. Just like students on summer break. Why couldn't that be her? Why couldn't she be one of them with nothing more pressing than a few short hours spent with friends?
She continued to stand and look through the glass doors. She didn't want to sit on the couch where Connor could
tower over her and invade her space. Maybe standing here wasn't all that great an alternative, but it was the only one she had.
Connor followed her to the French doors and stood behind her, his breath hot on the top of her hair as he sank his hands into her shoulders, holding her in a punishing grip. "I'm sick? Where in the hell did that come from?"
She shrugged her shoulders and refused to answer as her anger grew stronger with the scent that clung to his body.
He swung her around to face him, impatience etched on his features. "You're going to answer me."
Her shoulders stiffened, but she attempted to keep any emotion from her voice. It was time to hide her pain behind indifference. "No big deal, but you smell like a whorehouse."
She didn't look directly at him, so she couldn't see the confusion that held him for a couple of seconds, but it became plain when he released her and stepped back from her that he'd made the connection and understood. In her mind, the only reason he would have stepped away from her was because she was correct, he did smell like some slut's perfume, and he was trying to take the evidence of it a few steps away from her.
Jessica turned away from him and began walking toward the kitchen in jerky movements. "Get out, Connor. Get out of my house," she said dejectedly. "You told me you wouldn't sleep with anyone else. And you didn't even bother to wash off her scent before coming h-here." Jessica was horrified when her voice cracked.
He didn't answer her for a long time and she leaned against the kitchen counter, pain cutting into her so deeply that she needed the support to keep her from clutching her stomach and sinking to the floor in a miserable heap.
He walked around the corner and came to the edge of the kitchen linoleum. "I didn't sleep with anyone else."
"No? You smell like you did." Jessica glared daggers at him.
"You're right. I guess I do have an . . . odor. I'll go grab a quick shower and then we'll talk."
"We don't have anything to talk about." She stood rigidly and answered him in short, succinct syllables, not believing his claim of innocence for even a moment.