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"Yes."
"You answer your phone if I call or text. No excuses, got that?"
"Yes."
"I'll see you tomorrow." The door closed and she heard his key as he inserted it and locked the deadbolt from the outside.
So that was that.
She slid from the bed and went and checked out the small bathroom more thoroughly. It contained a shower tub combination, and she turned the water on now for a quick wash.
She toweled herself off with one of only two towels she owned, and slipped fresh shorts and a t-shirt on.
The doorbell rang and she remembered the order he'd placed.
After paying and tipping the teenager, she carried all the stuff to the kitchen and began going through it. She hadn't paid much attention to him as he'd placed the order, but evidently, he hadn't wanted her to go hungry.
There were two large pizzas, one thin and one with a thick crust, as well as a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. And much to the delight of her heightened appetite, there was also a dessert pizza with chocolate dipping sauce. It wasn't exactly a balanced meal plan, but whether or not Connor realized it, he'd bought her enough food to last her nearly a week if she froze it.
As her salivary glands went into sudden overdrive, Jessica ran her eyes over the feast in front of her. She'd had a rough day; she'd just given her virginity away to someone who hadn't wanted it in the least. She had no family and very few close friends.
She went straight for the dessert pizza and the chocolate sauce.
****
Late that night, Connor sprawled on his sofa in his living room as a multitude of memories shot through his brain in a relentless panorama that wouldn't let up.
A virgin. She'd been a goddamn, one hundred percent, true to life, virgin. He hadn't even known they existed anymore. He'd damn sure never experienced one before in his life. Even his wife hadn't been a virgin when they had first gotten together. And before that, he'd lived through his high school and early college years ticking off how many girls he could fuck as he literally put a check by each one of them in his year book.
And none of them had been virgins.
The truth of it was still rippling through him in waves of after-shock.
He'd somehow managed to find the only virgin left in the goddamn city. And where the fuck had he found her? On a fucking website that promoted sexual arrangements with a financial foundation, to put it nicely.
It was beyond anything he could ever have imagined happening.
He should have pulled out of her tight assed little body and left right then, and to hell with the six-month lease he'd signed.
But it wasn't the money that had kept him there.
It was her, goddamnit.
He hadn't been bullshitting her when he'd told her he thought she was beautiful. She was fucking beautiful. And not beautiful in any hardened way like the previous women he'd met from the website. And of course, now he knew why.
She wasn't hardened at all. She was slender and soft with glossy hair that tumbled past her shoulders in waves of silk. Her complexion was almost porcelain; every time she'd blushed it was there for him to see. Her features were delicate; she had an ethereal beauty that was refined. She was of medium height, and she was so slender that her body was graceful and dainty.
He'd told no lie when it had slipped from his lips that he thought he'd died and gone to heaven. He hadn't meant to say it, in fact would have never told her so, but suddenly, he'd been fighting himself; something had crawled up from his soul and refused to terrorize her anymore than he already had. He'd wanted her to feel special in that one moment. Even he wasn't so much of an ass that he could blatantly take a girl's virginity and only fuck her blind. He'd had to make it more for her. But he needed to get a grip on that. It absolutely couldn't continue. He would let her go. Maybe not after six months as he'd originally thought, but he couldn't keep her forever. The idea was too ludicrous to contemplate.
Certainly, she'd told a compelling story of why she'd ending up resorting to this. The catalyst had been losing her scholarship, but there was something else that came before that. Something from her history that made it impossible to continue her education any way else, something that he didn't know about.
He didn't think he wanted to know. He couldn't deny he was curious, but he had to close that part of himself down and let it go. He couldn't let himself want to know about her. He didn't want to feel compassion for her or anything else that resembled anything like it. He had to stick to his guns, he had to keep reminding himself that he wanted her just for sex, he didn't need or want a woman in his life for any other reason.
Everything he'd told her had been true. And after this one day, this one evening of retrospect, he couldn't dwell on these feelings any longer.
But he'd let himself have these few minutes of contemplation.
When he'd met her in the restaurant, he'd been inordinately relieved with just about everything she'd said. He knew himself; he would only agree to this kind of arrangement with a certain kind of woman. And she'd more than ticked off his requirements, like boxes on an application.
It wasn't only her youthful beauty. But that had damn sure been the starting point.
It was also her moral values that screamed through the inappropriateness of the meeting they were having. She wouldn't do just anything for money. She had demands that he more than agreed with, most of them anyway, and now that he knew about her total lack of experience, he might not push for anything more.
He wanted more, no doubt. But this arrangement was going to be hard enough for her to handle without having to accommodate his more erotic needs.
One thing at a time. He had to find a happy medium so they could get along. He'd never find another woman like her who was willing to do this with him, under his mandate, not in a million years.
He couldn't scare her off.
But he also couldn't take the chance of getting emotionally close to her.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
****
At seven o'clock the next evening, Jessica looked up from the last box she'd been unpacking as she heard her front door opening. She'd taken her time with all her things, and organized and decorated to the best of her abilities and with her limited belongings. She stood to her feet and waited.
Her nerves jangled, thinking of Connor. It had better be him. If it wasn't, then that meant a stranger was unlocking her door and that couldn't be good.
But of course, it was Connor. He walked inside without a glance and turned and bolted the door. He looked once in her direction and then walked over to the tiny dinette table and deposited a plastic sack that gave off an aroma that was making her taste buds go on high alert.
"Chinese." He was direct and to the point, as he'd been the entire time she'd known him, short though that time had been.
She answered him in the same manner. "Thanks."
He also carried two other large sacks, and she stood back as he strode through to the bathroom and she watched from the bedroom doorway as he unloaded toilet paper, tissues, wet wipes, soap and shampoo. She breathed a small sigh of relief. There had only been the one roll of paper when she moved in, and now she didn't have to worry about the chore of lugging more on the city bus. She already had her own toiletries, but everything he bought would last a while.
She'd made up her mind to try to survive on the least amount of money possible, so she could save every penny of excess money he gave her for school and the future. She never wante
d to have to do anything like this again in her life. So last night, she'd frozen most of the pizza right away so it wouldn't ruin. She planned to do the same with any other food he might bring. She could survive on very little, and with the food he'd supplied so far and the supplies he'd just put away, she could last for a while without having to go shopping. Going shopping for just one or two things always led to buying more, because without a vehicle, she was always concerned about when she could get to the store again. And then, before she knew it, all her savings would be gone. So she really wanted to stay out of all stores for as long as she possibly could.
He finished in the bathroom and moved back into the bedroom and pulled out an oversized box of condoms that he dropped on the bedside table. Her stomach tightened with nerves. The last thing in the sack looked like a tube of lubricant, and as he put that next to the condoms before tossing the empty sack in the corner of the room, she acknowledged the distress coiling in her stomach.
The third and final sack contained a set of sheets in a solid tan color. He made no move to take them out of the packaging; he just tossed them in the corner as well.
Turning to face her, he slowly and methodically began unbuttoning his shirt while his eyes landed on her and locked her within his stare. Her heartbeat increased, a sliver of both fear and arousal slid down and landed in a heated pool between her legs.
He tossed his shirt away and motioned with a tilt of his head toward the bed, exactly as he had the night before. On legs that felt like jelly, she crawled up to sit on the middle of the mattress. Exactly as the night before, she found her arms wrapping around her knees in self-protection.
"Take your shorts and underwear off." His shoes and socks were off now as well as his shirt, and he turned to the nightstand again and began unwrapping the supplies he'd placed there only moments before. She took off the clothes that left her lower body bare, and pulled the pillow in front of her and clutched it to her front, hiding herself from him.
He unsnapped his fly and as he put a single condom within reaching distance, he began to slide his jeans from his hips. He glanced over at her sitting in the middle of the bed, and with one finger made a twirling motion that told her unequivocally that he wanted her to roll over on her stomach again.
