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The next three weeks crawled by as if in slow motion. Her relationship with Connor progressed only in tiny increments. He continued to come visit her around seven every evening, but he was almost always gentle with her now. She refused to think of it as making love, and she wouldn't use the terminology he used, but when they had sex, it was almost always in the missionary position.
She continued to keep her shirt on, and she knew it was beginning to drive him crazy. Always, without fail, he would wait until she was almost mindless from arousal, and then he would slide his arm up her torso and cover her breast with his hand. Several times, he almost got away with it, because she was so far gone. But each time, she'd realize what he was doing, and stiffen beneath his touch. They never fought about it, they didn't openly talk about it, and she hoped she wasn't such a mean-spirited shrew that she purposely denied him her breasts. It wasn't that. She just wasn't ready. It was crazy, she knew. But as long as money was the underlining factor in their relationship, she wanted to keep that part of her body to herself.
Sometimes he wanted to have sex two or three times a day. First, the very second he arrived, once on the couch around eleven, and sometimes again in the middle of the night. Those pre-dawn interludes were quick and only for him. She would awaken with him already inside of her and thrusting toward orgasm. It only took minutes.
He began spending the night at the apartment, or at least, almost the entire night. Without fail, she always had to use the bathroom at about four o'clock in the morning, and he was usually still there. Yet when she got out of bed around seven, he was always gone. So at some time in the wee hours of dawn, he left the bed with her asleep in it.
Since he was spending the nights with her, he began eating with her as well. She began to recognize on which nights he would bring certain types of food.
They didn't talk often about their pasts, but they'd had a few conversations. She learned he owned a start-up technology company, and he was able to work so much from home because he basically could do as he liked. She knew he made a lot of money from the mobile business applications he'd invented and which evidently, tons of companies couldn't do without. She'd been surprised when she'd found out he was so much into computers, because he didn't seem the type at all. Tall and brawny and well built, the last thing he looked like was a software developer. When she'd found out what he did for a living, she'd tapped him playfully on the shoulder and told him that he didn't look like a computer geek. He'd flipped her to her back and told her that computer geeks came in all shapes and sizes.
One night when they were sitting on the couch he began questioning her about her past. In her mind, the most shameful thing she'd ever done in her life had been what she was doing with him, so she didn't have anything to hide from him. She'd admitted she had no idea who her father was and told him that her mom was in prison and would be for a long, long time. They sat side by side on the couch, the sun had already gone down and she hadn't moved to turn on any lights yet. The moonlight came in through the windows, and the swimming pool lights cast a soft spell outside her window.
He moved to position his back in the corner of the couch, with one leg spread out on the cushions and the other propped on the coffee table. He pulled her into him until she lay between his spread thighs, curled up against him, her stomach pressed into the juncture of his thighs, and her head propped on his chest. One of his hands went to the top of her head, and began to play with her hair, while he held her hand in his other one. The hand that held hers didn't stay still, but caressed her hand, moving his fingers over hers and learning by touch every inch of her palm, fingertips, and nails.
He had taken her once to the bedroom already, and she knew that that encounter had taken the edge off his sexual need, and was the reason he was seemingly content to lie on the couch with her now. He'd left his underwear off, but had pulled his jeans back on, and they were zipped but not buttoned. She'd slipped a clean pair of panties on, and as usual, had her sleeping t-shirt firmly in place.
As he continued to stroke his hands over her, a shiver of longing ran through her, but she remained still against him as he quietly continued to question her. "So what made you do this, sweetheart? I know you lost your scholarship, but why didn't you go the obvious route? Something like seventy percent of college kids take out loans. Are you that much against debt?"
She licked her lips. "No, of course not."
"Then why?"
"My mom ruined my credit. She trashed it years ago."
"How so? How did she ruin it?"
"She took out a bunch of loans in my name. When I was about fourteen. My social security number has a black mark against it that I'll probably never recover from. I'm talking like bankruptcy and everything." She felt his hands still where they caressed her and she knew she had his full attention. "They say your credit can be repaired in about seven years, but that's a load of crap. Have you ever in your life seen a credit application that didn't ask if you'd ever declared bankruptcy? Once you answer that question, you're toast."
"So you tried to get a loan?" he asked.
"Yep, many times. Right after I went on academic probation, at the end of the last fall semester, just in case I ended up losing the scholarship."
"And you were denied?" His hands continued to run over her.
She sucked in a breath and tried to concentrate on the conversation they were having and not his hands on her. "Every time."
"I'm sorry."
Jessica moved to prop her hands under her chin and look up into his eyes. "It's not your fault."
He watched her carefully, the hand that she'd let go of moving to settle on her butt. He continued to study her, and his expression became clouded with something she couldn't read. "Isn't it?" he asked.
She frowned, wondering at his meaning. "No, you didn't even know me back then."
He leaned down and brushed a kiss over her forehead. "That's true."
Jessica sighed, and he put his hands over her arms and pulled her up a few inches until he could reach her mouth. Their lips met, and he kissed her softly, moving his lips over hers slowly, but not trying to penetrate her with his tongue.
They kissed like that for many minutes, and Jessica's head began to swim as his hands caressed her back, running over her butt and down her thighs and then to her shoulders and back again.
Their breathing became heavy, and he slid his tongue inside and tasted her more fully. His put his hand on the back of her hair and angled her head so he could get a better fit, and the kiss became even deeper.
Jessica began to get lightheaded and broke away from his lips to take a breath. His lips moved to her ear and he whispered, "You want to play a game?"
Chapter Seven
The last time Connor had used that terminology, they'd just met, and that force word had come up between them. Jessica stiffened in his arms.
He must have read her exact thought, because he began to soothe her immediately. "Shh. No, I'm not talking about anything you won't like. Nothing to be scared of, no pain at all, sweetheart. Causing you pain isn't something that gets me off." He stiffened beside her and his face paled. "It has the opposite effect."
"What then?" she whispered.
"How about a simple game of pretend?" he asked softly, teasingly.
"Pretend? Pretend what?" she asked, both surprised and mildly intrigued by the idea.
His teeth grazed her earlobe and he bit down softly on it before releasing it and smoothing the hair away from her ear and whispering again, "Let's pretend that we're kids and we're dating. You'll be a virgin and want to stay that way, but you're curious. We'll pretend that I'm desperate to do more than kiss you, that I'm desperate to move to second base."
Jessica's breath hitched when he said 'second base', and she let out a tiny, uncontrollable whimper of distress. She began to lever herself away from him. "I don't know, I'm not that good at pretending."
His hand wrapped around the back of her neck, holding her firmly in place, an
d his eyes clashed with hers and refused to let go. "Please, Jessica. Just play the game with me. You get to make the rules, okay? All of the control is in your hands, I promise. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. She wasn't stupid. Connor was trying to trick her or seduce her into taking her shirt off. But as panicked as that made her, she wanted to do this with him. It sounded incredibly erotic, exactly how she would have loved it to have really been between them. She believed that he'd let her have control, to not do anything she didn't want him to. She still didn't plan on letting him get to second base, but the kissing and petting and trying to get there was too tempting for her to resist. So she closed her eyes for a second and tried to put herself in the correct mindset. She was a virgin again and Connor wanted to make out.
When she lifted her eyelids again, she was already in the game.
She opened her eyes wide and blinked up at him. "You promise we won't go all the way?" Her words were a whisper and he reacted to them gratifyingly quickly.
"Oh, God, I promise, baby. I promise, we won't go all the way." With his words, Jessica knew, that he too, had slipped into character and joined 'the game'.
