She pushed some hair off her face, staring at him. She saw that he was earnest about this.
“You want me and you to date? Like a real couple?”
“Yes.”
“Jax, I don’t … I’m not comfortable with the thought of you being with other women.”
“This isn’t about other women. It’s you I want. No one else, and that is what I’m offering. You, me, and no one else.”
She tilted her head to the side and wondered what to do. Their shared kiss hadn’t exactly disappeared from her mind. If anything, she wanted him a little more. He’d been one hell of a kisser. The thing was, she didn’t want to lose this friendship they were building or this apartment.
She’d even started looking for other places to live, and nothing lived up to this. This place was fucking amazing, and she wasn’t being selfish or self-centered over this.
Sex was one thing.
Security was another.
“Okay, fine. You want to give this a try?”
“Yes.”
“How about we make a deal?”
“A deal?”
“Yes. An agreement between the two of us.”
“Why do we need an agreement in the first place?” Jax asked.
“Because, I love the way we are right now. Our living arrangements work. We work. You can’t deny that,” she said.
“No, I can’t. So you’re wanting us to come to some deal that keeps this.”
“It’s to see if we can still live together while we have something else going on.”
“Why wouldn’t we be able to live together?” he asked.
She rolls her eyes. “Simple, you’ve never been in a long-term relationship. In fact, you screw them and kick them out. This is my home. I want to see how this goes before we delve into the whole sex thing.”
“Why do I feel this is going to involve no sex, with what you just said?”
“Because it is, and the best kinds of agreements are the ones that offer abstinence. And you’ve been proven to be a douchebag to a lot of the women you sleep with. This is a temporary kind of security deal for my home. It’ll be fun. I think it’ll be fun. It’ll be kind of weird to do, but I think we can come to some arrangement.”
“What kind of deal do you have in mind?”
“It’s a pretty simple one, actually. We date. We spend time together, and we don’t have sex at all.”
“No sex.”
“None.”
“Can we negotiate?” he asked.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say no, but then he had her kind of curious. “What exactly do you want to negotiate?”
“So, sex is off the table. With each other and with other people. That goes for you as well.”
“I’m already in agreement with this.”
“Good. Then I say foreplay is still very much on. You make me come, I make you come. It’s a win-win.”
“That’s sex.”
“No, that’s foreplay.”
“We both get to have a happy ending, Jax. That is sex.”
“Where did you come from? Does that mean you’re not going to pleasure yourself at all?”
“What?”
“If you say foreplay and orgasms are all around sex, then you can’t masturbate. There’s no way I’ll let you stroke that sweet pussy, and to make sure we both stick to this agreement, you have to move into my bed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“By your own words, achieving orgasm is having sex. I don’t agree. Completely disagree with you on all that, but it’s what you think.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to manipulate all of this.”
“I’m not. I’m trying to play by the very rules that you’ve put in place. That means, no touching of your special place.”
She burst out laughing.
“Okay, fine; foreplay is allowed but no actual penetration.”
“I want to counternegotiate.”
“You’re really playing hardball with this.”
“A guy has got to get what he can. You’re a tough cookie to crack.”
She chuckled. This was actually really fun. “Give me your counteroffer.”
“No dick shall enter your pussy and no pussy shall slide on my dick. But … tongues and fingers and sex toys are allowed.”
“No sex toys.”
“Why the hell not?”
“They’re called sex toys, so it means we’re clearly having sex.”
“Ugh, this is not fun. Fingers and tongues?”
“They’re a possibility.”
“And finally, she caves.”
“I am not caving. This is crazy. I want you to also agree that if this doesn’t work between either of us, we can both still live in this apartment.”
“Wow, you don’t want my cock but you want my apartment.”
“A girl has got to have priorities.” She had said nothing about not wanting his cock. She very much wanted it, but she also didn’t want to screw up what they had. If for whatever reason they didn’t work, she didn’t want to think about him fucking other women.
“How long is this going to last? I need to tell my guy he’s not getting to see your pussy in a very long time.”
“I don’t know. How about a month? We see how things are going and you can make dinner and we’ll see.”