His eyes narrowed on her while she took deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. She hadn't ever planned on telling him any of that. But he'd given her no time to think up a suitable excuse with his demand for an immediate answer.
While she tried to get herself under control, she felt him watching her from across the table. She felt like an insect under a microscope, he was watching her so intently.
The waiter came up and deposited their food and this time, Jessica very meticulously kept her eyes away from the young man until he'd finished delivering the meals and left. She picked up her fork and began moving her food around on her plate.
"You passed."
Jessica exhaled a pent up breath and looked across the table at Connor.
"Where do you go to school?" he asked.
The coiled rope in her stomach loosened a tiny bit. "UTD," she answered him. An expression crossed his face that she couldn't identify, and thinking he didn't recognize the acronym, she elaborated, "The University of Texas at Dallas."
After a prolonged moment, he answered her tersely, "Yeah, I know what UTD stands for." His eyes released hers and he picked up his napkin and looked down at his plate, still with a frown on his face.
The knot in her stomach tightened again. "Okay. Now what?" she managed to ask.
There was a long silence until finally he answered her, "Now we eat. Then you prove your claim of no tattoos. Then we negotiate."
Her eyes flared. "How do I prove I don't have any tattoos?"
"You show me your body."
The oxygen snarled in Jessica's lungs as panic infiltrated her. "Why won't you just believe me? Why would I lie when you're going to find out anyway?"
"You'd be surprised at the depth that some people will go to in this world."
"You've done this before? This isn't your first time?"
He picked up his fork and began eating. He swallowed, and answered her. "I haven't done this before, not completely, anyway. You're the fourth woman I've met, but the only one I've decided to go further with. I'm just saying that I've come across a lot of people in my life who wouldn't hesitate to lie about anything if it brought them financial gain or made things easier for them."
"I'm not showing you my body tonight."
"Yes, you are."
She shook her head as her eyes clung to the plate in front of her.
"Yes," he said unequivocally as he continued to eat.
Her head lifted. "No. Where would we do it, anyway? I can't just strip right here and now."
"We'll go to the hotel across the street."
Jessica sucked in an alarmed breath. "No effing way."
His stare was intent, hot on hers. "Jessica, calm down and eat your food."
Jessica moved the food around on her plate and managed to eat maybe three bites before she gave up altogether.
Before she knew it and long before she could get her nerves under control, he paid the bill and hustled her across the street until they were sitting in the hotel bar in a darkened corner. He ordered another round of drinks and the closer it came to becoming a reality in her life, the more she began to tremble.
"You need to get a grip. Have a few sips of my drink and we'll talk some more." He pushed his drink toward her and she was just nervous enough to lift it to her mouth. She took a large gulp and almost immediately began choking. It tasted like crap, but there was no doubt the alcohol induced a slow-growing warmth that spread through her veins and made her feel better. She took another drink before he slid it away from her.
"You need to understand what I require from this deal, okay?" he asked.
"Okay."
"All I want is sex." When he made that statement, her eyes cut away from his, but he reached out and pulled her chin back toward him until her eyes were focused on his again. His fingers were rough and callused and she wondered what he did for a living. "All I want is sex," he reiterated. "I'll never want anything more. I want a female body, a vessel. And I'm willing to pay for it. That's it."
"I understand." She almost said 'okay' again, but caught herself because it sounded too much like an agreement.
"If you're willing to do this, I have to make sure, upfront, that you do understand. There won't be anything deviant, I'd never hurt you, but this won't be making love. It's going to be fucking, you understand?"
She steeled her spine and focused on her goal and not on what he was telling her. She was going to be a geologist. She was going to get her degree. She was. "Yes."
He continued to spell it out for her in descriptive terms that she couldn't fail to understand. "It's not going to be pretty, no flowers and no jewelry. I'm not going to seduce you. You're going to take my money, and in return, I get to fuck you. If you think you can handle it so far, we'll slip upstairs to a room and make sure you're telling the truth about the tats. Then we'll start the negotiations."
"I swear to God, I'm telling you the truth. Can we negotiate, first, please?"
He watched her steadily, his frown becoming more pronounced. "All right. Against my better judgment, and because you're young, I'm going to let you have this one."
Her shoulders sagged in relief. And then stiffened again just as quickly as he spoke.
"Lift up your shirt."
"What?"
"It's dark in here, for now, just lift up your shirt and let me see your torso."
Jessica looked around at the darkened interior of the room. A few people sat at the bar, but he was right, no one else was around and no one was paying any attention to them. She reached down and lifted her shirt until it was scrunched around her bra. Her jeans were very low-rise and her white skin was on full display. His eyes left hers and slowly slid down, past where her arms held the bunched up material over her breasts, and then down until he was seeing her naked skin.
He cleared his throat. "That's fine for now."
She dropped the shirt and defiantly, reached across the table and lifted his drink and took a huge gulp. She slammed it back down in front of him and raised her eyes to his. Great. Now she was becoming an alcoholic.
One side of his mouth quirked at her actions as his eyes ran up and down her torso with a heated gaze. "How much do you want from this deal, Jessica?"
"Money-wise?"
"Yes."
She licked her lips. "I thought I'd take this a semester at a time. Tuition, room and board."
He studied her intently for a moment before stating unequivocally, "Your negotiating skills suck."
"What?"
"You're cutting yourself short. It wasn't all that long ago that I was going to school. I know how much it costs. Tuition, books, living expenses, you're looking at what, ten, twelve a semester?"
"Yes."
"Cutting yourself short. You even know what the going rate is for this kind of arrangement?"
She shook her head.
"Three grand a month. Half a year, right there you're looking at eighteen grand."
"I don't want more."
"Taking more won't make this any worse than it already is."
"Yes, it will."
"No, I promise you, it won't. Half a year is probably about the time limit on the deal anyway. You plan right, you save your money, you could have the spring semester paid without having to do something like this again."
He had a point there. "How much then? Three grand a month? I need at least enough for tuition and books up front--well, I need it by August."
"That's not a problem."
Jessica took a moment to think. Three grand a month was the going rate? If she multiplied that by the six months he had mentioned, it would pay basically one and a half semesters of school. She had four more semesters to go. If she could get all this unpleasantness over in six months but make enough to pay two semesters, that would be beyond amazing. It would also give her time to figure out her final year of school. She could improve her GPA, and maybe get enough in private scholarship money to pay for her fourth year.
Twenty-four thousand divided
by six months equaled four grand a month. He'd already intimated he was willing to pay the going rate, so maybe she could get him to go four grand a month. Jessica focused on all these things, the business side of the arrangement, and not on the actuality of it. Going over the numbers in her mind, she went for it. "Four grand a month, that will put a roof over my head and let me save enough over the summer to pay tuition in the fall and then again in the spring."
"Done."
His voice was strong and adamant and astonishment that he'd agreed so quickly surprised her. "Really?" Crap, crap, crap. This was moving forward and she didn't know if she wanted to go forward. She did, but she didn't.
"As long as you agree to what I want," he said.
Her lips tightened. "I know what you want . . . sex."
"There's a little more to it than that. You have to have a complete health check-up, which I'll pay for. That will include a drug test as well. I won't tolerate drugs of any kind, so I'm talking about a hair follicle test, not a simple urine test. If you know you're guilty of drug use already, save us both the time and effort this will take and admit it now." He watched her closely and she shook her head softly. At her denial, he continued, "I'm going to have a background check done on you as well. In addition to those requirements, you'll also have to agree to live where I want you to live, but I'll be reasonable and make it close to campus."
She let the background check and health-screening pass over her. That was practically a given. "I can't live on campus?"
"No."
"Why?"