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.
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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.