The Mistress Mistake (13 page)

He knew he should get up and leave; this was
too dangerous, sleeping in the same bed with her. The agreement
between them didn't allow for such intimacy, he had to remember
that
he
didn't want it. But he couldn't seem to get up and
go. If he got up, he'd have to let go of her breast, and God only
knew how long it would take before he'd be able to touch it again.
His cock was screaming at him to roll her over and bury himself
within her hot folds. But his brain wouldn't let his cock win the
fight. He still had some control over his body, and right now, his
most pressing need was holding her breast in his hand for as long
as he could. He was vaguely aware that it was an emotional need,
and not a physical one, but he pushed away the thought and
concentrated on her. She was soft and silky, and God, so sweet. He
remembered the look in her eyes when he'd put her on top of him,
the innocence and question that had shone from them, and it was
almost more than he could stand to lie still and continue to just
hold her. He still needed sleep; his eyes were, even now, trying to
close on him. But he didn't want to go back to sleep, he wanted to
stay awake and enjoy the feel of her within his arms.

What he was starting to feel for her was
dangerous, and he needed to get a grip, but he'd worry about that
tomorrow. For now, nothing and nobody would take this away from
him.

****

When Jessica woke up the next morning, Connor
was gone. She tried to keep busy, and fiddled with the e-reader
long enough to download a bunch of free books that she hadn't even
known were available until she began browsing the online bookstore.
Free books! That was exactly within her price range.

It had started to rain again, and she flipped
through the channels on the new flat-screen until she found an
exercise program that was only just beginning. She jumped up,
pushed the coffee table aside and began following along, pleased
she was finally able to stretch and test her muscles again.

When she was finished working out, she went
online and checked her email accounts. Looking at all the emails
she kept getting from
that
account, she went in and with an
inordinate amount of satisfaction, deleted the profile she'd made
and erased the entire email account she'd set up to go along with
it. She hadn't had access to a computer since she'd left campus,
and now she ran through all her favorite websites and played on
Facebook for a while.

It dawned on her that she now could get back
onto the university's web portal, and she logged on and with a
dedicated effort, began combing through the financial aid pages.
She knew her grade point average was too low for any of the
scholarships offered directly through the university, but there
were tons of links to privately funded scholarships.

Unfortunately, she kept running into
different roadblocks. Either she wasn't working on the right major,
or she didn't have the correct prerequisites, or her GPA wasn't
high enough. She scrolled and studied for several hours until
suddenly, she hit a gold mine. Not a gold mine that would solve all
of her problems, but it would pay her fall tuition if she could
score it. The scholarship was from a national petroleum company,
and they were offering five grand to a Geology major who fit the
bill.
And she did
.

She re-read the requirements a good three
times, saw that the closing date to apply for the fall semester was
tomorrow
, and she spent the next two hours making her
application as tip-top as she possibly could.

She pressed the
submit
application
button, and said a swift prayer.

****

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?"

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, and 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'.

His lips grazed across her cheek and took a
quick, gentle kiss on her lips. "I just want to kiss you, I swear
to God."

He tugged her bottom lip into his mouth and
nipped at it, his breath joining and mingling with hers.

She let him take the lead, and floated into a
world of pretending the last few weeks hadn't happened. She set up
the scene in her head, and pretended they were newly dating, they'd
just gotten back from a movie, and he'd brought her back to her
dorm room only to find her roommate wasn't there. The character in
her head knew that Connor was going to push her for sex, but she
wasn't ready yet, and was determined to keep the situation and the
making out, under control.