Chapter 1: Come closer

ROSE 𓆩♡𓆪

   Demian’s  mother was dying.

That was the beginning of everything. That was the fact that it sat on my chest every morning when I woke up and every night when I couldn’t sleep. Mrs. Cole had been in the hospital for three weeks and the doctors had made it very simple fifty thousand dollars for the surgery or she wouldn’t make it to the end of the month.

Demian had been working himself to the bone. Ten thousand dollars. That was everything he had managed to pull together.

 Ten thousand dollars against fifty thousand, and the doctor’s face when he handed it over said everything that needed to be said.

I watched him drop to his knees in that corridor.

I couldn’t do anything.

My boss made the announcement on Tuesday.

A client,  a Mr. Alex Christopher,  had made a specific request. He wanted to spend the night with a virgin. My boss wasn’t subtle about it. He stood in front of all of us and said there was a significant amount of money attached to whoever was willing, and then he waited.

The room went quiet.

Sandra found my eyes immediately. She knew. Of course she knew  I was a virgin. She was the only person I had told about my life, about Demian’s mother, about the money, about the way I had been lying awake at night trying to find a solution that didn’t exist.

“Don’t,” I told her with my eyes.

She ignored that.

“Demian’s mother is running out of time,” she said quietly, close to my ear. “You know how much she means to him. Are you really going to do nothing?”

I didn’t answer her.

But I didn’t walk away either. I thought about Demian and his poor mother lying helplessly in the hospital and how much I loved Demian. I had to agree and went on with the arrangement since I was still a virgin. 

The hotel room was on the fourteenth floor.

I stood just inside the doorway and told myself to breathe. The room smelled expensive, the  cologne and cedar and something else I couldn’t name. Everything in it cost more than I made in six months. I was still holding my bag strap with both hands like it was the only thing keeping me upright.

“Come closer.”

His voice came from the bathroom. Calm. Unhurried. The kind of voice that didn’t need to be loud before you listened to it.

I let go of my bag strap and walked further into the room.

He stepped out a moment later, still buttoning his cuff. He was taller and broader than I expected. He finished what he was doing before he looked at me  like I was something that could wait  and when his eyes finally landed on mine they moved slowly, taking his time, reading something I hadn’t agreed to show him.

My throat tightened.

“So you’re a virgin,” he said. Not quite a question.

“Yes,” I managed to say in my cracked voice. “I am.”

He looked at me for another second then glanced back at his phone. Filing the information away somewhere.

“Are you in a relationship?”

“I need the money,” I said. “Someone important to me doesn’t have time.”

Something shifted in his expression, not softness exactly, just recognition. The look of someone who has heard a certain kind of truth before and knows better than to argue with it.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “I’ll pay you one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. After I confirm what you’ve told me is true.”

He said it the way people say things they’ve already decided. No performance, no negotiation. 

I stared at him.

I thought about Demian on his knees. The doctor’s face. Twenty dollars against fifty thousand.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Sir Alex.”

He poured two glasses of wine and held one out.

I shook my head.

“You’re trying to ruin my mood,” he said flatly, still holding it toward me.

I took it. Gulped it in one go because if I thought about it I wouldn’t drink it. It burned all the way down to my stomach. It was sharp and immediate. He watched me with something close to amusement then poured himself another and drank it slowly, his eyes never fully leaving my face.

“Can we just…” I stopped. “Can we just do this already?”

The wine was already blurring the edges of things. My limbs felt loose. My thoughts felt far away.

He set his glass down.

“Shower before or after?” he asked, the corner of his mouth lifting but it’s not quite a smile. Something more deliberate than that.

I answered by reaching for the hem of my dress.

My fingers weren’t steady but I didn’t let that stop me. One motion, then another, until he pulled off my dress down to my feet and there was nothing left between me and the full weight of his gaze.

He didn’t look away.

He didn’t pretend to look away either.

His eyes moved over me slowly, unhurried, unashamed , and the stillness of him made it worse than if he had rushed. Like he had already decided to use every second of whatever came next.

My heart was beating in my throat.

He crossed the room slowly. Stopped close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his skin before he even touched me.

His hand found my wrist first. He didn't grip me, he was just holding me. His thumb traced a slow line across my pulse point and I felt my breath stutter.

He reached up and gently removed my hands from where they had risen instinctively to cover myself. Like it was obvious. Like there was no version of  me tonight where he was going to let me hide.

He lifted me like I weighed nothing and laid me against the sheets and leaned over me  close enough that I could see the patience in his eyes. The kind that wasn’t waiting. It was deciding.

“Relax,” he murmured.

But I couldn't.

His mouth moved from my lips to my neck slowly, deliberately. My fingers curled into the sheets. His thumb found his way around my nipples, and right there I felt a sensation down my vigina. 

This isn’t supposed to feel like anything, I told myself.

But when his lips reached my collarbone and his hands settled on my waist,  it felt warm and he was completely in control. My body forgot what I had decided.

“Spread your legs.”

He said it slowly and he was patient. With something quieter and more final underneath it.

He checked his watch. One glance. Then back to me.

“I don’t like wasting time, Rose.”

The way he said my name,  like he had been holding it a while already  made something loosen in my chest that I hadn’t meant to let go.

His fingers traced the inside of my thigh and every muscle in my body pulled tight.

“Be a good girl,” he said softly, “and let me in.”

My legs parted.

His fingers found its way to my Vigina and the sound he made against my skin, low and slow, told me everything I hadn’t wanted to know about the night ahead.

“Soaked already,” he murmured. Almost like he was talking to himself.

I closed my eyes and tried to find Demian’s face behind them.

But I couldn’t.

There was only this room. This warmth. This man  moving like he had a right to every part of me I had been saving for someone else.

When he finally pushed himself forward I gasped sharply. More like a pain and he stilled. Just for a breath. His forehead dropped to mine.

“I’ve got you,” he said quietly.

And somehow I said, God help me. But  I believed him to have got me.