I am really glad that people like St. Berry sexy times! This is a sort of hybrid chapter, some sexy and then the story gets back on track.
I.
"We can't ever do that again."
He just about stops himself from rolling his eyes at her and the dramatic tone she uses, but he'd be a liar if he said that he hadn't been expecting this reaction from her all along.
What he is currently witnessing is a full-on Rachel Berry freak-out, and, if he's being completely honest with himself, he's sort of missed them.
He swears that the things that other people find most annoying about her are the things he appreciates the most.
She folds her arms to emphasize how serious she is, and she's so damn cute that he smiles.
"I thought you enjoyed yourself," Jesse says softly, a hint of teasing in his voice. "I certainly did."
She has never quite been able to fight a blush, and it colors her cheeks now so much so that she defensively looks away.
"I'm not that kind of girl," she affirms, returning to look at him. "I don't know what came over me, but it's definitely not happening again."
"Not the kind of girl to make out with her boyfriend on a Friday night?" Jesse mutters in mock contemplation, "I don't understand."
Rachel narrows her eyes at him, glancing around to gauge how many other people are within earshot.
"You know what I mean," she tells him quietly, her jaw set. "And we're not doing this here."
She moves away from him, making her way towards her class, and he grabs her arm again.
"Then let's go somewhere we can talk."
"Jesse, I have class," she complains, trying to wrench her arm out of his grip.
"I'm just trying to uphold my side of this arrangement," he states loudly enough that he could potentially draw the attention of passersby, which causes her to have a minor panic attack.
"Stop," she warns him, in response to which he simply raises one eyebrow.
He can tell that he's gotten the message of his challenge across. He'll make a scene if he has to.
She accedes reluctantly. "Mitra should be out the rest of the afternoon," she volunteers. "We can talk there."
Back in her dorm room, she paces the small room fretfully, and he catches her every so often shooting a nervous glance at the bed.
He smirks to himself. He hadn't counted on this being fun. He will have to play the fine line between continuing with this insane charade of pretending to be her boyfriend, and calling her out on the real reason that she's feeling scared and trying to put so much distance between them.
"Something wrong, Rach?" he asks, startling her out of her pacing.
She takes a minute to gather her thoughts. "We shouldn't have crossed that line," she says diplomatically. "It complicates things too much, and I'm not sure what you're used to, but I'm not the type of girl that just fools around with random guys."
"I didn't realize I was some random guy," he says, and he doesn't quite have to feign the hurt he expresses.
"I'm paying you for your acting skills … not your … other skills," she finishes weakly. "If I were paying you to do that it would be like … I'm pretty sure that would be prostitution, which is illegal in every state except Nevada, and being arrested in my first year of college is not what I had in mind when I moved to New York to pursue my Broadway dreams, and I'm sure it would be frowned upon if any casting director or agent were to find out, and although it's my understanding that that sort of quid pro quo happens often in the theater industry, I intend to become a Broadway phenom with my virtue wholly intact."
She gulps in some air after she finishes rambling and peers up at him, meekly waiting for his response.
"You're paying me for acting services," he says agreeably. "That doesn't mean that we can't engage in extracurricular activities that we both enjoy outside the workplace, so to speak."
She's shaking her head in disagreement, but she's not looking at him. "It's too complicated."
"Why?" he presses. "You're seventeen years old, Rachel. You have needs. You have desires. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be close to someone; wanting to be with someone."
She sighs, because she doesn't know how to explain to him that she just doesn't do that. It's something that she's been thinking about all weekend. She has only been with one person in her entire life, and, at the time, she had deluded herself into thinking that Finn was the one – and would, for eternity, be the one.
Sometimes she wonders if Finn had always felt that way about Quinn.
She's not like Mitra, or any of her other slutty friends, who think of blow jobs as first date party favors, and who can have sex without any emotional consequences.
At least she had thought she wasn't like them.
She definitely wasn't like them when she didn't sleep with Puck or one of Blaine's warbler friends, or any of the guys that had crossed her path post-Finn.
Yet, Jesse had gotten her naked and her mouth around him in a matter of minutes, and she hadn't second-guessed it at the time, didn't actually think to regret it until Mitra had spread the news of the hook-up around the dorm, and all the girls had expressed judgment masked in surprise that Rachel would be so intimate with Jesse after only dating for a couple of weeks.
Talk about pot calling kettle black.
When she had started this little, um, arrangement, she had thought that was what she had wanted – for all the girls to see her as someone that guys were interested in and attracted to, someone that all the girls in her dorm would want to be or clamor to be friends with.
Obviously, she was willing to lie to make that happen, and had paid Jesse to do just that. But hearing what Mitra had told the other girls about what she had walked in on, and having it be totally and completely true – worse, even, given the actual circumstances – had affected Rachel in a way she hadn't expected.
Because she wasn't, and isn't, that type of girl.
Unless…
She feels unleashed with Jesse, a word that she had finally stumbled upon early Sunday morning as she lay awake replaying all the events of Friday night. With Finn, she had always played the role of the dutiful girlfriend, allowing him to be the dominant male, letting him lead in most, if not all, areas of their relationship. After her first disastrous experience with the cat calendars sophomore year, she had never tried to control their dates, much less their sex life.
Jesse doesn't make her feel shy or self-conscious or subdued. He's okay with letting her take control, but never hesitant to assert it if he wants to. She likes that give and take, and hadn't realized before now that she needed it.
On Friday, she had felt comfortable enough to assert her own desires when Jesse had asked, had responded vociferously to his attention, and had returned the pleasure in a more brazen way than she ever had before. Yet, she hadn't felt the awkwardness that she had thought was second nature when you were unclothed and vulnerable before someone else. She hadn't felt the need to cover herself and hide from him, not only in terms of her body, but what she herself had wanted.
It had been liberating.
But they had crossed a line. They are not in a conventional relationship – she's still hanging on to the business arrangement angle – and despite how much she may have enjoyed their night, she knows herself to well, and she won't be able to become involved in a sexual relationship with him without implicating her feelings in some way.
Those old feelings are already starting to resurface, and, now they're accompanied by images and sense-memories that she can't quite erase from her head.
They have to stop.
But then he's kissing her, and she knows this is his way of saying that he's done arguing, that they're talking and thinking too much, when they could be doing so much more.
Every single coherent thread of resistance leaves her brain.
He breaks the kiss. "We're attracted to each other, so we have sex. There's nothing wrong with you allowing yourself to be with someone who respects you, and who won't hurt you simply because you want to. No one should judge you for that. It's your life."
It's absolutely killing him to not call her on her bullshit and state that the real reason she's having second thoughts is because she has feelings for him, and that she wants this beyond any level of simple physical satisfaction. She may be an excellent actress, but he has always been able to read her like an open book.
But if this is what she says she wants right now, he's willing to go along with her self-delusion.
It's only a matter of time, anyway.
She starts fidgeting as she tries to make up her mind, and he's drawn to her legs, clad today in cinnamon-colored tights and a barely there mini-skirt. Just the way he likes them.
Surprisingly, it's his distraction that seemingly finalizes her decision.
"My eyes are up here," she teases lightly, causing him to grin.
He reaches down and grabs her behind her knees, picking her up so that they're eye-to-eye with her legs around his waist.
"I missed those legs," he tells her in a low, sexy voice. "I have this fantasy from when we were dating … your legs parted for me, and your thighs pressing against my head as I…"
He swallows hard, his eyes half-closed, and he doesn't finish his sentence.
They both get the point.
She finds herself nodding, as if in a trance, but she has one thing she has to say first.
"I don't want to go all the way," she tells him in a soft voice. "That's going too far and crossing too many lines. But we can…"
He nods, cutting her off. "Okay."
To be honest, she had expected more resistance than that, and is pleased that he will respect her wishes.
"Okay," she agrees.
II.
She actually laughs to herself when she looks at the clock and sees that it's still late morning, and on any other Monday she would be staring blankly at her professor instead of recovering from one of the most intense experiences of her life.
He tickles her ribs to get her attention, and she looks over at him.
"We might need to get some tea and lemon for the harm you just did to your voice," he says teasingly, referring to just how loud she had been a moment ago. "Wasn't that more fun than French class?"
She turns red, thoroughly embarrassed, and he looks like he regrets his words.
"You have nothing to be ashamed about," he reassures her. "That's just the obnoxious male ego talking. I may be far superior to most men," he says with a smile, "But sometimes base instincts do take over."
She gives him a playful shove, but it manages to break the tension, which is good, because she's never really done the friends with benefits thing before.
"So…" she says, "What now?"
Jesse smiles. "You are going to blow off classes for the rest of the day, because I'm taking you on a date. I think it will make quite the impression on the girls, if I do say so myself."
They end up at the Columbus Circle metro stop, and he leads them to Bed, Bath & Beyond.
"So when I said date, I meant half-project, half-date," he says cryptically, "But I'll bet anything that you'll enjoy it."
She's been relatively quiet and trusting on the trip over, but now she's curious as to what she has gotten herself into.
"We're going shopping?" she asks suspiciously, thinking that there must be something else up his sleeve.
"Correction: you are going shopping," he instructs her. "I bought a bed this weekend, and we have a budget of $75 and a handful of coupons, and I thought that my girlfriend …" He stops so that she can appreciate the full impact of the word, "Would appreciate helping me pick out linens and all that other stuff. I'm pretty sure allowing you to do that puts me in the boyfriend hall of fame."
She can't help but smile excitedly, because it feels as if all the hours she spends watching HGTV will finally have an outlet, and it will actually be fun.
There is one thing that gives her pause. "You bought a bed with the money that I … that I've … um… been giving you?"
His face falls, as it always does when she reminds him of his financial situation, and she regrets her statement almost immediately.
"I've been saving up for a while," he says, "You may have been fooled, but the yoga mat isn't exactly the most comfortable place to sleep. And, after Friday, I figured we could use another place to hang out that isn't half controlled by your roommate."
She nods, unwilling to pose anymore potentially awkward questions. He has a point, especially if their … extracurriculars will continue.
"I just have one request, Rach. Go easy on the gold stars, okay?"
III.
Her lifelong thriftiness pays off, and she actually manages to make his place look semi-decent on a budget of $75 and a handful of coupons. She chooses a navy and gold theme, and splurges on a gold star throw pillow, more as a joke than anything else.
The result of that emotionally draining weekend is that she now has frequent orgasms, and a new place to chill in Jesse's apartment, as long as she only comes and goes in the daylight.
His instructions, not hers.
Even though she had been acting against her better judgment, their friends with benefits relationship is surprisingly easy, partly because their new friendship is so effortlessly easy. Some nights they experiment with new recipes in his slow cooker, sometimes they study, and sometimes they get naked under the covers.
Nothing ever feels more important than anything else.
The girls are starting to accept her relationship with Jesse as part of the routine, and she basks in the popularity that she had envisioned from the start - being invited out on group dates and dinners, house parties at which she and Jesse are practically expected to spend all night groping.
Other than the almost unbearably awkward moment of handing Jesse a check every week for his "services," she can almost convince herself that everything is perfect.
And then comes the day that Finn Hudson walks back into her life.