Chapter 1: The Gauntlet is Thrown
I had my hand underneath of her shirt and I was rubbing her breast through her bra. She was moaning around my kiss and I could feel her rubbing her hips against mine. Occasionally her hands would brush against my breasts and I would feel my entire body shudder. I decided to go for it one more time. I took the waistband of her panties in my fingers and started to slide them off down her hips. Instantly, her hands were on my wrists and she was rolling her eyes and pushing me away.
"Listen Scarlett," she said, "I have told you before, I don't fuck girls. We can kiss and you can play with my boobs but that's it." I couldn't believe her. How was she able to kiss so passionately and rub me so openly but still claim that she didn't want to go any farther. I was surer than ever that she was just playing games with me. I decided to play along.
"Isn't there anything I can do to change your mind?" I said, biting my lower lip and trying to be as sexy as I could. To my surprise, she seemed to consider it.
"Well..." she said, "Maybe there is something you could do."
I guess I should drop back a minute and catch us up to this point. My name is Scarlett Byrne and I am 25 years old. I have been told, and tend to believe, that I am very beautiful. I am a petite girl, 5'2 and around 90lbs. I have long, straight, brown hair and large brown eyes. I am especially proud of my long eyelashes and upturned pixie nose. I have thick, pink lips and dimples when I smile. I have that sort of All-American girl face. My body is, as I said, petite. But it is very womanly nonetheless. I have small, 30-A breasts and hips that flare out just enough. I am a big exerciser and so my stomach is flat and my belly button is pierced and I have a toned, muscular butt. My legs are long given my height and very shapely. I used to get made fun of for my tiny feet but I have always liked them and now I think people think they are cute and make me look girlish.
I have been living on my own ever since I graduated from high school. My mother and I had never gotten along and when I told her that I was a lesbian she kicked me out and I have been making it on my own since then. I worked a couple of odd jobs and made a little bit of money. I lived in ratty trailers and with some pretty scary people for a while. I tried to figure out what I was going to do with myself.
One day I was walking past a parking lot near my job and I noticed an old used book store with air conditioning tucked into a corner. The hotel I was living in at the time didn't have any air, so I decided to go browse around and try to store up some of the cold for later use. I went inside and loved it immediately. It was overflowing with old books and it was dark and quiet and had that smell of old paper. I walked around for a while and enjoyed the ambiance. Eventually, I decided I had wondered around long enough. I found a book and walked it up to the checkout.
The guy running the place was absolutely ancient. He looked like he was about to keel over at any second and I tried not to talk too loudly and risk knocking him over. I told him how much I admired his store and he seemed genuinely grateful.
"Yeah, she's a good old place," he replied looking around, "It's a shame it's going to be gone in a few days."
"What do you mean?" I asked, honestly dismayed. I had been looking forward to coming back.
"I am retiring on Saturday. I have been at this too long. I am ready for a break. Heading on down to Florida to live with my daughter," he explained to me and I could tell that he was relieved, but the next question I asked seemed to break his heart.
"But why does this place have to close?"
"No one wants it. The interstate took most of the business off of this road and the profit margin has gotten pretty thin," he explained. I asked him how thin, "I just a couple hundred a week after taxes."
"Do you own the building?" I asked and he nodded. He went on to explain that he couldn't unload the place and that he was going to sell it to the bank for next to nothing so that they could tear it down and extend the parking lot.
"I have an idea," I said. With that I set in motion the process of buying the old store. In exchange for $100 a month to the old man, I would run the store and keep whatever profits came after that. I went with him and he changed his will so that when he died the store would be mine. By that Saturday, the store was essentially mine and I actually owned all of the books outright and I was incredibly excited.
I threw myself into the store and fixed it up, I put ads in weird little newspapers where I could get free or cheap space. I made cheap tea and gave it away for free. I also devised ways to get my hands on books cheaply by taking old books from libraries or damaged books from wholesalers. Finally, I catalogued everything that the store had with a computer and even did research and found that some of the older books were quite valuable. Now I had a sort of hippie clientele that came in and read and sometimes bought books. I also occasionally had book dealers and collectors come in and pay good money for some of my rarer pieces. Finally, I got licensing from the local university to buy back and sell some of their text books at an enormous profit. All in all I was able to maintain the cute atmosphere at the store but still make a little more money than the old man had been able to make.
For a year after I opened the store I lived in a little store room in the back. It wasn't exactly glamorous but I didn't mind. I just didn't bring any dates back home. After that year the old man died down in Florida and the deed to the store came in the mail. I decided to move into a real home. A store across the street had an apartment above it and the rent was relatively low and the commute was fantastic so I rented it. It was a cute little place with a kitchen/living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. For a while, this worked out very well.
However, one year the economy took a big drop and the demand for some of my more expensive books dropped off. I realized that in order to make money I was going to have to figure out a different revenue stream. I was still making enough money to keep up the store and to pay my rent but at the end of the week I ended up running low on food and I had to cancel luxuries at my home like cable and internet. I decided to rent out my extra room to a college student to make ends meet. The college was huge and they had a severe housing problem. Making it worse was the fact that rent in local apartments was astronomical. I would be doing well by doing good if I rented the room out cheap to a student in need.
The first girl who came in response to the room was Kegan Kelley. She was a 19 year old freshman and quite possibly the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. I rented her the room on the spot. Her parents were quite wealthy and I was actually able to get her to pay a little more than half of my rent. Beyond that, she was 5'9 110lbs, she had long dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. She had the face of a movie star and the most amazing body I had ever seen. She was built like a model with long legs, a thin stomach, elegant features, and small, perky breasts. Beyond that, she was a very sweet girl and we got along very, very well.
She moved in a few days later and disaster was averted. Furthermore, I found that I liked having someone in the house. She was impressed with my cooking ability and she herself was actually quite handy when it came to things like broken light bulbs or dirty sinks; things about which I had no knowledge about. Further, she guided all of her cute friends to my store and they spent money on text books and other little things and my life got better. I also came to have a friend, despite the fact that she was 6 years younger than me. We would sit up late and talk and drink coffee in our pajamas. Despite the fact that I thought I was falling for her, I never told her that I was a lesbian and I decided not to act on it. She occasionally had a boy over, but none of them ever spent the night and I just sort of figured we would both have sort of asexual existences within the apartment. However, one night things changed.
Kegan had gone out with some friends for the evening, to a party of some sort at a frat house. I was in for the night. It was a Thursday night which meant that if I wanted to go do something for the weekend I had to get my books in order and find out what sort of paycheck I would be able to give myself for the week. I had just finished up and was packing my stuff into my backpack when Kegan came home. She was hammered.
"Hey Scarlett," she said, far too loudly, "How're you?" She sort of stumbled into the room and flopped down on the chair.
"Good," I said giggling, "You?"
