The Arrangement, Volume 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Arrangement | Volume 1: The Contract

  Synopsis

  Contents

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  The Arrangement

  Volume 1: The Contract

  Copyright 2014 by Sharla Saxton

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book shall be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means.

  This story contains explicit mature and sexual content and is inappropriate for readers under 18. Reader discretion is advised.

  This work of fiction is the product of this author’s imagination. Any similarities to real life characters, places and events are unintended and purely coincidental.

  All characters depicted are of legal adult age.

  Disclaimer: The following story is for entertainment purposes only. The author takes no legal responsibility for any results of the sexual acts depicted in this story if you choose to practice them. Safe sex is encouraged and should always be practiced.

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  Email: [email protected]

  If you liked this book, please leave a review! It will really help me out a lot. You don’t want this poor girl to go broke and starve, do you?

  ***

  Synopsis

  What if you were forced to become the slave of a wealthy and powerful rancher cowboy?

  When 22 year-old Laura Jensen gets fired from McDonalds, she’s delighted to find a job as a maid to a playboy cowboy billionaire at The Pleasure Ranch.

  At first, she’s awed at the rich mansion, private jets and rows of servants, but when her hunky yet cruel employer begins humiliating her and forces her to become a sex toy, she is unwillingly aroused, but realizes all is not what it seems.

  As she navigates her way through the intriguing and glamorous world of mega wealth and high society, she finds herself playing a dangerous game, one where everything has a price and the ultimate prize is escaping with her life.

  *

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  *

  Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.

  D. H. LAWRENCE, Lady Chatterley's Lover

  *

  I.

  She was 22, just barely out of college. She had a daughter to care for and she was working a low-paying job in the fast-food industry. Her life was going nowhere.

  To Laura Jensen, Apartment 409: your rent is going up by 25%. You have 24 hours to pay up or you’ll be evicted.

  Sara Matheson, Landlady

  Laura frowned as she read the notice taped to the door of her third-floor apartment in Brooklyn, New York. It was a beautiful summer day in the Big Apple but this notice put a damper on her spirits.

  Puzzled, she tore the notice off the door. She had spoken to Sara the night before and Sara said that it wouldn’t affect Laura. Laura was glad because she knew she couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t her fault that her supervisor at McDonalds was a braying jackass who kept the profits for himself and refused to give his employees a raise.

  At that moment, the elevator opened and Sara the Landlady stepped out. A short fat redhead, she was hurrying through the hallway holding what looked like other rent increase notices.

  Holding up the notice, Laura protested, “Sara! I thought you said I didn’t have to pay the increase.”

  Sara barely glanced at Laura as she taped the notices on the neighbors’ doors. “Sorry, hon. Upper management says that all tenants will now have to pay up. Even those who can’t afford it. Wish I could help, but ain’t nothing I can do.”

  “But....”

  She turned the corner and disappeared.

  Shit, Laura thought. I can’t afford to pay an extra 25%. My rent is $600 a month for my crummy old studio apartment. An extra 25% would make it $750. Where am I going to get an extra $150 a month? My savings is depleted enough as it us. I make minimum wage of $7 an hour and every dollar goes to basic necessities like shelter, food, and transportation...for me and my daughter. I make a measly $262.50 a week working a 40-hour week. After paying all the necessities, I have no savings at the end of the month. And I have a child to care for.

  Backed into a corner, Laura decided she would swallow the bitter pill and ask her supervisor for a raise.

  *

  She arrived at the McDonalds by Grand Central Station a little late and Joe, her bald supervisor with bugger eyes, decided to let her have it.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled. “You’re late again.”

  Laura glanced at the clock on the wall. She was only one minute late, but she decided she wouldn’t get into it with him. After all, he was her supervisor and the assistant manager and his word was law.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “The subway stalled again.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough,” he cried.

  She gulped. There was no way she could mention a raise now.

  He went on, “You should apologize to all these customers who had to wait because we didn’t have enough people to serve them.”

  He pointed to the lineup that went all the way out to the streets.

  The customers were now starting to grow silent, staring at all the commotion.

  She looked at my supervisor for approval to go behind the counter and start her long ten-hour work shift.

  Joe rolled his bugger eyes. “Fine. Just get to work. And don’t be late again.”

  She quickly changed into her McDonalds team member uniform complete with the cap and joined her co-workers behind the busy counter.

  She looked down at the dirty floor and cringed. She was a very neat and clean person and couldn’t stand any filth. She ignored the dirty ground and tried to concentrate.

  Amid the loud cha-ching of the cash register and the din of conversation, she cleared her mind in preparation for heading into another long mind-numbing shift.

  Laura motioned to the next customer. “Next customer, please!”

  A grimy-looking old man in a baseball cap stepped up.

  “Welcome to McDonalds,” she said, willing myself to sound upbeat. “How may I serve ....”

  “One coffee and one bran muffin,” he growled, interrupting her.

  She overlooked the rude interruption. “Alright,” she said, punching the order in.

  Soon, his order arrived and she handed it to him.

  Then, she motioned for the next customer.

  But before the next customer could step up, the old man in the baseball cap took one sip of the coffee, spat it out and then chucked the hot coffee right at her.

  “Too hot,” the man said.

  She ducked fast, but not fast enough. The black coffee hit her chest, soaking my uniform and searing the skin underneath.

  She cried out in pain and the old man fled.

  She hurried to the employee washroom and changed out of her uniform. It was soaked all over, but lucky for her, her undershirt was fairly dry. The uniform had taken most of the heat too.

  Shit, she thought. Fuck!

  That had never happened before, but irate customers weren’t uncommon at McDonalds. But still, it annoyed her. She shouldn’t have to deal with this crap.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. Her blue eyes were bloodshot because she didn’t get much sleep the night before due to the constant wailing sirens in Brooklyn. Her long blond hair was neatly tied back, as a customer service representative’s hair would be.

  Since she was 5’10 tall an
d lean and worked out all the time, the spot on her chest where the coffee cup hit her didn’t hurt as much.

  Adoring activities like yoga and swimming, she was a natural athlete and would have tried out for the US Olympics Swim Team if it weren’t for her discouraging father, who had insisted that she study a subject like accounting. Since it was his lawyer money that paid her tuition, she had been forced to oblige. Unfortunately, the recession had hit hard and no entry-level accounting jobs had been available. Hence, she had been forced to settle for low-level fast-food jobs.

  She let out a deep breath.

  It’s OK, She told herself. It’s fine. You just had a minor setback. You can go out there and do your job.

  At that moment, her colleague Susan opened the door. “You OK?”

  “Yeah,” Laura said.

  Susan handed her another uniform. “I saw what happened so I told Joe about it. He said that customer is banned from our restaurant.”

  Looking at her with gratitude, Laura took the offered dry uniform. After the bad start to her day, it was nice to have a friend look out for her.

  Susan was a beautiful and petite short-haired brunette who started at McDonalds at the same time as Laura had. She was the only friendly co-worker Laura had. Everyone else would backstab her to get ahead. Susan was her best friend at work.

  “Just another one of those days,” Laura said.

  She tried to grin. “Yeah, I hear that. Let’s chat on our breaks. I wanna tell you about this cute guy I met.”

  Laura grinned back. With a friend around, work could become manageable.

  Susan left and Laura put on the dry uniform.

  Then, she prepared to head back out there again.

  OK, you can do this, she told myself. You can stand the rest of this shift.

  But the truth was that she couldn’t. She couldn’t take another shift of mind-numbing drudgery. She had been working at McDonalds for a year because she couldn’t find another job.

  But after a year, she had grown to hate the position.

  She was forced a monkey suit of a uniform working long back-breaking hours in a dirty environment for minimum wage. She had a bitch of a supervisor and a customer just threw a cup of scalding hot coffee at her.

  She wanted out.

  But she knew she had no choice. She was trapped. It was either work at McDonalds or spend months looking for another job. It had taken her four months to find work at McDonalds. Who knew how long it would take to find another job? And it would probably be the same job if she did find something. She’d end up working at another fast-food joint, a Burger King or an A&W or somewhere else.

  Her life was going nowhere and something had to be done.

  She wanted to quit so desperately, but maybe she could look for a job while still working at McDonalds. That way, she could quit when the right job came along.

  With her new plan easing her mind, she headed back out to the trenches, where her fellow slaves were assiduously putting on fake smiles and punching in orders of deep-fried foods that would clog up the arteries of consumers and then kill them.

  She stepped back up to the cash register and signaled for the next customer to order. “Next, please!”

  A lady in a dirty rain coat with wild gray hair and even wilder eyes stepped up. “I’d like a McChicken meal, please, but I only have $2. Would you please just give it to me for $2? Please, I’m really hungry and I haven’t eaten in two days.”

  She laid out two dirty and crumpled one-dollar bills on the counter.

  Laura could tell the old lady was probably one of those poor homeless street folk, even poorer than Laura was.

  In fact, the closer Laura examined her, the more familiar the old lady became. Then, it hit Laura. She had seen her a few times begging for food right outside of Grand Central Station.

  Laura knew she wasn’t technically supposed to hand out free food, but she had seen other coworkers do it even with Joe watching and they didn’t get in trouble. Besides, the need to be charitable took over Laura. The lady looked so poor and frail. Laura wanted to do something nice for her, to give her a break. After all, Laura knew the old lady had been ignored, sneered at and even spat on when she begged on the streets.

  Behind the old lady, the next customer was tapping his foot impatiently.

  Laura smiled and nodded. “You know what? I’ll give it to you for free.”

  The gratitude in the lady’s eyes was overwhelming as they welled up with tears.

  Even though Laura hated her job, she was glad she could use what little power she had to do something nice for someone in need.

  When the McChicken meal was ready, Laura handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” the old lady said, stuffing her face with fries. “You’re a nice young lady.”

  She turned around and left.

  Laura stood there, basking in the lady’s gratitude. It felt really good to help someone in need. It almost made her job bearable.

  The good feeling quickly evaporated when a colleague tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Yo dude,” he said. “Joe wants to see you in his office now.”

  Laura’s throat tightened. Had her act of charity displeased her boss?

  On her way to his office, Laura’s mind raced with all sorts of unpleasant scenarios, the worst of which was getting fired for handing out free food.

  She didn’t want to get fired (only because she desperately needed the money), but she braced herself for the worst.

  She didn’t even make it to Joe’s office.

  Her supervisor walked up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. “I talked to the manager and he agrees with my decision.”

  Laura turned around. “What decision?”

  “Someone saw you give out free food.”

  So he did know, she thought.

  Laura protested, “I’m sorry, but the lady said she was starving. I couldn’t refuse her. We’re a part of a multi-billion dollar company here. Can’t we spare the $6 to feed a homeless old woman?”

  “No,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Then I’ll pay for it. You can take the $6 out of my pay check,” Laura said.

  “It’s more than the money. You violated a rule.”

  “But I’ve seen other coworkers do it with you watching.”

  “You’re not other coworkers.”

  And that was when Laura knew that Joe had always had it out for her.

  There was a gleeful look on his smug, pudgy face.

  “You’re fired,” he said.

  *

  II.

  Laura tried not to think of how she had lost her only source of income as she headed to the daycare centre to pick up Rosie, her six year-old daughter.

  She had a child to take care of and needed to put on a brave face for Rosie.

  Laura arrived at Sunshine Daycare on East 56th and opened the door.

  A delighted voice cried out, “Mommy!”

  Rosie, a carbon copy of her mother, raced toward her mother and wrapped her little arms around her mother’s legs.

  “Mommy, I missed you so much!” cried Rosie.

  Laura gazed down at the mass of long blond hair.

  She wasn’t going to lie to herself. Sometimes, she felt saddled and burdened with the responsibility of having to take care of a child, but at times like this, when Rosie was gushing out love and adoration for her mother, Laura felt that it had all been worth it.

  At the tender age of 16, she had been knocked up by Tommy, a smooth, suave, sweet-talking, weight-training tanned young man who had dreams of becoming a professional UFC fighter.

  When he heard that Laura was pregnant, he bolted and was never heard from since.

  It had been a rude introduction to the world of men for Laura. After the birth of Rosie (named after Laura’s favourite grandmother), Laura had gone on to graduate from high school, while her parents took care of Rosie for her. And when she went to college, she decided it was time to become an adult and
take her daughter with her. It hadn’t been easy having to study, working a menial manual-labor job and take care of her young daughter at the same time, but Laura had done it. And now that Laura had finished school, she had more time to spend with her daughter.

  And as for men, well, Laura had managed to steer clear of men for the past six years. She knew they couldn’t be trusted to commit. Apart from the occasional casual date, she had never allowed any man to enter her, both physically and spiritually. Sure, there were nights when she had ached for the gentle touch of a man, but then, she would remind herself of what one impulsive night with a teenage boy had resulted in and that would always set her thinking straight.

  But still, there was always that lingering desire for a man that never went away. Over the years, she had learned to deal with it, even suppress it, but it resurfaced from time to time, and each time it did, she feared she might allow her heart to win out over her mind again.

  Laura bent down and picked up her daughter.

  Rosie was the splitting image of herself, right down to the blue eyes. Laura adored this mini version of herself.

  When she was pregnant with Rosie, she didn’t know how she’d feel about her daughter. Would she resent the social implications of pregnancy? Would boys ask her to the senior prom? Would her friends stick by her or ignore her now that she was different? Would she resent having to stay home and feed her baby and change her diapers while her friends went out and partied, as young people did?

  But the moment Rosie was born, Laura had stared into her baby’s sky-blue eyes and fallen in love. From that moment on, she knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her daughter.

  Laura smiled and kissed Rosie’s cheeks. “Mommy loves you, baby.”

  “I love you too, Mommy,” Rosie said. “Are we going for ice-cream today?”

  Laura stared at Rosie. She didn’t know what to tell her.

  Money was way too tight for ice-cream, but she didn’t want to let her child down. She hated it when Rosie made her sad face.

  Laura said, “I’ll tell you what, baby. We’ll go get ice cream another time. We don’t want to miss your favourite show, right?”

  At the mention of her favourite show, Rosie smiled. “Telly-Wellies!”