Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1) (38 page)

“Don’t cry,” Graham whispered as his finger slipped beneath my chin, tilting my head up. “I’m not worth your tears, beautiful.”

“Graham,” I croaked. “Why didn’t you just trust me with the truth?”

“I could see how much resentment you had toward your dad—resentment you’re entitled to, by the way. It scared me. I was a coward, and for that I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. I should have talked to you. I should have let you explain. I owed you that much.”

“Flor, you gotta know that every minute without you has been hell. You’re all I think about. You’re all I miss. You’re all I want and I came here to ask—no—
beg
you for another chance. Give me a chance to prove to you that I can make you happy.”

My chin quivered as tears blurred my vision.

“Come here. Please don’t cry. It kills me,” he said, sounding as though his emotions were barely contained.

I allowed him to pull me forward, bringing my body only inches from his.

“Why didn’t you say something? You should have said something.”

“I wanted to. I tried so many times.”

“I had the right to know,” I rasped, tears sliding down my cheeks.

“Would you have stayed?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know, but what I
do
know is that you keeping things from me was the worst thing for you to do. Especially that you’re a recovering alcoholic. You knew that was a sore subject for me,” I said accusingly.

“I know and if I could go back and do it all over, I’d change what I did. I didn’t think you’d love me like I love you if you had any idea that I am the way I am.”

“You love me?”

“Dammit, Flor, are you blind? I’ve loved you from the first time I met you. Is it really that hard to believe that you bring me to my knees, that my entire world hinges on your next breath?”

“You love me.”

“Yes. More than you’ll ever know because I’m not capable of the right words but if you give me the chance, I swear to God I’ll show you. I’ll show you every day for the rest of my life. If my past is the single reason for you saying no, then let me give you a million reasons for you to say yes. Let me show you.”

“You love me.” The words were fine as silk across my tongue.

“I do. I love you so much, Florence Randall.”

“I love you too, Goliath.”

The twinkle that I loved so much flashed in his eyes before his goliath arms wrapped around my waist. He lifted me from my feet and buried his face in my neck and inhaled deeply. He smelled just as divine as he always did.

“God I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“Never leave. No matter what. Never leave.”

“I love you. I’ll never leave. Never,” I promised whole-heartedly, knowing that there were no truer words ever spoken.

Graham half growled, half sighed, sending vibrations through his body and into mine. His grip around me slackened just enough for me to slide down the front of him, slowly back to my tiptoes.

I slipped my eyes shut when his hands cupped my face as though I were breakable and precious and irreplaceable. His lips brushed over mine, testing my willingness to kiss him. I leaned in, giving him my approval. He half moaned, half sighed as his mouth met mine. Our lips melded together as though they too had missed the one they were made for. I opened my mouth to him and he didn’t hesitate to slip his tongue inside. He kissed me with fervor like I’d never experienced. I reveled in the taste of him on my tongue.

Graham pulled back, my eyes fluttered open, my heart was racing so fast, and I felt close to passing out.

“Flor, baby, I need you.”

“You’ve got me,” I breathed.

“No, baby. I
need
you. Right now.”

“Oh.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Please.” He would have tossed me over his shoulder if I didn’t move my legs in time with his. I took four steps for every two he took but I managed because in truth, I needed him too.

We hurried to the curb where his SUV was waiting. He swung the door open and I slipped inside. The moment I settled into the leather seat and reached for my seatbelt, Graham was already sliding into the driver’s seat. His arm snaked over the center console and his hand claimed the territory of my thigh. Desire and nerves coiled tightly in my belly. God, how I wanted him. My core tingled and buzzed with desire for him.

He didn’t say a word as he maneuvered us through Manhattan traffic with ease. The bubble of reunited love that was encasing us felt fragile. So fragile that I didn’t want to open my mouth and say a word. I wondered if he felt the same.

Graham pulled up to the valet at his building and hopped out. He rounded the front of the SUV and opened the door for me. I locked eyes with him and felt preyed upon. Carnal desire lit his eyes, and I knew that my man was hell bent on claiming what was his and I wanted him to. I wanted him to take his fill, take what he needed, take what he wanted, get drunk on me and stay drunk on me because that was exactly what I planned to do too.

The elevator doors chimed and slid open as soon as Graham pressed the button. I stepped in ahead of him and immediately memories of being in the elevator with him at Four-19 flooded my mind and subsequently, my center. I inhaled deeply. My breath stuttered down my throat. My breasts rose and Graham’s eyes dropped to where cleavage peeked up from the top of my dress.

He sighed impatiently and looked up at the light indicating what floor we were passing. It seemed to take an eternity and a nanosecond to arrive at the top. The elevator chimed, the doors slid open and Graham lunged at me. He swept me up, prompting my legs to wrap around his waist. One hand cupped my ass; the other held my face as he ravaged my mouth with his.

I was dizzy with lust, kissing him as though my life depended on it. We were making up for the time we’d lost. My back hit his bed causing breath to rush out of me.

“I need you,” he repeated in a deep voice, husky with need.

“I need you too,” I breathed.

“Flor,” he whispered as a flurry of clothes rained down around us. I laid before him completely bare and trembling with lust.

“Please,” I begged without shame.

Graham slipped one hand along the inside of my thigh and then the other. With one quick movement, he gripped my hips in his hands, tugged me to the edge of the bed and tossed my legs over his shoulders.

Oh god.

His breath on my sensitive center sent goose bumps racing across the surface of my skin, causing a delightful shiver to move through my body.

He kissed the inside of my thighs making me squirm. I was desperate for connection. I needed him to fill me and claim me and make my body his. Something primitive in me needed him to own my body with his—to possess me.

“Baby, please,” I urged, moving my hips forward. I looked down at him and noted the smile tilting his lips.

Painfully, yet perfectly slow, his tongue swept across my slick center. I moaned and tossed my head back.

“Perfect,” he whispered just before making another slow pass with his tongue. He alternated between long, languid passes with his tongue and short, rapid bursts, flicking against my skin so fast my legs jumped reflexively in time with his ministrations. He suckled my clit and rolled his tongue across my most sensitive area over and over. I gasped and moaned and fought to breathe.

“So good, baby,” he growled against my skin, sending vibrations through me. He slipped two thick fingers deep inside me and worked me in and out, his tongue staying in time with the movement of his fingers.

“Oh, yes,” I moaned. “Oh, please, don’t stop. Right there!” Like dammed up electricity, my orgasm burst free of its walls in one formidable wave of pleasure. It seared its way through every nerve ending in my body. I shook and cried out, gasped for air and quaked with Graham’s divine tongue still lapping up my desire.

My eyes felt heavy but I pried them open just in time to see Graham hook his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and drag them down his legs. My mouth watered at the sight of him. His extraordinary cock stood at attention and pulsed slightly. With my legs half hanging off the bed, Graham grabbed me around my waist and hauled me up his bed. Without hesitation, my knees parted invitingly. His dark eyes burned with lust, making me feel very powerful because I knew that it was me who had done that to him. It was average me who had him going wild just as he had me going wild.

“Graham, I need you,” I whispered.

I watched as he planted his knees and leaned down over me. His mouth covered mine in an all-consuming kiss. He broke away and gripped his cock in his hand, positioning himself at my opening. He dragged the tip of his erection over my slick center, making me squirm for more.

He pushed in one rock solid inch at a time, filling me to barely within my limits. He was pushing the line between pleasure and pain and I loved it. He sheathed himself fully within me and his head tilted back, his jaw tensed, and he groaned.

“Fuck,” he gritted out, extracting himself to the tip just to push himself right back in. His pace picked up. He thrust in and out of me and I bucked my hips against his. He leaned forward, scooped me up and sat back on his heels. I wrapped my legs around his waist and moaned with every deep thrust he made. My muscles tightened around his cock as a new wave of pleasure built and surged forward. I cried out his name as my orgasm tore right through me. I shook in his arms.

He plowed through me, hammering in and out and in and out. Beads of sweat sprang up across his brow, his skin flushed, every muscle in his gorgeous body tensed as he rocketed forward, delivering blow after delectable blow to the depths of me.

“Fuck, baby!” He groaned and shook as he found his release deep within me. Graham collapsed forward, burying his face in my hair. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he grunted in a raspy voice.

“Why do you say that?” I laughed.

“Because I’m going to need to do this at least three times a day for the rest of my life.”

“You won’t be able to keep it up when you’re old.”

“Hey! Don’t discount my manhood, woman.”

“Okay, okay. I guess I’ll have to stick around and find out what old and gray Graham is like.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Good because your name sucks. Florence Stone sounds much better.”

“Ha!” I barked a humorless laugh. “I won’t give up my name unless I have to.”

“You have to.” He kissed away any protest that was about to spill from my mouth. I melted into him and savored the taste of him. “It wouldn’t be right for my wife and the mother of my children to have a different last name,” he whispered.

My eyes widened at his declaration but mostly due to the serious look in his eyes. “Don’t panic on me. Not yet, but only because you aren’t ready for that, but one day, Flor, you’ll be my wife and I’ll spend all my free time trying to get you pregnant with little Stone babies.”

“Savage,” I whispered through the tears that had begun to well in my eyes. Graham chuckled and kissed me once again, this time reverent and full of passion, love, and promise.

I lusted for the man I met at the gallery, then again at Indigo. I was mesmerized by the man I peered at massive stars with at Four-19. I fell in love with the boy next door, and I lost the wounded man who lived high above Manhattan in his very own castle tower.

They were different, yet the same. Each of them were insights into the man that Graham was. Each of them were mine in their own ways, and each of them taught me a few things about myself.

Everyone’s life is a story. Their story is a book that is all their own. Sometimes, your story doesn’t turn out just as you’d planned. Things happen that you hadn’t plotted out. Characters show up and vanish without preamble. Settings change, and once it’s done and you read through the story you’ve penned, you realize that it is so far from what you had originally outlined for yourself that you hardly recognize it. But the beauty of writing your own story is that
you
can change it. You can go back and rewrite history, in a way.

Graham showed me the way. He gave me the gift, the power of creation. My childhood was one that no little girl should ever have to live through and as an adult, I had been unkind to myself over something that wasn’t the fault of a four year girl. Graham made me see it was my story and if I wanted to rewrite it, I could. I could choose how it ended. I couldn’t go back in time and take back what had been penned in my own personal story, but I could change how it affected me and how my story ended. I could own my story, shape it, mold it and grow with it.

He was that token boy next door who made me mad, picked on me, teased me, and loved me so completely that it stole the breath right from my lungs.

Without knowing it, Graham had given me something that I didn’t know I’d been missing. Or if I did know, I wasn’t quite so conscious of its absence. He’d given me redemption and the knowledge that I had the ability to rewrite my own book.

I knew being with Graham Stone would never be easy, that I’d perpetually walk the thin line between being his weakness and his greatest strength. I knew he’d challenge me more than anyone and anything else. I knew we were an unlikely pair. I knew my demons would not go quietly into the dark and neither would his. I knew his sobriety would be a daily fight requiring more diligence than either of us sometimes had and that my regret and my guilt would take a long time for me to figure out how to manage.