Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1) (26 page)

Graham

Invested

M
y nightmare had been the same with exception to one detail—it wasn’t just me and Tommy in the living room. Flor was there. She’d said nothing, only watched on as Tommy and I acted out the hellish scene. Some part of my conscious brain cringed knowing that she was somehow there, even if only in my head. She had her arms crossed over her chest as we bantered back and forth. When the orb in Tommy’s chest lit up, seemingly out of nowhere as it always did, her arms dropped to her side and she looked at me with confusion written across her face. Her beautiful gray eyes silently urged me to do something.

The glowing mass grew; I did the same thing I always did in my dream. I screamed and cried and batted at him, but this time I kept looking back at Flor. I felt the normal fear that the dream always provoked, but I also felt fear and shame. She looked on with a horrified expression. She looked as though I were committing some abhorrent crime. She looked as though I had put the ball of light there and I was the one that had caused it to combust. The look on her beautiful face reflected exactly what I felt inside.

When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Flor looked at me with pure disgust and turned away from me. She walked away and left me standing alone in the wake of Tommy’s super nova.

When I felt her hands on my face, her melodic voice rousing me from pure terror, I’d opened my eyes and relief engulfed me. I held her hand to my chest and closed my eyes, inhaling her soft, sweet perfume, allowing it to anchor me. “I’m sorry,” I’d said. She thought I was apologizing for having a bad dream in her presence and maybe in part, I was apologizing for her having to witness it, but mostly, I was apologizing for who I was, for the monster that remained hidden, for the things I’d done, for the fact that she’d inevitably find out and she’d hate me once she did. There’d be no way she’d hate me near as much as I despised myself.

As though stepping out of a nightmare and into a dream, she’d given herself to me. Her body on top of mine, her skin, her moans, her passion, it all felt like a dream. Maybe that’s why I selfishly took what she had offered when I knew I should have declined. Then I claimed her body once more.

When she had given herself to me for the second time, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The first time was blissful. The second time was divine. She’d stripped herself of her clothes and straddled my lap. Though I knew well that it was careless to take her without a condom, I didn’t care and in truth, I wanted to claim her body with my own, without anything between us.

Her small hand wrapped around my cock and stroked me from root to tip. Her touch was both firm and gentle. My hips thrust forward instinctively and I groaned.

“Are you sure?” she asked then dropped a tender kiss on my lips.

“I am. Are you?” My voice was husky and weighty with lust.

“I trust you,” she whispered and it made me feel an inch tall. She shouldn’t have trusted me. I was the very last person she should have given that gift to. I was ready to stop her, citing my painful leg but she positioned herself over me and slipped the tip of my cock through her wet heat. The feel of her supple skin against mine sent a bolt of arousal and carnal need right through me. I thought alcohol was the most tempting vice on the planet. I knew now that I was wrong. Florence Randall was the most tempting vice on earth, and I had nothing in the way of willpower.

Impossibly drawn to her, I watched as she slipped the tip of my cock into her body then eased herself down, impaling herself with my cock. Her body squeezed me tightly and if I had no self control, I knew I would come right then and there. She slid up and down, settling into a pace that she set. My cock slipped like satin against her. She moaned in turn as each thrust of my hips met hers. With my arms wrapped around her waist, I felt like a man on the brink of devastation. I was scared to fall but curious to find out how it felt to soar, even if only for a moment.

Getting more emotionally invested in Flor meant I was risking falling. Falling where? Who knew. Looking at her face in the throws of ecstasy, I dared not think about falling in love with her. I’d only known her a month and this is what she’d reduced me to. What would happen in another month? Six months? A year?

Her petite frame trembled and shook as her orgasm raged through her. Just seeing her face, her cheeks flushed, her lips round, forming an O—she was exquisite to watch this way and it was my undoing.

I clenched my jaw, bucked hard against her, ramming my cock home, blow after blow. Tension built, my balls drew up tightly, my cock pulsed and I shook violently as I spilled myself in to her depths.

Struggling to catch our breaths, I wondered what she would think of my actions once she knew. What would she say? I was selfish and I knew it. Knowledge of my own depravity only made my ugly truth more cumbersome to shoulder.

Flor kissed me sweetly, slid off my lap and made her way to the bathroom. She returned a moment later, dressed in her pajamas, a sleeveless aqua blue gown that rested just at her thigh and made her clear gray eyes stand out more than ever. She kissed me again on her way to the kitchen. I watched now as she plated cheese and crackers and grapes, her mussed hair the evidence of what we’d just done—what I craved to do again and again.

“You really should go to sleep,” I gently reprimanded her given the hour.

“It’s okay. I don’t have anything going on tomorrow,” she explained then plucked a grape from the stem and brought it to her mouth. Her plump lips sealed around the green grape as she popped it into her sweet mouth, giving me a sudden craving for grapes.

“Oh.” I shifted my leg and winced. The damned thing still hurt like hell.

“Your sister is right. You are stubborn,” she announced then walked off in the direction of Tommy’s bathroom.

She reappeared a moment later with a small round tablet in her hand. “Take this. It’s your pain medication. Says you can have it every six hours.” Her eyes glanced at the clock on the wall and I could tell she was counting. “It’s just after one AM now, so you can take more in the morning if you need to. You also need to take your antibiotic once you eat something.”

“I don’t need the pain meds,” I said, shaking my head.

“Graham, you’re in pain. This will help. It’s why they gave you the prescription.” She reached for my glass of water and tried handing me the pill and the water. “Now drink up, Goliath.”

“I said I don’t need it,” I snapped and immediately regretted it.

“I—okay. I’m sorry,” she mumbled, setting the water down and turning back for the bathroom.

“Flor,” I said dismally as she reentered the room. I noted that she kept her eyes from mine and I couldn’t blame her. I’d just had sex with her and snapped at her only minutes later.

“I have red grapes, too,” she mumbled distractedly and smiled insincerely. It was a hollow sort of smile. One that made my heart ache.

“Flor,” I said her name firmly. Her gray eyes met mine and I said the only thing I could think of. “I’m sorry.” And I was. For everything. Especially what was to come. It was only a matter of time. I felt it creeping in like thick fog.

“It’s okay. Better eat something.” She tried smiling again but it still lacked sincerity. I didn’t like seeing her that way. I could have kicked my own ass for ruining our night. That was the kind of thing that you couldn’t take back. You couldn’t fix it. It was done and her memories of our first night together would forever be marred by my brash mouth. I was feeling severely off kilter. I would need to call Martin tomorrow. Perhaps he could set me straight.

She handed me the bottle of antibiotics and a plate of food, then returned to her perch on the couch across from me. She dug out her colored pencils and papers and began working.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Just going to sketch a little then go to sleep. I can leave if you’d like,” she offered indifferently.

“Flor, I don’t want you to leave. Please eat.”

“I’m not really hungry,” she insisted.

“You must be. Did you have dinner?”

“No,” she muttered looking into her bag.

“So eat.”

“No.”

“Fine. Then I won’t eat.” I sat my plate down and crossed my arms over my chest. She inhaled deeply then rolled her eyes.

“Fine.” She served herself a small amount and we ate in silence, but I was certain in that head of hers it was anything but silent.

Conversation waned after that. I watched television intermittently between glances at Flor. I had caught her looking at me a few times and it seemed to me that the attraction and tension between us was very much still there despite my fuck up. So much weighed on my mind. I’d given her a part of my story but I’d omitted a few key details that I knew she’d find out about sooner than later. Images of the way she’d looked at me in my nightmare flashed through my mind and though I was exhausted, I was afraid to sleep.

She worked in silence, scribbling, erasing, and smudging. She bit the inside of her bottom lip as she worked and it drove me insane. That full, pink lip should be reserved for me to bite and nibble and kiss. Her gray eyes were fixed on the book in front of her unless they were on me. She mesmerized me. I was caught in her gravitational pull and I was content to remain there. Even if it meant I’d eventually crash and burn.

Though I fought sleep, my eyes grew heavy and I slipped back into dreamland and faced my beautiful Flor. Her hands all over me, her lips against mine…

I woke up and my eyes immediately searched for Flor. She was sleeping comfortably on the couch. Her face was expressionless and tranquil. I watched her breathing in and out for some time, wondering what in the hell I was going to do with her—what the hell I was going to do with myself.

Flor

Plus Three

M
y cell phone vibrating atop Graham’s coffee table roused me from a dead sleep. I stayed up far too late last night and the effects were less than desirable. My eyes felt puffy and I fumbled with the phone for a moment then finally cleared my vision enough to see the screen. “Mom.” My voice was scratchy from sleeping. I rubbed my tired eyes and squinted at Graham who seemed to be amused.

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

“She wants to video chat,” I said holding my phone up.

“So chat.” He shrugged with a smirk in place.

I grumbled, smoothed my hair a little and swiped the screen, holding my phone out so my front facing camera could get a decent shot of me.

“Hey, mom,” I said, smiling as a little box with her face popped up on my screen.

“Good morning, sunshine—wait, where are you?” Alarm edged its way into her voice and I decided that I should choose my words carefully.

“I’m at a friend’s apartment. He’s actually my neighbor.”

“The asshole neighbor?”

“Mom! He’s right here! He can hear you.”

“Oh. Um, sorry!” she called out, raising her voice a notch. “When did you become friends with the neighbor? I thought you didn’t like him? Is he the one you pepper sprayed?”

“It’s a long story, but it turned out that I knew him. We are friends. He got hurt,” I said, turning my phone to face Graham. He waved and my mom gasped. “So for now, I’m helping him out while he recovers. He’s paying me.” I glanced up at Graham and noted that his jaw had tightened and his eyes narrowed. I pissed him off with that remark but it was true! He was, in fact, paying me to assist him while he recovered. The fact that we had been intimate…twice, was irrelevant at this point because it wasn’t going to happen again and though I knew it was impossible, I wanted to forget that it had happened in the first place. My ego was wounded after his mood swing last night, and I didn’t think I’d be recovering any time soon.