“I’m good,” Graham says, his voice so controlled you’d never know what he was doing. “How are you?”
I don’t hear the response. My body bounces on Graham’s cock, his hands roaming my body, demanding contact. I wrap my arms up and around his neck and arch my back, needing the release that is so close I can taste it.
His lips find the crook of my neck and he kisses me, nibbling the soft skin behind my ear. That does it.
“Graham,” I mutter, cradling my breasts with one arm. “I can’t stop this . . .”
“Let go, baby,” he whispers. He drives into me, hitting the spot I love like he’s done this a million times. I hear his voice calling goodbye to his neighbor while my world spins wildly out of control.
“Shit!” I cry, biting my lip to keep from calling out too loud. My body tenses around his cock, squeezing it as I feel my body shake. My knees go weak, threatening to collapse. Graham’s arm winds around my waist and holds me up, his fingertips searing into my skin. “Oh. My. God.”
Trembling as the orgasm hits me in full force, I feel his lips against my neck. “Damn it, Mallory,” he groans. Fuck!” He shudders against my back, his cock pulsing as he finds his mark. There’s no way to see his face and I hate that I can’t watch him, see what I do to him.
As I struggle to catch my breath, I feel a single, light kiss press against the skin right behind my ear. “You good?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I breathe, getting my wits about me. The air seems colder now, my body so much more exposed.
Without even seeing my expression, he seems to know what I need. “Let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”
He scoops up our clothes, takes my hand, and leads me in the back door.
Mallory
FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF the sofa, I watch Graham work in the kitchen. He moves so fluidly, completely at home as he makes us a drink.
On one hand, I feel like I know him so well. But when I think about it, I really know nothing at all. The fact I want to know more leaves me a little uneasy.
He looks over his shoulder, the muscles in his neck flexing as he pours a drink. The soft grey pants he’s changed into sit right below his navel and he’s shirtless and shoeless.
“What?” he grins, coming towards me with a wine glass and a tumbler.
“Do you cook?”
“That’s random,” he chuckles.
“No, it’s not. You were in the kitchen. Kitchens are where food is made. You are sexy. Men in kitchens are sexy.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“Trust me,” I laugh. “So, do you?”
He hands me the glass and keeps the tumbler. Staying standing, he looks at me like I’m a touch crazy. “Sometimes. I don’t cook much. Too much goes to waste. I do have a cedar plank I use to make salmon sometimes. It’s really good.”
“I don’t like fish.”
“You don’t like fish?”
“I think it’s because I’m a Pisces,” I wince.
“That makes no sense,” he chuckles. “I also make crepes. Do you have any strange aversions to eggs or gluten?”
“Nope,” I say. “I love all things butter, eggs, and gluten. It’s a part of my balance thing. I eat all the terrible things and then do yoga.”
“I thought you went to yoga for stress?”
I look at him blankly. “I do.”
He laughs, shaking his head, then taking a sip of his drink. “What about you? Do you cook?”
“I try,” I admit. “I like to bake. You know, with—”
“Butter, eggs, and gluten,” we say in unison before laughing.
Our voices meld together in the air between us. It’s a delicious feeling, warm and cozy and even better than I ever imagined it would be.
Pulling my legs up and under me, I watch him in the light of the fireplace.
“I bet your kitchen is a wreck,” he says. “I’ve seen your desk and there are no liquids. I can only imagine you in a kitchen.”
“Yeah, it gets a little wild. Want to cook with me sometime?”
“No. No, I do not. I would never survive that with how messy you are,” he jokes.
I’m staring. I know it. I know he knows it when he pulls his brows together and tosses me a questioning glance.
“I was just thinking I love looking at you like this.”
“In sleep pants?” he laughs. “Wow. I now officially have a complex about how I look in a suit.”
“You rock a suit like no one else,” I smile. “But this is so different. You look all cozy and casual. It shows that maybe there are more sides to you than the demanding CEO,” I wink.
He sits next to me, fresh from the shower we took together. Sinking into the leather, he lays one arm along the back of the sofa. “I think you know there is more to me than that.”
“I do. But I feel like you keep so much of yourself closed off and your nose to the grindstone. Why?”
His features wash in a look that tells me he was expecting this question or one similar. It also tells me two other things: he’s prepared to answer it but he doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t right away. Taking a sip from his tumbler, he watches me over the rim. I expect he’s giving me a chance to change the subject, to get antsy by the look in his eye, but I don’t. It’s time. Things between us keep building, and I don’t know to what end.
“I don’t trust a lot of people,” he says finally. His tone is smooth, but I hear the grit behind it from the force he’s using to make himself talk about a subject he doesn’t want to broach. “It’s hard for me to really open up beyond my family.”
“But you have friends, right? And, you know, probably girlfriends sometimes.”
He grins, letting his hand fall to my thigh in some kind of comforting motion. I try not to blush. “I have more acquaintances than I do friends, I suppose. I mainly spend my time with one of my brothers or alone. I prefer it that way.” He pauses, smirking. “And, yes, I have girlfriends sometimes. But those relationships are very particular.”
I gulp, imagining red rooms and contracts. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just . . .” He looks at the ceiling. “I don’t spend time with a woman with the expectation, or desire, if I’m honest, that it will become something routine.”
Each word is said crisply without eye contact. Every syllable stings my heart. With each rip against the fabric of my most precious organ, it’s obvious: I was hoping for more.
Maybe I didn’t realize it until now, but it’s impossible to ignore the feeling in my stomach. The grinding, tumultuous movement in my soul.
My spirits fall, the wine glass shaking in my hand so I steady it with the other. I smile at him. I don’t want him to see me looking dejected.
“That being said, I really like spending time with you, Mallory. You really make this difficult for me.”
“Since we are being honest and all,” I say, looking at the darkness through the window and thinking, briefly, how it feels like my heart, “that makes things really difficult for me too.”
Before he lifts his hand off my leg, he squeezes it. The spot he’d taken right above my knee feels utterly vacant as soon as his palm is gone.