16. Graham #3
Graham’s restraint began to fray as the friction intensified, but he kept himself where she wanted him. Her fingers closed tightly around his forearm, and her head tipped back for a moment before she looked down at him again.
“Give me everything, Graham. Don’t hold back.”
His hand tightened at her side.
“God, look at you.”
“Graham.”
The sound of his name had changed over the years. Once it had been shouted over grinding machines and rink noise. Later it had become something strained across hotel rooms and media barriers.
Now there was no crowd competing for it.
Only Riley.
“Come here,” Graham said.
She leaned closer without surrendering control, and he caught her mouth in a kiss. Riley broke away first, pushing herself upright again as the movement between them accelerated into hard, punishing thrusts. She rode him relentlessly, driving his thick cock deep inside her.
Graham kept his eyes on her.
This is what trust looks like.
Not obedience. Not sacrifice. Not one person deciding what the other should endure.
Choice.
Riley’s control finally broke at the edges. Her vaginal walls clamped down fiercely around his thick shaft, squeezing him as a powerful orgasm ripped through her. She reached for him, his name escaping again as pleasure overtook whatever teasing remark she might have made.
“Graham!”
He held her through it, letting her ride out the climax as her pussy throbbed around him, before his own restraint gave way. Graham thrust upward, bucking his hips to bury his cock as deep as it would go.
“Riley—fuck, I love you.”
The words came without performance or calculation in a rough groan as he exploded inside her, pumping hot, thick spurts of cum deep into his pregnant wife. No camera waited for the line. No sponsor stood behind a lens.
Riley was the only audience he had left.
And the only one he wanted.
Their movement slowed together until the room went quiet around them, his cock still twitching deep inside her slick heat.
Riley folded down against him, choosing the side of his chest away from the bandage. Graham wrapped both arms around her back and kept her there while the room settled around them. The evening air drifted through the open window, along with the faint rasp of crickets from somewhere beyond the shop.
For several minutes, neither of them tried to fill the quiet.
Riley lifted one hand and traced the edge of the tape across his collarbone.
“Does this still hurt?”
“A little.”
Her fingers paused. “That’s the first honest answer you’ve given me about it.”
Graham brushed his mouth against her hair. “I’m learning.”
“You’re late.”
“I know.”
There was no accusation left in the words, only the truth of them. Graham let it stay that way. He had spent too many years answering every uncomfortable fact with a justification, as though a good enough explanation could erase the damage.
Riley’s hand rested against his chest.
His clothes lay beside the bed where they had abandoned them. Graham loosened one arm from around her and reached down into the pocket of his trousers.
Riley slid off his softening cock to lie beside him. “What are you doing?”
“Something I should have done differently a long time ago.”
He pulled out the leather wallet and opened the zippered compartment.
The silver ring waited inside.
Riley stared at it.
Graham had carried it through locker rooms, hotel suites, the Georgia heat, the motel, and New York. There had been nights when touching it had been the only punishment he trusted himself to understand.
“You kept it?” she asked.
“Every day.”
He took the ring out and set the wallet beside him.
Riley’s gaze stayed on the silver between his fingers.
Graham didn’t reach for her hand.
“I’m not putting this back on you because we slept together,” he said. “And I’m not putting it back because I burned the franchise down. None of that buys me a marriage.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
“I want you,” Graham continued. “I want our child. I want every boring morning and every bad shift and every argument where you tell me I’m being an idiot.” His thumb moved once across the ring. “But this only goes back where it was if you want it there.”
Riley looked down at her bare left hand.
Then she held it out.
Graham stared at her offered fingers for a moment before taking them.
Don’t rush this.
The ring slid over her knuckle and settled where the pale mark from it had long since faded. Graham kept hold of her hand after the metal was in place, his thumb resting beside the band.
Riley turned her hand once, studying it.
Then she brought it against his chest.
Graham kissed her forehead.
“The cameras are gone,” he said. “No more flights. I’m done with the ice. I don’t want another version of that life.”
Riley rested against him again. “Good.”
“We’re the only thing left.”
Her ring caught the last light coming through the window when she spread her fingers over his skin.
“That’s all I want,” she said. “Our family.”
Graham closed his arms around her and let the quiet return. Outside, the crickets kept going, indifferent to contracts, arenas, trophies, and every piece of noise he had once mistaken for a life.
For once, nothing outside the loft mattered.