64. Graham
64
GRAHAM
H alf an hour later, I’ve still got my back against the wall just inside the door where I’m being kissed breathless.
It’s a slow, intense burn—Silas’s hands move deliberately and with no haste down my arms, up my sides, through my hair. Our cocks graze but don’t grind—at least not yet. His ability to pace himself might outmatch mine, though. He’s breaking me.
Why is he doing this if he doesn’t want me to try and keep him?
This feels like a test, but testing me isn’t really his style, so I don’t know what this is. Not knowing and overthinking it is stealing some of my enjoyment from what should be beautiful. If we were still together, and this were the greeting I got every time I got back to town, I’d be ecstatic, but tonight, I don’t know what to make of it. By my count, he hasn’t left a single mark yet.
“What are you doing to me?” I groan with an increasingly impatient hard-on.
“Just go with it.” He tries to kiss me again, but I turn my head. His lips land on my cheek and trail down to my neck.
“If you’re not gonna fuck me, the least you can do is talk to me. ”
His hand moves up and down my stiff cock over my pants. “I can do both.”
“You’re torturing me for some reason.”
“Just torture. No reason.”
“Silas,” I whimper as he finally sucks some of my skin between his teeth. I wrap my hands around his ass and press into him. “I’m seeing my dad tomorrow.”
“Are you asking me to stop?”
“No. Jesus. No.”
He sucks harder. I lean my head to give him more room, worked into a state beyond caring.
“Are you planning to tell him who did this to you?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
He stops, nipping my earlobe with his teeth before pulling away. “You want a drink?”
What?
I’m shaking my head at the same time I’m touching the spot on my neck where I doubt he had enough time to leave a decent mark. He was talking too much. “Why?” I ask.
“Because I need one.”
“Is everything all right?”
“You sure you want me to answer that?” he asks as he leaves me standing in a full state of arousal to go to the kitchen where there are even more moving boxes than last time.
“Yes,” I decide is my honest answer. “I do want to know if you’re okay.”
“To tell the truth, I’ve been wondering if I was a shitty boyfriend,” he says. “What do you think?”
I frown. That’s what he was thinking about? “What are you talking about?”
“Have you ever been around two people who are really in love—like I go where you go, what’s mine is yours kind of love?”
“I’m not sure I personally know anyone like that, but I don’t doubt it exists. ”
“I actually loved you like that,” he says with his back to me.
I was about to enter the kitchen, but I freeze, catching the doorway so I don’t stumble in my surprise.
“Granted,” he continues, “I wasn’t operating with all the information I should have had, but I would have lived in that apartment and been your secret forever if you and Avery had stayed married.”
“Yeah?” I ask, the word cracking on its way out.
“Crazy, right?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“If you’d known that—at the time—would it have made a difference?” he asks.
“Love wasn’t the issue, Silas.”
“No, I know,” he says. “But if you’d known—or believed, I guess I should say—that I would have stood by you through anything even if it meant I’d have to get raked over the coals, do you think you might have tried harder to figure something out? Or was ghosting me just easier?”
I stop my knee jerk reaction to say the obvious—that leaving him wasn’t easy . That I’d desperately wanted to figure something out, but everything spiraled so far so fast.
Still, we’ve covered that. Tonight, he’s asking me something different. He’s asking what he was worth to me, and if something he could have done would have raised his value. There’s the answer that would let him off the hook, and there’s the truth. My father offered me a way out of the mess I found myself in and kept fighting for me.
Silas begged me to ignore all of it, dodge the problem and run away. I’d wanted to split the difference somehow, keep him and leave my family out of it at the same time, but before I could figure out how to do it, the video came out, and it was too late.
When I denied it was me in the video, I admit, I expected something from him. Texts to prove it really was me in the video. His revenge for what the press put him through. But when none of that materialized, it wasn’t a relief. It was proof we were over and he wouldn’t fight me.
His lack of rage and his radio silence felt like indifference. It felt like he had exactly one hour’s worth of fight for me, and then he gave up. Not that I blamed him. I’d given up, too.
When I don’t say anything, he says, “I think I should have tried harder. Proved to you somehow we could work with or without your family.”
“You tried?—”
“And then I stopped trying. I’m sorry, Graham. I fucked up, too.”
“I get it,” I say. “Probably felt a lot like what Ben did.”
“It did, but you’re not Ben.”
“It was a shitty time. A shitty situation,” I say.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says, dejection evident in his tone. “Right now’s not much better.”
“It’s not worse,” I tell him, wanting him to look at me again.
Instead he changes the subject. “I fucking hate the idea of finding someone else. Dating. God. I’ve never liked dating.”
“Are you trying to make me throw up?” I ask, not loving any of these topics.
“I’m just saying—or at least what I think I’m trying to say is if I couldn’t be good enough for you to want to keep trying, then how the fuck am I ever gonna make it work with someone else I probably won’t love half as much?”
How the hell am I supposed to respond to that? As a friend? An ex? An interested party? His lover?
Not for the first time, the wrongness of where we’ve wound up hits me with blunt force. The difference is my urge to fix it is much stronger. While I have nothing to compare it to except the love and loyalty I have for my family, what I feel for Silas is all of that and more. There’s no question I’m deeply in love with him. The idea of being separated from him again is ripping me apart—the only question is what do I do ? How do I stop him from signing up on a dating app and seeing what else is out there? How do I make him stay?
“You told me a week ago you didn’t know if you could trust me,” I remind him.
“Yeah. I said that. It was true, too. That day, anyway.”
“Not anymore?”
He turns to face me, a scrutinizing look on his face. “What changed, Graham? This last week you’ve been—so fucking amazing. Is this all bullshit, or is this what you’re really like?”
“It’s not bullshit …”
“Then what changed?”
“ I did,” I say without thinking too hard. It’s not that deep. My life these last few years has changed me. This past year most of all. Hell, the last couple of weeks have flipped me upside down. “Look, I made a mistake. Choosing not to ride out a scandal with you—trying to protect us from it—blew up in my face. It hurt you way worse than I could have imagined. Living and knowing that, wrapping my head around why I did what I did—it made me very aware that I was a shitty boyfriend, too. And a daddy’s boy, and all the other things you called me.”
His jaw ticks as he stares at me from across the small space.
“What I want to know is why are you giving me all this time and what feels almost like another chance if you’re just planning to pick up and go? What changed for you ?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I just said, I made mistakes, too.”
“So I’m a mistake?”
“No—not you. Not even this. You asked why, and the reason I met you in Philly was stupid. I thought it’d be all nostalgic and depressing, and it was. Kind of, but it was something else, too. I thought I was ending something, and now…”
I know exactly what he means. I don’t need for him to finish the sentence. It feels like we’re starting over.
Only to end it.
“So what do we do?” I ask .
“I don’t know if there’s anything to do. It just sucks. And I wish I tried harder. I wish we both had. You were worth it, but I just couldn’t see past the hurt. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And now?” I ask, daring for one shining moment to hope. “Is it too late?”
He gestures to a stack of boxes. “Well, yeah.”
“I still can’t believe you’re actually doing this.”
“Moving? Or having this conversation.”
“Silas— moving . Why didn’t you just blackmail me when you had the chance?”
He gapes. “Are you serious?”
“You have everything you need. Texts. Videos. Phone records. My father would have given you every cent you were trying to get out of Avery.”
“Why the fuck do you think I didn’t do it? I don’t want anything from him.” He shakes his head, like he wants to reset. “Do we have to do this right now? We don’t even have twenty-four hours.”
I need to do it at some point, so while we’re on the subject, I don’t see any reason to change it.
“Silas, can we work?”
His eyes flash, and his shoulders tense.
“If I resigned from the senate today, could we?”
“You’re not gonna do that. I won’t let you do that. Not for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want that shit on my shoulders. Plus, you’re good at it Graham. I might hate your politics, but it’s not like you’re up there doing nothing and being useless.”
“Our politics aren’t all that different,” I remind him.
“What we stand for is. You say you’ve changed, and I have, too. I might have been happy being your secret back then, but it didn’t work out so great for me. To make it work, you’d have to go against everything you’ve ever stood for.”
“Not everything ,” I argue .
“Nearly everything.”
“Is that a dare?”
“No,” he says firmly. “That’s not what I want for you. Or from you.”
“Will you stop being so fucking proud?” I say. “You need help. You need money. You need—” I startle as he abruptly pushes away from the counter and charges toward me, grabbing me by the front of my t-shirt and crushing our mouths together again.
“ You ,” he practically growls. “I need you .”
Responding with new fervor—because that was both the hottest, and most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me—I wrap my arms around him and let him in. Unlike the kiss at the door, this is rough and possessive, raw and deeply sexual.
It’s the answer I didn’t know I needed.
He walks me backward a few steps, our mouths still fused and tongues hyper-involved. We turn the corner into the bedroom and undress one garment at a time, kissing furiously after each article of clothing hits the floor.
Every time our lips meet, I feel another year older. Another age wiser. As his hands roam my body, my confidence surges, and with every moan from Silas’s throat, I feel like the most powerful man in the world.
We crash onto the bed, legs tangling as we fight to get closer. Our leaking cocks are sticky as they rub together between our eager, rutting bodies. He pulls at my hair, angling my head to give himself access to my neck where he sucks long and hard on the spot he barely got started on at the door. It’s like having a vampire attached to me.
“Yes,” I hiss, welcoming it, ready to plead for more. But I don’t have to. He moves from my neck to my collarbone, the base of my throat. I grip one of his ass cheeks for dear life as he marks me up. His lips and tongue on my skin are wet and burning hot.
“You won’t find this in Florida,” I say, grazing his hole with my fingertips .
“Shut the fuck up,” he says before having another go at my mouth, effectively making me obey. “You won’t be able to stay away from me.”
I roll on top of him, taking control. I pin him to the bed with one hand on his chest and grab the lube with the other. “You know what I think?” I ask as I grab his thighs and lift them off the bed, angling his hole to take my cock. I spit with perfect aim, soaking his opening. “I think you’ll be my secret as long as I want you to be. If I promise to keep feeding this ass my cock, you’ll keep it all for me. You’ll be begging for it every day.”
His dark eyes are hooded and bright with a fevered glaze, telling me I’m not wrong.
I give myself some lube and shove inside him with a strong thrust.
He cries out and grabs for his headboard. I lift him by the neck and press my mouth to his. He kisses me as I fuck him hard and fast. He bends himself in half to take me deep. The tight heat of him clenches and swallows me. Our hips slam together sounding loud claps as we collide. He sucks my tongue and groans into my mouth. The need to come surges up my thighs.
Breaking from his lips, I drop my forehead to his shoulder, my hips pounding as his head hits the end of the bed. “Let me change my life for you.”
“Graham… Jesus… That’s not fair.”
“You’ll take me…”
“ Yes .”
“I’m gonna come.” I didn’t mean to change the subject—didn’t want to. I would have rather continued fucking him and begging him, but his ass and his yes push me right to the edge.
“Yes,” he says again. “Come with me.”
Maybe one day I’ll ask him what he really meant by that, but since we both start unloading cum in impressive volumes, it would sound stupid if I asked now. Instead I bite his shoulder and let the orgasm take me .
“ Fuuuccckkk… ” he groans as I leave my own mark on him. If my cock is still shooting, his probably is, too. I lower my abs to feel his slick spend on my skin while he holds me in place, locked deep in his ass.
Technically, I think it’s generally accepted that you’re not supposed to hold anyone to something they say while they’re having wild animal sex. But in this case, I’ll be making an exception.