I woke up shivering in the middle of the night.
The covers had come loose during the night, which explained the cold seeping into my fucking pores. Grunting with displeasure, I shifted, pulling the thick duvet tight around me again.
On the other side of the bed, Graham was fast asleep. He lay facing me, and the blankets were thrown off his body. He seemed completely unaffected by this, even though it was as cold as Jack Frost’s taint. His chest rose and fell with each deep, noisy breath as he continued to slumber. The breathing was just this side of snoring, which I found oddly endearing.
I watched him for a moment, fascinated. I’d never actually seen him sleep, though I’d been here in his bed five nights in a row now. There was a simple enough explanation for that: I’d fallen asleep almost the second my head touched his pillows.
The reasons for that, however, were a bit more complicated. On the surface, I was just plain exhausted. Chastened by Kristi’s words to me on Saturday, about how I had all but abandoned my own business, I’d made an effort to show up in the shop every day this week. I’d learned a lot about how she ran things in just a few short days; the brick-and-mortar sales were flagging, because tourist season was over. But the online sales were robust enough to keep us afloat. Didn’t hurt that my cousin Krista, who was a self-professed hoarder of all things gaming, had Soundtrax procuring all kinds of rare – and more importantly expensive – items for her. The commissions on her purchases alone were enough to pay Steve, the high school kid who came in to help Kristi part-time.
So part of it was physical tiredness, sure, from being on my feet all day. But if I was being honest with myself, a big part of the reason I fell asleep so quickly was that I felt safe in Graham’s bed. He was right there beside me, a solid presence protecting me from the ghosts that haunted me in the middle of the night. I knew that if I had a bad dream, or if I started to cry, or if I just needed a hug, he’d be right there.
And weirdly, the ghosts weren’t so bad when I was here. Maybe it was because there was no history for me in this house, no memories echoing off the walls and bouncing around in my skull. There was just Graham, with his fancy All-Clad skillets and his windowsill herb garden and his huge body that seemed perfectly at ease, whether he was standing at the stove, making paella while I taste tested, or curled up on the couch with me, watching Ghostbusters.
I felt good here. I felt more like me, like the Larkin I was supposed to be, at Graham’s house.
But right now, every version of Larkin was fucking freezing.
I looked around the room, realizing it was dark. And not just the dark of – I checked my watch, grateful for the bright LED light – three thirty-six a.m., when the lights were off and (most) everyone was asleep. No, this was the kind of dark where the alarm clock was black, the computer tower wasn’t blinking, and the street lamps outside the window were nothing more than poles. The only light I could see was the barely-there glow of the new moon.
The power was out.
Though I hated to disturb what was obviously a peaceful slumber, I poked a hand outside the blankets and tapped Graham on the shoulder.
He didn’t wake. Didn’t even hitch a breath, in fact. He just kept on almost-snoring.
So I again extended my now-frigid hand, giving him a good shake. This time he grunted, but he simply rolled over onto his back, still asleep.
I huffed. This pussyfooting was getting me nowhere. It was time to bring out the big guns.
Reluctantly, I sat up. The covers fell to my waist, and I shivered mightily as I leaned over him. Then I snuck my hands under his shirt and pressed my handsicles to his abs.
In an instant, his eyes flew open, his hands clamped around my wrists, and he flipped us over. I blinked, shifting experimentally. He’d imprisoned my hands above my head, and he was pressing me into the mattress with one of his gym-thickened legs. His eyes were unfocused, like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at in his still sleepy state. But then they locked on mine, and they softened.
He didn’t let me go, though.
“Whassamatter?” he mumbled.
And why exactly wasn’t his breath putrid? It was – I checked my watch again, tipping my head back to be able to see – three forty-one a.m. He should smell like he just ate out the Swamp Thing. Instead, it was like he’d brushed his teeth four minutes ago, not four hours.
“It’s cold.”
He blinked, a frown spreading across his rumpled, yet still GQ cover model-handsome, face. “It’s November,” he pointed out.
I huffed, my undoubtedly putrid breath fogging between us. “The power is out,” I clarified.
He grunted. “Furnace runs on oil.” He shifted slightly, his hip brushing mine.
And fuck me. I felt it everywhere. My frozen synapses were suddenly firing on overdrive, just from one little glancing touch of his body.
“Pilot must have gone out.” He sighed, his warm breath fanning across my icy cheeks. “I’ll go check it out.”
His hand released my wrists. Then he rose to his knees, reaching over to his nightstand and opening the drawer. He rummaged around for a moment, finally pulling out a flashlight.
“Be right back,” he rumbled. Then he climbed off the bed and disappeared from the room.
I regretted his absence immediately, and not just because he provided much-needed body heat. No, my lecherous brain also wished he would come back to bed and pin me down again. Or maybe I’d pin him down. Maybe I’d restrain his wrists while I ran my hands all over him, driving him crazy with desire.
Yeah, that seemed like adequate punishment for teasing me, then leaving me literally in the cold.
I grunted, rolling back over and pulling the blankets up again. I was being ridiculous. My friend had merely been confused. I’d woken him from a dead sleep, and I’d done it by putting my hands on him. Uninvited. Again.
What was wrong with me, constantly touching this man? He obviously had no interest in me beyond friendship. And I still wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted that, either. He couldn’t be getting much out of it, if anything. I was prone to mood swings so severe they could probably cause vertigo. I took too much emotionally, and didn’t give enough in return. I was a hot damn mess.
But every single night, when I came knocking on his door, he smiled at me like I was the best thing he’d seen all day.
Weird.
After a couple of minutes spent shivering under the covers, Graham reappeared.
“I got the pilot on again. It’ll take a couple of minutes to get going, though, because it’s an old furnace.” He walked to the side of the bed, putting the flashlight back in the nightstand drawer. Then he pulled a box of matches out, lighting the candle that sat next to his reading lamp. “But at least the radiators will heat back up pretty quick after that.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said, around my teeth chattering.
He frowned, setting the matches aside and climbing back into bed. Then he lifted the covers and pulled me close.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tucking me into his chest, where it was nice and warm. “It’s an old house. Some stuff’s been renovated, but there’s always something, you know?”
I nodded. I did know. My own beach cottage was built in the 1930s, and there was always something that needed repairs. Always something falling apart.
You know, when I wasn’t helping the natural decay along with a sledgehammer.
My house was kind of like me, in that respect. And when I put it like that, it wasn’t hard to see why I’d rather sleep at Graham’s.
“Especially with a storm,” he murmured, oblivious to my internal monologue. He ran his hands up and down my back, trying to keep me warm.
“Mmmm,” I said.
Well, more like moaned. Because his hands on me felt good. Really good.
“Stuff goes out. Power. Heat.”
“Mmmm,” I repeated, shifting my hips.
He looked down at me, his eyes locking with mine. “You okay?”
I nodded, but really I wasn’t okay. My skin was on fire and my eyelids felt heavy and my breasts were aching and all of a sudden my hands were sneaking under his shirt again. He had hair all over that muscular body – a body that had suddenly become very still, by the way. I liked the feel of him, the soft, fine hair over smooth skin. I wondered what it would look like, if it would be as dark as the hair on his head. I wondered what it would taste like if I ran my tongue all over it.
“Larkin,” he whispered, his voice like thunder in the far distance, the merest rumble of its full power. “What are you doing?”
I looked into his eyes, just barely visible in the moonlight. His pupils were huge, and his breathing was labored, his mouth hanging open to pant.
“Feeling,” I whispered.
And then I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his.
His reaction was immediate. He gasped, his stomach jumping under my hands, and his mouth was frozen for an agonizingly long moment.
But it was just a moment, because then his lips were moving and his hands were sifting through my hair and he was pushing me onto my back and sliding that big, hard body over mine.
“Larkin,” he groaned, and I couldn’t help but grin when I heard the desperation in it. “What are we doing?”
I shook my head. “Don’t talk,” I begged. I felt desperate, wild, like a thing possessed. “Please. Don’t question it. Just feel.”
He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to mine. Then he stole a quick kiss, and another, and another. And soon he was devouring my mouth as his hands grappled with the hem of my sweater.
I broke the kiss, pushing him up so I could pull the sweater off. I tossed it aside quickly, pulling him back down to me.
Our lips clashed again, tongues twisting and tasting. He moaned as he pulled back, his chest heaving like he’d run a marathon. He raised himself to his knees, giving me a tortured look.
“Fuck.” He closed his eyes, and I watched him struggle, like he was trying to get himself under control. His hand ran absently over the considerable tent in his flannel pants, and I licked my lips. “You mean to tell me you had nothing on under that sweater?”
I grinned. “What was I supposed to do, put a wet bra back on?”
He groaned. “I can’t think straight when you say the word ‘bra.’”
“Then don’t think,” I demanded. “Feel.”
I grabbed a fistful of his tee shirt, awkwardly trying to pull it up and off. The angle was weird, and I was getting more and more frustrated as the seconds ticked on and on, and he wasn’t just fucking naked already.
He smiled as he reached behind his head, pulling the shirt off with one swift, efficient motion. But then he was right back over me, pressing me down with that chest of his, and fuuuuuuck. The hair on it scraped my nipples, causing every single cell in my body to light up.
“Goddamn,” he breathed as he kissed his way across my jaw to my neck, then my ear, then lower. “You are so fucking sexy.”
I chuckled, but it sounded nothing like me. It was all breathy and high-pitched. But I made a conscious effort to give zero fucks about that. I was going to get out of my damn head tonight if it killed me. No overthinking this. Just overfeeling it.
Which is why I didn’t make a little joke about how unsexy I was, like I wanted to. Because right in that moment, it wasn’t true. I didn’t care about those twenty pounds I couldn’t seem to regain, or the dark circles under my eyes, or the protruding hip bones, or the hair on my legs. In that moment, none of it mattered.
The only thing that mattered was the feeling of him on top of me, his hands pulling my sweatpants down while he kissed his way all across my breasts. His warm breath and the wet scrape of his tongue on my nipple. The hands that were roaming my now fully-naked body, touching and squeezing. The sounds he made in the back of his throat, like he couldn’t get enough.
The way my legs parted for him, my knees bending to accomadate him like they’d done it a thousand times.
“God, Graham,” I whispered. “Fuck me.”
He groaned, his hand rubbing my pussy, testing my readiness. His fingers skated over my seam, up and down and back again. And then he pushed two long fingers inside.
I clenched around them, and he grunted a curse. Then his thumb circled over my clit, gently pressing, and I just sort of… tripped over the edge.
This was the first orgasm I’d had in seventeen months, two days, and I-was-too-fucking-wrapped-up-in-the-sensations-to-check-my-watch. I simply let it take me over, reveling in the way I clenched around his fingers, the way my fingers clutched at his hair, the way my heels pressed into the mattress, toes curling under.
His fingers retreated, and I moaned my protest. But the next moment, the hot, blunt head of his cock nudged at me, and his searing mouth captured mine again as he pushed into me.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his lips brushing against mine. “Oh my fucking God.”
Yeah. That.
“Feels so good,” he murmured, pulling out, then pushing slowly back in again.
Yes. Yes it did. It felt… it felt like he was huge and blistering hot and he was fucking inside me. It felt like I was going to burst. Again. Already.
“So perfect. So tight.” He kept whispering all these nonsense words, all these compliments, and I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted to feel it.
So I lifted my hands, tangling them in his hair and pulling him down to me. With a happy little noise, he obliged, kissing me again and again as he stroked in and out of me, the flared head of his cock dragging against my secret spot with each pass. His hands were on my face, in my hair, on my tits, skimming down to my waist. They were everywhere, and he was all around me, that big body cocooning me, shielding me. I shut my eyes. I shut my brain off. I shut out everything but the way he felt inside me, on top of me, around me.
He shifted his hips so that he was rubbing against my clit with every thrust, and a moan escaped me.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he grunted, picking up the face like he was racing toward the finish line. And I was right there with him. I nipped his lips, trying to draw him back into a kiss. I needed it. I needed his lips and his cock and his hands and his everything.
And he gave it to me. He gave me everything he had, crying out as he drove himself deep. His cock swelled, and then he was coming.
And I was right behind him, pulsing with my second orgasm of the night. I let it wash over me, let it block out everything but the sensations. No thoughts. No words. Just feels.
When I came back to awareness, he had pulled out, and he was leaning over me, panting.
He smiled. “Not bad for a couple of Sasquatches, huh?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Not bad, no.”
He kissed me, slow and sweet, and I closed my eyes, just letting myself enjoy it. Trying to push down the guilt that was already starting to creep in.
I fucked Graham.
No, not fucked. Fucking implied down-and-dirty, and that was not down-and-dirty. That was sweet and…
No. I had not just made love to him. That’s not what this was about, not what we were about. We were friends.
Friends who’d had sex.
I had sex with Graham. My friend Graham. Taylor’s ex Graham.
Not-my-husband Graham.
I broke the kiss, sliding out from under him.
As I reached for my sweater, I could see him flop back onto the bed. He took care of the condom I hadn’t even seen him put on, propping himself up on his elbow.
“Okay?” His smile faded as he took in my rushed, jerky movements. It was quickly replaced by an apprehensive frown.
I nodded. “Just need to pee,” I rasped. I cleared my throat as I pulled the sweater on. “UTIs are no joke.”
“Good point.” He gave me a soft smile. “But hurry back,” he said. “It’s still cold.”
“That it is,” I replied, grabbing my sweatpants and hurrying across the chilly wood floors to the bathroom.
Once the door was shut, I stumbled over to the toilet in the dark. Then I sank down onto it, dropping my head into my hands. I took in three quick breaths, letting them out slowly.
“This is fine,” I whispered. “You just got caught up in the moment. Gave in to the feelings.” I gulped. “This is not a big deal.”
But I realized as I was wiping myself clean that it was a big deal. It was a very big deal. I’d had sex with my only friend in the world. I’d had sex with someone who wasn’t Daniel. I’d had sex without even thinking about my safety, or his. I’d had sex without thinking of the consequences to my body, or my head – or my heart.
I’d had sex with the guy I was falling for.