Loving Graham Page 10

  “What’s up with you being such a nice guy, anyway?”

  He wrinkles up his forehead and jerks his head back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what I said. I don’t know anybody who is so generous with their time and money as you are. Everybody loves you, and not just for your money. I think people would love you if you were flat broke.”

  He chuckles. “Thanks, I think. And to answer your question, I had a rough start in life, and there were a couple of people along the way who went the extra mile for me. If not for them, I firmly believe I wouldn’t be here today.”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  “Like Nicky?” Graham asks.

  “Yes, like Nicky.”

  “What’s her story?”

  “Nicky? She grew up a punching bag for her father until the government took her away and put her into the orphanage where I lived. We weren’t close in age, but something drew us together, and we were best friends for years. When she aged out, she got involved with Adam who was a younger version of her father. When she decided to leave him and start over in the U.S., she knew I was aging out of the orphanage, and she came to get me and take me with her. We’ve been here ever since.”

  “And she never got involved with anyone else here?”

  “Nah, nothing serious. She’s been on some dates, and she has a nice group of friends, but I think she’s afraid of making the same mistake again.”

  “So how’d you become a cop?”

  “I guess I can thank Nicky for that one, too. I was forever watching mystery and cop shows on TV growing up and even as an adult. She pushed me hard to join the police academy, and every time I considered quitting, which was often, she talked sense into me again.”

  “That’s a great friend, the kind of friend I strive to be.”

  “I’m lucky to have you both in my life.”

  “I think the feeling’s mutual.”

  Our flight is called, and three hours later we dropped a very sick Jorge off at the Saint Stone Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center. I learned an hour into the flight when he started getting agitated that Graham had encouraged him to snort some meth to get him through the trip. It didn’t last long, and I was worried either the police or a medical team might meet us at the gate.

  Graham helped him keep it together until we got into our rental car, but the ride to Saint Stone was horrible. Between banging his head on the glass and trying to jump out onto the freeway, we were lucky to deliver him in one piece.

  I think it’s safe to say that even Graham thought he might have bitten off more than he could chew. When he joined me in the lobby, I’m pretty sure I saw tears in his eyes. I reach for his hand, but he passes me and exits out the front door alone. I feel like he needs time, but I can’t very well stay in here. I follow him hanging back a bit and let him get in the car. After five minutes of standing outside leaning against the trunk, he gets out and walks around to the passenger side. Without a word, he gets in, and I make my way around to get in behind the wheel.

  I start the car and back out of our spot. “Where are we staying?”

  “The Warwick, but I need a drink.”

  “Hotel bar?”

  “Yeah, I don’t care as long as they have alcohol.”

  His voice is flat and void of emotion, but his face is tortured. Just when I’m settled on letting him work things out on his own, he starts to talk.

  “I changed my mind. I don’t want a drink. I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” I say dragging out the word with hesitance. This doesn’t sound like something I’m going to like hearing, but if he feels like getting something off his chest, I’m here for him.

  “I know what Jorge is going through from personal experience.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this right now, it can wait.”

  “I need to tell you tonight before this goes any further.”

  “When we get to the hotel.”

  We ride the rest of the way to the hotel in silence, check in, and drag ass to the room where he flops down on the bed on his back. I take a seat at a small table near the window that has a beautiful view of the Space Needle.

  He presses the palms of his hands into his eyes and begins. “I was scouted by a modeling agency when I was sixteen. Gavin and I were shopping at the mall with Mom when a woman approached us. The agency was interested in my brother, too, but he was too shy, and he refused to do it. Not me, though. I was excited. I loved being the center of attention, and for a kid wearing cool clothes and traveling around the world for a lot of cash, was like a drug in and of itself.

  “Add to that the pressure to look perfect all the time, minimal adult supervision, and terrible peer pressure, I came home from my last European shoot addicted to a multitude of drugs and alcohol. Everyone around me was doing it so much that it didn’t even feel abnormal. Until I started getting sick, and I couldn’t keep up with the work. I began rebelling. I was late for assignments, I started getting tattoos, a lot of them, and I looked like shit. Not from the tattoos but malnutrition, acne, and my hair was falling out. When my jobs dried up, I ran out of money, and I had to move back home with my mom and dad when I was eighteen.”

  He stops talking for a while and lowers his hands to his sides staring up at the ceiling. I shift in my seat unsure of what’s next. Is that it? Is he done confessing? And if so, what’s the big deal? He was an addict, a lot of people are, and he’s obviously risen above all of that.

  “You’d think that would have been my all-time low. An adult coming home to live with Mommy and Daddy broke and addicted. I earned almost a million dollars modeling during that time, and I spent it all on drugs, alcohol, and partying—pathetic. But it only got worse over the next two years. I must have shaved off twenty years from my parents’ lives making them worry about me. I was a bratty, self-centered little bastard who only cared about my next fix. They begged me to go to rehab, even tried to have me committed once, but I ran away for five months. During those two years, I begged and stole to support my addiction. When that wasn’t enough, I prostituted myself, and when that wasn’t enough, I went to work for one of the biggest dealers in the state distributing his product until I was arrested and put in jail for possession and intent to distribute.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. I watch a tear slip from the corner of his eye and run down the side of his face onto the mattress. I want to go to him, comfort him, tell him that I don’t care about his past. I’m falling for the man he is today, but I think he needs to get this all out in the open, so I keep my distance and hold my tongue.

  “I spent six months in jail, and when I got out, my parents wouldn’t take me back until I went to rehab. They used the money they had set aside for me to go to college to send me to a facility in New York. I spent a year trying to complete a two-month program. I had multiple backslides, and at one point, even the doctors and counselors thought I might be their first failure.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I just woke up one day and decided it was time to start living and stop fucking around. I’d been having a year-and-a-half-long pity party, and it had become boring. I enrolled in cosmetology school in New York, and I never looked back. That’s when I met Gloria, and we became best friends. Eventually, I opened a salon in New York with Gloria at my side, and its success far exceeded my expectations. I started modeling again, but now I had an armory of weapons against addiction, and I was older and smarter, so I knew how to handle myself. I was doing great, feeling even better, but something was missing. I was lonely for my family. It was hard living on opposite coasts. I craved that sense of belonging I had growing up. I asked Gloria if she would come to San Francisco and help me open another salon, and you pretty much know the rest.”

  “Graham?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Look at me.” He rolls his head to the side, and I lock eyes with him. “Thank you for sharing that part of yourself with me. I know it couldn’t have been
easy. But I want you to know something, who you were then isn’t who you are now. I like this Graham Blackwell, and you wouldn’t be this wonderful man if not for all those hurdles.”

  He blinks back more tears that are forming in his eyes. “I thought if you did a background check on me and found out who I was, you would run as far as possible in the other direction.”

  “No, no way.”

  “But you’re a cop.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you have to keep up an image?”

  “First of all, who I date is not the San Francisco Police Department’s business, and second, you’re pretty great for my image. You have overcome some nasty demons, and now you dedicate your life to helping others. Anybody who has a problem with your past can go fuck themselves.”

  He sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed with wide eyes. I have the overwhelming urge to tell him I love him because I honestly think I do. I don’t want to scare him off when he just unburdened himself the way he just did, though. The words can wait. I’ll show him how I feel instead.

  I stand and close the distance between us stopping between his legs. He tips his head back to look up at me, and I take his beautiful face in my hands. Crouching down, I kiss him soft and slow, our tongues sliding together exploring each other’s mouths. My head is buzzing with things I want to do right now, but this is our first time together, and I want it to be memorable. I want to worship him and make him understand that who he was in the past means nothing to me now. I’m going to make him feel good and loved and safe in my arms.

  I move my hands from his cheeks to his shoulders and feel his hands come up to unbutton my shirt. He starts at the bottom, and when he’s reached the last button, I break our kiss to stand back and shrug it off my shoulders.

  I jut my chin toward the head of the bed where I want him to move, and he scoots back while I finish undressing. When he starts to remove his shirt, I shake my head. “That’s for me to do,” I say. He stops and rests his arms down at his sides watching me move around the bed with hungry eyes.

  I crouch down next to my suitcase and unzip it grabbing a condom and a tube of lube, but I abandon them on the nightstand and join him on the bed. When I’m settled astride him naked, I begin unbuttoning his shirt and jeans slowly. “Someday when I’m not so eager to devour you, I’d like you to tell me about every one of these tattoos,” I say smoothing my hands over his washboard abs and up his chest. He doesn’t say a word while I touch him, but his eyes speak volumes.

  I think he likes it slow and deliberate. He needs to be worshiped and cared for not just fucked hard and fast. I take one of his hands and place it on my hard cock. Eyes locked, he strokes me up and down, and I moan. God, it’s been too long, so long I might not last. When my balls start to retract, I move his hand away. I lean down and kiss the word focus that is tattooed along his clavicle, and then I place another on the scull with smoke billowing from its gaping mouth a few inches down. I continue my descent kissing an intricate circle with the word claim in the middle of it, and then another of a clock stuck at three minutes after two.

  I try to concentrate on the tattoos to keep my lust under control, but the rippling muscles under the art ruin any chance of taking things slow. His hands are in my short hair when I tug at his jeans. He lifts his hips up so that I can work him out of the confines of his clothes. When his cock springs from his boxer briefs, I smile. I’ve been trying to imagine him naked since the day I met him at Tease. Nothing I came up with in my head comes close to the real deal.

  He’s hard and thick and yes, tattooed. I wasn’t sure that was possible, but now I know it is. He has had his cock artfully turned into a very large black, green, and red dragon. The dragon’s colorful wings span his hips, and his cock is the mythical creature’s neck and head. It’s beautiful and cringe-worthy at the same time. The pain he must have endured to get this tattoo must have been monumental, I can’t even imagine.

  “You like?” he asks while I stare at his dick. I rip my eyes from it and look at him. “It’s magnificent, like the rest of you. How bad did that hurt?”

  “Bad, I couldn’t walk or wear pants for a week.”

  “A week?”

  “Yep, I stayed home naked in bed and watched TV for an entire week. It was worth it, though, especially right now seeing your reaction.”

  My reaction? He must like the shock factor then because that’s my initial reaction. The image of a tattoo artist holding his dick in his hand while he fills his skin with ink fills my mind, and I know I need to focus on the result and not how it got this way.

  I touch the dragon gripping it at the base of its neck and stroke it up to the tip where I find yet another surprise—a piercing. It’s a bar that goes all the way through with a ball on each end that doubles for the dragon’s eyes. I ignore the impulse to imagine how this came about and lower my mouth to lick the dragon’s head.

  Graham gasps at my sudden dragon assault. He probably thought I was going to want to talk about it more, but the pause button on our lovemaking has been pressed long enough.

  He digs his fingers into my scalp. I wrap my lips around him and take the dragon all the way into my mouth until its face is hitting the back of my throat. His hips tilt up forcing himself deeper, and I relax the back of my throat to allow him this extra space.

  When his hands relax slightly, I pull away and suck hard until I feel his piercing clink against my front teeth. He pulls up his knees, and I slide my hands under his ass pulling him closer to me. I start a rhythm of suck, stroke, swirl, clink, suck, stroke, swirl, clink until his dragon cock twitches, and I know he’s going to come. He taps his hand on my head, but I close my eyes and ignore his time to pull out notification and keep sucking until he releases my head and pounds his fists into the mattress.

  He spurts hot and forceful down my throat with every spasm until he’s spent, and I release the dragon from the warm confines of my mouth.

  “Holy fucking shit, that was amazing,” he says pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes.

  “I do believe I just tamed your dragon.”

  He smiles and removes his hands from his eyes. Then he laughs hard. It’s an odd post-coital reaction, but this is Graham, and Graham can be odd, and that’s what I love about him.

  He looks up at me and pulls me down on top of him. Nose to nose his laughter stops, and his beautiful dark blue eyes become serious. “You have a talented mouth.”

  “That’s not the only talented part of my anatomy.” I push my painfully hard cock into his belly.

  “Yeah? How about you prove it.” He reaches out to the nightstand and grabs the condom and lube placing them on the bed next to us. Then he kisses me hard and fast before gently rolling me off of him and turning onto his stomach. The soft glow of the lamp next to the bed helps illuminate more artwork on his back, shoulders, ass, and legs.

  For a moment, I don’t know which I want to do more—examine the pictures on his skin or slide my blank canvas of a dick into his gorgeous decorated ass. Of course, that doesn’t last long, and I’m tearing open the condom and rolling it on.

  I run my hands up his back and massage his muscles in little circles stopping to kiss his spine every few inches. When I reach the top of his crack, there is another skull tattoo that looks incredibly 3-D staring me in the face. This guy might cause a performance problem for me. He has a snake slithering into one of his eye sockets and out the other and the word redemption on its forehead. Something about his dead, hollow gaze and the scaly intruder turns me off. I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them, I slide my hands under Graham’s hips and hoist his ass up giving me a better view of where I’m going instead of Mr. Skull and Snake.

  Much better. I sit back on my heels and pump my cock a few times before leaning forward to lick, kiss, and tease the pucker of his ass. Graham’s moans are muffled by his pillow, but I know what I’m doing feels good when he arches his back offering me more of him.

  I reach out blindly
for the lube and open it with one hand squeezing a large amount into my hand and back away to slather it on my cock. I rise and place my hand over the tattoo that I don’t care for before sliding inside his warm, welcoming body.

  Pushing into Graham feels like going home for the first time in my life. I’ve never had a real home, but there is no doubt in my mind that this man was custom made for me and I for him. We fit, we belong together, and we need each other. Graham plus me equals healing, growth, and hope for something better.

  I enter balls deep and pause, twitching and pulsing inside him, waiting until I’m confident I won’t blow after two or three thrusts. I hold his hips and glide out and back in listening to him groan into the pillow, but I need more.

  I curve my body over his and slide my arm under him encouraging him up onto his hands and knees, so I have better access to, to… to everything. Now I can hear him panting, hear the catch in his throat when I hit that spot inside him that makes him quiver. I can also slide my hand around and stroke his hardening cock for a while until I can’t focus on anything but my impending orgasm.

  I release him and peel my front from his back taking hold of his hips to fuck him hard and fast until I explode like an Amtrak train hitting a wall coming harder than I ever have with anyone before. The orgasm goes on for what feels like forever until we collapse onto the mattress together in a sweaty, sated heap.

  I haven’t had sex with anyone for years, but after what just happened with Graham, I believe in the saying it’s just like riding a bike now more than I ever have.

  I roll off of him onto my side, and he turns to face me taking my hands in his and focusing his attention on them. The lack of eye contact immediately concerns me. This is an intimate moment, and I need his eyes. I need reassurance that everything is okay because, without it, my confidence is waning.

  “Graham? What is it? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

  Thankfully, he gives me his eyes, those wise-beyond-his-years Egyptian blue compelling eyes.