Loving Graham Page 36

  Noah – Rainbows

  Powerful control freak, Liam, is my favorite. I like it when he’s sweet and thoughtful and playful, but the man standing before me right now telling me to strip naked is incredible.

  My heart is pounding in my chest, and I’m hard as steel when I remove my sweater and then my t-shirt and jeans. I used to worry my first time would be with someone I didn’t know well, someone I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

  When I’m with Liam, I have no inhibitions. I stand before him willingly exposed and vulnerable waiting for further instruction with no shame whatsoever.

  “Lie down,” he says, purposely peeling his clothes off painfully slow. I do as he asks, and when he finally slides his boxers off, and I see how hard he is for me, my cock twitches on my belly. He strokes himself while he walks to the bed looking at me with eyes so black with desire it’s nearly alarming.

  His knee presses into the mattress by my hip as he swings his other over to straddle my body. With his cock still in his hand, he takes mine in his other hand and strokes us simultaneously. The sight of his hands working both of us at the same time is so erotic I worry about cumming prematurely. Go somewhere else, Noah, don’t blow your wad before we even get started. Fuzzy kittens, newborn babies, reading at the library, there, that’s better, but not by much.

  My hands feel like they should be doing something, but I don’t know what. I grip his strong flexing thighs and stare into his eyes while he jerks me off.

  “Does this feel good, Noah?” he asks, and all I can manage is a moan of appreciation and a nod. “I want to watch you the first time I cum inside of you, understand? Don’t close your eyes.”

  I nod again in agreement, and he lets go of his dick and leans down to kiss me while still stroking mine. Sex is sex, I’ve seen plenty of it online to know the clinical aspects of it. But sex with Liam is more than that, it’s about the emotions and feelings as well as the physical pleasure.

  When the bare skin of our chests touches, I come alive inside, every molecule of my body screams out, “Let me make you happy. Please let me make you feel as good as you’re making me feel.”

  He ends the kiss with a nibble on my neck and earlobe. A whimper escapes me, and he pushes his hips into me and our cocks touch. “Liam, please,” I beg with a voice I hardly recognize as my own. I sound husky and desperate on the edge of such a powerful need that I will do anything to get what I want. What do I want? I don’t even know. I can’t think.

  “I’m not going to make you wait long, baby, but you have to be patient,” he whispers in my ear, and I want to cry. I know now what I want, I don’t want to wait! I want him inside me now, but he is in control of my pleasure.

  He kisses a path to my happy trail and teases with licks and bites until I’m on the verge of tears wondering if a person can die from anticipation. I think it’s possible when he licks my shaft from root to tip and abandons it to find a condom in the bedside table.

  With a condom rolled on, he squeezes some lube onto his finger and slides it into my ass slowly, carefully until I stop tensing against him. “Stroke yourself, feel how good it is to be penetrated at the same time,” he says. I take my cock in one hand, and he squeezes lube onto it. The sensation of these two acts at the same time almost sends me over the edge until he inserts another finger, stretching, preparing for something much larger.

  It’s not easy to concentrate on both things at once, but I get the hang of it, and just when I do, in goes another finger. I clamp down spontaneously. I have no control until he gently reminds me to relax. “It will feel so good if you relax. I know it’s not easy at first, but let me make you feel good, baby. Let me take you places you’ve never been. Relax, relax, relax,” he chants with every stroke, and after a while I do.

  He’s right, it’s phenomenal when my mind and body relax, and he knows I’m ready. He slips his fingers out and applies more lube to his cock. Primed and ready, he slides his hands under my knees and lifts them up and out to the sides before entering me.

  He moves slowly, tip in, tip out, tip in, tip out, increasing by an inch each thrust until I’m panting with desire. “That’s it, baby, feel that? That’s me loving you. After all these years, I finally get to show you. How. Much. I. Fucking. Love. You.”

  He finishes declaring his love and moves into a rhythm that blows my mind as promised. I reach up and take his face in mine and pull him in for a kiss when I know it’s almost over, and he holds his position until I press against his chest and nod my head.

  As if he’s been given permission, he rears back and pounds into me while I stroke my cock. The world around us turns every color of the rainbow, and I cum so hard it’s unbelievable. As instructed, I keep my eyes open and stare at him when he cums inside of me for the first time. “Oh God, Noah, fuck, fuck, fuck…” he yells and collapses on top of me panting and kissing my face, my neck, my chest, and finally my mouth.

  I hold him and work on catching my breath before I ask, “Are there always rainbows?”

  He slides out of me and pulls us to our sides facing each other smiling like a maniac, and then he laughs. “You saw rainbows?”

  I frown. “Yes, didn’t you?”

  “I saw fireworks and atomic bombs but no rainbows.” He reaches up and rubs his thumb between my eyes forcing me not to frown. “I’m sure it’s different for everyone. Noah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “And I like that I can make you see rainbows.”

  “Maybe that’s why rainbows represent homosexuality?”

  Now he laughs, and I laugh with him. “Maybe.”

  “Liam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so glad my first time was with you.”

  “Me, too, you have no idea how glad.”

  “Can I ask a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How many men have you been with?” He pulls me closer and pushes his leg between mine without answering. Why isn’t he answering me? Are there so many he needs a minute to count? Or maybe he can’t count them all or remember them all? Shit, why did I ask? What a stupid question to ask right after the best and only sex of my life.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I don’t, never mind, it’s okay. It was a stupid question to ask right now. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Me.”

  “Huh?”

  “I got into you. And to answer your question, there were a lot. When I went to college, I slept around like a slut. I was trying to find something. I don’t know what, maybe something like what I felt with you. But I never found it, and when I moved to Washington, D.C., I gave up and started sleeping with men that would never expect anything from me. I didn’t want a relationship if it didn’t feel like this.” He squeezes me tight against his chest.

  “Does my inexperience, I don’t know, does it turn you off at all?”

  He pulls back and takes my face in his hands. “Did what happened just now feel like I was turned off?”

  I shake my head and blink back tears that are pricking the backs of my eyes. “Noah, baby, what’s wrong?”

  I don’t answer. I’m not sure what’s going on with me.

  “Fuck, I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “No, it’s not that. I knew a man as hot as you would have been with a lot of guys. It’s, I, I want to be your everything. I’m in so deep that if you ever decide to move on, I don’t know if I’ll survive.”

  He relaxes in my arms and kisses me on my forehead. “Is that all? You’re the one I’ve been looking for in all those other guys’ eyes. I’ll never want another, and you have been and will always be my everything, Noah, always and forever.”

  With that reassurance, I press my body against his until I can feel his every breath and let sleep take me. I never slept as well as I did that night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Liam – Beginnings and Endings
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  The past three weeks with Noah have been the best in my life. It’s as if the past nine years never happened. The way he blended into my group of friends, it’s as if he’s always been here. We have had dinner parties, gone to the movies, and we have given each other rainbows and fireworks, a lot. We chill and watch Netflix, football, and Dancing with the Stars. Theo got him hooked, and eventually after overeating Italian food, we have started visiting the gym on a regular basis.

  And every weekend I take him to all of my favorite places so he can take photographs for his growing portfolio that he is presenting to Theo’s art gallery friend next week.

  Tonight we are having a rare night in alone eating on the coffee table watching Stranger Things on Netflix because we both hate commercials. We found we have identical taste in music, movies, and television programs. Books, however, are a different story. Noah reads smutty romance, and I stick to science fiction.

  The intro music for Stranger Things ends, and I hear my phone ringing in the bathroom where I left it after showering. “Let it ring,” Noah says.

  “Can’t, it might be Theo and Abe. That baby is a week overdue.”

  “Oh yes, crap, get it, hurry!”

  I hop up and grab my phone just as it stops ringing. When I check my recent calls to see who it was, Kitty’s name glows on the screen, and immediately I feel guilty. We promised to visit often and call every day, but we’ve missed the past four days in a row, and neither of us has even mentioned a trip back to Florida.

  In the living room, I settle back onto the couch, and Noah looks at me expectantly. “So, who was it?”

  “Kitty.” His face falls when the guilt hits him, too. It’s not that we don’t care, we have been busy settling into our new life with each other, but sometimes you have to remind yourself not to be too busy for the ones you love. Out of sight cannot mean out of mind.

  “Shit, I forgot to call her again last night.”

  “Me, too, pause the show. We have some groveling to do.”

  He mutes the television while I press redial. She answers on the first ring, “Liam?” Her voice sounds panicked, and my guilt intensifies.

  “Yeah, Kitty, Hi, I’m sorry…”

  “Is Noah there?” she asks, interrupting me.

  “Yes, is everything okay, Kitty? You sound upset.”

  “Anastasia died.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. “What?”

  “Ana had a massive heart attack this morning and died. I wasn’t sure if I should call Noah or if you think it would be easier coming from you.”

  Ana is Noah’s mother. I can’t believe she’s dead. I find myself immediately wishing it were his father instead.

  “I, uh, yeah, I’ll tell him,” I say, and then it hits me that Ana isn’t only Noah’s mother but Kitty’s only sister. “Kitty, I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? Liam, tell me what’s going on. Is she okay?” Noah says leaving his chair to join me on the couch.

  “Thank you, dear, it’s a shock. I haven’t spoken to her in years. Apparently, she’s had heart problems off and on for a while now.”

  “Liam!” Noah shoves my shoulder and opens his eyes wide.

  “I’ll let you go so you can tell him. I’ll be in touch when I know more about the funeral plans.”

  “Okay, if there’s anything we can do, we’re only a call away.”

  “Thank you, dear, goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Noah huffs and slaps his thighs. “So, what the hell?”

  “Kitty’s fine.”

  He sighs and tips his head back to look at the ceiling. “Thank God, you scared the shit out of me.”

  I reach up and slide my hand around the nape of his neck to bring his attention back to me. “Something has happened, though. Your mother, she had a heart attack this morning, and she’s gone.”

  I’m not sure what to expect, he hasn’t spoken to his mother since she sent him to Florida as far as I know, but she’s still his mom. I watch the first stages of grief cross his face before my eyes. Shock, disbelief, and when the sadness envelops him, he falls against my chest and sobs.

  “I’m so sorry, Noah.”

  I hold him and rub long soothing strokes up and down his back while he cries. He loved his mom, and he believes she didn’t want to go along with his father’s plan to disown him. He told me he waited for her to call or visit him after the dust settled, but she never did. He tried to call her himself, but their number had been changed. Even Kitty had no way to contact them. After a year, he accepted he would never hear from them again. That’s when he started hiding out at home secluding himself from the world and all the painful things it brought with it.

  When his sobs slowed, I pick him up and carry him to bed, undress him, tuck him in and bring him a glass of water. I sit on the edge of the bed and brush his hair off of his forehead. “I don’t know what to say.”

  He takes my hand and holds it against his chest. “There’s nothing to say. She was my mom, but she abandoned me. I don’t even know why I’m sad.”

  “You just said so yourself, she was your mom, and I know you loved her. It’s okay to be sad. I’d be surprised if you weren’t.”

  “She sent me away. She didn’t want me. If she did, she would have fought him harder. She could have called or snuck away to visit. Hell, she could have told him to go fuck himself. I was her son. You fight for your kids, you don’t give them away when things get hard.”

  He’s crying again, and my heart is breaking for him. If I could take his pain away and endure it myself, I would. He doesn’t deserve to cry another tear for as long as he lives. Noah is a good man, a smart man, and a handsome, talented man who had unbelievably fucked-up parents. All of the pain inflicted by them was avoidable if they had only had an ounce of tolerance or a pinch of acceptance.

  I sit with him until he falls into a fitful sleep, and then I go into his office to call Abe and Theo and then Bianca. He is going to need his friends to help him through this.

  Abe agrees to come in the morning while I go to work to make arrangements to take a few days off. I don’t know if he will want to go to the funeral or not, but after seeing him fall apart the way he did, I know he’s going to need to lean on me for a while. Theo will be over when he is finished at the theater, and Bianca is bringing dinner when she gets off work.

  I pull a chair up next to the bed and watch him sleep until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. At midnight, I undress, slide into bed, and spoon with him kissing the back of his head. He mumbles something I don’t understand, and we sleep until morning.

  I haven’t lost either of my parents, but I have lost a friend or two, and I remember that waking up the morning after finding out is the worst. At first, you think it’s a normal day like any other, and then it hits you like a tidal wave—the pain, the loss, and the sadness.

  I wake before him and watch and wait for him to go through that awful progression of realization when he wakes. A while later, he opens his eyes, and we are lying on the bed facing each other nose to nose. He smiles, but the smile morphs into pain when the tidal wave begins, and my heart breaks for him all over again.

  I press my lips against his, and he wraps his body around mine.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he murmurs into my neck.

  “Me either.” I don’t know what else to say. If it were anyone else’s mother who died, I would say I’m sorry and ask if they wanted to talk about it, but I suspect Noah doesn’t.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” he says rolling out of my arms toward the edge of the bed. I grab his wrist, and he looks back at me with his glassy, sad green eyes. They look like the marbles we used to collect in the third grade. The swirls of green and gold made blurry by the bubbles in the glass. But his eyes are blurry with unshed tears not bubbles, and we aren’t in the third grade anymore.

  “I can get it, you stay here and rest.”

  “I don’t need rest. I’m not sick, and nothing’s happ
ened to me. My mother is dead, and it doesn’t have any effect on my life. She’s been dead to me for nine years. The only thing different now is that I know there will never be a reconciliation or closure or forgiveness. She knew where I was, she could have done something to fix our relationship, but she didn’t, and that’s on her, not me. Now she’s somewhere answering for what she did.” I let go of his arm, and he leaves the bedroom. He’s right, about all of it. The ball was in her court, and she never served it—her loss.

  I let him be alone while I shower. When I get out, there is a cup of coffee on the vanity waiting for me just the way I like it, cream with no sugar. He is taking care of me when I’m supposed to be taking care of him, but that’s Noah.

  I dress and drink my coffee like I do every day. In the living room, the television is on CNN like it is any other day, and Noah is making breakfast, my lunch is already on the table ready to go.

  The doorbell rings, and he looks up from the eggs he’s scrambling, startled. “Who would that be this early?”

  “I asked Abe to come and be with you while I run into work to grab a few things and make arrangements to take a few days off.”

  “Why? You don’t have to do that for me, I’m fine, and I’m not going to the funeral, so there’s no reason to take time off.”

  The bell rings again. “Well, entertain Abe for a while then for me, will you? He’s a mess waiting for his baby to be born, and he could use some support, too.” I know he won’t say no to that and maybe this is how Noah copes, by taking care of others. Everybody’s different, and Abe’s here, so it’s worth a shot.

  I answer the door, and Abe’s face is full of sympathy. “How is he?” he asks.

  “Surprisingly, he seems fine, but I’m waiting for the shock to wear off. He says he doesn’t need you here, but he does. He’s agreed to let you stay so he can help distract you from project baby watch, but you know what’s really going on.”

  “We can help each other out then because I so need some distracting. If that girl doesn’t push that baby out pretty soon, I’m gonna reach up there and get it myself.”

  I chuckle and pat him on the back as he passes me. This is good, maybe they actually will be helping each other out.