AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fourteen
The next few days were a slog of scheduling times I could meet with my friends’ famous friends, and scouring ads for jobs and apartments.
Violet got me airtime with Sadie and Grayson, which went so well. They were friendly, made me feel at ease, and was about as perfect an introduction to this process as I could’ve hoped for.
Wednesday, Graham was taking me to meet his sister. This wasn’t like a let me introduce you to the family thing. Though, there was a distinctly loud part of me insisting that in a way, it was.
Adrienne was an artist, and she was going to draw me, just a cartoon version, to use as part of my branding.
Who was I that I needed branding?
I was supposed to be myself. Which for me meant over thinking ten different outfits in a span of two minutes, until half my wardrobe, from cutoffs and a T-shirt to my nicest interview outfit, blanketed my bed.
I tugged a corset out of the back of the closet. Violet got this for me a few years back, for Halloween. It was pale blue and white, with gauzy, wire-framed wings. It was absolutely not the kind of thing that someone wore for the day-to-day. As I laced it on, and twisted this way and that in front of the mirror, it made me feel absolutely magical.
And now that I had that happy glow, I could put on something more practical. I was reaching for a T-shirt in the discarded pile that said Gamer Girls Do It Better, when someone knocked.
I opened the door to Graham.
“I’m early, I know. I…” His gaze fell on me and he trailed off. “Wow.” He drew the knuckle of his index finger lightly up my bare shoulder, dropping his touch short of my neck. “It’s always been hard to keep my hands to myself around you, but I don’t know if it’s possible anymore.”
“Why would you have to?” I could be coy, but he was so freaking close and if I was going to spend more time with him, I needed some clarity. “I get it. Before, you were my teacher. Now, you’re not.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to say, Luna.”
There were a handful of things I wanted to hear, but there was one specifically that needed to happen sooner rather than later. “Stop with the mixed signals. You push me away for my own good. You want more. Oz is in the way. You don’t want to keep your hands to yourself… There’s no possible way you don’t know I’m interested.”
Graham reached for me, and I pressed my palm to his to stop him.
“If you do this, no more but we shouldn’t after.” I didn’t know where the directness came from.
He gave a half smile and chuckle, twisted his wrist to break the contact between us, and rested his hand on my cheek. “That’s fair.”
He brushed his lips over mine and my heart skipped. When he pressed into me, pushing me back into the apartment, my body molded and yielded to his.
There was no tentative exploration like there had been the other day at Oz’s. Graham didn’t stop pushing until my back was to the wall. He dragged his mouth along my jaw and up to nibble my earlobe. “I’m not going to do any of that stuff you and he talked about.”
I noticed he didn’t say Oz’s name. “You don’t have to. My fantasies about you are different.”
“There’s more than just the on the desk at school?” Graham moved his mouth down to my collarbone, teasing his thumbs along the top of my breasts, above the hem of the corset.
Doubt whispered in. “I’m not the only one who’s been… You’ve had…” Maybe I didn’t want to know if he wasn’t fantasizing about me.
“I can’t count the number of times I’ve beat myself raw, to images of taking you, well, anywhere you wanted.” He dragged a finger lightly over my nipple, drawing a tingle even though layers of fabric.
I sighed happily at the touch. “I love it when we’re thinking the same things.”
“Fuck, I wish we had more time right now.”
“You were fifteen minutes early,” I reminded him.
The sound that rumbled up from deep in his chest filled me with need. “Fifteen minutes isn’t nearly enough time for what I want to do to you. I’ll have to leave us wanting.”
I’d been wanting for a decade. I also hated being late or keeping anyone waiting. I jutted out my lower lip.
He kissed the pout away. “What’s wrong?”
“I hate that we can’t just let passion take over and ignore the rest of the world.”
