Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1)

by J. L. Mac

  “Birth control,” I announced, knowing that neither one of us would want the moment to be lost due to having to hunt down a condom.

  “At this point, I really don’t care one way or another.”

  “That’s reckless talk, Goliath.”

  “I’m good at reckless.”

  I slipped out of my clothes once more and made love to the troubled Goliath next door, hoping that just maybe, I eased his pain just by being near to him, like he eased mine. His nightmare and his reality painted his world in gray. I wanted to rid his world of gray and brush on vibrant hues like the colors lighting the nebulas on the walls at Four-19.

  Graham

  Invested

  My nightmare had been the same with exception to one detail—it wasn’t just me and Tommy in the living room. Flor was there. She’d said nothing, only watched on as Tommy and I acted out the hellish scene. Some part of my conscious brain cringed knowing that she was somehow there, even if only in my head. She had her arms crossed over her chest as we bantered back and forth. When the orb in Tommy’s chest lit up, seemingly out of nowhere as it always did, her arms dropped to her side and she looked at me with confusion written across her face. Her beautiful gray eyes silently urged me to do something.

  The glowing mass grew; I did the same thing I always did in my dream. I screamed and cried and batted at him, but this time I kept looking back at Flor. I felt the normal fear that the dream always provoked, but I also felt fear and shame. She looked on with a horrified expression. She looked as though I were committing some abhorrent crime. She looked as though I had put the ball of light there and I was the one that had caused it to combust. The look on her beautiful face reflected exactly what I felt inside.

  When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Flor looked at me with pure disgust and turned away from me. She walked away and left me standing alone in the wake of Tommy’s super nova.

  When I felt her hands on my face, her melodic voice rousing me from pure terror, I’d opened my eyes and relief engulfed me. I held her hand to my chest and closed my eyes, inhaling her soft, sweet perfume, allowing it to anchor me. “I’m sorry,” I’d said. She thought I was apologizing for having a bad dream in her presence and maybe in part, I was apologizing for her having to witness it, but mostly, I was apologizing for who I was, for the monster that remained hidden, for the things I’d done, for the fact that she’d inevitably find out and she’d hate me once she did. There’d be no way she’d hate me near as much as I despised myself.

  As though stepping out of a nightmare and into a dream, she’d given herself to me. Her body on top of mine, her skin, her moans, her passion, it all felt like a dream. Maybe that’s why I selfishly took what she had offered when I knew I should have declined. Then I claimed her body once more.

  When she had given herself to me for the second time, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The first time was blissful. The second time was divine. She’d stripped herself of her clothes and straddled my lap. Though I knew well that it was careless to take her without a condom, I didn’t care and in truth, I wanted to claim her body with my own, without anything between us.

  Her small hand wrapped around my cock and stroked me from root to tip. Her touch was both firm and gentle. My hips thrust forward instinctively and I groaned.

  “Are you sure?” she asked then dropped a tender kiss on my lips.

  “I am. Are you?” My voice was husky and weighty with lust.

  “I trust you,” she whispered and it made me feel an inch tall. She shouldn’t have trusted me. I was the very last person she should have given that gift to. I was ready to stop her, citing my painful leg but she positioned herself over me and slipped the tip of my cock through her wet heat. The feel of her supple skin against mine sent a bolt of arousal and carnal need right through me. I thought alcohol was the most tempting vice on the planet. I knew now that I was wrong. Florence Randall was the most tempting vice on earth, and I had nothing in the way of willpower.

  Impossibly drawn to her, I watched as she slipped the tip of my cock into her body then eased herself down, impaling herself with my cock. Her body squeezed me tightly and if I had no self control, I knew I would come right then and there. She slid up and down, settling into a pace that she set. My cock slipped like satin against her. She moaned in turn as each thrust of my hips met hers. With my arms wrapped around her waist, I felt like a man on the brink of devastation. I was scared to fall but curious to find out how it felt to soar, even if only for a moment.

  Getting more emotionally invested in Flor meant I was risking falling. Falling where? Who knew. Looking at her face in the throws of ecstasy, I dared not think about falling in love with her. I’d only known her a month and this is what she’d reduced me to. What would happen in another month? Six months? A year?

  Her petite frame trembled and shook as her orgasm raged through her. Just seeing her face, her cheeks flushed, her lips round, forming an O—she was exquisite to watch this way and it was my undoing.

  I clenched my jaw, bucked hard against her, ramming my cock home, blow after blow. Tension built, my balls drew up tightly, my cock pulsed and I shook violently as I spilled myself in to her depths.

  Struggling to catch our breaths, I wondered what she would think of my actions once she knew. What would she say? I was selfish and I knew it. Knowledge of my own depravity only made my ugly truth more cumbersome to shoulder.

  Flor kissed me sweetly, slid off my lap and made her way to the bathroom. She returned a moment later, dressed in her pajamas, a sleeveless aqua blue gown that rested just at her thigh and made her clear gray eyes stand out more than ever. She kissed me again on her way to the kitchen. I watched now as she plated cheese and crackers and grapes, her mussed hair the evidence of what we’d just done—what I craved to do again and again.

  “You really should go to sleep,” I gently reprimanded her given the hour.

  “It’s okay. I don’t have anything going on tomorrow,” she explained then plucked a grape from the stem and brought it to her mouth. Her plump lips sealed around the green grape as she popped it into her sweet mouth, giving me a sudden craving for grapes.

  “Oh.” I shifted my leg and winced. The damned thing still hurt like hell.

  “Your sister is right. You are stubborn,” she announced then walked off in the direction of Tommy’s bathroom.

  She reappeared a moment later with a small round tablet in her hand. “Take this. It’s your pain medication. Says you can have it every six hours.” Her eyes glanced at the clock on the wall and I could tell she was counting. “It’s just after one AM now, so you can take more in the morning if you need to. You also need to take your antibiotic once you eat something.”

  “I don’t need the pain meds,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Graham, you’re in pain. This will help. It’s why they gave you the prescription.” She reached for my glass of water and tried handing me the pill and the water. “Now drink up, Goliath.”

  “I said I don’t need it,” I snapped and immediately regretted it.

  “I—okay. I’m sorry,” she mumbled, setting the water down and turning back for the bathroom.

  “Flor,” I said dismally as she reentered the room. I noted that she kept her eyes from mine and I couldn’t blame her. I’d just had sex with her and snapped at her only minutes later.

  “I have red grapes, too,” she mumbled distractedly and smiled insincerely. It was a hollow sort of smile. One that made my heart ache.

  “Flor,” I said her name firmly. Her gray eyes met mine and I said the only thing I could think of. “I’m sorry.” And I was. For everything. Especially what was to come. It was only a matter of time. I felt it creeping in like thick fog.

  “It’s okay. Better eat something.” She tried smiling again but it still lacked sincerity. I didn’t like seeing her that way. I could have kicked my own ass for ruining our night. That was the kind of thing that you couldn’t take back. You couldn’t fix it.
It was done and her memories of our first night together would forever be marred by my brash mouth. I was feeling severely off kilter. I would need to call Martin tomorrow. Perhaps he could set me straight.

  She handed me the bottle of antibiotics and a plate of food, then returned to her perch on the couch across from me. She dug out her colored pencils and papers and began working.

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. Just going to sketch a little then go to sleep. I can leave if you’d like,” she offered indifferently.

  “Flor, I don’t want you to leave. Please eat.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” she insisted.

  “You must be. Did you have dinner?”

  “No,” she muttered looking into her bag.

  “So eat.”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t eat.” I sat my plate down and crossed my arms over my chest. She inhaled deeply then rolled her eyes.

  “Fine.” She served herself a small amount and we ate in silence, but I was certain in that head of hers it was anything but silent.

  Conversation waned after that. I watched television intermittently between glances at Flor. I had caught her looking at me a few times and it seemed to me that the attraction and tension between us was very much still there despite my fuck up. So much weighed on my mind. I’d given her a part of my story but I’d omitted a few key details that I knew she’d find out about sooner than later. Images of the way she’d looked at me in my nightmare flashed through my mind and though I was exhausted, I was afraid to sleep.

  She worked in silence, scribbling, erasing, and smudging. She bit the inside of her bottom lip as she worked and it drove me insane. That full, pink lip should be reserved for me to bite and nibble and kiss. Her gray eyes were fixed on the book in front of her unless they were on me. She mesmerized me. I was caught in her gravitational pull and I was content to remain there. Even if it meant I’d eventually crash and burn.

  Though I fought sleep, my eyes grew heavy and I slipped back into dreamland and faced my beautiful Flor. Her hands all over me, her lips against mine…

  I woke up and my eyes immediately searched for Flor. She was sleeping comfortably on the couch. Her face was expressionless and tranquil. I watched her breathing in and out for some time, wondering what in the hell I was going to do with her—what the hell I was going to do with myself.

  Flor

  Plus Three

  My cell phone vibrating atop Graham’s coffee table roused me from a dead sleep. I stayed up far too late last night and the effects were less than desirable. My eyes felt puffy and I fumbled with the phone for a moment then finally cleared my vision enough to see the screen. “Mom.” My voice was scratchy from sleeping. I rubbed my tired eyes and squinted at Graham who seemed to be amused.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  “She wants to video chat,” I said holding my phone up.

  “So chat.” He shrugged with a smirk in place.

  I grumbled, smoothed my hair a little and swiped the screen, holding my phone out so my front facing camera could get a decent shot of me.

  “Hey, mom,” I said, smiling as a little box with her face popped up on my screen.

  “Good morning, sunshine—wait, where are you?” Alarm edged its way into her voice and I decided that I should choose my words carefully.

  “I’m at a friend’s apartment. He’s actually my neighbor.”

  “The asshole neighbor?”

  “Mom! He’s right here! He can hear you.”

  “Oh. Um, sorry!” she called out, raising her voice a notch. “When did you become friends with the neighbor? I thought you didn’t like him? Is he the one you pepper sprayed?”

  “It’s a long story, but it turned out that I knew him. We are friends. He got hurt,” I said, turning my phone to face Graham. He waved and my mom gasped. “So for now, I’m helping him out while he recovers. He’s paying me.” I glanced up at Graham and noted that his jaw had tightened and his eyes narrowed. I pissed him off with that remark but it was true! He was, in fact, paying me to assist him while he recovered. The fact that we had been intimate…twice, was irrelevant at this point because it wasn’t going to happen again and though I knew it was impossible, I wanted to forget that it had happened in the first place. My ego was wounded after his mood swing last night, and I didn’t think I’d be recovering any time soon.

  “Oh my gosh. That looks terribly painful! What happened?”

  “A cabby ran me over,” Graham spoke up, his eyes still burning holes in me through narrow slits.

  “My god, those cab drivers can be lunatics! You have to watch out. Honestly, it’s not even safe to share the road with them. Or the sidewalk, for that matter! So awful,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

  “So, what’s new, mom?”

  “Not a lot. I went to the movies with Joan yesterday, then we went to get manicures,” she said, holding one hand up in front of the camera.”

  “Oh. I love your color. I was thinking of painting mine Beguiling Blue or Ravishing Ruby. What do you think?” I peered over the top of my cell phone, shooting eye-daggers at Graham.

  “Go with the blue. Blues look great on you. Makes your eyes stand out.”

  “Beguiling Blue it is.”

  “How’s work?”

  “I lost my job but like I said, Graham hired me to help him, so I’ll be okay for now.”

  “I don’t have a lot. You know that, but I can try to help as much as I can.”

  “I know, mom. Thank you.”

  “And if you need more help than I can manage, you should really ask your dad.” She’d said it in that tone that moms get. The one where they aren’t quite chiding but it isn’t exactly indifferent either.

  “I will,” I lied. “I hate to cut our chat short, but I have some errands to run for my new boss and I have some…work to get done.”

  “Well, okay. Chat again soon?”

  “Of course!” Graham barked from his seat. “She can chat all she likes while she’s on the clock.” It took every bit of composure I had not to glare at him.

  “Oh good. Thank you!” mom called out, cupping her hands around her mouth.

  “Love you, mom.”

  “Love you too, Flor. Bye.”

  “Bye.” I swiped my screen, ending the video chat and began tossing my things into my bag. “Mr. Stone, I will be going home to shower and get changed, then I have errands to run. Is that okay with you?”

  “So I’m just your employer now? Because I could have sworn that last night when my cock—”

  I grabbed the nearest thing to me, which happened to be a couch pillow, and hurled it at his head. “Well, that won’t happen again. Sorry for the misunderstanding.” I snagged my bag, with things hanging out of it, and left his apartment. The moment I’d left I wondered if his fever had come back. The nurse said to stay with him until the fever was resolved. Damn him for getting under my skin! I didn’t want to leave him alone but I needed to. I needed a minute to breathe and think without him muddling my thoughts with his presence and his voice and his scent and his intense stare.

  Who did he think he was? He’d had sex with me. Twice, and then turned frigid the moment it was all over. His sudden change in mood left me dizzy and wondering what I’d said. What did I do wrong? What had led him from tender kisses and sweet nothings to clipped words and tense body language? I was disappointed, and nothing had ever been as unpalatable in my mouth as the taste of disappointment after amazing sex with a man whom, in spite of myself, I truly liked.

  Was he feeling as though I were acting as his keeper? His handler? I wasn’t trying to encroach on his single status by playing the part of the nagging girlfriend or wife, but he was in pain and he needed to eat so he could take his antibiotic. I was only trying to help the man that I was quickly developing feelings for and he practically bit my head off. It left me feeling exposed, used, unwanted, and every single one of those feelings doused my libid
o in ice cold water.

  My head was spinning and I couldn’t make sense of the change in his mood. Then this morning he’d looked at me with such…admiration? Of course, my account of things was questionable given how groggy I was when my mom had called.

  One thing was certain, he didn’t like the fact that I had labeled him “boss” but he could just eat it. He made me feel like shit last night. He confused me. He deserved my low blow. The only good news to my very tangled web was that his stupid list held the answer to one problem. He needed me available to him. I needed space thanks to his bullshit last night.

  I scanned the list and found the solution on the ninth line.

  Walkie Talkies. A childhood must.

  I let myself into my apartment and headed right for the shower. The quicker I washed off the giant mistake that the night before was, the quicker I could get on with things. There was no way I was going to repeat my mistakes. I lathered myself up, rinsed and did it again, ignoring the little stab of disappointment that I couldn’t smell him on me anymore.

  It took me all of ten minutes to find what I needed in the toy store. I slid the walkie talkies across the counter and grabbed a pack of batteries on a small rack near the cashier. Once I paid, I hooked the shopping bag on my arm and leisurely strolled back to my building wracking my brain trying to figure out what had caused his mood to switch so abruptly and what I was going to do from here on out.

  I felt as though I was caught up in a whirlpool or the Bermuda triangle! This thing with Graham, whatever it was, felt very complicated. Labeling it seemed impossible. Was he my neighbor? My boss? My friend? My lover? My beta reader? I needed to broach the subject with him.