🔥 🔥 The mature rating has been switched 🔥 🔥

Graham poured himself a drink and held the bottle out to Cressida, who shook her head.

"Come sit and tell me the rest," she encouraged, sitting on the sofa and patting the spot next to her.

"Two years ago, about five years after I left, I got a call from one of Ash's friends. He told me that Archer had come home from a bender and beaten both Ash and my mom really badly, and that my mom had died and that Ash was in the hospital."

"Oh, Graham, I'm so sorry!" And, even though she already knew, it wasn't hard for Cressida to sound shocked.

"I had to—to go back there," he said, shaken. "My brother wasn't in any shape, so I had to go back to straighten everything out, you know?"

Cressida nodded, squeezing his hand. "It must have been awful, to go back to that town, to that house."

"You can't imagine." He shuddered, looking off into space. "The house seemed smaller, somehow, even though it seemed pretty small when I lived there. I had to organize a funeral for my mother, and go through the house, the house where I'd been so miserable all those years—" He broke off and wiped his face with his hand, then poured himself another drink with a hand that shook. I stayed for a week, cleaning things out of the house and getting it ready to sell, visiting my brother in the hospital every day, you know, stuff like that." He took his drink down by half and continued. "Ash was in a coma from hitting his head against the wall so hard. Then, on my eighth day there, he had a stroke. His whole system was weakened from all the drugs he'd been doing, and that, coupled with the beating, brought it on."
He turned to Cressida, again squeezing her hand so hard. "I lied when I told you he needed the money for school, Cress, I'm sorry. He's in a facility. He woke up from the stroke and the beating, but he has severe mental and physical impairments. Even with the state helping, it costs so much money to pay for it. That's why I need the money from the competition so badly."

"God, Graham, I'm so sorry you had to go through this alone, and when you were only twenty years old?"

He nodded. "I asked Kath to come and be with me, you know? I basically lost an entire semester of studying trying to straighten everything out, but it was so hard for me, so hard, and I needed her. She said she'd come, but she never did. And after all the mess of putting my brother in the home and my father's trial, I came home to find out she'd been seeing someone else while I was gone." He smiled, though there was no humor in it. "It was horrible, waiting for her day after day while having nightmares about my father every night, with her just stringing me along and telling me one excuse after the other. 'Next week,' she kept saying. And she never came."

Cressida hugged him, hard, and his arms came back around her. "I'm okay now, I am," he assured her as he released her. "I finally realized after a couple months that she wasn't going to come, and I stopped asking. So I come home and find out that my beautiful, classy girlfriend, whom I love more than anything, has been carrying on with another guy in our class while I was away.

"She wasn't always horrible, you should know," he said, his voice misty with memory. "She was funny and smart, so well-read. I'd never known anyone like her. And when she chose me out of all the guys who were after her, well, it was like a dream." He shook himself like a wet dog. "I followed her around like a puppy, just worshipping her, happy to be with her. And she wanted to be with me because I was the best in our class. Total snob all the way." Again the awful, humorless grin. "She didn't mind slumming, but only to a certain degree, you know?" He finished his drink. "She just couldn't, she said, she couldn't come. Just thinking about being in White Chalk, Texas, was too much for her."

"And what did she say about the—guy? How did she explain that?"

"She was lonely, and he was a temporary thing, just until I got back. She actually thought we could just carry on, like nothing had happened, can you believe it? But my feelings for her were dead." He sagged back on the sofa as if he were suddenly exhausted.

"I wish I'd known you back then," Cressida said.

"Why?" Graham's voice held disbelief. "I was pretty miserable."

"So I could've gone with you," she said simply. "It breaks my heart to think of you going through all that alone." She sniffed, and wiped away tears.

"Oh no, don't cry," he implored. "I'm okay now—"

"You keep saying that, but you're not!" Cressida said hotly. "She damaged you so much, and you don't even know it! You don't trust anyone, you push everyone away, you're hostile—" She plucked up his hand. "You're suffering, so much, and you don't even realize it. And to think of a twenty-year-old having to go through what you did—"

Graham released her hand, shaking his head. "No, trust me, it's better this way, keep everything and everyone at arm's length. I have nothing to offer anyone." He continued to shake his head. "Who, knowing everything about me, my past, my upbringing, what person in their right mind would want to be with me?"

Cressida stared at him. "I would. I would.

"I love you, Graham. I'm so in love with you. You don't have to say it back, I'm not saying it so you'll say it back. I just wish—"

"What?" He was looking at her intently.

"I just wish you would let me." She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his, so he could feel her warm breaths in his face. "I wish you'd let me love you."

"Are you talking about sex?"

Cressida laughed. "No—yes—I'm talking about sex, of course I am, it's no secret how I feel about that, but I'm talking about more. I wish you'd just—let me in, let me get close to you."

"You want to go all in? With me?" Graham was incredulous.

"It's the only way I know how to be," Cressida answered with a shrug.

"Oh, Cress," he said, pulling her into a hug. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry to put you through this." He kissed her, then kissed her again, holding her face in his large hands. He looked intently at her, taking in again her beautiful eyes, her gorgeous skin. He stroked her shoulders, loving the soft feel of them, and leaned in to kiss her again.

She blossomed under his touch like a flower, lifting her face to his even more squarely.

"Graham, I love you, I love you," she whispered against his mouth.

"Thank you, my darling Cress, thank you," he murmured as he kissed her, over and over. He scooped her up from the couch, surprising her, and carried her to the bed, where he carefully laid her down. He stood tall, looking at her, nearly shuddering about what was going to happen.

He slid onto the bed next to her and took her in his arms, kissing her, moaning at the closeness of her. "I want you, Cress, do you want me? You want to make love?"

She nodded and sat up to unzip her dress. The straps fell from her shoulders, leaving them bare in the lamplight.

Graham reached up to lower her dress, thrilled to find she wasn't wearing a bra. Her beautiful, pointed breasts looked soft and glowing, and he couldn't keep his hands from them; he palmed one in each, causing her to tip her head back and close her eyes.

She finally lifted the dress off her body, leaving her straddling him in her yellow underwear.

"You're so beautiful, Cress," Graham murmured as he looked up at her, his eyes hazy with pleasure. "God, I could just look at you forever."

"Now you, now you," Cress said, giving a little laugh as she pulled him to a sitting position. She unbuttoned his shirt and spread it out, admiring his chest, with the few chest hairs on it; for the most part, it was smooth and muscular.

She leaned in and kissed him again, a moist, open-mouthed kiss where she tried to show him how she felt. She put her arms under his and around his back, loving how it felt under her hands.

Graham lowered his mouth to her breasts, the pebble-hot nipples rolling against his tongue. She leaned back, resting her palms against the bed, reveling in the feel of his mouth on her. She arched her back into him, moaning with the pleasure of it, with seeing his head bent to her front.

"Graham, Graham," she called softly.

He put his hands on her waist, nearly able to span it with them. He shifted her to a more comfortable position, giving him easier access to her breasts, and he moaned with how good she felt in his lap.

"Cress, I love you," he murmured, his voice muffled against her flesh. "God, I love you so much. I love you, I do."

She put her hands on his shoulder blades, nearly fainting from the feel of his muscles under her palms.

He pulled her down on the bed and rolled over, so his bulk covered her, his tanned skin in stark contrast to her paleness. He was huge, she felt smothered by him, in the best possible way. Her nimble fingers undid his slacks and slid them past his lean hips, leaving his erection sharply exposed under his boxer briefs.

He groaned when his fingers found how wet she was for him, as she rolled her hips up to meet his capable hands, pressing her head and shoulders into the bed.

She looked magnificent.

"Nn, Graham, Graham—"

Graham reached in the drawer next to the bed for a condom, and Cressida rolled it on as he watched her hands on him. Then he was probing between her thighs, searching for her opening, as he kissed her hot mouth over and over.

Though Cressida was not a virgin, her previous lovers had not been big men, so she was still small. Graham pressed into her wet, tight heat, and with one push, she was small no longer.

"Oh god, oh Cress," he murmured, lying still, just enjoying being inside her.

She wrapped her legs around his slim hips, locking her ankles together in the small of his back. She pressed on him with the heels of her feet, loving how he filled her.

He looked down at her face, his expression vulnerable and questioning. "This feels—I can't describe—"

"Me too," she assured him as she began moving her hips, rocking into him in a tempo as old as time.

He moaned as he felt her on him, the friction of her sliding up and down. He clasped her to his body in abandon, burying his face in her neck so she could smell his hair, then he rolled them with no effort whatsoever, so she was on top of him and he could admire every inch of her, from her tiny, pointed breasts to her pale skin to her round hips where she covered him. She put her fingers on herself while looking in his eyes, one of the hottest things he'd ever seen.

She had her first orgasm as he watched her, tensing on him, her mouth going slack as she felt it overtake her.

He sat up so he could hold her, so he could kiss her lovely mouth as they moved together, feeling his own release coming, roaring through his body, completely out of control. "Oh god oh god," he groaned, squeezing her so tightly she had trouble drawing breath. "Cress, Cress, Cress—" He stopped moving for a few, brief moments, his expression intense, brows furrowed, mouth in a grim line. He lifted her off the bed as she rode him, feeling his heat inside her. He groaned and lowered his head to her chest, relaxing at last, so Cressida felt his rock hard body softening against her, all muscles seeming to melt.

He pulled her over, so they were lying sideways, looking at each other.

She smoothed his hair, damp with effort, away from his temples, and leaned in to kiss him.

He kissed her back, searching with his tongue for the warm depths of her mouth.

They smiled at each other.