Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1) (7 page)

I forced myself to move, allowing her to continue down the hall. The only perk to allowing her to leave without asking for her number was the fact that I got to watch her go. I bit the inside of my bottom lip hard enough to bruise, wishing that it were
her
lip I was bruising instead of my own. Her backside was just as pleasant as the rest of her.

I had planned on letting her walk out ahead of me and then finding her in the club to strike up a conversation. My lust-drunk brain hadn’t considered that perhaps she was on her way out.

I had looked for her until closing time, which was far longer than I usually stayed. Typically, I came in to check on things. I made my rounds and then left.

Martin lectured me regularly about the dangers of me being in one of my clubs for too long. I was careful to not overextend my stay, but that night I just couldn’t get her off my mind.

Maybe Martin was right about the dangers.

There was no maybe to it. I knew he was right. The risk of being there for very long was too real, and it was enough to paralyze me with anxiety.

Alcohol was not my friend, and I was a disillusioned fool for allowing myself near it for any extended length of time thinking that I was bigger than myself.

History had proven otherwise. But I wasn’t staying put because the allure of a drink was more than I could handle. I was there because the allure of that woman had fully ensnared me. I knew the feeling of being hooked on something all too well and there was no dissuading myself. I knew I had to find out who she was and if she frequented my club. If she did, I planned to sample from whatever she was willing to offer me. Based on what I knew from the gallery where we’d first met, she knew Calvin in some way. If I needed to, I could reach out to him for information, but I’d see what I could come up with on my own before I sought the help of someone that I was affiliated with professionally.

It was an intrusive thing to do, but after she had vanished from the club that I co-owned with Halley, I’d gone right away to pull the surveillance footage. It took me an hour of combing footage, but there she had been, tucked safely behind the guy she was there with. I knew that had to be it. She seemed familiar when I’d first met her at the gallery because she had obviously been to one of my clubs before.

Nina poured them both shots of Patrón and I watched on the somewhat grainy screen as her slight throat worked to swallow down the alcohol. I watched and kicked myself for not upgrading Indigo’s security cameras and monitors to the best HD quality on the market.

Familiar need, urgency to pacify my craving, gripped me. I knew I shouldn’t allow myself to play with fire but
dammit.
This woman had four-alarm blaze written all over her and yet I was ready to storm the building, flames be damned.

I licked my lips, thinking that just a drop, a taste from her pouty lips…

No.

I had to shut myself down before my mind wandered too far in that direction. The trajectory of my thoughts was often an indication of what actions were going to follow.

Fantasizing about licking residual alcohol off that woman’s delectable looking mouth was a recipe for disaster. I’d paid a fucking fortune to learn how to identify the obvious dangers for people like me.

Triggers were the devil and had to be consciously avoided and there I was, sitting on the edge of my bed after only the second time seeing her and wanting to bury my cock balls deep in what I knew would be a huge trigger—Flor.

People like me.
I laughed at my own expense, alone in my room. Thinking that there were other people like me was laughable considering how isolated I felt from the moment my eyes opened in the morning until sleep came for me at night. I’ve never met any one else whose life had turned out like mine. I doubted they existed. It was just me.

Her showing up tonight, exactly a week later at Four-19, was fucking fortuitous. Her companion had paid cash for their drinks the night she came to Indigo, and of course none of my staff had the faintest clue who this woman was.

Dumb luck delivered her to me seven days later. Not that I deserved a fucking ounce of good fortune, but I’d take it nonetheless.

Seeing her leaning against the wall outside sent a measure of excitement through me. I had to calm down for a couple of minutes before walking over to the booth where I had my staff seat them.

Looking at her tonight, I knew this woman was going to be trouble for me. Martin, my sponsor, would have gently reminded me that addiction is a chameleon, a shape-shifter, and I’d be serving myself best if I stayed honest. “Be honest, Graham. Stay honest,” I muttered to myself from the king sized bed that only I slept in. It was laughable to recite those words considering that I had secrets that even Martin didn’t know. I had wondered if he had a few secrets of his own.

Martin spoke of addiction as though it was a living, breathing monster, and in truth, I felt he was right. Sobriety and relapsing were forever pitted against each other in a daily war with no resolution to be had. There would be no peace treaty. Ever. There would only ever be a battle, a fight, a war. But if war wanted me, war could have me, and I’d be a fucking soldier against my own evil for as long as it took if it meant sparing the people I loved from the monster I was capable of being when alcohol snaked its way through my veins.

Martin would warn me that my addiction was likely trying another vector to entrap me, to encourage my poor choices and the disease that had no cure. The same disease that I knew first hand would only lay a blanket-path of destruction on my life if given half the chance.

I knew all of that. I could practically hear Martin preaching to me right now. If I were braver, I’d call him right now. Who cared that it was three o’clock in the morning? Alcoholism waited for no one, conformed to no one else’s agenda and took pity on nothing.

But…I’m weak, and addiction was a very real ball and chain that I hated and that scared the fucking shit out of me. I wasn’t about to call Martin to let him know that I was struggling because of a woman.

My ball and chain ruined my life and tore my family to pieces so small I hadn’t the slightest idea how to put them back together, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure I was a big enough man for the task.

I may stand six-feet-four-inches tall and two hundred forty-seven pounds, but my ball and chain kept me feeling infinitesimal.

When she’d looked up at me tonight and asked if we would exchange numbers, I couldn’t help the uptake of my pulse.

“Absolutely,” I’d said, withdrawing my cell phone from the breast pocket of my suit jacket.

She held her cell phone out to me, prompting me to hand over mine. The simple act of handing over my cell phone had made me uneasy. I valued my privacy, but the trophy at stake was enough for me to surrender.

I watched her add her own contact information to my phone a lot quicker than I could make my bulky fingers peck out letters and numbers on the screen of hers.

I held her cell out to her and she held mine out to me. I’d wished I could take her back to my place right then and there, but it was obvious to me that this woman was not the type to just jump in bed with a stranger.

I was both pleased and uncomfortable with the fact that I would likely have to put in more work than I normally would. Putting in more work meant spending more time. Spending more time meant getting to know each other a little, and getting to know each other meant that I’d either end up confessing that I was a recovering alcoholic, or I’d hide my ugly truth like a coward. But…spending more time with her also meant
spending more time with her
, and I wanted that very much.

I could have opted for the company of another woman as a distraction, but I knew—I just knew that chances of finding someone else to mollify the craving I had were slim to none. My craving was one she’d established within me and she’d be the only one capable of remedying me.

Finding a woman to spend a night with was never an issue for me, and I was rarely met with noncompliance once I’d made my intentions clear, but this woman didn’t exactly fall into the same category as my normal hookups.

“We should probably get going.” She seemed reluctant to say it and I winced internally. I didn’t want her to leave just yet. Everything in me wanted to touch her again, to pull her to me and own the territory of her mouth with mine. The only thing rooting me in place was common sense. I could neither indulge myself nor take liberties with her until she gave me a green light. How fast I sped once she chose to give me that green light was another story entirely. One that, I hoped, would play out soon. Despite the tightly coiled need in my gut, I smiled and nodded.

Seemingly of its own free will, my hand rose to her cheek. My fingers drifted over her skin and tucked a wayward lock of brown silk behind her ear. I watched as her breathing became choppy, her cheeks turned a beautiful pink and her long lashes fluttered closed. I hated showing restraint.

My hand fell back to my side and her gray eyes bore into me, her pupils dilated more than they had been before.

Fuck, the things I plan to do to you…

She licked her lips; her stormy-gray eyes took on a carnal look as though she had read my mind. I’d hoped that she could and dreaded what she’d see there if she did.

“Walk us out?”

“Of course,” I nodded, stuffing my hands back in my pockets and fidgeting as I so often did when addiction felt entirely too close to the surface. I kept my hands hidden, knowing that if I didn’t do something else with them I wouldn’t be able to keep them off that flawless skin of hers.

“Matt, we’re leaving,” she called out to her friend who had been wandering around the terrace pretending to be completely engrossed in his cell phone. I appreciated the few minutes of privacy.

Matt’s head popped up and he plastered a false pouty face on, dragging his feet back to where we stood.

I feel the same way, brother.

Sitting in my bed alone, thinking back on everything, thinking about her, I couldn’t ignore the throbbing heat between my legs any longer. My balls ached for release after fantasizing about a stranger for a week straight and then seeing her tonight only made it worse. I sat on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes as I pulled the elastic band of my boxer briefs down.

My eyes landed on the clock beside my bed. It was getting close to four o’clock in the morning and I was about to stroke myself off.
Fuck.

I pictured her soulful gray eyes, her full lips, her tits rising and falling with each breath she took, her round ass that was neither too big nor too small, just enough to fill my hands.

I took a tentative stroke, working my hand down the length of my cock and back up. I cupped my aching balls with my other hand and gently massaged them, all the while imagining how her small hands would feel against my back, the bite of her nails raking down my fevered skin as I took her hard and fast—hard enough to push the limits between pleasure and pain.

A choked groan escaped my throat as I pictured her legs spread wide to accommodate me. How it would feel to push into her one scorching hot inch at a time.

I tightened my grip and stroked myself root to tip again.

Again.

Again.

My balls drew up tightly as my cock grew even harder. Pleasure seared its way through my veins and I shuddered again and again as my cock jutted outward, spilling my release in search for the woman I had been imagining. But she wasn’t there. She hadn’t fucked me. Not yet.

I was addicted and I hadn’t even had a proper taste yet.

Flor

Standards

“I
still can’t believe you took off on him,” Matt said incredulously, shaking his head, wearing nothing but his tiny fitted trunk underwear.

“I didn’t take off. I diffused the situation—a situation that was beginning to make me consider turning into a major slut, mind you,” I said holding one finger up, resolutely.

Matt snorted in response, but bit his tongue.

“If I would have stayed, I would have given him the wrong impression and it would have been tough to behave myself. Standards, you know? I got his number, though,” I said, pulling my phone out of my back pocket to re-read the text he’d sent me early this morning. I smiled when I saw the name he’d entered in my phone.