Claimed by Him (3 page)

Something turbulent swam through her veins, overpowering her.

His eyes opened, glowing like suns in his tanned face, and so hot she could burst from the heat smoldering in their depths. His voice gentled as he reached out and touched her cheek. “You happened,” he said thickly. “It’s all about you. Go, Chlo. Please. For me.”

“Graves…I don’t want you to sleep with anyone. Please. Why can’t it be me? I don’t care what Daniel says, I trust you. You wouldn’t hurt me. I’m…ready. I’m ready for you.”

He released a low, hungered groan as his hands curled around her arms and he hauled her against him. “Christ, I’m not a normal man, Chloe. And I’m not a smitten young boy you can twirl around your little finger.” Eyes burning into her like lasers, he slid a callused hand boldly up her throat, his erection pressing almost painfully against her pelvis. “You think I could stop, if I go too far?”

The look he gave her was so consuming, she closed her eyes and sank her nails into his shoulders, gasping. “I know you would!”

“Chlo.” He set his forehead on hers and his breath bathed her face in rapid, desperate bursts. “Jesus, you need to understand I’m very particular about the way I live my life. The way I compartmentalize to stay peaceful…quiet. You’re not fucking quiet to me, Chlo. You make me feel wild and stupid and I don’t trust myself with you. You’re right. You’re fucking right, I would never. Ever. Hurt you. But I don’t want to find out how much I’d hurt myself for you. You’re dangerous to me, Chlo. I’m afraid to hurt you and I know damned well you’re going to destroy
me
.”

The bell rang, and he released her and pressed a code into a nearby keypad, his fingers deft and long. A low buzz sounded when he finished, then she heard the slow, rolling noise of the elevator traveling upward. Chloe’s misery felt like a steel weight when she realized the woman he was going to “play” with had arrived.

Graves’s chest rose and fell as he waited for the elevator to arrive. He watched the climbing numbers with glimmering eyes, those shiny handcuffs dangling from the pockets of his pants.

But Chloe was still swimming in a daze, overwhelmed with need and hunger because he
wanted
her. Graves wanted
her
. She’d known it, she’d known those looks couldn’t lie, the way the heat pooled and slid down her legs when their eyes met. But he didn’t want to want her, and she couldn’t stand the thought of him rejecting her after everything he’d said.

She played poker with the boys sometimes, too, and now she realized she was going to bluff her way to a winning hand.

“Look, Graves,” she began, drawing in a deep, fortifying breath. “I’m twenty-five this Saturday—and I’m a virgin. If you don’t want me, then I’ll ask Luke Preston to spend a weekend with me, just show me a couple of tricks. He may bluff all he wants about his scruples, but we both know he’d do me in a heartbeat.”

His eyes flared in disbelief, then narrowed menacingly as he took a step toward her. Something low and fierce glimmered in their depths. “You don’t want any involvement with Preston any more than you want to get involved with me.”

The jealousy in his eyes thrilled her, spurring her on. “Want to bet?” she asked, brow raised, then mockingly said, “Oh, wait, you don’t
want
to bet anymore because you always
lose
!”

The elevator pinged, and as soon as the doors rolled open, a tall, slender blonde strode forth, as gorgeous as Graves was handsome.

Chloe was amazed at her own composure, keeping her poker face as she climbed aboard.

The woman’s expensive perfume lingered in the air, and before the doors rolled closed, Chloe met Graves’s tumultuous gaze, her eyes imploring him to please, please touch her and make her his. She knew he’d had a tough childhood. She knew he was eccentric. But she also knew that she could take what he gave her, all of it and more.

He stood with his legs braced apart, arms at his side. “Call me when you get home,” he commanded. At the same time, without looking at his new playmate, he arrogantly lifted the dangling handcuffs in the air in a silent order, which the woman obediently seized and clicked eagerly over her wrists. “I said call me from home, Chloe,” he added dangerously when she didn’t answer.

And seconds before the door slid shut, Chloe said with a cold smile that told him to fuck off, “I’m not going home, Graves.”

Graves watched her leave in a daze of disbelief mingled with lust mingled with frustration, his heart pumping furiously in his chest, every turbulent emotion swimming inside his straining, aroused, screaming body. Chloe was a virgin. A sweet, precious, lovely little virgin. And she wanted
him
—the master of impersonal sex—to
fuck
her? No. She wanted Luke Preston to do it now.
Goddamn it.

“Mmm.” Susanne licked into his ear and leaned her curvy, plush form against his, nuzzling her face up all over his muscles, his pecs, down his six-pack, to his rock-hard cock pushing up against the fly of his pants. “My goodness, look at you today,” she whispered delightedly.

He grabbed her hair to pull her back in a not-so-gentle way, grumbling, “It’s not for you.”

Setting her aside and charging across his living room, he started barking out orders. “Fire up the computers. Lobby view, on four.” A screen popped up on the wall, exposing an HD view of the lobby elevators. “Parking lot, on five.”

A second screen appeared, and there was Chloe, crossing toward the very spot he’d parked her Mercedes. Even from a TV screen her saucy little walk did despicable things to him. He curled his fingers into his palms.

“Connect to Daniel Lexington’s system. Open logged-in computers. Open iCloud on Chloe’s Mac. Go to track my iPhone.”

Scanning sounds erupted around him. Suddenly, a map lit up in the air, and a little moving dot that represented her car slowly blinked on the screen, advancing down Michigan Avenue. His heart pounded as he watched it, his cock straining in his pants, his heart aching in his chest as he remembered her shocked expression when she’d seen his handcuffs. And then, her pleading whispers…

Graves…I don’t want you to sleep with anyone. Please. Why can’t it be me?

Holy God, he wanted to die for her. He wanted to go tell his best friend who enjoyed a little pain that he was going to bang his baby sister. He didn’t just want to bang her. He wanted to be sweet and fucking easy. He wanted…to reinvent himself just so he could touch this beautiful princess and get her out of his head, his chest.

That same heart, that same damned chest, constricted painfully when the dot took a side street, and Graves realized Chloe had not been bluffing. Oh, no, that little lady played her game right.

She was heading straight, straight, to Luke Preston. Jealousy squeezed him by the nuts and he wanted to vomit thinking about the things Luke Preston would do to Chloe in a heartbeat…there was no surer thing in all of Chicago than him. And Chloe was about the sexiest, most innocent thing on legs. Graves didn’t even know how the hell he’d managed to resist her just now, when she’d glowed like a blazing sun and he’d been desperate to get burned to ashes.

“Call Luke’s mobile,” he barked out to his butler.

Calling Luke Preston’s mobile phone, sir.

“What’s up, Grave face?” Luke’s cocky voice rang out into the living room.

“Hey, you home?” Graves kept his voice level as he dug into his pants pocket in search of the handcuff keys.

“Hell no. Still at Danny’s. Cade’s fucking us both in the ass. You should really get back here and dump a couple of more millions so he can fuck
you
.”

“Listen, remember the weapon-scanning software you wanted me to install? I’m restless and have time now. I need an in to your place and no interruptions for at least a couple hours.”

“Restless? Just go get laid, Graves. You’re depressing me, man.”

“Yes or no, Luke?”

“Fine. Yes. It’s cunt.”

“Excuse me?”

“The password. It’s cunt.”

“Jesus.” Graves ended the call with a quiet command, then he turned to Susanne and unlocked the handcuffs. “Sorry I made you come over. Help yourself to something, just be sure to let yourself out before I return.”

She shrugged, bored. “That’s fine. I’ll just go fuck Randy.”

“Say hello to your husband and thank him for sharing.”

She grinned. “Don’t worry, he gets off on it.”

“Yeah, I know.” He crossed to his bedroom and shoved into a plain T-shirt, so damned angry that Chloe would expose herself, sacrifice herself, over some stupid idea of losing her virginity before Saturday. She’d always been all sunshine, spirited and mischievous. Something that, as the polar opposite of Graves’s grim personality, he liked in ways that defied his comprehension. But this?

“I’m leaving,” he called out as he stalked toward the elevator. “Set up security system after Mrs. Robinson leaves.”

Yes, sir. Security system on standby.

Anger had worked Chloe into a lather.

Her car smelled of Graves. The gas tank boasted full, the red indicator rising up above the top of the marker. And the fact these tiny details affected her so powerfully made her want to scream. Especially when the man she ached for was now, as she drove down the busy Chicago streets, with another woman, in handcuffs, in his apartment.

God, please let Luke allow her the use of his state-of-the-art gym, so she could just have a go at his punching bags. But then the thought of Graves—mesmerizingly sexy, dark in all the ways that that woman had been light and fair—doing sexy things to her this very moment made Chloe’s throat close and her eyes sting and suddenly hitting something was the last thing on her mind.

And all she wanted was just to have a good cry instead.

She swallowed back her tears and braked at a stop light, drawing in a deep, fortifying breath. No. She couldn’t cry now. Maybe if she’d thought all hope was lost, she would allow herself to break—especially when her entire life, she had been waiting for him.

But Graves’s words trailed unbidden in her head, and her storming hormone levels shot through the roof every time she replayed them…

That’s right, Chlo. I want you so much you make me shake in my fucking pants. I’m obsessed with you…with where you are…and what to do…and who the fuck you’re with…I want to bury myself inside you so deep I won’t ever want to pull out…

Her hands shook on the steering wheel, and when she made her last turn, Luke’s posh apartment building stood like a beacon of hope only two blocks away. Because Luke was such a party boy, Chloe had been to several of his legendary “pajama parties” a couple of times when Daniel was out of town and mercifully oblivious to it, and thanks to those random escapades she knew Luke’s key-code access. The man had even told her once that if she ever wanted to go into his place, she could wait for him naked like all the rest of his special “friends.” Yeah, right.

He was incorrigible, Luke Preston, making it look
so
good to be bad.

He had the amazing good looks of a Greek god and lived a life of excess like a true Roman. Super sexy and painfully aware of his magnetism, he was unscrupulous enough to take wicked advantage of every girl’s attention and then some. The fact that he’d been born a billionaire and his companies almost ran themselves left the guy with tons of time to visit every bedroom in the city. In fact, Chloe’s entire group of friends had slept with Luke—and years later, they still didn’t stop gushing about it and couldn’t stop complaining over the fact that Luke didn’t seem to visit any bed twice.

But Chloe didn’t plan to sleep with the guy.

She wanted Graves Buchanan so badly, she feared she would die a virgin if she couldn’t have him.

All she truly needed tonight was to lure Luke’s playful streak—which was easy because the man didn’t have a serious bone in his body—and ask him to please help her torment Graves so he’d believe they were having an affair. Maybe if she managed to push the right button, Graves would react and for the love of God just put her out of her misery already!

Graves.

Chloe had never before reacted to a boy the way she had when she’d first met Graves. He’d been so handsome with his dark, windblown hair and his gold eyes and that deep, grave voice of a man. His endearing somberness had made Chloe anxious to tease out a smile from him.

She’d been merely thirteen, while Graves had been almost seventeen, and he’d recently approached her father’s company with one of his brilliant intelligence plans. Her father had been so impressed with the boy, he’d pulled his only son out of the partying lifestyle he’d been dragged into by the incorrigible Luke Preston, and he’d forced Daniel to work with Graves on the project for months.

Graves and Danny had been best friends ever since.

Years later and barely in his mid-twenties, Graves had gone on to become independent and a billionaire, but his promising start had been with the Lexingtons.

Chloe still remembered how anxiously she’d waited for Graves to come over to the house to work on his projects with Danny. Sometimes, she felt like she dressed just so he’d see her. And God, did Graves see her.

He used to stare at her like she was the most beautiful, precious thing on this earth. Like he’d gladly miss the sight of a comet, a sunset, a rainbow, so long as he could keep staring at Chloe. He’d get
so
distracted when she passed through or came to say hello, Danny would have to call his name several times to regain his attention.

But then, a couple of years ago, around the time Chloe began seriously trying to flirt with Graves and dramatically improved her outfits in the sexiness department, he’d begun stiffening when he heard her voice, going almost into defense mode when he saw her approach. And that had just made Chloe more and more desperate to make him look at her.

But tonight, those pale tawny eyes that appeared in all of Chloe’s fantasies were now looking with desire at
another woman
.

A cloud of despair enveloped her, and she bleakly decided the first thing she would attack when she got to Luke’s place was his assorted bar.

Graves could be kissing that woman and sliding his hands all over her this very instant, his beautiful tanned fingers caressing her skin in ways Chloe had dreamed of.

Her pussy wept with longing, while an awful loneliness spread through her until she felt empty and unwanted.

Trying to push him out of her mind, she rode the elevator to the top floor of Luke’s building, pressed Luke’s stupid code into his naked-woman keypad, and then she strolled into his place, greeted instantly by Luke’s female butler who’d been reduced to some sort of harem girl who sounded almost orgasmic.
Welcome, master!

“I pity you, woman,” Chloe grumbled, shaking her head. “I really do.”

Luke’s pad was sexy, a version of a playboy mansion that took up three entire floors, with the pools and a mini golf course on the lower level, his “themed” bedrooms on the second level, and a huge terrace plus a bar and the living area with Luke’s trademark red velvet drapery on level three.

Before Chloe settled down in the living room to watch something cheerful like E’s
The Soup,
she determinedly went to pour herself three shots of tequila. She paused when she heard a noise by the door and Luke’s stupid,
Welcome, master!
erupted once more. So…

The master had arrived indeed. Excellent. He was just in time.

“All right, Luke, before you start taking your pants off, let me tell you exactly what I want from you—” She stuttered to a halt as she turned.

Her stomach dropped.

Graves Buchanan, the man of her dreams, somehow had pulled a Copperfield on her and now stood at the open door. His chest was broad and muscular in a plain gray T-shirt, the sleeves snug around his bulging biceps. He looked somber and thoughtful, but even then, Chloe loathed that he was still as sexy as he’d been half an hour ago—and he still made her heart ache like a sore.

“I’m afraid Luke’s too busy getting fucked tonight, so I’m going to have to see you home.”

Something warm flitted through her at the quiet jealousy in his voice. “Graves, what are you doing here?”

“You surprised me once, now it’s my turn.”

Her pulse spun like a whirlwind when he stepped inside and shut the door, his expression telling her,
You’ve been a bad, bad girl and now you have it coming…

Her heart jumped inside her chest and her traitorous nipples puckered. Then she remembered that he had denied her, repeatedly, and that he’d handcuffed some woman to pleasure him tonight instead of her. She shot him a glare. “I want Luke!”

He crossed his muscled arms and braced his legs apart, assessing her in somber silence for a moment. “Half an hour ago you wanted me, Chlo.”

“Clearly I’m wasting my time with you.”

He nodded indulgently. “I assure you, you’re wasting your time with Luke, too.”

“Really? How will you keep a sure lay like Luke away? Do you plan to tell him I have STDs or something?”

“Maybe,” he said with another nod, and suddenly he pushed himself forward in her direction. “Or then maybe I can just tell him you’d rather have me.”

Graves walked, easy and catlike, toward the bar, and suddenly her heart fluttered like a morphing little gremlin in her chest. Her mind got way ahead of her, and her brain synapses went haywire with the prospect of him pulling her into his arms and kissing the idea of sleeping with Luke Preston out of her head for good.

But he obliterated her hope when he grabbed two of her tequila shots and unapologetically poured the liquid into the copper bar sink.

“Don’t do this when you’re driving, Chloe,” he admonished with a frown that made him look concerned and inexplicably handsome to her.

A knot of disappointment tightened in her tummy when he tossed the third glass down the drain, too.

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she rebelliously spun around and groped along the counter in search of the entire bottle. “Thanks for the advice, Poppa Buchanan, but I suggest you just go back to your big macho handcuffs and your bimbo now.”

Graves had cornered her, and now he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her head forcibly to his. She held her breath as he ruthlessly scrutinized her for a long, heart-wrenching moment. His voice broke with huskiness. “Don’t be angry I didn’t put them on you.”