Claimed by Him (5 page)

When she slid her fingers up to his jaw, he tore free, panting, jamming his fingers into his hair, his face hard and raw. “Go home,” he rasped. “
Now!
”

Chloe panted in disbelief. Graves looked wild, like an animal, and about to fuck the living daylights out of her in Luke’s living room. Her pussy gripped, because she wanted him so much, but she’d promised him, and she couldn’t bear to have lied. “I’ll…okay. Okay, I’m leaving.”

She ducked as she pulled the door open and rushed to the elevator, too unsettled by his kiss to even look back when he commanded, his voice roughened with anger, “Call me when you get there!”

Frowning darkly, Graves pounded on the wireless keyboard hooked to Luke’s system and typed in a long security code, a sector of his brain working on autopilot.

Which was a good thing; that it could actually work.

Because the rest of him was consumed, every sinew, tissue, muscle, nerve, and bone in his body,
consumed
by Chloe Lexington.

His mouth still burned with the taste of her. His blood stormed hot through his veins and his cock kept pushing up into his pants when he remembered their kiss.

It had been almost three hours since she’d left and it was well past midnight, and Chloe hadn’t called. She was irking him. Deliberately provoking him. Still determined to give some motherfucker her virginity, Holy God.

I want you so much. Please let me taste you.

Her voice flicked through him like an angel’s wing, telling him she wanted him, needed him. Graves ruthlessly suppressed a shudder as the wet flicks of her greedy little tongue came vividly back to his mind.

Sitting tense at Luke’s acrylic desk with every one of his muscles contracted, his hands paused on the keyboard and he stared off into nothingness, his chest cramping. He couldn’t believe he’d kissed her like that. That kiss…It had been hours ago, and his body still raged hot and hard for her. Was she as affected as he was?

Was she wet, while he was so damned hard?

He could still taste her in his mouth. Maybe she was right, maybe he just didn’t like to kiss the women he was with. Because Chloe’s kiss could’ve driven him to orgasm. No tobacco taste like those few awkward kisses he’d shared with his first whores. No taste of stale alcohol, of bitterness, of poverty. No. Chloe tasted rich and luscious and minty. It was all freshness, and female, and her. Fuck, that kiss had been as intimate a thing as he’d ever allowed himself in his life, and the worst part was, it was still not enough. Graves had trembled with the need to get closer to her. To bury his tongue as deep as he could fucking go and bury his cock in the opposite direction until he’d impaled her so well and so hard he became one with her.

Jesus, what had he been thinking?

Did he think he could resist the woman of his fantasies?

He’d fallen for her bait, ready to make her go back home and out of Preston’s place before the jealousy ripped him in two. But damn it, he’d thought he’d have more control, more reserve, that he would just give her the kiss and send her on her way, maybe even torment her a little for tempting him like she had.

But no.

Hell, no.

In his entire life, no kiss had ever knocked him out like hers had. No kiss had ever shot straight to his balls and made his cock jump and twitch from the intense pleasure. Jesus. She’d made him like it. Hell, she’d made him love it, and she’d made him want more so fiercely that he’d been a breath away from tearing her clothes off and fucking the heck out of her on Luke’s floor.

Damn, he had it
bad
for her. So damned bad he felt big inside his skin, stretched to his limits, bursting because he was in love with this girl and she was pushing him so hard he didn’t know what to do with her.

Oh, yeah, he wanted her. He’d die for her. And she wanted him back.

But starting something with Chloe wasn’t as easy as it sounded. He knew full well that Chloe would push him so damned far beyond where he’d ever been pushed. She would not be satisfied until she’d tumbled his every wall, his every defense, and he’d be a
dead man
.

Then again, maybe he’d be a
happy
dead man…

Welcome, master!

Spurred back from his thoughts by Luke’s virtual butler, Graves began typing again as Luke strolled into his pad. The scanning device he’d programmed and wired was activated as his friend moved inside.

“That’s creepy. I can totally hear it scanning me,” Luke said with a smirk, as he sent his coat flying across the room. He threw himself onto the couch next to where it had landed and propped his feet up. “I’m your master and lord, idiot, and I am unarmed!”

Graves kept typing. “Almost through here. I’m merely saving your profile as an authorized weapons holder…”

“Good deal. You know, I’m tired of being greeted as Master Luke. How about you program it to say, ‘Welcome back, lovable, lickable, luscious Lord Luke.’ Sounds special. Right?”

Graves continued coding. “It’s your home, dickhead.” Then, because he had to know, could not tear his mind from her for the life of him, he asked, “Chloe make it back home, do you know?”

His ears still rang with the sounds she’d made when he fucked her mouth his tongue. He just couldn’t stop thinking about this woman, this girl he loved and adored, and who wanted to lose her virginity. She had kissed him, breathing against him, taunting him to take her. So why in the hell couldn’t he just be the lucky bastard to do her the favor? If he kept to the way he usually had sex, he could be careful and not get in over his damned head so much. He could love the Jesus out of her if only for one night, and then be on their way, getting each other out of their systems.

Nobody had to know, nothing needed to change.

“Hell yeah, she got home. And she was apparently not kidding about kissing her date. Her mouth was swollen like a blown-up kissing fish and it made Danny get all up in her case.”

Graves’s heart vaulted, and his dick jumped to its full eight inches as he remembered the way her luscious mouth had looked after he’d kissed it. He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, but couldn’t relax a single muscle. He forced himself to continue coding. “What would you do if she were to…” He let it trail off.

“Chloe? Come on to me, or something? Man, I’d do her sideways, upside down. Hell, I’d do her both ways—”

“Forget I asked.” He immediately regretted it. This was Luke, damn it. He was the world’s busiest man whore.

“Man, we’re talking
Chloe
here. Just looking at that ass—”

“
Forget it!
” Graves snapped. But her pert little ass appeared in his mind, and his balls gathered high and tight in his pants as one of his fuck-Chloe-doggy-style fantasies flickered through his mind.

“I might just end up getting the chance to fool around with her, you know,” Luke said with a conspiring wink. “She wants to ‘talk’ to me. And we all know what women have in mind when they want to talk to me. She invited me to one of her weekly charity things tomorrow, some kid orphanage.”

Everything inside of Graves went cold. Alaska and Antarctica were hot compared to his insides. He seemed to have stopped moving, stopped typing. And apparently he wasn’t breathing much, either. “Did she?”

“Yeah.”

He still could not breathe. “To do what?”

“I don’t know but I’m taking my checkbook.” Luke ran his hands through his hair and chuckled. “I’m going to have to drop a couple thousand, if not a mil, if I have any heart in me—and I’m all heart, man. I’ve done it a couple times, but the way Chlo asked me this time…She had this little wink of mischief in her eye and my radar shot up, man. She’s up to something with me, that girl. My radar never fails.”

“Stop looking at your fucking dick when you say radar,” Graves snapped.

He was glaring at Luke, his temperature doing a one-eighty turn. Now his blood boiled angrily in his veins, jealousy storming through him like an erupting volcano. He had never been the jealous type. He kept to himself, his businesses, his robots, and his intelligence systems. He didn’t like getting entangled with people’s dramas, kept sex as up-front as he could with absolutely no emotional involvement…

But Chloe, God, she pulled all his strings, all his buttons, and then some. Chloe intended to sleep with Luke? He stared at the guy the woman he loved planned to fuck tomorrow while Graves was shaking with unfulfilled desire. He stared blindly at the delicate code he had been working on for hours, his blood roaring and his every muscle straining and his dick so pained he wanted to cut it off. Every inch of him, every instinct, screamed at him to
get. Chloe.

Because no undeserving asshole was going to take her virginity, especially not Luke I-Fuck-Anyone Preston.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d rather go to the orphanage instead,” Graves told him.

Luke had been lounging back on the couch as though dozing off. But he pried one eye open to stare at him from the sofa. “You? Graves?” He laughed. “Look, man, I know some things are hard to comprehend to a beast as socially awkward as yourself, but if she’d wanted you there, she wouldn’t have asked me. So, no, man, you can’t go—she asked me cuz I’m
fun
. Kids dig me, and I’m inspiring in a twisted way. You…”

“You can keep your clown act, Luke, I’ll take a robot with me instead. One of our newest prototypes.”

Luke shrugged. “Or you can just wear a mask and they’ll buy you’re the robot.”

Graves met his friend’s gaze squarely in silence, waiting for Luke to ramble out of ideas, which sometimes took a goddamn while.

“I can’t see how you think taking a weapon of mass destruction to an orphanage would be a good idea,” Luke continued.

“We have some for entertainment purposes,” Graves countered.

“Ah, I forgot that. You have robot secretaries, I now recall. What I still can’t figure is why you don’t give them tits and asses and names like Debbie Blow Me and Letitia Lick My Weenie.”

“Because the world already has one of you to come up with that shit, asshole.”

“All right, so tell me why you want to do this. I’d love to know. As far as I know you’re not very chummy with Chloe. Heck, you’re not chummy with any of the ladies, warm, loving teddy bear that you are. Now you want to be best buddies with her? What about your BFF Daniel? I don’t get it, man.”

Because Chloe’s mine mine, she wants me me
me
. He exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. Luke was the closest thing to a gigolo, but he wasn’t a snitch when it came to serious business. And right now Graves couldn’t think of anything as fucking serious in his life. His balls still ached in his pants, almost as badly as his chest did. He had never, ever, felt like this before. He was really, truly, fucking in love and in lust with this woman.

“Graves? Man, you’re scaring me.”

Graves shook his head, inhaled again, and exhaled long and slow. “I want her so bad I feel like she’s opening me up and cutting right through me.” He dragged his hands over his face in despair.

“You want her as in…”

His face shot back up. “As in, I’ll kill you if you touch her. I wouldn’t even have to set a finger on you. I’ll just program your door to shut on your goddamned face.”

“Wow, you’ve even got the method down.”

“I’m not bluffing, man. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’ve lost my fucking mind, but it’s too damned late now to do anything about it.”

“Holy shit, you
have
lost a screw! What the hell are you going to do with a social butterfly like Chloe? She won’t come to heel when you command her like your toys, Graves.”

“Thanks for the shit input, Dr. Freud,” he snapped.

“You’re very welcome,” Luke said coolly. “But I definitely have to say all your troubles are due to the fact that you grew up without a mother. If you’d been exposed to even a fraction of some healthy maternal love, like myself, you wouldn’t have any problems accepting a woman’s affection.”

Graves snorted. “At least I didn’t lose my virginity to my old nanny.”

“Ah, now you’re giving me a boner.” Luke sighed and pushed to his feet. “Well, why didn’t you say you were going suicidal, Grave face? Chloe’s all yours, dude—don’t worry about me. I’ve got the entire city of Chicago at my disposal. Plus, I’m kind of relieved I won’t have to handle that slight inconvenience of dealing with Daniel…”

“Are you supposed to pick her up tomorrow or are you meeting her there?” Graves demanded.

“Meeting here there…” And Luke, with that mischievous sparkle in his eyes, dished out all the details.

After a night of no sleep, Chloe rushed the next morning to make it by nine to the Ralph Lexington Orphan Home, a small two-story orphanage that had been founded by her great-grandfather. She rushed through her shower, rushed through breakfast, rushed on her drive, and she even rushed on her way into the building. And every nanosecond of every one of those moments, she did the same thing she’d done while lying sleepless in her bed at night.

She relived Graves’s kiss.

Over and over, she’d rewind, pause, rewind, replay…

She felt so haunted, so gripped by that moment, she could not push him out of her head. His raw, forbidden taste teased and tantalized her. His heat. His groans. His hands. The way he’d drawn out the moment…teasing her and somehow, making her want it so much more…

God, she had to stop thinking about it. Being in a daydreaming state all through the day with the children would just not do. Plus Luke would be here today to motivate the kids, and she had to be sharp and clear-headed when she exposed her plans and hopefully enlisted his assistance.

But definitely, a “pretend affair” with Luke was in order.

Shuffling into the great room, Chloe greeted Lisa and Marie, the two caretakers on standby, with a hug and a kiss, discovering that they’d already gathered the kids into several rows of perfectly lined chairs for Luke’s presentation.

Children of all ages lived in the home, boys and girls, some of them so lonely you could just break in two when you met them. Luke always made them laugh, though, and he never showed pity for anyone. He called them his “compadres” as though they were equals and dazzled them with his easygoing personality.

Chloe just loved to see them smile and therefore tried to bring a guest in at least once a month.

“All right, children, today I am having a very special guest who you might…”

Tittering and fluttering spread across the room, and suddenly all the little heads before her turned toward the swinging doors. Chloe heard a strange sound like the continual click of a thinking computer from that direction. Puzzled, she twisted around, and her eyes widened when a huge man-sized robot walked directly toward her.

With a bright red rose stretched out.

“I…”
Oh my God, what is this?

She seized the rose with a hand that started to tremble. The robot turned to its audience and in a deep, robotic voice, told the children, “My name is Prototype R45, but my friends call me Tot.”

The kids started screaming “Tot! Tot!” He talked and moved fluidly, lifelike, like Iron Man except this was a real robot with no man inside. The gold-and-black outer suit gleamed, and he had the kids in his pocket in a mere instant. They were screaming out his name like it was Michael Jackson.

Chloe’s heart fluttered like it had grown a thousand wings—because of course there was only one business in the entire United States that handled this level of intelligent robotics, providing the government with some of its most advanced intelligence weapons.

And it was not Luke Preston’s billion-dollar underwear business that did this.

Heart lodged up in her throat, she scanned the crowd as the robot continued speaking, and she spotted Graves with his dark head bent over and a shoulder propped against a wall. He held a small pad in his hand and busily typed instructions with deft fingers. He looked…there were no words.

In a dark designer suit and an orange Hermès horse-patterned tie, Graves Buchanan was the sexiest, most quietly vibrant thing Chloe had ever seen in her life. His ebony hair shone under the lights, his skin beautiful and tan contrasting with the starchy collar of his crisp white shirt. He was princely and elegant in his business suit; tall, handsome, with his beautifully proportioned body making her mouth water and his symmetrical features and striking face making her want to melt to the floor.

She kept waiting for him to make eye contact with her, but he didn’t.

He kept handling the robot, loving every minute of it—she could tell by the occasional twitch of his lips, and it made her own lips curve upward, too. All the kids went crazy when the robot started impersonating voices of famous people, making special moves that matched what he said.

Not a single one of these children noticed the dark, reserved man who handled him.

But Chloe had eyes for nothing else.

She noticed Graves’s lips would curl into a smile a good few seconds before the robot said something funny and the kids laughed. His fingers were long and tanned and the tips of her breasts had never, in her life, felt so excruciatingly sensitive against her bra than when she saw those hands move, every inch of her body dying to be stroked by those beautiful long fingertips.

Then Tot spoke to the kids, saying in a crisp robotic voice, “Thank you for spending time with me today! Before I leave, I will leave you with something to think about. You see, I was born in 1993 as an idea in the mind of an orphaned kid like you…”

Kids glanced at each other in wonderment, and even Lisa and Marie exchanged a meaningful look.

“It actually took over a year to gather all my parts, and to build me out of all the things people didn’t want anymore. Old radios, old telephones, old TVs. I was so ugly in the beginning and there wasn’t much hope for me. But here I stand with you today. One of the first of millions of robots spread all across the world. We’re your protectors, your loyal workers, and your friends.”

A wave of soft, innocent “wows” spread across the robot’s captivated audience, and Chloe was touched by the awed manner in which the kids gazed up at Tot, like he was the greatest invention since lighting.

“Quitting was never an option for us. And if it had been, then I would still be all metal parts with nothing to hold me together. I’m so glad I wasn’t given up on. And I sure hope you never give up on your dreams, either. So those ideas in your head? Your hopes? Your ambitions? Keep them alive in your heads at all times—all times. No matter how tough it gets, it can only get better. So, believe you can do it, find your own ‘Tot’ and make good things happen!”

The orphans cheered in utter captivated delight at those last words, and Chloe’s windpipe clamped shut with repressed emotion. She hadn’t really paused to think about this aspect of Graves’s personality. How he had grown to feel more comfortable with equipment—predictable, controllable, and reliable—than with the chaos he had grown up with.

Orphaned, from foster home to foster home, he’d been a runaway. He’d never had a real “education,” but he was so smart and so hell-bent to pull himself upward. He could’ve become a hacker. A thief. An alcoholic or a drug addict like the ones Danny said he used to “bunk” with at fifteen.

Instead, Graves had forged himself into a man of honor and character, keeping his eye on the ball and not on his empty basket. He didn’t drink so much as a drop of alcohol, having been surrounded by crazed alcoholics. He despised anything that even hinted at a remote lack of brain sharpness, much less a loss of control. He was organized, methodical, careful, and patient. Admirable, because despite his enormous power, he didn’t fuck up the people or institutions who had failed to provide him with safety as a kid. He was a man who looked to the future instead of the past. He was tough, street smart, and a fighter to the end. He was hard but fair, and always harder with himself than with anyone else. And just look at him now. He was so…perfect to her. Even if he didn’t like kissing, touching…

Chloe could not think of a man she admired more and wanted more.

In fact, she couldn’t see why she hadn’t thought of inviting him to the orphanage before. But he was such a reserved man—he didn’t enjoy attention like Luke did—that Chloe hadn’t wanted to put him on the spot. Silly, now that she thought about it. He’d turned out to be so motivating in such a real way, she was utterly dazzled. No makeup, no gloss, no Luke Preston bullcrap. Graves was real and raw.

The sudden thought of him as a little boy with the sad, lonely eyes in an orphanage crushed her.

While her insides burst with emotion, Tot began dancing to “Thriller” to wrap it up and the kids screamed in delight. Chloe laughed in surprise. She started edging in Graves’s direction as the kids jumped to their feet and formed a circle around the dancing robot whose moves could put MJ to shame.

Graves approached the circle to watch the robot’s feet, but Chloe continued advancing toward him, her eyes on his beautiful profile as she fervently wished those golden eyes would turn and acknowledge she was here.

She noticed he’d slipped the keypad into the pocket of his jacket, as though the dance routine had already been wired and programmed into the robot.

Her heartbeat accelerated. Then, she was there. Right beside him. Her elbow grazed his jacket sleeve, but with the music and the shouts all around her, she couldn’t really talk to him. She clutched the rose in her hand while at the same time moved her free hand the tiniest fraction in search of his. His knuckles brushed tantalizingly against the back of hers, and she held her breath.

Though he stood watching the robot at her side, Graves surprised her when he hooked his index finger around hers. Desire flooded her. The move was so unexpected it made her tremble with longing inside. He squeezed her finger meaningfully with his and then he gently tugged her aside. Chloe helplessly let him guide her weakened legs to follow him to the fringes of the circle, where the music wasn’t so loud.

He stopped at the very edge and positioned himself behind her, his hand sliding down her arm and resting at her hip. Her heart hammered and her skin tingled and her entire system went on hyperalert. And for a moment she just wanted to stand here and enjoy this. Being with him. His scent. The heat of his hand.

She kept her eyes on the robot as his front pressed intimately into her back. The heat emanating from his body spun through her. The smell of his aftershave teased her and dizzied her. His lips bumped her earlobe when he spoke, his voice a seduction of its own.

“When?”

She didn’t understand, and whispered, “What?”

His hand squeezed her hip. “When do you want me? When can I have you?”

A silence.

Her heart dropped and then jumped sky-high, and her toes curled in her Jimmy Choos.

“I…have social work tomorrow,” she forced herself to answer. “The children expect us to do handcrafts…”

“Saturday then. Your birthday.” His voice dropped to a thick murmur. “Do you think you can keep your hands off Preston until then?”

Thrilled with the possessiveness in his voice and words, she turned her head sideways and smiled tauntingly. “I don’t know. Do you think you can keep from handcuffing one of your ‘friends’?”

His slow smile was full of promise and sexual innuendo. He bent to her ear again. “Tease me all you want, Chlo. Because Saturday, I’m the one who’ll be teasing you.”