Claimed by Him

by Red Garnier

  She swallowed. A pulsing knot within her coiled and twisted as lust flooded her body. “If I wear things like these…I do it because I want you and I want you to want me. Graves…I don’t care if you don’t kiss me,” she pleaded, unsure whether she was lying or not, but at the moment, she just wanted to feel him inside of her. Inside her. She took a few steps in his direction, her womb rippling with need. “I’m not afraid of being handcuffed if you’re the one doing it. Please…”

  “No, Chlo. No.” He came forward like a turbulent wind, his face raw and fierce, then he urged her to the door with increasing pressure on her arm. “Get home. Whatever it is you want, you’re not getting it from Preston tonight—and you won’t be getting it from me.”

  “You may have remarkable self-control, but you can’t stop Luke forever,” she snapped, eyes flashing as she broke free and glared at him. “And I promise you, if it’s not Luke, then I’m finding someone who will take me to bed if it kills me.”

  “Jesus! Why don’t you wait for the right fucking man, Chlo?” he thundered, gripping her by the shoulders and shaking her.

  “Because I’m staring right at him and he won’t do shit!” she screamed, and hit his chest with one hand. “You don’t like being touched? Fine with me! I’ll just hit you!” She hit him with her other hand and, with startling speed, his hands whipped up to seize her wrists and yank them down to her sides.

  “For the love of God, go home, Chloe!” he hissed, eyes troubled and desperate, his hands clenching around her wrists. “Before I call Daniel and tell him to come fetch you!”

  “I’ll leave when you kiss me.”

  They both froze.

  For a moment they both stood there, shocked that she’d actually said that out loud.

  Then Graves uttered a low, bemused, “What?”

  Oh, my God. Had she just dared him to kiss her? Talk about rash. Stupid. Reckless. The guy just admitted this was one of his pet peeves. But she was so damned angry at him. And he’d been staring at her lips again with that strange, hungry look, and she ached ached ached to give her lips up to him and prove him wrong.

  Graves stepped back in shock, dropping his hold on her. “What did you just say?” he asked, eyes flared wide.

  Nervous butterflies whirled in her stomach, but Chloe sucked in a long, long breath and gathered her courage. “I said I’ll leave. When you kiss. Me. On the mouth.”

  He stared at her as if dumbstruck, then scrutinized her mouth with a look that darkened with some wild emotion as well as annoyance.

  “You don’t like to kiss? Well, I don’t want to leave!” she said haughtily, in her best heiress voice.

  He kept staring at her mouth, his look suddenly morphing from annoyance into a ravenous golden-eyed wolf, and it made her lungs have to work overtime to get some air in.

  Her voice was a cottony whisper. “I’m not buying you don’t like kissing, Graves. Maybe you just don’t like the girls you’re with too much. But I’m not one of them…”

  He stared at her lips like now that she’d dared him to kiss her he couldn’t think of anything else, or look at anything else, but her lips. When he spoke, she could hardly make out what he said, his words were so terse. “Do I have your word you’re going to go home right after? No pit stops. No bullshit.”

  Her nipples beaded when he took a step, and she realized he was going to actually bite the bait. Oh, God, what if he didn’t like kissing her, either? Oh, God, he was going to kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her.

  She nodded wildly. “You have my word.” She breathed, savoring his lips, beautiful lips, already tasting them in her mind. “But you have to make it a good one, not a stupid little peck…”

  A silence stretched unbearably as he slowly, painfully slowly, backed her toward the door. Her pulse raced. She licked her lips. Her breasts pricked and a pool of liquid heat gushed between her legs. Her mind was screaming to please be kissed, please, please, kissed by Graves.

  “All right.” He stopped when her back was flattened against the door. When he leaned forward, his manly smell spun around her senses in a tornado.

  She sucked in a shaky breath as his big, dry hands slid in a silken line up her bare arms, stroking her gently. Their eyes locked, then she saw him once more stare at her lips with an incredibly famished look. His head ducked toward hers.

  “Graves,” she whispered, her heart jumping, disbelieving this could be happening. The suspense was killing her, gnawing away at her confidence. And the desire…it was eating her up alive.

  “Open your mouth.” His breathing deepened as he framed her face between his hands, his incredibly large erection pressing hard and rigid against her stomach.

  “Please…” she said, tilting her head up, her hands flat against the door behind her for support. Their noses brushed as he lowered his head, and then Graves dropped his head even farther and dipped the tip of his tongue into the dimple in her chin.

  Electricity sizzled through her, and she gasped.

  Graves lifted his head, his golden eyes gleaming in the light. Then he slowly ducked and repeated the motion, only this time, the lick went a little higher, from her dimple to the lower fringe of her bottom lip. She tensed and mewed with expectation, and whispered, “Kiss me.”

  “Shh. I’m getting there.” He scraped his plush lips across hers in a slow, teasing way, like he was getting to know the feel of them. Lava coursed through her veins, her legs turning watery. Then he did it again, brushing across her, lip to lip, side to side.

  A shudder rushed through her, and her cunt clenched with need. She was so wet she could feel it soaking down her thigh. Graves’s scent intoxicated her, his nearness, the sensual scrape of his lips, and Chloe parted her lips and snuck out her tongue because she was going to melt into a puddle of want if he didn’t kiss her now. Graves. The only man she’d ever, ever wanted.

  But Graves drew back when she tried to lick his mouth. He smiled teasingly down at her, then bent and seized her bottom lip between his teeth and took a slow, sensual bite. She gasped at the friction of his teeth on her flesh and squirmed restlessly against him, the pleasure unbearable, shooting arrows of bliss straight to her core.

  He drew back and spoke, thickly, as he pushed his thumb into her mouth so that she suckled it. “Your mouth is so damned hot the rest of me is jealous, Chloe. Is this how you plan to suck my tongue when I give it to you?”

  The guttural way he spoke to her was so sexy, so arousing, she started trembling. “Graves…stop delaying,” she gasped, her eyes drifting shut for one tiny second. “I want you so much. Please let me taste you.”

  His thick-lashed eyes set her on fire as ecstasy tightened his face muscles. He lowered his head and licked hotly into her mouth, then withdrew, and before he licked into her mouth again, he murmured, “If you want my tongue, then give me yours.”

  She anxiously pushed her tongue into his mouth and shuddered when their damp heats collided, his taste invading her, tormenting her. She felt him tense against her, his erection growing an extra inch against her stomach, and he groaned as his hips began to sinuously pump her against the door.

  They went wild, like teenagers on their first kiss, their mouths slanting, him growling low and deep, her moaning helplessly. He turned his head and took her mouth, suckled her, and she feasted on him, her hands automatically going to his chest.

  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 v
irginity, 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.