He cracked an eye open and saw her bite her lower lip, and he wanted to eat it. Taste it. He remembered all those tacky kisses that had left him tasting of stale alcohol and tobacco and everything dirty. He’d never tried to kiss anyone again. But he was obsessed with Chloe’s mouth. With that kiss she’d pushed him to give.
He couldn’t stop touching her lips, looking at her mouth, wondering if he’d imagined it tasted so good, afraid to taste more of her and becoming addicted. If he kissed her again, he’d be screwed, and he was already so deep in over his head he felt like he was drowning.
Chloe’s heart picked up speed when Graves’s eyes fluttered open…and her hands froze on his abdomen. He watched her with heavy eyelids for a long, breath-clogging moment. Then his breathing changed, and lines of determination tightened his face. He was going to kiss her. Suddenly the awareness that he was thinking about it made her breath become fast and choppy, her eyes blur with anticipation.
He rolled gradually to his side, and the move forced Chloe to somehow lie back down. His eyes felt like a hot brand on her mouth as he lowered his dark head. She held her breath. He set his lips so lightly over hers, it felt like a whisper. She almost thought he would pull back soon. But he didn’t.
Her heart thumped harder as the plushness of his mouth molded to hers, and she opened ever so softly, trying not to move or scare him off, letting him find his way by himself.
He made a ravaged groaning sound and settled his body against hers. He turned his head and gingerly flicked out to taste her. The kiss was light and explorative, and it sent the pit of her stomach into a wild swirl. She fisted the sheets at her sides, so eroticized she could have had an orgasm while Graves kissed her like this, almost like he was discovering kissing for the first time.
He cupped her face and turned again, but this time he covered her mouth hungrily and plowed his tongue so deep she felt his thrust in her womb. Her veins sang with his kiss, and a tremor of ecstasy ripped through her as his bold, damp taste invaded her.
His hands convulsed and he shuddered, groaned, and pressed his erection meaningfully against her. His tongue meant business now, taking no prisoners. He kissed her so hard she helplessly opened her mouth and let him devour her, twirling her tongue around his while her pussy drenched between her legs.
She’d never been kissed like this, with such hunger, such reverence, teasing her vagina into clenching at each damp, hot flick of his strong tongue. His mouth didn’t become softer as he kissed her, but harder, wilder, more ravenous—exhilarating her.
She shivered, felt like he had at last opened himself to her. Awash in awe, she slid her hands up the bulging muscles of his biceps and around his shoulders, her swollen, deliciously kissed lips moving against his when she spoke. “Can I touch you, Graves?” Ravenous, he continued nibbling at her lips and suckled her tongue and squeezed his own tongue around hers. “Graves, can I please touch you?”
He slid an arm around her waist and pressed his fingers into the small of her back, then he squeezed her against his body and groaned, “Touch my face.”
She stroked his jaw with her fingertips and he tensed and slammed his eyes shut as though he were in nerve-racking, toe-curling, bone-churning ecstasy.
Chloe wanted to explode in a million pieces and never be the same again. She felt so very weak with this one concession. It was insane the way she wanted him and she couldn’t stop. Instead she wanted him more with every second she felt him, smelled him, spent here, with him.
Graves devoured her mouth again, kissing her roughly with his tongue, and she trembled as he rocked his cock against her stomach. “Touch me. All of me,” he said in a guttural voice that made her womb ripple hotly and her heart somersault.
“Oh, Graves,” she breathed. A ribbon of tenderness unfurled inside her until she was a mass of quaking emotion.
She slowly felt her way along his hard chest with unsteady hands, glorying in the silken feel of his bare torso, every one of his muscles incredibly defined and snug beneath his tight, gleaming, tanned skin. He groaned feverishly and tongued her mouth hard, pulling her tighter against him.
Chloe could smell herself, the cream in her sex, feel the steady little pulses within her. She squirmed hungrily beneath him, making shallow noises as she kissed him back like a wanton woman, her body screaming empty and desperate to have him inside her.
She gasped between his kisses. “Graves, you feel so good, I’m going to orgasm just touching you.”
He groaned and brought his mouth to her ear; his tongue hot and wet. “Chloe, my God, my first kisses…they weren’t like yours. Jesus.”
He licked the shell of her ear, then her dimple, her jaw, her lips again, his mouth warm wherever it touched, his velvet tongue lapping thirstily at her skin. “I didn’t like the taste of my first women. I couldn’t wash it off my mouth for days,” he murmured. Then he drew back to look at her, and his eyes glowed between his lashes and made her feel as if she’d been swallowed entirely. “But you, sweet Chloe…”
“Tell me how it was,” she said, aching to know more of him. Everything. “Your first times.”
His eyes were violently tender on her face as he caressed her sides with his hands, his strong fingers molding her like clay. “My foster parents had nine children, and I used to share a bed with three. I couldn’t even think with all that noise, I guess I’m just not a people person…All five boys were forced to eat together, bathe together, and it drove me fucking nuts.”
“Somehow I don’t see you in a big family, Graves.”
“Neither did I.” His lips twitched for a moment, then he shook his dark head. “I had to leave there, Chlo. I was so damned desperate to be alone. Not that getting the hell out of there was even an improvement, at first. There were nights when I bunked with alcoholics and drug addicts and prostitutes, and I’d wake up wherever I slept to find whores fondling me. People of all ages got raped when they were drunk or drugged, even while they slept.”
An awful sound tore from within her. “Graves, please don’t tell me you were…!”
“I wasn’t.” He set a kiss on the bridge of her nose. “I watched every damned glass of water I took and made sure it wasn’t spiked. To this day, I still don’t drink alcohol.” He brushed her hair back with a gentle swipe of one hand and a half smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, that smile, and seemed darkened by his memories. “I slept most of the day so I could be awake at night, when everything was shit around me. Some nights I spent scraping up metal parts from dead electronics, working on my first prototype, and when I felt the need for sex, I found that I could take care of it if I set some limits for my…partners. I wasn’t interested in getting intimate with those whores, Chlo…but by the time I hit fourteen I had needs like everyone else.”
Her throat closed, and she nodded in understanding. While Chloe had been showered in hugs her whole life, swamped in praise, in flowers, with a doting big brother to protect her and a set of loving and giving parents…all granting her a life that would make a Disney princess’s trajectory look
easy
. Yes, while Chloe had cried over a torn Barbie costume, Graves had been surviving out in the streets, all alone. Unsafe at every moment. On guard even as he slept.
His first time had been with a whore, but he had damned well made sure that Chloe’s first was on a bed of roses he’d made for her. A stab of pain pierced through her, and her eyes stung—a fact that he seemed not to miss.
“Shh. It’s all right, princess. You grow used to it. I never felt sorry for myself,” he whispered. His eyes fell to her lips again, and then his thumb traced the path of his eyes and gently caressed her. “I never wanted intimacy. I never even craved to kiss a woman after those first few times. It became a habit not to, and I saw no reason to change if it worked well for me. But then you happened.”
He framed her face within his large palms, and Chloe couldn’t even speak, was falling in love all over again with him this very moment, in love with this little glimpse of the darkness that had given birth to this man, in love with the look of complete and total lust and need in his eyes, in love with Graves Buchanan.
“Chloe, Jesus, how I crave you…how I fucking crave you.”
He made a low, hungered sound as he bent his head and nuzzled her face, while at the same time, he reached between her legs and pressed the tip of his thumb into her clit. Her legs quaked, and her thighs felt liquid as she parted her knees wider and curled her legs around his hips in wanton invitation. She rubbed his small, dark nipples with her fingertips. “Graves…kiss me again. I crave you like crazy, too.”
His warm breath bathed her face as he reached into her nape and fisted her hair in his hand, and then he gobbled up her mouth with his own, his groan deep and heady, as if he was blissfully lost in what he was doing and never wanted to be found.
She pinched his nipples in the way he’d pinched hers, and when he shuddered under her caresses, tiny spasms of emotion seized her. He kissed her mouth again and again, both of them feverish as they rubbed, groped each other, and all the while he scraped his hardness against her pussy lips.
“I’m going to kiss you all morning, Chloe…all fucking morning. Until your mouth is raw and swollen and you’re begging me to stop.”
She shuddered at his words, the sexual promise in them. Chloe could feel the black hunger in him like something palpable; in the whistle of his breath, the gruffness of his voice as he continued to whisper her name against her mouth, over and over again.
Chlo. Sweet Chloe.
Drowning in sensation, she clung to his large, heavy body as tightly as she could, feeling so connected to him she could almost swear she could hear his heart beat at the same rapid pace, contracting and pumping the very same instants as her own. Her pussy burned to be penetrated by him. Completely possessed, mind body soul…
A bell rang in the distance.
Graves lifted his head from her mouth as though in confusion, then when the bell rang again, he dropped his head and breathed against her face, “Activate face recognition,” he said, and bent to continue with the fierce, wet onslaught of his mouth on hers. Crushing her body to his, he pressed his lips to hers with an animal groan that was muffled by the butler’s English accent saying—
Mr. Daniel Lexington to see you in the lobby, sir. Activate the elevator?
Graves nibbled at her lower lip, catching it between his teeth before releasing it, and suddenly Chloe didn’t know how she acted so fast, but hearing her brother’s name while she was naked in his best friend’s bed getting deliciously fucked just clicked on an alarm button—even if it took a second or two to register.
She pushed Graves’s leaden weight off her with surprising force and started searching for her dress on all fours on the floor. Her mind spun frantically as she realized she’d never been away a whole night without letting someone know where she was. She glanced up to find Graves sprawled on the bed, motionless.
His lips were red and swollen and his eyes cloudy and he looked completely drugged from their kiss. The sight of him only made her realize her mouth felt on fire, too, and all of her body trembled with unfulfilled lust.
“Graves!” she hissed, trying to keep her head on.
He reacted and shook off the daze, grabbed his pants, barked a command to his butler, and pointing a possessive finger in her direction, said, “Get back in my bed, Chlo. I’ve got this. You’re not going anywhere.” She noticed that he was barely able to zip his pants back up over his erection, and suddenly not jumping back into his bed like he’d told her to was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
“But I’m sure he’s looking for me, I’ve never been away like this!”
“Shh. Just calm down and power off your iPhone.”
“It’s already off! But what if he saw my car downstairs? I’m so stupid, I should’ve just left a
note
.”
Graves was already storming outside to greet Daniel, shutting his bedroom door behind him.
Zipping up her dress and with her heels in her hands, Chloe pressed her ear to the door and felt awash with guilt when she heard her brother speak. He sounded so agitated. “We can’t find Chloe and I need you to help me track her, goddamn it. We found a message that looks a lot like blackmail. It took me a couple minutes to piece the letters together but it reads: ‘I will pick you up at midnight.’ And now no one knows where the fuck she is. My parents have already started a search—”
She’d quietly pulled the door open and stepped out on unsteady legs, the onyx granite floor cold under her bare feet. “I’m here, Danny.”
Graves whipped around faster than Danny did, and his handsome face fell when he saw her dressed and ready to go. She couldn’t miss his reaction, couldn’t miss the way he stiffened as though struck. She actually saw a thousand expressions cross his face within a short second—disbelief, disappointment, regret, and fury, until at last, he curled his fingers into his palms at his sides and schooled his face to reveal nothing.
Maybe he wasn’t ready to confront Daniel like this. Graves had come to where he was by outsmarting people, she supposed, and he’d been ready to buy her some time, or buy himself some time, she wasn’t sure which. But she couldn’t do this to her family. Even a minute spent worrying about her when she was fine, more than fine, was too much for her to make them endure. It was nothing that they’d ever deserved. Asking Graves to lie to Daniel about where she was would be even worse, even if he’d been clearly ready to do it.
No. This was better. Cleaner.
Eventually her family would have to understand that this had been her choice. Plus the search party could have already seen her car downstairs anyway.
“What is this supposed to mean?” Daniel demanded, glancing from one end of the living room to the other.
With a sinking feeling in her gut, Chloe realized how it must appear. Graves was shirtless—gloriously so—and his mouth looked thoroughly kissed, while Chloe was barefoot, her lips red and swollen, and when she ran a trembling hand down her hair, she realized it probably had never looked so bad.