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.”
Chapter Two
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.