Claimed by Him by Red Garnier Page A

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