Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel by Nia Davenport Page A

the way up. I felt my face heating up before the words I were about to say were even out of my mouth. “Would you mind helping me with my zipper?”
    Chase’s answering smile was roguish. “I suppose I could be troubled to do so.”
    I pushed my door open wider and turned presenting my back to him. The dress was strapless so I had to hold it up in the front until it was zipped, unless I wanted to flash him my top half. His fingers brushed the bare skin along my lower spine sending tingles racing up it. He pulled up on the zipper and his hand came to a stop in the middle of my back. It lingered against my bare skin for a second, the spot beneath his touch warming on contact.  
    “Thank you,” I said suddenly feeling a little out of breath.
    I turned to face him and met eyes that blazed with the heat of a blue flame. I swallowed hard then shouldered passed him. “Are you ready to go?”
    He held his arms out in a sweeping gesture. “Lead the way.”
    A long, sleek black limousine idled on the curb outside of my apartment building.   I shook my head as the driver held the door open for me and Chase. Of course the car my grandmother sent would be a limo instead of a much more practical town car.  
    “I bet you’re loving this,” I said to Whitney who was seated across from me beside her date.  
    “You know I am. Are you yet?” Her eyes indecently roved over Chase as she spoke.
    She unabashedly and very overtly visually molested him in the back of the limo. I couldn’t blame her for it though. He looked good in jeans and cotton tees, but the relaxed look also afforded him an air of lightness, of casualness. In the serious black, slim-fitted, tuxedo he was downright gorgeous, but he also emanated a dark, possibly cruel beauty that I’d neglected to notice before. It screamed raw masculine power that would cut you down just as easily as it would swallow you whole. He looked like dangerous temptation at its worst and was all the more sexy for it.  
    I wonder if he fucks as powerfully as he moves. Whitney’s previous words floated through my head. With them came an image that made my stomach coil tightly about itself. A warming sensation flooded my core and I bit down hard enough on my tongue to draw blood in response. I inwardly winced at the pain, but it had done its job. My senses focused on the throbbing pain at the tip of my tongue, effectively cutting off an ache at its head that had started to blossom elsewhere.  
    “Do I ever enjoy myself at my grandmother’s events?” It was a rhetorical question. One that essentially ignored the question behind the question Whitney had asked.  
    The ride from our apartment near Emory to the Fox Theatre in Midtown was a short one. We arrived less than fifteen minutes after we’d left the apartment. The driver pulled up to the curb in front of the historic theatre. He opened the door for us and we stepped out onto the red carpet.  
    Obviously my grandmother’s pretentiousness knew no bounds.
    Chase offered me his arm and I all but blanched when he did. I was still grappling with the absurdity of him accompanying me this evening.
    A photographer waited for us near the theatre’s entrance. We paused and I stood rigidly while he snapped several pictures.  
    A burly, security looking type in a suit stood erect outside the entrance’s closed doors. A thin white wire hung from his ear and he held a tablet in his hand.  
    “Name,” he half requested, half demanded without looking up from the tablet.  
    “Alex Sinclair plus three.”
    He touched the tablet’s screen and typed in what I assumed to be my name. He looked up at our group pasting the type of smile on his face that people who knew they were hired help and were well aware of who wrote their checks bestowed on the people who did the writing.  
    I fought the urge to roll my eyes.  
    “Have a good evening Miss Sinclair,” he said too cordially as he opened the door for us.
    As much as I did not want to be