“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.
Graves was deathly quiet as he assessed their new visitor, his eyes hooded like those of a hawk, his muscles tense as if for battle.
As Danny’s eyes kept ping-ponging from one to the other, he wore a blank, puzzled look about him Chloe was unfamiliar with, especially when the man was as sharp as a tack and was always on top of everything.
But then, in one single heartbeat, Daniel moved. Chloe had never seen him move so fast. One second he stood there, trying to comprehend the situation, and the next he was on top of Graves, ramming his fists three times into Graves’s jaw.
Chloe stormed barefooted across the living room, her heart collapsing in her chest at the awful bone-cracking sound. “Stop it! Daniel, are you crazy? It was me!” She used her shoes to hit his broad back repeatedly, and when that didn’t work, she tossed her shoes aside and grabbed him by the back of the shirt and yanked him away with all her might. “I wanted to lose my virginity, Danny, don’t be a dick!”
Panting in fury, Daniel straightened and faced her with a scowl that was so black, it didn’t even mesh with his perfect, beautiful features. “To Graves?” he asked, horrified and disgusted. Then he turned and jabbed an angry finger in Graves’s bare chest. “You took her virginity, you motherless fuck?”
In a slow, painstaking move that somehow seemed utterly threatening, Graves shoved his hand away and wiped the blood from his mouth with his forearm, his face tight and controlled. He wasn’t staring at Daniel. Instead he stared past Daniel’s shoulders directly at Chloe, and the biting intensity in those amber eyes suddenly made her used and well-loved body scream for his touch again. His kisses. His closeness. “No. The fault was mine,” he told her in a soft, low rasp.
Daniel started pacing in circles. “Jesus, you’re the last man on the planet I expected to take advantage of my sister!” He started purposely for Graves again and Chloe jumped once more, this time blocking Daniel’s path and pushing him back with both hands. “Daniel! Get a grip! Please!”
Daniel glared past her head at Graves, his face reddening as he held back with visible effort. Chloe was so mortified with embarrassment that she could barely look Graves in the eye. Of course Graves hadn’t wanted a problem like her—of course he’d resisted her. He knew this would happen and yet Chloe had insisted, like a stupid, spoiled, little girl…
She heard a crack of knuckles nearby, and her head shot up in fear. Danny rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, his forearms huge and muscled, his veins popping out of his throat. “You know what? I don’t fucking care what my sister says. We’re settling this right now, asshole, and you’re not touching her again.”
“Fine, Daniel. Have at me,” Graves said flatly.
Chloe stared at them in complete horror. She’d die if Daniel hurt Graves again. And what if Graves ended up harming Danny because of her? Graves was a patient man but she didn’t want his limits tested, and despite his initial chivalry, she was getting the sense Graves was warming up to the idea of beating Danny to a pulp as well.
She frantically jumped between them and faced her brother, trembling with fury now and desperate to get Daniel out of here. “Danny, stop this! Stop this right now! I seduced him, all right? It was me—I practically forced Graves to do it when I told him I’d get someone else to take me to bed if he didn’t. I promise you I did all this and more. I even forced him to kiss me. He doesn’t even like it and he doesn’t like touching, either. Please, please, let’s just go home, all right?”
Her words made Daniel pause, but when Chloe turned to look at Graves, she was overcome by his expression.
His mask had broken for a fraction of a second, and although it was so brief she hardly noticed, it was enough to make her realize that she’d just hurt him. Like a stab in the heart, or a slap in the face, he’d visibly retracted like she’d poleaxed him with a paddle.
She blinked, and the next instant, Graves seemed to recover. But her heart cracked in two as he crossed his arms over his chest, widened his stance, and looked…defensive.
Because he’d been somehow attacked…by her.