by Lora Leigh
"I can do it, Chase," she told him quietly, watching him with a wary light in her eyes.
"I can do it without hurting you."
He turned her, started at the bottom of the long, silky strands and began to work through the tangles the day had given her.
Not that there were many of them.
"I wasn't able to style it this morning," she sighed, as he felt her relax marginally.
Anger surged hot and deep inside him at the knowledge of how painful that cut must still be.
The doctor hadn't had to shave the area the attacker had sliced open. The wound was less than an inch long and had taken only a few stitches.
"I'll wash it for you when you bathe," he told her, his cock howling in agony now.
"You don't have to do that." Her protest was mild, her voice soft, relaxed.
"I want to do it."
And he did. He wanted to care for her. He needed to care for her. That hunger struck inside him with dizzying force. Even the women he had lived with before, the need to care for them hadn't gone this deep. Not so deep that the slightest knowledge of their pain cut into him.
As he stroked the bristles of the brush through her hair, his heart clenched and something melted inside him. He'd never given much thought to the idea of a wife, a family. But as he sat with Kia, that thought began to form within his mind.
Kia, soft and round with their child. Maybe a little girl who looked like her mother, with long, soft hair that needed to be untangled gently. Or maybe a son. And Kia would be there, holding all of them.
He worked the brush higher into her hair as her head moved, shifting and allowing her hair to flow around her as he brushed it.
He was harder than a rock, but his heart was melting in his chest. Who would have guessed something this simple would bring the knowledge it did.
The fact that Chase knew, clear to the depths of his spirit, that he had fallen in love with Kia.
Chapter 23
Kia thought that having Chase at the office with her would be confining. That his male presence, arrogance, and determination would begin to stifle her. It had in the past when she had Drew following her everywhere she went.
Instead, she had found out that he could be comforting. He knew how to be quiet, yet the heated looks, the reflection in his expression, had kept her primed for him. Unfortunately, there had been no time for anything more than that brief, hard kiss he had given her.
She had expected, once they returned to his home, that he would cash in on that kiss. But dinner arrived, and then so did Cameron.
And the party wasn't going to wait on her. A party she wished now that she could just skip. She wanted to roll around in Chase's big bed with him, wanted to feel him, touch him.
She had teased them both today, especially after the confrontation with Drew. Not that she thought Chase would actually kill Drew, but she knew that should it come to a fight, then Chase would likely break bones Drew didn't know could be broken.
As it turned out, her ex-husband wouldn't be back to her office. Her father had barred him from the main offices, and Drew had sent word his resignation would be forthcoming.
Rutherford's would lose a talented security and Systems analyst when that happened. Drew didn't just sell the products his talents protected, but he had devised the most exacting measures in making certain Rutherford's offices and warehouses were secure.
She shook her head as she carefully arranged her hair into a soft style that flowed around her face and shoulders rather than pinning it up. Her head was still too tender to pin it up.
She wore the violet and silver-threaded bra and matching thong. She had her stockings on, and her violet and silver dress hung on the door behind her as she checked her makeup carefully.
She smoothed a finger over the smoky shadow on her eyelid, adjusted the shadowing and turned back to check the look.
She didn't wear much makeup, but tonight she needed the added confidence. She had fought to push back the knowledge that someone out there wanted to hurt her. It wasn't easy, unless Chase was holding her.
She fiddled with a few strands of hair at the top of her head, arranging them over the stitches and making certain the wound didn't show.
Vanity. She almost chuckled at the thought before her gaze slid to a shadow of movement in the bedroom. Chase stepped to the doorway. His eyes held her. That look in them.
When he was hungry, his eyes became just a little darker, but still a pale green so light as to be icy. And he was hungry now. The color glittered in his dark expression.
Kia licked at her lips nervously before reaching for her robe.
"You don't need that." He slipped into the bathroom, staying her hand before she could reach the silky garment.
"Cameron's gone?" She breathed in roughly as his hands gripped her hips and pulled her back against him.
"The men of the club don't touch other women when they're in relationships," he told her.
Kia almost rolled her eyes. "That wasn't what I was referring to."
His gaze met hers in the bathroom mirror. "I want to bring Khalid back, or another if you prefer someone else."
Her heart rate spiked. "The sharing doesn't stop?" she whispered.
"Not unless you want it to." His lips smoothed over her shoulder.
She stared back at him, and she saw that hunger raging in his eyes, reaching out to her. Flashes of memory, in the back of Khalid's limo, in her bed, raged through her. Both of them touching her, taking her.
"What—what if Khalid finds his own woman?" she whispered.
His expression became darker, hungrier. "If I had my choice, it would never be the same man, Kia. Each third brings his own strengths to any encounter. A different type of pleasure."
Her heart was racing, and she couldn't help it, her nipples were spiking.
She watched as his lips parted, his teeth raking her shoulder.
"That's the strength of the club. A trusted member, someone who will never speak of the encounter, that you never have to be embarrassed to meet in public. Men who know a woman's body, how to pleasure her in different ways. Some are incredibly gentle. Some are rougher, some know the very boundaries of pleasure and pain. I want to give that to you."
"Or to yourself?" Her lashes fluttered closed as his fingertips slid beneath the band of her panties.
"It doesn't work that way for a woman, Chase."
"To both of us," he whispered at her ear. "Your pleasure is mine, Kia. All of it. And I want to know all of your pleasure."
Her head fell back against his shoulder as his lips moved to her neck, gentle kisses, rougher kisses. She felt herself sinking into that pleasure despite the confusion rolling through her mind.
"And later?" she finally asked, barely forcing the words past her lips. "Where does that leave us later? When you decide you want a woman who knows only your touch, who has no experience taking anoth
er man after you've had her? Where will that leave me?"
"Look at me, Kia. Look at me, sweetheart," he ordered her roughly.
She opened her eyes and stared at him miserably. He was asking her to accept a darkness, even within herself, that she wasn't certain she was comfortable facing.
"Do you think that will ever happen? That the day will ever come when it wasn't something I wanted?"
"Wanted, or needed?" she asked as she felt his fingers moving ever closer to the swollen bud of her clit.
He was arousing her, tempting her. And he knew it. She could see the purpose in his eyes, to make her think about it, to make her want it.
"I need it. Sometimes," he finally told her. "Sometimes, Kia, there's something inside me I can't control. That darkness, that hunger, it finds its outlet only one way."
"And when you don't have that outlet?" she asked him.
His lips quirked. "I'll never hurt you, Kia. You know that."
His fingers curved over her pussy, a finger sliding into the syrupy wetness gathering between the folds.
"Feel how wet you are," he crooned. "So wet and ready. Just thinking about it."
"You want me to have sex with strangers," she moaned. "That isn't something I want, Chase."
"Never strangers. For now, just Khalid. For now I want you to trust me. Trust me with your
pleasure, baby."
His finger slid inside her, thick and rasping as her legs parted and a moan left her lips.
"I want to watch you as I did the night in your bed. Watch you taking him, staring back at me, your eyes darkening in arousal and lust as you held on to me. I want to watch you give yourself to it, ache for it."
He nipped at her ear and she nearly came on his fingers. Her hips were moving totally against her will, grinding her clit into his palm as she fought to draw in another shaky breath.
"What if I were to love you?" she asked huskily. "How does this fit into love, Chase?"
"Do you remember when you told me what love was?" he asked her then.
And she did. Being free even as you're being held? Knowing you can reach for the stars, and someone's there to share it with you? Or to give you a boost if you need it? Someone to laugh with, love with, cry and argue with? Someone you know will be there when you're moody, when you're dark, or when you just need a hug. Isn't that love ? And she remembered when she whispered those words, how everything inside her had reached for him.
She felt her panties slide from her hips as he used his free hand to push them down. His fingers were still buried in her sex, stroking, massaging her.
"Would you trust me, Kia?" he whispered. "To know your pleasure? To know your limits?"
She whimpered as he turned her to him and lifted her until she was sitting on the sink cabinet and he was pushing between her thighs.
He brought the finger that had been buried inside her to his lips and took it into his mouth. His gaze flared at the taste of her and she felt more of her juices spilling along the head of his cock.
How the hell had he managed to get his pants open so quickly?
"Lean back, baby. Watch me take you. Fill you. Just watch for a second."
She watched, watched the thick, ruddy head part her intimate lips and press forward. Her juices coated the thick flesh as he pulled back, then eased inside her.
She watched the silken, intimately bare flesh flush deeper, becoming a rosy pink as the darker knot of her clit pulsed.
"Do you know what I see?" he whispered as her head lifted.
Kia shook her head.
"I see sweet nipples that need to be sucked, lips that need to be kissed. And you ache, don't you, sweetheart?" His fingers slid from her thigh, below where he was taking her, to where a sweet, dark ache filled her. "Right here." The tip of his finger pressed into the hidden entrance.
"You like that. You like being taken there as I take your sweet pussy."
Her head dropped back against the mirror as her lungs tightened, constricted with excitement.
Kia stared at Chase as he filled her, inch by slow inch, pressing into her, taking her, as she remembered the pleasure pain of being taken both ways at once, filled and driven insane with the wicked, forbidden pleasure of it.
"Only pleasure," she moaned.
He paused, buried to the hilt inside her as she felt his hand cup her cheek.
She was lost in a haze of naked desire and conflicting lusts. And love. She loved him until she wasn't certain what was right, what was wrong, or how to handle the emotions tearing through her.
"Not with us." His look was intent, the icy green eyes darkening, flaming. "Never again with us, Kia. You're mine." He pulled back, and some hold he had on his control seemed to break.
Kia felt it like a shock of heated, blazing sensation. It struck inside her, like a volcano erupting, spilling over her.
Chase gripped her hips, plunged inside her. His expression twisted into a mask of need. Not just lust, of need.
Kia felt her nails biting into his biceps as each pounding thrust dragged a helpless cry from her lips. Each shock of penetration, each stroke across sensitive nerve endings threw her higher.
"Do you hear me, Kia?" he suddenly snarled, one hand burying in the back of her hair, dragging her lips to his. "Fucking mine."
Kia shattered. The hard, forceful fucking of his cock inside her, his hand tugging at her hair and then his lips taking her kiss with the same determined arrogance that he took her body sent her riding a wave that crashed and exploded into a sensory veil that wrapped her in pleasure, in exquisite ecstasy as he buried his face against her neck and began to pump his silky, heated release inside her.
And this time, she was very much afraid she had whispered the words she fought so hard to hold back.
"Oh God, Chase, I love you!"
Chase felt his arms tighten around her, felt the words hovering on his lips, but they didn't fall. His chest tightened until he wondered if his heart was going to explode within it, and all he could do was hold on to her.
Sweat poured from him, whether from the heat generated between them, or the emotions pushing, tearing inside him, he wasn't certain.
He knew he couldn't get enough of her. Even now, he could take her again, so easily. Pound inside her and know a pleasure unlike anything he had known before.
Instead, he released her. He stepped back, grimacing as his cock slid from her ultratight grip
with a surfeit of additional pleasure.
"Where did that come from?" Kia moaned, still resting against the mirror as her eyes opened and she stared at him.
She had felt it, too, he thought. Whatever it was that poured from him, mat wrapped around them and had him fighting to make certain she understood, he would never let her go easily.
"I'm not allowed answers now?" she asked.
Chase almost grinned. Only Kia could look and sound so perf
ectly haughty while still shuddering with the aftershocks of her orgasm.
"It came from us." He tried to shrug the question away.
Kia's eyes narrowed, but she let it go. There was something in his expression that warned her quite forcibly that right now wasn't a good time to push him. As she knew, there was no avoiding this party, and the clock was ticking. But the party would be over tonight, and tonight she would get her answers. Maybe.
As he helped her from the sink she realized that perhaps she didn't want answers right now. She wanted just a while longer in his arms before her emotions pushed her into the questions she wasn't certain she wanted answers to.
Could he ever love her? And what did belonging to him mean exactly? Mine . His voice had been rough, primal. It had been a declaration; it had been rife with possessiveness. Surely he wouldn't feel those emotions without feeling others?
Shaking her head she let him pat the sweat from her body, then clean her with a curious attention to detail before drying the folds of her sex gently.
She almost shook her head at him as he straightened. Bending, she picked up her panties and drew them up over her legs.
"At least you didn't tear them this time," she told him with a light laugh.
As she adjusted them over her hips and restraightened her stockings, she caught the questioning look on his face.
"What?" she asked, almost uncomfortably.
"Are you going to shower again?" he asked her.
Kia ran her hand over her stomach, feeling the dampness of him and her mingling, a small spot he had missed. There were others, of course.
"No." She stared back at him before swallowing nervously. "I like the feel of you on me."
Chase had to clench his teeth to hold back some kind of primitive growl of ownership. He had expected her to shower but a part of him had been regretting the hell out of it.
Every woman he had ever lived with had insisted on showering after sex. As though they couldn't sleep unless they washed the lust from their bodies.
He realized Kia had rarely showered afterward. The few nights he had slept with her, she had fallen asleep in his arms after their release, content with the ministrations he performed on her.
