Only Pleasure (16 page)

"And why doesn't it work that way?" She faced him across the kitchen, wishing he would just leave.

He sighed heavily. "How do you see this relationship between you and Chase, Kia?" he finally asked her. "When a man brings a third in, he has established a trust, a bond between his woman and the friend who touches her as well. Your welfare and your happiness may be his priority, but they are also my concern."

"There would have to be a relationship first," she informed him, her voice brittle. "Only for the pleasure, remember, Khalid?"

He frowned again, his brows lowering heavily over his black eyes. "There is more to pleasure than simply taking you, Kia."

Not as far as Chase was concerned, and Kia wasn't going to inform Khalid of that fact either. She had stepped into this with eyes wide open. She had known it was for the sex only; if she was starting to feel as though something were missing, then that was her fault, not Chase's.

She lifted her chin and stared back at him. "Did you know Drew asked him, two years ago, to be here?"

"To be his third?" Khalid clarified gently.

Kia nodded, seeing the knowledge in his eyes and forcing back a sob.

"I did not know this," he told her gently. "But Chase would not have mentioned it, little one. Such offers are always kept between those who make or accept them. Does it matter?"

She shrugged uncertainly, trying to figure out how it mattered.

"You feel rejected, do you not?" he asked her then, watching her quietly. "This man who is holding your heart now rejected you even at a time when you could not have accepted him."

"That's not it." But it was, in a way. "And forget I asked. What the hell business is it of yours anyway?"

His lips quirked ruefully. "I make you my business, lovely one, simply because you breathe the air and slide through it with grace and beauty." His eyes twinkled wickedly as he threw out the outrageous compliment.

She didn't want to hear compliments, but her lips twitched before she could control them.

She shook her head as the doorbell rang again. She started for the door and stared in shock as the security disengaged and the doorknob turned. Chase stepped inside, bold as brass, twirling a key in his hand and staring back at her with a hint of anger as he snapped the door closed behind him.

He found Khalid immediately, his gaze moving between her expression and the other man's.

"Is she okay?" he asked Khalid.

"I have yet to establish this," Khalid answered. "A bit angry, though I must admit she may well have reason to be."

"Hello, guys, excuse me. I
am still here."
She felt like bouncing something off both their heads as she stalked to Chase and jerked the key out of his hand. "How did you get this?"

His brow arched. "Ian owns the building. I'm his employee. Remember?"

She turned and stalked away from him, slapping the key on the counter before she lifted the wine and took a healthy swallow.

"I'm fine. Both of you can leave now."

She didn't look fine. She looked hurt. Pain glittered in her bright eyes. Her face was pale, her lips tight.

"What did he say to you?"

Kia set the wineglass down and stared back at him. God, she loved looking at him. The way his hair brushed over his forehead and framed his dark face. Those light green eyes. He was so tall he made her feel dainty, and so strong he reminded her she was a woman. And so much of what she should have known better than to try to have.

"Why didn't you tell me he asked you to be his third that night?" She finished her wine as she forced the words past her lips.

False courage. Two half glasses were enough. Champagne could put her under the table, wine made her too damned brave. Either way, alcohol was something she knew better than to consume when she needed to keep her wits about her.

She had managed to surprise him. His jaw clenched as he glanced back to Khalid. The other man shrugged, his expression inscrutable.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want you hurt by it," he finally said. "I turned him down, Kia. I wasn't the one here with him that night."

"Oh yes, I'm very well aware of the fact you turned him down," she said. "He made that quite clear today. How many other people know? How many other men did he approach in that damned club of yours before he got lucky and found a taker?"

She crossed her arms over her breasts and hid her tears with her anger. She felt like a piece of meat that had been on display and hadn't measured up. Which was worse? she wondered. Knowing she had been on display or knowing she had been rejected?

"I never asked him," Chase answered her, his voice too soft, almost warningly so. "And it doesn't matter at this point."

"But it does matter." She shook her head, trying to hold on to her anger because she didn't have anything else to hold on to.

"You need to stay away from Drew, Kia," Chase told her decisively, his expression flickering with anger as he moved to her, gripped her arms, and watched her demandingly. "Give me time to take care of things and he'll leave you alone again. Until then, make certain you keep a distance between you two."

She stared back at him incredulously before jerking her arms away. "Until you can do what? Take care of things? What are you going to do, Chase? Lock him up somewhere?" She laughed bitterly as she turned her back to him. "Sorry about your luck there, big boy, but this isn't the Wild West. You don't just make your own rules."

"You're to stay away from him, Kia," he spit out again.

She turned back to him, staring at him in fury as he made his demands.

"You
are
the same man who didn't want me two years ago, right?" she finally asked him. "You know, when I got married, I thought all that preening and posturing to catch male attention was over. Who knew it only got worse? No, I wasn't shopping for a husband anymore. Hell no. I was shopping for a third. Who knew!"

She glared at both of them. They stood there, their gazes brooding as though she were the one who had somehow managed to lose her senses.

"Drew twisted what it's all about, Kia." Chase finally sighed. "You experienced something that was never meant to be."

"So just tell me what it was meant to be then," she demanded. "Or should I guess? Why, the husbands of your great and wonderful club just love their wives so much that they want to make sure there's someone to always watch over them," she said sarcastically. "So you have your little bunch of gigolos who play a nice little third in your beds so she's well and suitably watched over should something happen to you, right?"

"Gigolo?" Khalid murmured. "Should I be insulted, Chase?"

"Probably," Chase drawled, glancing at Kia with a hint of amusement.

"Definitely," she shot back at him. "So why don't you leave? Then you won't have to be insulted any longer."

"Sorry, baby, you got the terms a little off there." Chase
tsktd
.

"And you've got your arrogance a little off, Falladay," she snapped back. "I really don't care what your little boys club is or how their game-playing works. What I do care about is being humiliated, not once, but twice by one of your members. What I do care about is keeping my mouth shut to preserve your damned secrecy while that bastard you protect stands in public and begins informing me to my face that I was rejected in a dirty little game I didn't have any interest in."

"Dammit, Kia." He pushed his fingers roughly through his hair. "Do you think I didn't know you, even then? Did you think I wasn't perfectly aware of the fact that you would have never survived what Drew wanted from you?"

"You didn't even tell me what he was doing to me!" she yelled back at him. "You let him, Chase. You let him do that to me and then you made me take the blame for every sordid tale he told me about your perfect little club. Damn you!"

"Kia, it wasn't like that."

"Get the hell out of my apartment!" she snarled to both of them. "I've had enough."

"Stay away from Drew, Kia." Chase's voice hardened.

Kia stared at him. A year ago, hell, a month ago, she would have eagerly acceded to any such demand. It didn't matter that she had every intention of staying just as far away from Drew as possible. That was completely beside the point.

No, the point was, he was
ordering
her to do it. As though they had a relationship, as though she were something more to him than a hard little fuck whenever he and Khalid decided they had an itch.

And well, there was the wine. False courage. She really didn't drink it very often, for a reason. It clouded her mind just enough to make her forget a lifetime of lessons where her own anger and her smart mouth were concerned. And she'd had just enough that, combined with her anger, it made her tone just as cutting, as falsely sweet, as any debutante or society bitch ever created.

"You're not my husband, and you're not my father. You're not even my fucking lover," she stated coldly. "Unless you can claim one of those titles, keep your damned demands to yourself, Chase, because I'm not in the mood for them."

Chase stared at her. He could almost feel his head getting ready to explode, the dominance that he kept carefully leashed tugging at its bonds.

She was like a flame, burning. Her blue eyes glittered with emotions and anger, her gently rounded face was flushed with it, and that stubborn little chin lifted as she defied him.

He was aware of Khalid leaning lazily against the kitchen counter, pouring wine into a glass and watching them curiously. As though it were some damned show he was enjoying.

He was aware of other things, too. The shoe that lay against the wall as though it had been thrown there. The spill of satin, lace, and silk across the couch and flowing to the floor. The blanket tossed across the room, the pillow that lay against the glass doors that led to the deck.

Subtle. The fury that had raged through the apartment was subtle. Like Kia. But the anger that raged inside her now wasn't subtle, and it sparked something inside him he didn't want to look at too closely.

"You don't want to push me on this," he warned her, holding himself in check, pulling back on the sexual core inside himself that sometimes seemed too tightly bound to her.

She laughed. A broken, pain-filled sound that had Khalid wincing and had Chase breathing roughly. She was hurt. He couldn't stand to see her hurt; he couldn't stand to see that disillusionment in her eyes.

"Perhaps you don't want to push me, Mr. Falladay," she warned him. "I gave you what you wanted two years ago, and you've gotten what you wanted from me in the past few weeks. Count yourself lucky and watch the demands you make. I'm not some spineless twit who's going to sit in a corner and wait for you to tell me when to move."

"Did I ask that of you?" he said carefully.

"And you're not going to," she informed him before gesturing to the door. "Go on. Run away now. You did what you came for; you warned me to obey you. I'll take your demands under consideration."

It was the smile that did it. That tight little facsimile of a smile that curled at the edges of her lips and didn't have a hope in hell of reaching her eyes.