Khalid glanced at Chase broodingly, and Kia only barely caught the subtle little shake of Chase's head.
"Keeping secrets from me?" she asked the two of them. "Shame on you."
She turned back to Chase as she reached the cleared area of the floor and looked between the two men.
"Khalid has issues." Chase shrugged.
"So it would appear," she said. "Am I allowed to be nosy?"
"No." It was Chase who answered.
Kia's brows arched. "I think I will be anyway."
She barely caught Chase's muttered curse.
"He's a part of our lives," she told Chase "For however long that lasts. I don't like secrets, Chase. You promised to let me know about anything that can even remotely affect me."
And something here was getting ready to affect her.
"She has to know." Khalid set his beer softly on the counter, his expression brooding as he looked back at Chase, then to Kia. "It's time, Chase."
"Hell." Chase rubbed at the back of his neck. "You and your fucking guilt complex."
Khalid's lips twisted in a mock grin. "Am I not lucky that I so rarely feel guilt?"
Kia sat down slowly in the chair beside her, crossed her legs, and waited. She wasn't demanding anything more, but Chase knew that tilt to her chin, that expression on her face. The truth would come out, or she would find ways to remind him that he was withholding something from her, and they wouldn't be notes taped around the apartment.
Seeing her hurt again, even in the slightest, enraged him. Knowing Khalid had the power to sear the pride and confidence he saw in her could make him violent.
Chase moved protectively behind her, standing behind her chair, aware of the tension that filled her as Khalid moved to the couch, sitting within feet of her and staring back at her as she turned and watched him silently.
For Khalid, it was one of the most difficult tasks of his life. He stared into Kia's bright blue eyes and saw the fears that shadowed them. She was so used to being struck, to being forced to defend her tender emotions, that, even now, she was preparing herself to defend against another.
Hell, he hadn't meant to do this. He had meant to forever keep it from her, one small burden he could have kept from falling on her fragile shoulders.
"It's normally easier if you just strike hard and fast," she told him quietly. "I actually handle that better."
He grimaced.
Khalid was suave, smooth, charismatic, and completely male. Even now, facing her with something he obviously didn't want to tell her, the savage contours of his face and wicked black eyes stood out in sharp relief.
"I would rather prefer to bleed to death than to hurt one such as you," he said finally, sighing.
Kia frowned back at him. "What exactly is 'one such as me'?"
His lips twisted down. "A woman of strength and courage. One who knew to kick her husband in the balls when he was otherwise occupied in his struggle to keep the third from strangling the life from him."
It took her a moment. She stared at him, the knowledge slamming into her, that night flashing before her eyes.
The utter terror of being touched by someone she didn't know, someone whose face she couldn't see. But whose guttural, enraged curse she heard as he jerked Drew away from her.
"It was you," she whispered, suddenly aware of Chase's hands on her shoulders, comforting, his body tense. "You were the one with Drew that night."
Khalid caught her hands, and only then did she realize she was gripping them together tight enough to leave the impressions of her nails in the skin.
He lifted them, touched his lips to her clenched knuckles, and watched her, a hint of sorrow in his dark gaze.
"I had no idea you did not know I would be there," he told her. "I thought you had agreed to the experience, little one. I never imagined the lengths Drew would go to in forcing such a thing upon you. I do not ask for your forgiveness. Only that when you remember I was a part of such pain and fear, that you would try not to know true hatred for me."
She shook her head.
"I understand if this is something you cannot do." He laid her hands gently in her lap. "I should have refused to be Chase's third, but in my own defense, I had to know, to be there, to ensure you knew only the greatest of pleasure and not even a hint of the fear that once filled you." He moved to rise to his feet. "I will leave you now."
"No!" She gripped his arm, staring back at him as he sat back down slowly. "You saved me."
He lowered his dark head and shook it. "I was the reason for your fear."
"And if it had been someone else?" He had been the one who had kept Drew from actually raping her. "Would they have forced him to let me go? Would they have called my father and had him come for me?"
"They would have suffered had they not," he told her. "I would have ensured it."She lifted a hand and gripped Chase's fingers where they lay against her shoulder. She turned back and saw in his eyes what she knew had been tormenting both of them. And her decision was made.
She had stepped into his lifestyle for the pleasure, and he had stolen her heart. But he had given her a hunger, a need for satisfying the same desires that had drawn them together to begin with.
She turned back to Khalid. She remembered that night with Drew as a nightmare, as nothing of pleasure. But Chase had pushed that memory to a distant part of her mind. Drew didn't exist for her any longer. Her life with Chase filled her, and this man had helped to bring about that life.
"I'm privileged to have you as a friend." She reached out and touched his face. "And even more privileged that Chase has you as a third."
Khalid stared back at her, and admitted, silently, to the amazement that washed through him. He had expected anger at the very least. Hatred certainly. But this he had not expected.
Her soft hand touching his face, and in her caress he felt her desire, in her eyes he saw the shadow of the needs that had filled her when he and Chase had first taken her.
When he had walked away from the relationship he had shared with Courtney and Ian several months back, he hadn't expected to ever find another woman with the same compassion and gentleness of spirit as Courtney had.
And as he stared at this woman, he knew that, somehow, Chase had found just as rare a gift as Ian had.
A woman of honor. Of strength.
Now she shifted, moved, and then bestowed upon him one of the rare pleasures Chase allowed within the ménages they shared.
Her lips touched his. They trembled at first, as though uncertain of her welcome. They whispered against his as his eyes went to the man behind her.
Chase wasn't concerned with the kiss. His eyes were flaring in that hunger that Khalid knew well himself. The need to touch the fire, to lose himself in the extremity of pleasure one woman could feel.
And he let her have her kiss.
Cupping the back of her head he pulled her to him, dragged her over his lap and let his eyes close. And perhaps there was a hint of disloyalty in this kiss. For, as always, it was another woman he thought of, another who filled him with regret as he gave pleasure to the one he held.
But that secret was his alone.
This woman had given him the ultimate gift of her forgiveness; he would ensure that he gave her nothing but pleasure to complement the heated, love-filled ecstasy her lover gave her as well.
It wasn't long before they had her stretched out, not in the bed they shared together, but in the guest room. Khalid understood that. The intimacy of their bedroom was a sacred place to those who loved, but here, here was just for the pleasure.
He watched, his senses processing the added depth to each kiss Kia and Chase now shared. The way Chase touched her, his large hands dark and gentle against her tender flesh. But there was the way she touched her lover as well. Her little nails digging into his flesh with more demand, with added dominance. And his lips twisted as he moved to lie alongside her, his hand cupping the full globe of her breast, his lips lowering to the peaked nipple.
She was velvet and steel. Strength, courage, and fragility. She was a woman worthy of nothing but pleasure, nothing but the tempestuous, demanding cries that left her lips.
And he couldn't help but watch as he touched her. As he spread her thighs and watched the hungry lips that enclosed her lover's erection. His cock twitched at the remembrance of those lips on his own, and the fantasies that filled him each time. Thoughts of the woman he was denied.
He lowered his lips and kissed the bare folds of her pussy, licked over them, drew in the sweet taste of her heated lust.
This was the ultimate of pleasures. It stilled the sweeping sorrows that rose inside him and stilled the bleak, dark pain he kept strictly to himself.
He loved the woman he could not have through the bodies of others. He gave the greatest of pleasures that he could bestow from hands stained with blood and death. And it stilled the memories while allowing him an outlet to the brutal, dark dominance that often tormented him.
He kissed and licked at the slickened, flushed folds. He drew her clit into his mouth and lifted his lashes to watch her give her lover pleasure.
With soft fingers and silken lips, she sucked at the hard, thick flesh Chase gave her. Khalid prepared her for the pleasure to come. She moaned, her expression taut with the needs that rose inside her, her breasts peaked with hard nipples, her body arching to them.
And he gave her pleasure. He ignored the imperative demand of his own body, his cock that ached and throbbed for release. He consumed her flesh, licked and stroked, eased her entrances, and prepared them.
When Chase lay beneath her, his flesh filling the soft silk and fire of her sex, Khalid eased slowly into the gripping heat of her rear.
And it was exquisite. He knelt behind her, feeling the tight grip, the tender tissue fluttering around his cock, and closed his eyes at the pleasure.
Such intimacy. Such trust. And pleasure. He was giving pleasure, he was not giving pain. A drop of penance in the ocean of guilt that filled him. But a pleasure that whipped through his mind and dimmed the dark memories and the hungers he couldn't escape.
He moved inside her, slowly, easily, then harder, giving her what she demanded, as Chase moved beneath her, stroking her into that little death that swept through her and released her pleasure in an explosion of sensations.
Only then did Khalid release his control. His semen filled the condom he wore, shudders of pleasure tearing through him, racing to the base of his skull and filling his mind with a few, fragile seconds of peace.
Below him, Kia was whispering Chase's name. Her love flowed from her voice, but he imagined another. Another voice. His name.
As he withdrew from her, he left the bed slowly, aware that the two who continued to lie within the warmth of the bed were in their own little world.
Chase had not finished with the woman he loved. He turned her to her back, moved over her, and was taking her again.
Hunger and love filled this room, and it was no place for one such as him.
He collected his clothing and moved to the bathroom. There he disposed of the condom, cleaned the sweat from his chest and shoulders, and dressed. Moments later, he was slipping from the apartment and taking the back steps to the enclosed yard that surrounded the converted warehouse.
Abdul had parked the limo in the back as requested. As Khalid aphis chauffeur jumped from the driver's seat and moved to open the door. Khalid was gripping the doorframe, moving to step in, when a shift of shadows across the street caught, and held, his attention.
From the gloomy darkness a figure emerged. Dressed in jeans and a heavy black coat, her hands shoved into the pockets, her pale blue eyes staring back at him somberly, was the woman he knew he could not have.
He let her hold his gaze, and in hers he saw knowledge. She knew what he had just come from. She knew the secrets of him, whether he wished it or not, and that knowledge bound them. It moved through them with sorrow and with rage.