"You look a snow fairy," he said, leaning against the heavy post that supported the ceiling, only a few feet from her table.
Her gaze lifted, her slender neck rippling as she swallowed tightly.
"Well, it is snowing tonight." She cleared her throat.
It was there between them, he could feel it. He could see it in her eyes, almost taste it in the air around them. If she left that table to join him, it was going to be for much more than a drink.
He glanced away from her for a moment, acknowledging that every attempt he had made to stay away from her had just flown the hell out the window.
When he turned back, his jaw clenched.
"I'm not playing games with you, Kia. I have too damned much respect for you for that." He held his hand out to her. "Would you like to join us?"
She looked over to where Khalid had turned in his chair enough to watch them. His dark eyes gleamed with sensual, sexual knowledge. Just as Chase's did.
She stared at his hand.
She had wondered for two years what being with him would be like. What the pleasure could be. The knowledge in his eyes when he told her it was only for the pleasure.
"What if I can't?" she whispered, knowing what he meant. "What then?"
"Then you can't." He continued to hold his hand out. "It's your choice."
It was her choice. She hadn't been offered a choice before—she had nearly been raped by her husband instead.
But this wasn't Drew. This was the man who had been honest with her from the start. He had, in small ways, perhaps, but in ways impossible for her to miss, protected her.
She looked at his hand again, remembering the dreams, the fantasies, and all the lonely nights when she had assured herself, if this night ever came, she would have the courage to take his hand.
She stood slowly, holding her wrap around her shoulders with one hand as she saw Khalid rise from his chair at the back of the room.
"The limo's outside." Chase took her hand in his, broad, warm fingers wrapping around her smaller, paler ones. "Are you going home?"
Where she was alone? Where she could dream about him rather than taking her courage in both hands and becoming the woman she had been wishing she could be?
Bold. Courageous.
She was breathing harshly. She could feel her breasts rising and falling, felt his gaze flick over them as he began to pull her to the door.
"I don't want to go home yet," she finally whispered.
His arm went around her back, his hand cupping her hip as her velvet dress swished about his legs.
"I won't take you home then." They reached the door to the bar and stepped out as the limo, a Hummer no less, pulled up to the sidewalk.
Snow covered the sidewalk now, a good inch, and she barely noticed it.
She didn't worry about the hem of her dress, because suddenly she was being lifted in his arms, her eyes widening, her wrap slipping as she clutched at his shoulders.
"I don't want you to slip and fall," he stated as the chauffeur opened the door smoothly. Chase ducked inside the warm interior, holding her against him as he moved into the sumptuous limo and sat down by a narrow bar counter, in one of the thickly padded, wide leather seats.
Khalid followed and the door closed behind them, the tinted windows hiding them, securing them against curious eyes.
The interior of the Hummer was incredible. The seats were wide, the dark leather was probably comfortable, but as Chase held her, she was betting he was more comfortable. Even with the thick wedge of his erection pressing into her hip.
She wasn't certain what she was getting herself into now. She leaned back against Chase's shoulder and drew in a hard breath. She was only seconds away from requesting that they take her home after all.
She couldn't do this. She thought she was brave. Thought she was courageous.
"Khalid, this limo is insane, you know." Chase glanced around the interior, his hand stroking comfortingly down Kia's back as the vehicle moved smoothly through the streets.
"So I told my father when he had it delivered." Khalid shrugged. "But it came with free petrol from his stations, so who am I to complain?" Khalid winked at Kia playfully. "I'm, of course, a bit more conservative with my own wealth."
"Yeah, Khalid buys horses instead." Chase chuckled.
"Fine beasts." Khalid grinned. "But one thing this is good for is the viewing pleasure of all the beautiful lights through our fair city as it snows. All the comforts of home." He waved to the windows that surrounded the seats. "And we don't have to worry about getting stuck for quite a while."
"Khalid likes to run his security detail ragged in the snow," Chase told her with a hint of laughter.
"It's not the security detail I have such fun with," Khalid drawled, the faint Middle Eastern flavor of his voice tinged with his own amusement. "It's those damned special agents they keep on my ass. You'd think I wasn't a U.S. citizen."
"One tied to a very rich, fairly powerful sheik," Chase pointed out.
Khalid winked at her again, and Chase felt her relax, not a lot, but enough that perhaps she wasn't gearing up to demand to be taken home.
"I assure you, Ms. Rutherford," Khalid announced. "It is Rutherford now, yes?"
"Yes," she breathed out faintly.
Chase had been unaware she had returned to her maiden name.
"As I was saying, I assure you, I'm related to the sheik by only the thinnest of bloodlines and a father that has more money than any true connections. Though he does enjoy spending the money on his youngest bastard son." Khalid's lips quirked mockingly.
Kia inhaled slowly as Chase continued to rub her back. Damn her and her bare back. Her wrap was barely hanging to one shoulder now, the velvet dress held to her shoulders by thin straps, the velvet covering her breasts doing very little to cover the firm mounds.
She was incredible. Beautiful. Several strands of hair had slipped from the diamond pins that held it in place, the blond strands framing her face and neck.
A light flush mounted her cheeks and her sapphire blue eyes, were filled with vulnerable curiosity and courage. He'd known, somehow, over the past two years, it would come to this. And he had pushed it, pushed her, made her more curious each time he'd pursued her for a dance at a party or a moment to chat at an event.
"The lights are pretty tonight." She swallowed tightly again and found her fingers curled over Chase's forearm, where it lay across her thighs.
She stared out the window across from her as the limo wove through traffic, stopping smoothly at traffic lights, moving more slowly past the elaborately lit areas.
"The lights are gorgeous this time of the year, especially during a snowfall." But Khalid wasn't staring at the lights, he was staring at her.
His voice was low, smooth, and charming. It was sexy, but it lacked the true warmth she heard in Chase's voice.
"Jaci and Cam are putting up the Christmas tree tonight." Chase grunted. "One of the reasons I ended up in a bar rather than reading comfortably in my apartment. They threatened earlier to make me help."
"You don't like Christmas trees?" She risked looking up at him now, and the light green orbs held her, mesmerized her as they always did.
Each time his gaze caught hers, she wanted to sink into it, live within it forever. There was something mysterious, something completely male and forbidden each time he held her gaze with his.
Of course, she knew the forbidden. It was here, in this limo. Chase and the third he had obviously chosen, and they were nothing compared to the husband and the third who had terrified her years before.
No, it hadn't been terror, it had been rage. He had attempted to get her drunk and when he thought she was, he had then snuck another man into their bed.
"I love Christmas trees," Chase finally told her softly. "But some things, Jaci and Cam need to do alone."
It was said gently, as though a message was hidden there. Was he telling her he no longer shared his women, or just his brother's woman?
She had wondered, she admitted. She had often wondered if Jaci Wright enjoyed each night what Kia was too afraid to reach out for.
"I haven't decorated a tree in years," she told him then, attempting to smile, almost lost in the memory of the last time she had done so, at her parents' home.
"No?" He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek as the fearful tension receded, only to be replaced with something darker, more heated.
"I don't have a tree," she said. "There's just me."
"You buy presents?" he asked her.
She shook her head. "Just for my parents. They don't require a tree in my apartment."
Her life had become barren in the past two years. A desert landscape that still had the power to hurt.
"Friends?" He tensed a bit, as though anticipating the answer.
"Friends are busy with families for the holidays." She shook her head. "I don't need a tree." She didn't buy friends presents because she didn't allow herself to have friends.
"You need a tree," he breathed against her ear. "A very tall one."
"I'd never be able to decorate it." Her head tilted to the side, almost without her permission, her neck suddenly tingling to feel that little breath. "I'm short."
"You're exquisite." He kissed her behind her ear. A soft brush of his lips that had her lashes drifting closed and pleasure streaking through her.
Khalid' was watching. She could feel him watching. She could feel the tension rising in the back of the monstrous limo and the heat of sexual desire beginning to move over her flesh.
She should move. She should be frightened, as she had been earlier. Instead, she felt that strange courage rising inside her again. No, not courage, insanity, because she knew she wasn't going to deny them. She was going to be wild and wicked and do the forbidden. Here, in this decadently large limo, she was going to let Chase have her, Chase and Khalid.
She opened her eyes and turned her head to stare back at him. This man, he was her fantasy, and whatever he wanted to give her tonight, she would allow him. As much as she could.
"It's only for the pleasure?" she whispered.
His eyes dilated in surprise, as though shocked she had remembered what he had told her.
"Just for the pleasure," he promised her.
"Just between us?" she asked then.
One finger caressed her cheek. "Do you ever hear of the women I'm with, Kia?" he asked her.
"Not like this. But it's known that you do it." She shook her head, glancing at Khalid as he watched, waited. Relaxed, assured that he would touch her.
"And you won't," he promised her. "Where is the pleasure in allowing your lover to be gossiped about? Or your woman to be embarrassed?"
She was breathing roughly now. She could feel her clothing rasping against her flesh, the curling tendrils of anticipation rising inside her.
"I was only with Drew," she whispered. "That's all."
He had been her only lover. She had come to him a virgin and couldn't remember a single time they had been together that her pleasure had mattered much to him.
Chase knew what she was telling him. He could see the edge of uncertainty, her desire and her confusion over her desires rising inside her.
He knew what she was doing. This wasn't about the pleasure or the manage, it was about the temptation he had offered her the day he came to her apartment. It was about the temptation he had held out to her every time he had seen her after that.
He let his head move lower, let his lips brush across hers, aware of Khalid moving silently, opening the door beneath the bar's counter to draw free the requirements of pleasure.
Lubrication, massage oil, condoms. Khalid was a true sensualist. Nothing was hurried when he was involved. The pleasure was all that mattered. He gained his pleasure from the pleasure of the woman he touched. Or helped to touch.