Her tender emotions weren’t offended when he became moody. She met his passions, whether they were dark and forbidden or wicked and hungry. She would read a book while he worked, and he knew, in the future, she wouldn’t depend on him for her entertainment.
She was more content here, enjoying the peace and quiet the apartment afforded them, than at a party or social event. She fitted him. She completed him.
She was going to be stuck with him. With all of him. The dark needs, the sometimes prickly temper, but he had no doubt now that she could handle it.
“We need to talk soon,” he told her as she turned and with shaky hands began to try to repair her makeup.
She paused and glanced at him. “Will you answer questions then?”
He nodded slowly. “We’ll both answer questions then.”
Kia laid down the makeup applicator and watched him with the glimmer of hope that always warmed him.
“I could call my parents. I might feel a headache coming on.” There was also a hidden shadow of fear.
But she wasn’t stepping back. Kia hadn’t run two years ago; she had fooled everyone. She had let her wounds heal, and she had strengthened, and when she stepped back into society, she had stepped back as a fighter, a woman stronger inside than Chase suspected even she knew.
“Soon,” he stated. He had to rub his hand over his chest to ease the dull ache there. “If you miss this party, your dad will do more than just hurt me.”
Her lips quirked. “Daddy is fairly particular about this party.” She gave a small laugh. “Last year, he nearly drove me insane getting it ready.”
His eyes narrowed. “You weren’t there last year.”
She reapplied her eye shadow, checked it, and glanced over at him. “I’ve coordinated all the parties Rutherford’s has ever thrown since I was eighteen years old,” she told him. “Drew didn’t like it after we married, so I gave up the official job, just as I gave up my position in the company.” She shrugged and looked down before glancing at him again with wry amusement. “I was a bit immature when it came to my ideas of what a good wife should be, I guess.”
There was a warning there, and Chase caught it fairly easily.
“So you’ve always kept your pretty little fingers in that pie?” he asked her.
Kia shrugged. “The whole pie, I would say. Rutherford’s will be mine one day. I wasn’t willing to be completely ignorant, nor was I willing to turn it all over to Drew, no matter what he wished at the time. If anything ever happens to Daddy, I’ll run it. Hopefully as well as he has.”
Son of a bitch. He stared back at her. It hit him then. She hadn’t been in society, she had quit her official position at the job, but for years club members had listened to Drew Stanton bitch about the amount of time his in-laws demanded of his wife.
She had been keeping both hands in that pie and Drew never had a clue.
“You could be a scary woman if you wanted to be, Kia,” he finally told her with a grin. “Remind me to never try to tie you down.”
She shrugged at that. “You make your own ties, don’t you think, Chase? No one can tie you down. You can only tie yourself. I haven’t done anything that I didn’t think was best at that time. I hope I don’t change that in the future.”
Pure steel. Sweet and soft, silken and warm. But inside she had a will to match his.
“Get out of here.” She nodded to the door. “You need to dress and we need to leave. I promised my parents we’d be on time, and we’re already going to be a bit late.”
Chase shook his head, but he went. He should have guessed, he thought. She had stepped back into Rutherford’s as though she had never left it. Because she hadn’t left it, not entirely. And she had stepped back into society with her head held high and her chin raised, daring comments.
She was tiny, fragile. A man could break her with one hand, but Chase knew that the indomitable spirit he was glimpsing would never be broken.
And he didn’t want it broken. He wanted to see how strong she could get, how much she could challenge him, and he wanted the woman, the confidence, and the sheer adventure of loving her, of learning her day by day.
Damn, he was in deep here, he thought, as he stepped into the shower. He wished he had showered before going to her. He could have worn the scent of her flesh on him as she was wearing his on her.
Damn cock. It sprang up as hard as it had been the first time he had taken her at that thought. The thought of her wearing him, his seed still lingering inside her, marking her. He had to clench his teeth and force himself to shower rather than taking the additional time to jack off.
Jacking off wasn’t needed. It would wait, he told himself. Tonight, when he got her home, tonight he would tell her.
He’d stare into her eyes and he’d give her the words tearing him apart inside.
“I love you, Kia.” He whispered it in the shower. Those were words he had never given another woman. An emotion he had never thought he would feel for anyone. And it was frankly terrifying.
Chase Falladay had stared down bullets, drug runners, and even a few terrorists in his days at the Bureau, and he had never known terror. But now, realizing the depth of emotion he felt for Kia, he realized his guts were clenched in fear.
Because losing her would mean losing himself. And that was a risk he had sworn he would never take.
24
From the moment they entered the Rutherford-Edgewood charity ball Chase knew there was going to be a problem. Not because he intended to start the problem. He was a great believer, in some situations, in letting people hang themselves. It made his life a lot less complicated when he did that.
And he knew the only way he was going to be able to break Drew Stanton’s face was if the bastard started it. Otherwise, Kia was going to be a while in forgiving him.
He was very much afraid she wouldn’t resort to the normal means of making a man pay either. Gutting him off would be the least of the punishments he might well receive.
“Stay away from Stanton,” he whispered to her as they entered the ball and she moved into the receiving line with her parents and aunt and uncle.
Chase stood carefully behind her as the guests who had been waiting in the lobby for the ballroom doors to open began to file in.
“I’m not stupid,” she murmured before the first guest appeared.
Chase was amazed at the line. Hollywood figures, senators, a member of a Middle Eastern royal family, and the cream of Alexandria and the District’s social set moved through it.
Neither Rutherford nor Edgewood was powerful enough politically to pull in some of the names that were attending. But the charity, the band, and the nationally known singer who had donated her time to the ball, no doubt at Kia’s urging, had drawn them in.
It was a social coup, Chase began to realize as the line moved into the ballroom and the adjoining dining room and buffet.
The band was moving into place, though the female performer had yet to make her appearance.
As Chase stood protectively behind Kia, he observed the figures as they went by. He could feel the hairs at the nape of his neck tingling. A sense of foreboding warned him trouble was coming.
He couldn’t get the look of Kia’s apartment out of his mind, or the fact that somehow, someone had managed to screw over the security in both the secured office as well as Kia’s door.
There was something that wasn’t clicking, he could feel it. He should have the answers, the reasons why, and they weren’t adding up in his mind.
Drew had never seemed psychotic, until recently. Of course, Kia could make a man crazy, Chase reminded himself.
As the line finally thinned and dwindled, she turned to him with a strained smile.
“If I don’t get a glass of wine, I may well collapse at your feet,” she told him.