He had been there for two days. He had showered in the bathroom attached to her private room, but other than that, he hadn’t left the room. He wasn’t leaving. If he had to take his eyes off her longer than what he absolutely had to, he might go insane.
“I love you,” she whispered again as she slipped into sleep.
“I love you, Kia. Rest, baby.”
He held her hand as she relaxed into sleep, unaware he was being watched until his head lifted and he saw Drew Stanton standing in the doorway.
Drew’s expression was somber, his brown eyes a bit bitter, but accepting. In one hand he carried a vase of flowers. He moved into the room and set the flowers on the table by her bed and stared down at her.
“He bruised her cheek,” Drew whispered sadly.
“As you did,” Chase reminded him. He wasn’t ready to forgive the other man for that.
Drew nodded slowly before meeting Chase’s eyes again. “I courted her and I married her because I thought you wanted her. I thought, look at me, the big shit. I have something Chase Falladay wants and can’t have.”
Chase stared at him in surprise.
“You always had her, though.” He sighed. “And when I saw her in that room, willing to die to protect you, I guess I finally grew up.” He shook his head. “Maybe, if I had cared more for her than I had for myself, things might have been different.”
Chase shook his head. “I would have taken her from you eventually.”
To that, Drew smiled. “No, you wouldn’t have. Kia keeps her promises, Chase. All of them, no matter what, no matter how much it hurts her. You’ll find that out. She doesn’t back down. She doesn’t fight. She doesn’t rage. But you’ll see.” He nodded, amusement sparking his eyes.
“You’ll find out. She’s stronger than any other woman you’ll ever meet, and most men.”
He already knew that. Chase stared back at Drew, holding that knowledge close to himself. He had known that for a while now.
“I’m heading to England,” Drew said then. “New job, better position and pay.” He shrugged. “Tell her I said goodbye.”
He turned and stepped toward the door.
“Drew.” Chase stopped him as he passed the end of the bed. The other man turned back to him. “Thank you for being there. For seeing what I missed when she stepped into that elevator.”
Drew’s lips quirked. “You weren’t the only one worried.” Then he nodded and turned and walked out of the room.
Chase stared down at Kia and whispered another prayer. A thank-you.
Other than the concussion and some bruising, she was going to be fine. She would be out of the hospital in the morning and home where she belonged. In their home. In his bed.
“Hey, bro. Dinnertime.” Cameron swaggered into the room, a greasy bag in one hand, two cups of coffee in a holder in the other.
He looked at Kia, his gaze flashing with compassion before his attention was distracted by his fiancée moving in behind him.
“Is she asleep?” Jaci whispered, her big green eyes concerned.
They had stuck by him the past two days, Cameron and Jaci, sleeping in the chairs in the hallway or stretching out on the couch in the waiting room when they could. They hadn’t left until that evening to rest and shower before coming back.
Khalid had a bodyguard outside her door just in case there was further trouble and another doctor had been flown in from New York to consult with Sanjer, just to be on the safe side.
Friends surrounded her. Ian and Courtney, Ella and James, Terrie and her husband, Jesse. They had all been there. Even Devril, Lucian, and Tally had cut their vacation short to return home and visit her in the hospital. Saxon and Marey, friends of Chase’s who Kia hadn’t met yet, had called several times from where they were visiting with Sax’s family in California, and Kimberly and Jared had been in to see her several times. Flowers filled the room, and he hoped she felt the friendship.
She would never be alone again, Chase promised himself. No matter what happened, there would always be friends surrounding her.
“Come on, Chase. Coffee and food.” Cameron tapped his shoulder, drawing his attention. “She’s going home tomorrow, and everything’s going to be fine.”
“She’s coming home.” And he could finally believe it. Finally, that lonely, dark apartment full of the memories of a life that had ended when he was a child would be a home.
Because of Kia. Because she had taken pleasure and turned it into love. Because she had filled his heart, just as he knew she was going to fill his life.
It wasn’t only pleasure anymore. Hell, Chase knew, it never had been.
Epilogue
Kia stepped out of her parents’ limo, her little shopping bag rolled up carefully in her overlarge purse and her heart lighter than it had been in years.
She was still bruised. Her face was healing, but she looked like a human punching bag beneath the makeup. Her mother and aunt had known the right person to call to help cover the bruising so she could finish her Christmas shopping.
“I’m walking you to the elevator,” her father informed her, coming out of the limo as the chauffeur helped her out. “You should have let me call Chase and let him know you were here.”
He was frowning at her steadily, watching her as though she were an invalid.
“When are you going to accept I’m fine, Daddy?” She smiled up at him, though she held on to his arm, mostly because he kept putting her hand back there.
“When that bruise on the side of your face heals. When I stop having nightmares over seeing you on the gurney, being loaded into an ambulance, too hurt to protest it.”
She grimaced. “Fine. Do you want to go upstairs with me?”
“I’ll let you do that on your own.” He grunted. “I remember the last time I came upstairs without letting Chase know.”
Kia almost laughed, and flushed instead. Her father had walked in on them as Chase was stalking her around the living room. She had been dressed. Chase hadn’t been.
“But I’m not with him.” She laughed.
“Why tempt fate?” her father growled. “That boy ain’t near as pretty naked as he is dressed.”
No, but he was a damned sight sexier naked. Kia kept that thought to herself.
She let her father open the elevator and check it out before she stepped inside.
“Love you, Daddy,” she told him with a wide smile as he closed the barred door.
“Love you, sweetie,” he told her as the elevator slid silently to the second floor.
She held her purse in her hands, her presents tucked securely into it, and let a frown flit across her brow. She had been out of the hospital for over a week, and her injuries hadn’t been more serious than a few deep bruises. Still, Chase was treating her like an invalid.
And she could feel the tension growing in him, and in herself, she thought. She hadn’t believed him when he told her that the hunger for the pleasures he had shown her wouldn’t go away. That she would need the third he could bring to their bed as much as he would need to see her with one.
But it was growing, rising, and nothing else was stilling the knowledge of what Chase needed, or the knowledge of what she was growing to need as well.
It was a strange feeling, loving Chase as she did, to the very bottom of her soul, and realizing that they were sharing a need that they should have considered abnormal.
His need to see another man take her. Her need to be taken as he watched. To stare into his eyes, to be touched along every inch of her body at the time, to be taken in ways that could be achieved only with that third.
There were times that the thought of it still wasn’t comfortable, but the hunger for it was growing.
When the elevator stopped, she stepped outside, then paused, listening. She could hear a male grunting, a curse, a less than polite insult.