“Would you have stayed with him if he hadn’t brought the third in that night?”

She flattened her hands against his chest, felt his heartbeat against her palms, slow and steady.

“I loved Drew when I married him. I loved the illusion he gave me of who and what he was. I don’t want illusions anymore. But neither do I want a relationship that’s cold and remote except in the bed.”

“What do you want, Kia?”

She lifted her head and stared into the shadowed expanse of his expression. “I want something real. I want to laugh. I want to be able to cry when I need to. I want to dance, and I want to be free. And I want to be held.”

His fingers continued to stroke, to massage her neck.

“It’s hard to be free and to be held at the same time,” he told her quietly.

“Is it, Chase?” She touched his jaw, simply because she couldn’t help herself. “Isn’t that what love truly is? Being free even as you’re being held? Knowing you can reach for the stars, and someone’s there to share it with you? Or to give you a boost if you need it? Someone to laugh with, love with, cry and argue with? Someone you know will be there when you’re moody, when you’re dark, or when you just need a hug.” She smiled up at him, feeling it inside her, reaching out to him, knowing Chase was the man she wanted that with. “Isn’t mat love?”

Chase felt the dreams that moved through her as though they were his own. It was so unfamiliar, the sensations so unique, that he wanted nothing more at that moment than to get out of the bed and leave the room. To escape the velvet bonds he could feel wrapping around him.

“You’re free, Chase,” she whispered, moving her hand back from his jaw and fixing on him with those gem-bright, dream-rich eyes. “Always free.”

And she would always hold him. He saw that, too. Saw that Kia held things inside her, wrapped herself around the people she loved in such a subtle way that they never knew what she had done until it was too late. Until she owned a part of them.

“You’re delirious,” he replied, but his hand smoothed down along her side until he was cupping her hip, holding her to the thick, hard ridge of his erection.

“I need you.” She whispered his words back to him, and Chase swore his heart was going to leap right out of his chest.

“You’re hurt.” He swallowed tightly. “When you’re better. Ah fuck, Kia.”

Slender, graceful fingers moved from his chest to the heavy weight of his erection. They curled around it, stroked, pumping his flesh with silken destruction.

“Not a good idea,” he groaned. “Sanjer will kill me for this.”

Her lips brushed his jaw, her tongue reaching out to stroke, to taste his flesh. Each touch was like a destructive whisper. Chase held her to him, let her touch, let her stroke, and he pushed back the hunger rising inside him like a beast he didn’t know how to control.

He had tried, he told himself. He had tried to stay as far away from her as possible. He had tried to save them both.

“Kia, go to sleep, or your headache’s going to get worse,” he warned her. “When I slide inside you, I don’t want to stop until we’re both coming. Until our heads are exploding. You don’t want that right now.”

He gripped her hand, held her wrist still.

“You don’t want me?” The edge of vulnerability in her voice sliced at his chest.

“One of these days, very soon, you’re going to find out exactly how much I do want you,” he warned her. “But not tonight.” He lifted her hand from his flesh. “Not when it will only hurt you worse.”

She moved to turn out of his arms, to pull away from him.

“Don’t do it, Kia.” He clamped his hand on her hip, staring down at her as she looked up at him in surprise. “You don’t pull away from me, do you understand that? Not now, not ever again.”

The hand that landed on his chest was less than gentle. A hard slap against the tensed muscles before he was forced to allow her to push away from him.

“Understand this,” she told him fiercely. “You won’t control me, Chase Falladay. Period. And the minute I’m able to push my butt out of this bed and stumble to that front door of yours, I am so out of here.”

She jerked her pillow to her, slapped it, and laid her head gingerly against it.

Chase grinned. He waited, counting down the minutes, the seconds. Then easily, gently, he pressed his fingers back into her neck and began to knead the tense muscles again.

Nearly six inches separated them. For now. Until he could ease her into sleep, then he would have her in his arms once again. And in his arms was exactly where she belonged.

As her shoulders relaxed and her head settled deeper into her pillow, Chase moved to her. A while later, she was backing into his warmth once again, and it wasn’t long after that he was following her into sleep with his arms around her.

Holding her completed him. He wasn’t going to explain that one to himself, nor was he going to look into it too closely. It was that simple, and for the time being, he was going to let it stay simple.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Five days later Kia froze in the act of attempting to slip from the bed and from beneath Chase’s arm when his drowsy voice grumbled from the depths of the huge bed he had forced her to sleep in.

“I have to go to work.”

She had lain around and done nothing but sleep and eat for nearly a week now. Her parents had driven her crazy, flitting in and out. That insane doctor had made her want to shoot him every time he woke her up, and Chase had her so frazzled she wondered if she would ever be able to settle her nerves again.

“Like hell. Sanjer said a full week.” He hooked his arm around her waist and dragged her back to his chest. “Go back to sleep. You really don’t want me to wake up yet.”

But he sounded very awake. And he felt awake. The hard, thick length of his erection was pressed against her back. Because he slept naked. Because he had come to bed after she fell asleep and wrapped that hard, warm body around her.

And he made her like that. That was what he did. After she went to sleep, chilled and achy, he slipped into the bed and got her all warm and relaxed, and when she woke up the next morning all she wanted to do was stay there.

Well, she’d had a headache then, she assured herself. She didn’t have one now.

“I really don’t care if you wake up, Chase,” she informed him irritably. “Or what Sanjer said. I have a job, and I have my own bed.”

“A bed you don’t sleep in,” he snorted, holding her to his chest.

“I do now,” she told him, her voice firm. She had to be firm when arguing with Chase, she had found.

He was quiet behind her. “What the hell does that mean?” he finally growled.

“It means exactly what the hell I said.” She pushed at the arm wrapped around her and gave a moment’s thought to just biting him if he didn’t let her go.

A second later she was on her back, staring up at what had to be the sexiest sight God had ever gifted a woman with. Chase, long black hair tousled around the dark, arrogant features of his face. His light green eyes were narrowed down on her, thick, dark lashes doing nothing to shield the hunger, nor the fire in his eyes.

“When did you start sleeping in your bed?” His lips were tight, a muscle flexing in his jaw.

“The night before I bought my electric blanket and a vibrator,” she said sweetly. “Why, Chase, I do declare, I’ve learned that that bed can be quite comfortable when I want it to be.”

She relaxed beneath him as much as possible with the sight of those hard, powerful biceps flexing by her shoulders and the hard flush washing through his cheeks.

She was counting down to the explosion now.

“What kind?”

She blinked back at him. “Excuse me?”

Where was the anger? The fury? Drew had blown a gasket when he found her tiny personal vibrator years before. Wouldn’t Chase be just as angry? Especially when she had done everything but demand he not touch her for the past few days.