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.

She moved to the doorway, peeked around it, and her eyes widened in shock and surprise.

“Dammit, Chase, this bastard still isn’t straight.” Khalid cursed as he struggled to hold upright a huge, at least eight—and—a-half-foot tall live Christmas tree. “How the hell did you manage to talk me into this insanity? Why couldn’t you do as I did and simply hire someone for this?”

“Hell, maybe I don’t have Daddy’s megabucks like you do,” Chase snapped irritably from where he lay, stretched out on his back, beneath the tree. “Straighten it and hold it steady so I can lock it in here.”

“Steady it? Have you lost your senses, Falladay? You didn’t buy a tree, you bought a damned forest with this monster.”

“Khalid, steady the damned tree or I’m kicking your ass off the fucking balcony. It’s a long way down.”

Khalid grimaced, struggling to hold the tree in place and keep it straight as Chase did whatever he was doing to keep it from shifting and Khalid from cursing.

It was a monster Christmas tree. Beautiful, with huge, full, dark-green branches. Around it was a multitude of Christmas decorations, strands of lights, and even a few wrapped boxes.

It was a week before Christmas, and Kia had forgotten about the tree. She hadn’t forgotten about the present. It was the reason for her trip out with her parents today, because the present was for Chase, and he had dug his heels in at the thought of her going alone.

“There. Okay, let’s try it,” Chase announced from beneath the tree.

Khalid’s expression was skeptical, though he let go of the huge fir slowly, watching it critically, then he gave it a little nudge when it obviously wasn’t toppling to the floor.

Chase slid from beneath the branches. There was a scratch on his cheek, his dark hair was mussed, and he hadn’t shaved that morning. He looked like a too sexy pirate, and she wanted a bite of him, desperately.

Khalid looked around the room. “Please tell me you hired someone to decorate this monstrosity.” He shuddered in a mock attempt at fear. “Otherwise, I’m going to fear for your sanity.”

“Start fearing,” Chase muttered as he stepped around the tree, studied it, and stepped back to the front. “Okay, it’s straight. We can start on the lights.”

Khalid appraised him coolly. “You may start on that alone. I believe I’ll grab a beer and merely watch.”

“Fine, I’ll yell at your chauffeur and his little coffee sidekick and see if they want to help me.”

Khalid paused.

“You wouldn’t be so cruel.”

Chase grunted at that. “You know, Khalid, you’re getting lazy,” he pointed out. “A Christmas tree wouldn’t have fazed you last year.”

“Not lazy, merely more efficient.” Khalid smiled and stared at the tree. “Perhaps I’m allergic to evergreens.”