“I’ll get you some antihistamine,” Chase promised, entirely unconcerned. “Now, where the hell do we start on these lights?”

“This will have benefits, correct?” Khalid bent and plucked a twig off the floor. “A nice Christmas present? Something besides your normal can of cookies that you present each year?”

Chase frowned. “They’re good cookies.”

“They’re cheap cookies, Chase,” Khalid pointed out. “I priced them. Under five dollars. It’s an insult.”

“Beats that lump of coal you had wrapped in the box you gave me last year,” Chase snarled. “And what the hell are you doing pricing my Christmas presents?”

Khalid’s brow lifted. “I, of course, need to know whether or not to purchase the coal, which, I will remind you, now costs more than your can of cookies, or whether I should get more extravagant and actually put myself out in the choosing of your present.” Khalid made a pretense of studying the ceiling.

“Don’t put yourself out,” Chase said irritably. “You might strain something.”

Kia was on the verge of giggles. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe the two of them. Staring at that tree, obviously procrastinating, dreading the work of arranging the lights so much that they were arguing instead.

Enough torture was enough, though.

“I know how to put the lights on.” She stepped around the corner, dropping her purse on the table by the doorway and grinning back at them.

Tension immediately filled the room, and it wasn’t just sexual.

Khalid, casually elegant in dark silk slacks and a shirt, tensed, almost dangerously. His black eyes hardened for a moment, his expression tightening as Chase turned quickly to her.

Something wasn’t right.

She stared back at the two of them, feeling dread creeping inside her. There was an air of something here, something she could see in Chase’s eyes that could hurt her.

Foreboding swept over her. Had she been reading him wrong? Had she somehow mistaken his lust for something deeper, after all?

He had told her he loved her, just that morning. Surely he hadn’t changed his mind, no longer than it had taken her to go shopping?

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“Well, perhaps I should have eavesdropped a bit longer.” She stepped fully into the room. “How is it that a woman always knows when a man, or men, as the case may be, are hiding something?”

She didn’t back down when it came to Chase. She had always backed down in her marriage, always given Drew his way. She didn’t do that with Chase. She wasn’t going to start now.

Chase grimaced. “I’m not hiding a damned thing except your Christmas present.” He shot Khalid a warning glance as the other man moved to the kitchen and pulled one of the horribly expensive beers he preferred from the refrigerator.

“It’s a very nice present, too,” Khalid said in an attempt at humor that fell ridiculously fiat. “Much better than a tin of cookies.”

He stared at the beer before lifting it and taking a drink.

Kia watched Chase suspiciously as he moved to her and gave her a soft, lingering kiss. “We wanted to surprise you with the tree.” He smiled, but there was something in his eyes when he looked back at Khalid that had her breathing in deeply, and it had nothing to do with his need to share her with the other man.

“I’ll have you know, I never buy tins of cookies.” She moved farther into the room, stepping over decorations and multicolored lights. “I’m not stupid either. What’s up with you two?”

Khalid glanced at Chase broodingly, and Kia only barely caught the subtle little shake of Chase’s head.

“Keeping secrets from me?” she asked the two of them. “Shame on you.”

She turned back to Chase as she reached the cleared area of the floor and looked between the two men.

“Khalid has issues.” Chase shrugged.

“So it would appear,” she said. “Am I allowed to be nosy?”

“No.” It was Chase who answered.

Kia’s brows arched. “I think I will be anyway.”

She barely caught Chase’s muttered curse.

“He’s a part of our lives,” she told Chase “For however long that lasts. I don’t like secrets, Chase. You promised to let me know about anything that can even remotely affect me.”

And something here was getting ready to affect her.

“She has to know.” Khalid set his beer softly on the counter, his expression brooding as he looked back at Chase, then to Kia. “It’s time, Chase.”

“Hell.” Chase rubbed at the back of his neck. “You and your fucking guilt complex.”

Khalid’s lips twisted in a mock grin. “Am I not lucky that I so rarely feel guilt?”

Kia sat down slowly in the chair beside her, crossed her legs, and waited. She wasn’t demanding anything more, but Chase knew that tilt to her chin, that expression on her face. The truth would come out, or she would find ways to remind him that he was withholding something from her, and they wouldn’t be notes taped around the apartment.

Seeing her hurt again, even in the slightest, enraged him. Knowing Khalid had the power to sear the pride and confidence he saw in her could make him violent.

Chase moved protectively behind her, standing behind her chair, aware of the tension that filled her as Khalid moved to the couch, sitting within feet of her and staring back at her as she turned and watched him silently.

For Khalid, it was one of the most difficult tasks of his life. He stared into Kia’s bright blue eyes and saw the fears that shadowed them. She was so used to being struck, to being forced to defend her tender emotions, that, even now, she was preparing herself to defend against another.

Hell, he hadn’t meant to do this. He had meant to forever keep it from her, one small burden he could have kept from falling on her fragile shoulders.

“It’s normally easier if you just strike hard and fast,” she told him quietly. “I actually handle that better.”

He grimaced.

Khalid was suave, smooth, charismatic, and completely male. Even now, facing her with something he obviously didn’t want to tell her, the savage contours of his face and wicked black eyes stood out in sharp relief.

“I would rather prefer to bleed to death than to hurt one such as you,” he said finally, sighing.

Kia frowned back at him. “What exactly is 'one such as me’?”

His lips twisted down. “A woman of strength and courage. One who knew to kick her husband in the balls when he was otherwise occupied in his struggle to keep the third from strangling the life from him.”

It took her a moment. She stared at him, the knowledge slamming into her, that night flashing before her eyes.

The utter terror of being touched by someone she didn’t know, someone whose face she couldn’t see. But whose guttural, enraged curse she heard as he jerked Drew away from her.

“It was you,” she whispered, suddenly aware of Chase’s hands on her shoulders, comforting, his body tense. “You were the one with Drew that night.”

Khalid caught her hands, and only then did she realize she was gripping them together tight enough to leave the impressions of her nails in the skin.

He lifted them, touched his lips to her clenched knuckles, and watched her, a hint of sorrow in his dark gaze.

“I had no idea you did not know I would be there,” he told her. “I thought you had agreed to the experience, little one. I never imagined the lengths Drew would go to in forcing such a thing upon you. I do not ask for your forgiveness. Only that when you remember I was a part of such pain and fear, that you would try not to know true hatred for me.”

She shook her head.

“I understand if this is something you cannot do.” He laid her hands gently in her lap. “I should have refused to be Chase’s third, but in my own defense, I had to know, to be there, to ensure you knew only the greatest of pleasure and not even a hint of the fear that once filled you.” He moved to rise to his feet. “I will leave you now.”