by Lora Leigh
He paused. "Would you walk away if you could?"
She wasn't certain what flashed in his eyes, or why it burned in her chest.
"Would you?" she asked him rather than answering.
And he didn't answer. No more than she could he answer that question right then. If she did, she would reveal everything. The heart and the soul she could barely keep contained.
She loved him. She loved him until everything inside her reminded her how empty, how lonely, her life had been for far longer than the two years she had suffered for her one mistake.
But she couldn't bear to suffer longer. Soon, soon, this would have to be resolved.
"No answer, Chase?" she whispered back.
"I'm not letting you go tonight," he said, his hands cupping the mounds of her breasts. "I'm not letting you go, Kia."
"For how long?" Her lips trembled on the question.
"I won't let anyone hurt you." He watched her, his gaze intent, his expression hard. "I swear it, Kia."
She licked her dry lips slowly and fought to suppress the disappointment.
"I knew that." No one but him.
He took her lips again, and suddenly the battle wasn't just emotional. It was physical. It was hunger burning into hunger and an explosion of defiance and anger flowing from Kia.
Determination and arrogance aroused in him.
Lips dueled to control the kiss. Her pants were pushed from her thighs, her fingers pressed between their bodies, wrapped around the heavy length of his cock and pumped.
His groan was heavy. Her cry as his lips moved to her breasts filled the dim room.
He sucked a nipple into his mouth, drawing on it deeply, his tongue stroking over the sensitized tip as she watched him. He watched her. His cheeks flexed, his lips covered her flesh, and between her thighs a flood of response saturated her bare flesh.
"You keep forgetting this," he growled, his lips moving back to hers, nipping at them, stroking at them. "This, Kia. Walk away from it, I dare you."
She shook her head. She should walk. She was tempting her own destruction here and she knew it. But she knew she couldn't walk. He was a part of her now.
Before she could hold on to him again, he moved back, rolling her to her stomach as she tried to buck against his hold.
"This isn't fair," she cried out, feeling his lips on her shoulders, his teeth. "I can't touch you."
"I could tie you back down," he suggested, his voice thick and husky now. "You liked that, didn't you, Kia? Helpless beneath me. Shattering outside yourself when you came? I know what you did. I know what you felt, Kia. I was there with you."
He nipped her ear as sensual weakness flooded her at the memory.
"I was with you, baby. Where the darkness shatters your mind and you know you're lost forever."
One hand curled beneath her hips, jerked her up, and positioned her as he moved between her thighs.
"Can you walk away from it?" The head of his cock pressed against the hot, wet folds of her pussy. "Can you stop aching for it? Stop needing it?"
"Oh my God!" Her head reared back as one hard thrust buried him halfway inside her.
The abrupt stretching, the mindless heat, tore through her, throwing her into a chaotic pleasure that whipped and surged through every nerve ending.
"Feel how tight you are around me," he growled, his teeth raking her shoulder as the savage tone penetrated her senses, whipped her pleasure higher. "Like a greedy, milking fist. Milk me, Kia.
Pull me into you."
She was already. The tender muscles were flexing against the heavily veined flesh, drawing him inside her as she panted for air and fought for sanity.
But he was retreating, pulling back.
"Don't stop," she was whimpering, needing more. She just needed a little bit more. That was all.
Her back arched and she screamed as he buried his cock inside her again. Every thick inch powered through the tight sheath, burning inside her, blistering her with the heated pleasure.
"You love it," he snarled, pulling her up, holding her back to his chest as he gripped her chin and turned her lips to his. "You love it, Kia."
His face was as savage as his voice.
"You love it," she cried back. "Being inside me. Taking me. You love it, too, Chase."
"I love it, Kia." His teeth bared. "I love fucking you until you scream my name. I love feeling your sweet pussy coming around my cock. I love all of it."
"With me," she demanded, concentrating, just a little concentration to tighten further around him, to make her muscles suck at his erection, from base to tip.
He blinked in sudden pleasure, a grimace contorting his expression before he was staring back at her.
"With you." He held her head back to his chest, her face turned to him as he nipped hers lips. "I love it with you, Kia."
"Just with me." The words slipped out, causing them both to freeze, causing fear and desperation, hunger and the need for satisfaction to become stronger, deeper.
"Just with you." The words came out almost as a curse. Fierce, furious. His lips covered hers for an endless heartbeat.
A second later a hand between her shoulder blades pressed her chest to the bed and a hard hand gripped her hip. He began moving, caressing her, stroking and pumping inside her as the other hand gripped the back of her hair, pulling.
Erotic sensations danced over her skin. The prickling, heated pain at the back of her head only added to the pleasure and the burning sensations as each thrust buried him fully inside her, stretching her, taking her.
There were no words said. Kia could only cry out, plead with desperate whimpers, and take the surging lust building inside her.
The love. She felt the emotions whipping through her, the needs, the sensual pleasure, all wrapped into one, and when they exploded through her she prayed she didn't scream the words that were on her lips.
"I love you, Chase. Oh God, oh God, I love you."
It was in her head. She bit her lips. Shook her head. She wouldn't say it. Fireworks were exploding through her body and mind, though. They were racing through her blood and tearing through her system as she heard his harsh exclamation behind her.
Then it was amplified. Another orgasm detonated as she felt him release inside her, his semen pumping into her, adding to the sensations, the emotions, and the love she knew she could never escape where Chase was concerned.
She collapsed beneath him long moments later. Exhausted. Her lashes heavy as he dragged himself to her side and pulled her into his arms.
She curled against him. It was where she had longed to be for so long. Just right here. She needed it, just right now.
It wasn't just the pleasure, she knew. It never had been, even that first night. It was about Chase.
It was about this emotion that pulled a single tear from her eye and left her clinging to
him.
It was for the love.
Chapter 22
"I don't need a babysitter in the office," Kia told Chase the next morning as he exited the elevator to the fourth floor of Rutherford's main offices and followed her through the sales force cubicles to her back office.
"You have one anyway," he informed her, his voice dark, hard.
He had been like that since they awakened. Darker than normal, more arrogant, if that were possible.
"Daddy can give me security if I'm putting you out. I'm sure you have things to do." She kept her voice cool. If he didn't want to be there, then she'd be damned if she wanted him there.
"If you put me out, you'll be the first to know."
His hand was riding at the small of her back. Behind her, he stood tall, broad. She could feel him, could feel the feminine eyes that followed him as they passed the cubicles.
He was a hell of a male statement in dark dress slacks and the long-sleeved white cotton shirt he wore beneath the black jacket.
The gun he had strapped on beneath that jacket was a hell of a statement as well. One that had stolen her breath when she watched him strap on the shoulder holster.
Shaking her head, she opened the door to her outer office. Her secretary was already in place behind her desk. Liza Ison's eyes widened in surprise as she jumped up from her desk.
"Ms. Rutherford. Mr. Rutherford said you might be late."
The rounded, grandmotherly face never failed to give Kia a sense of balance as she walked in.
That balance was knocked askew at the sight of the Christmas tree in the corner of the office, though, and the two little presents beneath it.
Chase hadn't mentioned putting a tree up at the apartment. But should she really expect him to?
"Kia."
She turned at the sound of Marion Harding's voice as he rose from the comfortable chairs at the side of the corner office. He glanced behind her at Chase a bit uncomfortably. "I have the projections we were working on before you were attacked. Are you sure you feel like going over them? It can wait."
Behind his glasses, Marion's brown eyes were faintly concerned.
"I'm fine, Marion." She nodded. "Come into the office and we'll get started. Liza, I need some fresh coffee. Plenty of it. And please let Dad know I've arrived. He wanted to go over some files this afternoon. I need to know when he wants to do that."
"Yes, Ms. Rutherford." Liza, like Marion, cast Chase a strange look as they passed.
"Chase, stop looking as though you're going to hit someone," she informed him. She didn't have to see his expression to know he was intimidating Marion as well as Liza.
"I have no intentions of hitting anyone, Kia." There was the faintest hint of amusement in his voice.
She turned to look at him as she moved behind her desk. He, of course, took a position of authority. He pulled one of the more comfortable chairs across the room to a position beside her
desk, turning it so he would have a clear view of her as well as the door.
Marion watched silently, taking a seat in front of her desk as she moved to her own and sat down.
"How did the projections come out?" Kia pulled the file toward her and opened it, frowning down at the analysis he had laid out of the warehousing, shipments, and deliveries of the product.
"Not quite where you forecast," he told her coolly. "But you were right about the change in warehousing affecting the total cost."
Kia looked up at him. He didn't appear angry, or, at least, not angry with her.
He shook his head. "I hadn't anticipated several of the shifts in consumer awareness that you found in your analysis. If we move the product to the east and south warehouses and ship from those, then we can maintain a more cost-effective outsourcing for the client."
Kia nodded and went back to the files.
"What about the warehouses shipping into L.A. and San Diego? I think we'd more effectively supply those two areas as well as the Nevada, Iowa, and New Mexico customers if we also had the product in our Nevada warehouse. We're losing ground there."
"There are a few exceptions."
Chase watched as Marion rose from his chair and went to the front of the desk to point out flaws in her argument in the file. Marion wasn't a threat. Chase knew how to identify threats, and Harding wasn't one.
The only threat in that damned room at the present was Kia herself, to his self-control.
Watching her walk out of that elevator in front of him had caused his cock to nearly split the zipper of his slacks.
Damn her. That little black skirt was killing him. It had stretched over her ass like he wanted to cup it with his hands. And that little flip of fuller material that ran down the back had been like a dare. A challenge to lift it and reveal the sweet, soft flesh he would find beneath.
He'd had her the night before, more than once. But he'd found that the more he had her, the more he wanted her. And he wanted her damned bad.
"I think we need to rethink this shift then," Kia stated as she rose from her chair. Chase had to clench his teeth as she moved to the side of the desk, bent just a little, and pointed out something on the file as she turned it so it was right side up for both of them. "Sales and quicker delivery to the area could increase the productivity and gain that bonus Dad got into the contract for higher shipments into the area."
Marion moved closer, causing Kia to lean in more.
Chase swallowed tightly. Damn her. Damn her to fucking hell and back, he hadn't seen her put on those stockings that morning.
He had assumed the soft silk covering her legs was pantyhose. He had convinced himself they were. Hoped and prayed they were, because stockings on Kia's legs were a particular weakness of his.
And these stockings had a delicate lacy edge that had the tips of his fingers itching to touch them, to caress the smooth skin above them.
Hell. He shifted in his chair, trying to drag his eyes from her ass and focus somewhere else. He just happened to meet Harding's gaze and saw the glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he obviously caught Chase looking.
Kia straightened then and moved back around her desk. When she sat down, she turned sideways just a bit, crossed her legs, and there was that peek at stockings again. Chase let his eyes narrow, retaliation rising up inside him as arousal began to bite into his balls.
What the hell was it about her? He should have been past the first, hard surges of lust where she was concerned and moving into that place where the sex wasn't that important. It was a normal progression. He'd been through it several times over, hadn't he?
The need for the sex dimmed simply because it was readily available. He'd had her last time until he was pumping his cum inside her with a force that left him exhausted. Yet he woke just as hard, just as hot for her as he had been the first time he had taken her.
"Alright, I'll get these ideas back to my office and rework the projections." Marion sighed.
"You're killing me on this one, Kia."
"Don't feel bad. I had several e-mails from the rest of the sales force informing me of the same thing." She smiled as she leaned back in her chair and watched Marion walk to the door.
"Yeah, now I remember why we breathed a sigh of a relief when you left five years ago," he grunted. "You're a slave driver."
The door closed behind him.
Chase turned back to Kia, catching that smug little feminine smile she tried to hide when he caught her watching him.
His lips were parting to inform her of just how much trouble she was in when the door to the office slammed open.
Chase was on his feet, in front of her desk, his hand on his weapon jerked from the holster and leveled on the other man. Drew slammed to a stop and stared at the handgun with wide eyes, his face paling. Behind him, Kia's cry warned Chase of her shock, her fear. Her warning that he wasn't to go after Drew. He wanted to go after the son of a bitch right now.
Instead, he slid the gun carefully into its holster and taunted the other man. "Want something, Stanton?"
"Ms. Rutherford, he just rushed right on in," Liza was protesting. She was in shock as well, her face pale. "I told him Mr. Rutherford wanted to talk to him first, and he ignored me."
Chase stayed in front of Kia's desk as Drew glared at him, hatred surging in his eyes as Kia moved cautiously from behind the desk.
"What are you doing here, Drew?" she asked him carefully.
"It doesn't matter why he's here, he can leave," Chase said coldly. "Get the hell out of here, Stanton."
Drew's fists clenched at his side, his eyes moving from Chase to Kia.
"My God, Kia, how can you actually think I'd hurt you? I just spent the morning at the police department. I was being interrogated, for God's sake. Where the fuck is your mind?"
"Where the fuck is your common sense?" Chase's muscles bunched, tensed to move, when he felt Kia's hand on his arm.
He stopped and glared down at her. "Don't try it," he warned her. "Don't even try to protect this little bastard." He turned back to Drew. "Get the hell out of here before I throw you out."