by Kery, Beth
The detective shrugged. “I’ve learned in my line of work you shouldn’t give these criminal types more intelligence or fortitude than they’re due. When things grow a little tough, they’ll more than likely run for it.”
Ian looked far from convinced. Guilt wriggled in her belly at the sight of his rigid, anxious visage. She hadn’t seen that expression on his face since the difficult months before his mother died, when he was consumed with worry. He hadn’t wanted to take her off Belford’s grounds, but she’d persuaded him. He’d been worried about her since he arrived, and now she had firsthand proof he hadn’t just been paranoid.
Anne stood to see the detectives out. Elise patted Francesca’s hand. “Are you doing okay?’ she asked in a hushed tone.
“I’m fine. I was just more startled than anything,” Francesca assured the others, including Ian, who was studying her.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to hold the press conference tomorrow with this criminal hanging about?” Gerard asked.
“I’ve increased the security around Belford until we can find out more about this man’s location. Hopefully he’ll be apprehended soon,” James said.
“Lin has checked out everyone coming. No one other than authorized visitors will be allowed onto the grounds,” Ian said, sitting back down in his chair. “If we cancel now, it’ll only fuel the rumors that are flying about in regard to Noble Enterprises being in choppy waters.”
“I agree,” Lucien said. “The business world needs to see Ian securely back at the helm.”
James nodded, looking up when Anne returned to the sitting room.
“I’ve asked the staff to go ahead and serve dinner. We’ll go in as we are,” she said, referring to the fact that none of them were dressed for dinner. They’d all gathered upon hearing Ian and Francesca’s alarming news, and hadn’t left the room since the police had arrived to take their report.
It felt strange, but somehow comforting, to sit in the Belford formal dining room wearing her Cubs T-shirt and surrounded by so many concerned faces. It struck her later as she ate Mrs. Hanson’s delicious raspberry tart for dessert, listening to the others talk, that she was surrounded by her true family. The familiar ache started in the vicinity of her chest as she watched Ian conversing somberly with James and Lucien that there was a good chance she’d never officially be part of that family.
Not if Ian couldn’t come to terms with his demons.
Later that night, she said a quiet good night to Anne and kissed her on the cheek. Ian said her name as she was walking through the Great Hall alone toward the stairs. She turned to him.
“Were you planning on going up without saying good night?” he asked, approaching her.
“Of course not. I was going to say good night in your suite in a little while.”
The almost indistinguishable lightening of his expression told her he’d liked her answer.
“I’ll come with you if you want to get anything in your room, and then you’re coming with me. I’m not in the mood for letting you out of my sight at the moment,” he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the stairs.
“You’ll have to at some point,” she said, half-exasperated by his diligence and half-touched by it. “You don’t want me at the press conference tomorrow, and I have to meet with the sketch artist, for instance.”
“I’ve already arranged all that.”
“Of course,” Francesca said, giving him dry sideways glance. He seemed unaffected by her fond sarcasm as they ascended the stairs.
“Lucien has agreed to sit with you while I’m occupied. And after that, I’ve spoken to Lin. She’s beginning a search for someone for you.”
“Someone for me,” Francesca said warily, her feet slowing as the neared her room in the arch-ceilinged hallway. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Full-time security personnel,” Ian said briskly, urging her with his hold on her hand to commence down the hallway. She pulled back. He dropped her hand, his expression going flat.
“Ian, I am not having someone follow me around twenty-four hours a day!” she exclaimed with heated restraint.
His eyes flashed back at her. “Just until we can get this situation under control. After that, if you only agreed to live at the penthouse, my worries would vanish. Well . . . decrease a good deal anyway.”
She gave a bark of incredulous laughter. “I refuse to have you lock me up like a pet, Ian. Especially . . . given our circumstances,” she added, leaving things vague on purpose. She was done hashing out his obsession with his past and what it meant to his present and future. For today, she was.
He came to an abrupt standstill. She faced him.
“You make it sound like I’m purposefully insulting you . . . demeaning you,” he bit out.
“You are demeaning me by making all these decisions about me without even giving me the respect of talking to me about it. It’s my life. Stop trying to take control of it. I have a right to my privacy, among other things.”
“I’m very well aware it’s your life,” he replied ominously. “I’m just trying to make damn sure you go on living it in good health.”
“Here’s an idea,” she replied heatedly, straining to keep her voice quiet in the resonant hallway, but not succeeding. “Ask me how I feel about it next time instead of just planning my life for me. It’s not that hard, Ian!”
The sound of footsteps caught her attention. Her cheeks flushed when she glanced down the hallway and saw James, Gerard, and Elise rising up the stairs. They looked a little uncomfortable at accidently hearing Ian and her arguing, and kept their gazes averted before they disappeared from view down a corridor that led to their right.
She jerked the knob on her door. She plunged into the suite, leaving Ian standing in the hallway, not bothering to close the door. He’d come in anyway. She wasn’t trying to send him away, no matter how sharp she’d just sounded or how arrogant he had. Francesca wanted to be with him that evening. She’d been affected by that harrowing experience on the road as much as him. His heavy-handedness, his single-mindedness in arranging her life just peeved her. Not that she was unused to it.
Not that he was unused to struggling with her over such things.
By the time she came out of her bathroom after washing up, wearing an ivory silk gown, robe, and slippers, much of her irritation had eased. He sat on the couch in her sitting area, flipping through her sketchbook.
“I like what you did today,” he said quietly, nodding at the page. She knew he was striving for a neutral subject, and was thankful.
“Thank you,” she said. She stepped toward him and looked down at her drawing. “Those are fruit trees at the edge of the forest, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “Apple and cherry.”
“They must look stunning when they bloom in the spring,” she said.
“They do,” he replied gruffly, still looking at the page and not her.
“I wasn’t satisfied with my earlier attempts. I’d rather paint Belford as if coming out of the woods, the viewpoint of someone returning after a journey, suddenly seeing not just a house or a landmark or an architectural prize, but a home and everything that implies,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to run it by Anne and James, though. It would require me to put the woods closer to Belford Hall in order for me to get the house details. It would be inaccurate factually.”
“Not really. Only recently,” Ian said, puzzling her. He closed the sketchbook, set it aside and stood. “The gardens and yard area were only expanded in the past few decades. When I first came here as a boy, the forest was much closer to the house. I think my grandmother was worried about the woods being so close with a curious boy in residence. I also happen to know neither of my grandparents particularly cared for the clearing of the grounds. What you’re describing is what generations of Nobles would have seen upon returning home from one
of the forest paths.”
He met her gaze soberly, and she knew he wasn’t thinking about her painting. “We can discuss the issue about security more tomorrow, after the press conference. I don’t want to fight with you right now,” he said quietly.
“I don’t want to fight with you, either. Not tonight,” she replied honestly. He put out his hand and she took it, following him out of the room and closing the door softly behind her. They walked together to his suite through the shadowed hallway, the silence seeming to billow with rising anticipation.
* * *
They entered his suite and he locked the door. He removed his jacket and draped it on a valet stand. Then she was in his arms and he was pulling her against him. His mouth was feverish on her neck and ear, his intensity making her eyes spring wide. His body felt hot, too . . . and hard, she realized with a thrill. Yes, she’d felt the increasing electrical excitement building between them, but this . . .
He was liked a coiled spring. She’d sensed his palpable tension ever since the incident on the road earlier, but hadn’t expected his anxiety to transform so quickly to arousal once he touched her.
She whimpered in stunned lust when he fisted a bunch of loose hair at her neck and pulled, so that her throat was exposed. His lips burned a trail on her neck before he seized her mouth in a kiss. It aroused her to no end, that scorching, desperate kiss, but tears burned her eyelids as well.
“Ian, I’m all right,” she muttered raggedly a moment later against his mouth.
“No thanks to me. I shouldn’t have taken you with me, today,” he said grimly, backing away from her slightly, but keeping his groin pressed against her belly, the fullness there like a silent reminder of what was to come. She wanted it, too. Needed it. They’d both come very close to ending up in a fiery wreck earlier.
“I was the one who talked you into letting me go. Neither one of us would have guessed that man would come have come from Chicago to Britain.”
“I guessed it,” Ian said harshly. He untied her robe roughly and jerked the sides over her shoulders. Beneath the robe she wore a simple, thigh-high ivory silk gown. She gasped when Ian cupped a breast, shaping it to his palm. He hissed something she couldn’t quite make out, then pressed his forearm to her back. When he leaned down over her, she instinctively arched against the brace of his arm. He sucked on the tip of her breast straight through the silk, his warm tongue rubbing the wet fabric erotically against the nipple, demanding that her flesh awaken to his call. Her sex tightened in answer. Francesca sensed the depth of his almost rabid need. He lifted his head a moment later when she moaned in rising pleasure. His eyes looked a little wild.
“I love you so much.”
“I know,” she replied. And she did. How could she deny it, when she saw the truth of what he said reflecting in his eyes like fiery words?
“I’m going to spank you and then I’m going to have you again and again, until we’re both too exhausted to move.” He opened his hand along her jaw. “I’m going to fill you up with me. I’m going to take my fill of you, Francesca. Not that it will work. It never does. I always want more,” he said grimly, bending to take her mouth again in another kiss.
Chapter Eleven
Heat rushed through her at his incendiary, erotic words. His voice still echoed in her head when he finally sealed their kiss.
“Are you going to spank me because I talked you into taking me into town with you?” she asked shakily.
“Maybe a little bit. But mostly I’m going to do it because I’ll love it. And you will, too.” She felt his cock swell next to her belly. He felt delicious and full and heavy.
“All right,” she conceded, excitement starting to bubble inside her. Maybe it was the idea of danger hovering, maybe it was the knowledge—no matter how remote—that they could be separated at any moment. Ian might leave, true, but they were also only human. Life was cruel at times, and random . . . and so was death. But they were here together now, both of them teeming with life and lust and love. She would grab this moment with him, squeeze it for all it was worth.
“Come here,” Ian said, taking her hand. She looked over at him in confusion when he led her to a stretch of blank wall between an antique chest and an elaborate oil painting of a man on a white horse in sixteenth-century garb. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
She watched him go into his closet, just as he had last night to get the belt. The skin on her bottom seemed to prickle in anticipation. Her clit did the same. When he came out of the closet, however, he wasn’t carrying a belt, but instead a wooden paddle. Her eyes widened as he neared her.
“I thought you didn’t have any things like that here,” she said, eyes fixed on the paddle. At first glance, it looked like the paddles he had used on her in the past, but it wasn’t. It was flat on one side and slightly convex on the other, an elevated ridge running down the middle of it. The paddle portion was about a foot long and three or four inches wide, not including the handle with a leather carrying loop attached on the end.
“I was thinking about how to improvise,” Ian said with a small smile. Her breath stuck in her lungs when he removed a silver cuff link from his sleeve, slipped it into his pocket and began to roll back the sleeve on the arm that held the paddle. He flipped the paddle, holding it up for her inspection. “It’s a miniature cricket bat. In fact, it’s the first one Grandfather bought me when I came to Belford as a boy. I uncovered it in a cabinet in the billiards room earlier today. Well, in fact I was searching for it.”
“With no intention of playing cricket whatsoever,” she said, amusement mingling with her arousal.
“I played regularly in school,” Ian told her with a smoky look as he transferred the paddle to his other hand and fleetly removed his other cuff link. She licked her lower lip distractedly at the vision of him rolling back the white shirtsleeve and revealing another strong, hair-sprinkled forearm. She could see the outline of his cock quite well in his trousers. It’d been trapped by his boxer briefs in an upward slanted position pointing toward his left pocket, the fat, tapered head delineated even through the fabric. Her mouth watered with a sudden acute desire to feel him plunging in her mouth. “I’m quite good at it, you know, handling the bat,” he said, stepping toward her, the paddle now firmly in his right hand.
“I’m sure you are,” she said, looking at him with mounting lust spiked with just a hint of wariness. She lowered her gaze to the paddle. He held it up.
“It’s very light. They’re made of willow,” he said huskily. “Touch it.”
She swallowed thickly and ran her fingers over the tool he intended for her punishment. It was lightweight.
“It will sting.” She said her thought out loud, shakily.
“I believe it will, yes. I’ve never used it to this purpose. Be sure and keep me apprised of how it feels,” he said, his small grin a little wicked, walking behind her. She gasped in excitement when he pressed the paddle to her ass and circled it against her buttocks through her gown and underwear. For an erotic moment, she just stood there while he ran the paddle over her prickling flesh softly.
“Drop the gown,” he said thickly after a moment as he slid the paddle over the bottom curve of her cheeks and rubbed, now lasciviously.
She whisked the spaghetti straps of the gown over her shoulders and down over her breasts. The garment pooled around her waist. Ian continued to lewdly rub her ass with the paddle, but helped her, sending his fingers beneath the fabric from the back and pushing the gown over her hips. He lifted the paddle and the silk slipped down her legs, pooling at her ankles. He walked in front of her to the blank stretch of wall.
“Come over here,” he demanded quietly.
She stepped out of the gown and the slippers she’d been wearing and approached him clad only in a pair of sheer lace panties. His gaze was on her breasts, belly, and mons, making her nipples stiffen and her clit swell and ache.
“Put your hands above your head and lean against the wall,” he instructed, stepping aside to give her space, his arm bent, the rim of the paddle resting casually against his shoulder in what looked to be a familiar pose from his cricket days. A whole history of naughty references about Englishmen and spankings flashed through her brain, making her hide a smile. It aroused her, though, the idea of having her bottom smacked by the cricket bat . . . by the idea of having her ass spanked by the sexiest Englishman in existence.
That aroused her very much, she admitted, as she started to take the position, her head turned, gaze glued to Ian. He put his hand on the sensitive side of her ribs and she wondered if he felt the way her heart was pounding.
“No, lovely, don’t bend over yet. Just lean against the wall. Put your feet behind the rest of your body. There. Perfect,” he growled softly next to her ear. When she’d settled, her feet were about two feet away from the baseboard, her hands were above her head, her forearms bracing her weight, her breasts heaving six inches from the wall. She wasn’t bent at the waist, but instead in sort of a vertical slant against the wall.
Ian moved behind her. She couldn’t see him without straining around to look. She knew from experience he wouldn’t like it if she gave in to her curiosity. He always said her eyes undid him. Instead, she stared fixedly at the blank wall and forced air into her lungs.
He slid his fingers beneath the waistband of her underwear and lowered them down over her ass to midthigh. She started to move in order to assist him in removing the garment, but he stopped her.
“No. Spread your thighs wider.”
