by Kery, Beth
“You’re mine,” he said.
“Yes.”
He bent and ravished her mouth with his, continuing to stimulate her breasts, squeezing them together and finessing the nipples until she moaned feverishly against his stabbing tongue.
“Your mouth is so hot,” he muttered, straightening. “This is going to feel so good.” Without another word, he arrowed the fat, tapered head of his cock between her lips. She clamped around him immediately, sucking him deeper. He grimaced in pleasure, pulsing his hips, enjoying the sight of his cock stretching her pink lips and her dark eyes gazing up at him, so radiant . . . so giving . . . so helpless.
She had always been willing to accept her helplessness when it came to this thing between them. Why hadn’t he?
He growled in pleasure at the sensation of her pulling at him, tempting him deeper. He’d first taught her how to perform fellatio when she was bound, and he continued to have a preference for it thus, even now. She knew the only way she could control the act was with the movement of her head and her strong suck, and now he took away the former, gripping the hair at the back of her head so that she couldn’t drive him mad with her bobbing. It left only her suck, and she used what resource she had to perfection, making him snarl, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“There. Is that what you want?” he said roughly as he began to pulse his hips, fucking her mouth shallowly, sparing her throat. She almost imperceptibly nodded, her gaze never wavering from his face as he looked down at her. He continued to hold her immobile, using her for his pleasure, plunging his cock between her rigid lips. She sucked determinedly, her nostrils flaring. He gasped at the delicious sensation of the soft side of her cheeks brushing his stabbing cock.
They maintained eye contact as he carefully breached her throat. She shuddered, but quickly stilled herself. God, it felt divine.
He grunted gutturally and slid his cock out of her. She said nothing when he turned and hurried to the bathroom, coming back with a towel and a bottle of lubricant. He’d washed the towels when he arrived, so he knew they were clean. He’d washed the sheets, too, but the bedding itself was dusty and moth-eaten; it was only a matter of time before the sheets grew befouled. Francesca shouldn’t come into contact with that bedding.
He shoved back the heavy velvet coverlet. A puff of dust rose when the bedspread landed. He quickly lay down two clean towels and returned for Francesca, helping her to rise. She just stared up at him as he reached around her and unbound her wrists, then begun to undress her.
“Do you remember the evening . . . before I left?” he asked hoarsely, removing her shirt and bra and unfastening her jeans. She didn’t try to help him, but stood there compliantly while he undressed her.
“I’ll never forget it,” she said.
He glanced up at her face, pausing in the process of working her jeans and underwear over her hips and ass, her smoky voice capturing his attention.
“I must have watched the tape of your face a thousand times,” he said starkly. He blinked, rising out of the spell of her eyes, and bent to remove her boots and socks. “I used to watch it here. In this filthy room. You think I’ve been obsessed by Trevor Gaines, but I was obsessed by the image of you giving yourself to me.”
He stood, having removed all her clothes. He cupped her jaw. “I’m going to make love to you now like I did that night, like I’ve thought about doing in this room too many times to count. It was the image of you that kept me going when I was so alone here in this cursed place. Now you’re here.”
“Yes. I’m here with you,” she said in a low, quavering voice.
He moved her toward the bed and the spread towels. He urged her sit at the edge, where he again bound her hands, this time in front of her.
“Now lie back and place your hands above your head. That’s right,” he muttered thickly, adjusting her slightly so that when she lay back, her bottom was at the very edge of the bed. “Now bend your knees toward your chest.”
He stared down at her positioned body as he began to undress.
* * *
She trembled with excitement and love as she watched him remove his clothing, twisting her head on the mattress to see what she could between her bent knees of his muscular thighs, large, erect cock, narrow hips, tight-as-a-drum abdomen, and powerful chest. She licked her lower lip, almost tasting her anticipation as he poured some of the silky lubricant onto his fingers and placed the bottle next to her on the bed. He stepped between her thighs, so big and powerful. The thrill of submission that went through her at that moment, perhaps the strongest she’d ever experienced—pure and concentrated, true and complete. He grasped her knees and rolled them back, exposing her sex and ass to him. He slipped his middle finger into her anus, and she moaned.
Neither of them looked away from the other’s face as he finger-fucked her ass, his arm moving faster and more stringently as time passed, their breathing coming more erratically. After he’d prepared her sufficiently, he lubricated himself and pushed the thick head of his cock against the resisting hole.
“Press against it, lovely,” he rasped.
She pushed with her hips, moaning at the pain as he slipped into her ass. He opened both hands on her hips, holding her secure, and began to pulse in and out of her.
“Sweetest ass in the world,” he said, his blue-eyed gaze boring down on her face. “Sweetest everything.” He appeared to be utterly rapt as he deepened his strokes, impaling the snug flesh, his manner not harsh, but firm. Demanding.
His pelvis bumped against her ass cheeks.
“Look at you,” he said, pausing, his chest heaving, perspiration gilding his muscular torso. “God, it can’t be possible, but you’re giving even more of yourself tonight.” The realization seemed to enflame him. She saw the flash of lust in his blue eyes. He thrust, their skin smacking together. “Aren’t you?” he asked more harshly as he began to pump, fucking her in earnest.
“Yes,” she moaned, overwhelmed by the sensation of being filled by him, inundated by forbidden, delicious pressure. Her head twisted on the mattress. “Use me,” she pleaded. “I’m here, Ian. Use me for whatever you need.”
He growled viciously and accepted her invitation. She watched him as he abandoned himself to his own dark, primal nature, pushing down on her calves so that her knees pressed tightly against her breasts, fucking her with long, forceful, thorough strokes. Her clit throbbed and burned at the vision, but she strangely didn’t wish he’d see to her pleasure. It was a thrill enough to see him lose himself. He’d always expressed amazement that she could give herself so trustingly to him, but at that moment, he trusted himself enough to give completely to her.
“Yes. Just like that,” she chanted between swollen lips. “Fuck me so hard.”
The ancient bed began to rattle on the wood floor from his forceful possession. She stared dazedly at the trembling canopy above her, utterly consumed.
“Look at me,” he ordered roughly.
She stared at him, panting for breath, as he flexed his hips powerfully. She whimpered as he drove into her. He jerked and swelled inside her. He released one calf, reaching between her legs, his thumb finding her clit.
“Ooh,” she mewled, her eyes springing wide as he rubbed the burning piece of flesh. Her ass tightened around him and he snarled.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I love you,” she gasped, shuddering in orgasm. He grunted and his cock convulsed as he began to climax.
“Always,” he grated out, jerking his hips, fucking her even as he came.
Chapter Sixteen
Francesca laughed softly after they showered together, incredulous and touched at the fact that Ian was truly worried about her sleeping in the bed.
“Ian, it’ll be fine,” she insisted, capturing his hand in the motion of spreading more towels and even some of his clean shirts on the mattress.
He scowle
d. “This place is disgusting. I really don’t want to think about what might live in that mattress.”
“You lived here all the time you were gone, right?” she asked, crawling onto the large bed. When she settled, her cheek pressed against one of Ian’s casual shirts on the pillow. She inhaled the familiar scent of freshly laundered cotton. It was nice, even nicer when he crawled into bed next to her and flipped the sheet over them.
“Yeah,” he replied, laying down on his side and facing her.
“You never got bit by anything, did you?” she asked, smiling as her gaze ran over his face. Her heart seemed to swell in her breast. He was so beautiful to her.
“I might have. To be honest, I was so numb, I wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Are you going to grow a beard?” she asked, running her fingertips over his jaw.
“I don’t know.” He noticed her quirked eyebrows. “I never really think about things like grooming or bedbugs while I’m here.”
“You just thought about understanding Trevor Gaines better.”
She swallowed thickly when his gaze flashed up to meet hers. She sensed his caution.
“What will you do with all the information you gather about him?” Francesca asked.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, catching her stroking hand and planting a kiss in the center of her palm. She wasn’t put off. She placed her hand back on his jaw. He glanced up at her, seeing the question remain in her eyes.
“I thought I could write it all down in some kind of organized way. Try to make sense of it all.”
“You mean, like write a book?”
“Not really. Just a compilation of facts,” he said, flipping onto his back and staring up at the canopy. She suspected she was making him uncomfortable, but sensed he wasn’t fully retreating from her. She waited patiently. “Not anything to be published. Just for me. And for . . .” He shrugged.
“What?”
“For anyone else who wanted to read it,” he rasped after a moment.
Her neck prickled with awareness. She propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at his face. “You mean like Trevor Gaines’s other children?” she asked quietly.
His gaze flickered over her. “Yes. Like Kam and Lucien, or whoever might turn up. It might help us all. To understand . . . even if the picture is ugly. It would be complete. As complete as it can be anyway.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. A full feeling grew in her chest.
“I think it’s a good idea,” she said after a moment.
“You do?” He looked surprised.
She nodded, holding his stare. “Will you promise me one thing?”
“I’ll try.”
“That you’ll do other things besides this? Work and spend time with your family and live.”
His nostrils flared slightly. “Yes. All right.”
She heaved a sigh of relief and placed her cheek on his chest. His arm curled around her and he ran his fingers through her hair.
“And I’m going to help you,” she said, growing drowsy.
“Who says?”
“Me,” she whispered, turning her face and kissing his chest. “This isn’t just about you seeing Trevor Gaines more clearly so you can get him out of your system. It’s about throwing some light into the darkness, taking away some of the power of the ugly things that hide out in there. Finding out what you can and writing it all down will help you to do that. I see that now. And I’m going to help you.”
He grunted, but he didn’t argue. He just continued to move his fingers in her hair until she fell into a deep, contented sleep.
She awoke some time later to the sound of the bedroom door opening, the sound secretive. Eerie. The room was pitch-black. Ian had turned out the bedside lamp after she’d fallen asleep. She had the impression she’d been asleep for hours.
“Ian,” she whispered, running her hand over his chest, her neck prickling with anxiety. He stirred next to her, and panic took the place of her drowsy unease. Ian was definitely in bed next to her. So who had entered the room?
Suddenly the room was flooded with light from the overhead fixture. Francesca blinked in shock at what she saw. Gerard stood just inside the door wearing a dark overcoat and gloves. There was a leather briefcase hanging from his shoulder.
There was a gun in his hand.
“So sorry to interrupt your sleep,” he said, smiling. He came closer to the bed, the weapon trained on Ian.
Chapter Seventeen
Ian rose slowly in the bed, his arms bracing his upper body.
“Ah ah,” Gerard said, waving the gun in his direction. “Stay completely still, please. I’m afraid Mr. Lenault has sustained a serious head injury and is out cold. No one will help you if you try anything. I’m not afraid to use this on you, Ian. In fact,” he paused, his smile widening. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Gerard, what are you doing?” Francesca asked, still stunned at the vision of him in the bedroom at Aurore, and completely unable to compute the fact that he held a gun and had it pointed at Ian’s head.
Gerard gave her a sympathetic glance. When his gaze traveled down over her bare shoulders and the tops of her breasts, however, she shrank back, gathering the sheet at her throat and turning her body in the direction of Ian.
“I actually came for you, Francesca. There was something I discovered completely by accident recently. It alarmed me, especially after what I told you this morning about my concerns for Ian’s sanity,” he said, setting the briefcase on a chair side table. He kept the gun pointed at Ian even as he withdrew a slim computer from the case and flipped open the lid.
“What are you talking about?” Ian growled. Francesca slowly realized that he was drawn tight as a drumhead next to her. She glanced into his face as he stared at Gerard, tracking his movement. More shivers than she’d ever experienced in her life cascaded down her entire body, making her shudder. Ian was looking at Gerard with the type of loathing reserved only for mortal enemies.
“Just this,” Gerard said, tapping his finger on the keyboard, his gaze flickering back and forth rapidly between his task and monitoring Ian. “There’s something Francesca should see. Something you deserve to see,” he said pointedly to her.
“Gerard, are you crazy?” she asked. “Why do you have that gun?”
“He wants to kill us,” Ian said levelly.
Another rush of shivers ran the length of her body.
“You don’t know what I want, Ian,” Gerard said, his mouth slanting, his voice going harsh. “I suppose you thought it was easy, to think of me like James probably does, to consider me like my father—the cheerful buffoon.”
“I never even knew your father,” Ian said. “But I can tell you firsthand, James never thought of you or your father as buffoons.”
Gerard gave a sarcastic bark of laugher. “He certainly thought little enough of me, once you came along, that is. But James never knew me. You never knew what I wanted. Nobody does. That’s the way I work.”
“I suspected enough,” Ian replied, his entire focus on Gerard as he approached the foot of the bed. “Maybe not always, but recently I have.”
“You’re lying,” Gerard said dismissively. “Nobody plays a part better than me.”
“I may have been hopeful that I was wrong about you, and I admittedly didn’t predict this, but I knew something was amiss. I may have been worried that jealousy was clouding my judgment, but I recognize the stench of something foul around you.”
For a moment, Gerard blanched at Ian’s calm certainty, but then his face contorted with anger. His fury seemed to fortify him. “Always so smug. Always so sure of yourself, even when you were a freaky kid. If you’re so damn smart, how come you couldn’t figure me out years ago? You were as blind as Anne and James,” Gerard spat. “James never even guessed the truth about his precious sister’s death.”
/>
“Are you saying you had a part in your parents’ death?” Ian asked.
Gerard just gave him a bland glance.
“If we were blind, it was because we loved you. I regret it,” Ian said. Her heart squeezed in anguish at Ian’s simple statement of fact.
“Oh please. Don’t turn sentimental on me now,” Gerard said scathingly. “You were duped, and have been forever. Might as well just admit it. But I’m not the only one doing the fooling, Ian. I knew I couldn’t rest easy, thinking of Francesca being fooled by you. She may have concerns for your sanity, but I wasn’t shocked that her misplaced feelings for you overruled her judgment when she took off in such a rush to meet you here. As soon as I discovered what you’d done to her, I knew I had to come and prove to her what you really are.”
“What I’d done to her?” Ian asked, scowling.
“Your surveillance of her. I’ve heard her say how much she prizes her privacy. I knew you wouldn’t like it,” he said, turning his attention briefly to Francesca as he hit a button on the computer and turned it, so that Francesca could see the screen, “When you discovered how Ian has been videotaping you.”
Her breast was pressed against Ian’s arm, so she felt the muscle bunch and strain as an image leapt onto the screen. It was her. She watched numbly, half not believing what she was seeing. She lay naked on Ian’s bed in the penthouse, her hand between her thighs, every muscle straining for relief. She looked wretched even in pleasure. A moment later she shook in release.
“No,” Francesca murmured, the reality of what she was watching crashing down on her. Her horror only grew worse when her recorded image turned on her side and crunched into a ball, her body shuddering as she wept. In a flash, she remembered the moment . . . how vulnerable she felt, how miserable and empty and hopeless about a present without Ian . . . the bleakness of a future without him. The idea of somebody watching her at such a moment was too much for her to bear. “Stop it,” she told Gerard desperately. She sat up slightly in the bed, her glance sliding across Ian’s profile.
