Because We Belong: A Because You Are Mine Novel (35 page)

“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

F
rancesca 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 scowled. “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

I
an 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.

He wasn’t looking at the mortifying image of her on the screen. His eyes blazed as he stared at Gerard.

“I’ll kill you for this,” Ian said.

Gerard snarled and tapped a finger. Another image leapt onto the screen, this one of her masturbating while tears wet her cheeks, one hand filled with a breast, the other between her thighs, her face tight with anguish. Another, this one not at Ian’s penthouse, but in her suite at Belford Hall.

Another . . .
no
, it couldn’t be.

She saw the image of her face transformed by surrender and bliss as she told Ian she loved him.
Always
. It was the video he’d taken of her on the night before he’d discovered he was Trevor Gaines’s child . . . on the night before he’d left her.

“No,”
she ground out between clenched teeth, lunging toward the computer, her only thought to extinguish the image of herself at such a vulnerable moment. Ian sprung after her, halting her with a hand on her shoulder when Gerard started at her sudden movement. He shoved aside the computer, letting the lid drop, the illicit sounds of their recorded lovemaking continuing. Gerard stepped closer to where they now sat on the bed, the gun extended threateningly.

“I didn’t want to show you, Francesca. But you had to see. I knew you’d want to know he’s not that different from his father—that criminal, Trevor Gaines.”

“How do you know about Gaines’s past?” Francesca asked incredulously.

“He thinks he knows everything,” Ian said quietly. “But he’s wrong.”

“I’m not wrong,” Gerard bit out, his glassy eyes flashing in fury.

“I didn’t take those videos of you, Francesca. Not most of them,” Ian said, not looking at her, but at Gerard. “The one I did, but you knew that. I would never do that to you,” he said steadily through a tense jaw.

“I know that.”

The gun jerked slightly in the air at Francesca’s words.

“What?” Gerard asked, stunned. “Don’t tell me you believe him, just like that?”

“Of course I do,” Francesca whispered, examining Gerard in rising horror. “Ian would never do that to me. He’d never record me without my permission. And Ian would never want to see me that miserable.”

Ian glanced over at her rapidly. She saw the gratitude and relief in his blue eyes. Sadness and compassion flashed through her. He’d worried she’d believe Gerard.

“He was watching you masturbate, you fool. He was getting off on it, spying on you,” Gerard bellowed.

“No. You were,” Francesca spat. She couldn’t stop the shivers of revulsion and horror from rippling through her body at the idea.

Gerard’s face grew red and mottled. Her point-blank refusal to believe Ian was a pervert who was spying on her without her permission and using the footage for sexual titillation seemed to exponentially amplify his rage.

“God you’re a fool. You deserve him,” he said, his mouth twisting. He suddenly shrugged. “I was going to have to kill you anyway, so what does it matter?”

“Then why did you even show it to me?” Francesca asked bitterly.

“Because it would have been all that much sweeter for him to see you betrayed by me before he killed us both. He couldn’t let you live. He knows I’ve left you everything if I die.”

“You did?” Francesca asked numbly. Everything seemed surreal.
Is this how it felt when you realized you were about to die?
She thought she’d be more panicked.

Ian nodded. “With Grandfather as the follow-up. But that works just fine for Gerard, because he’s Grandfather’s heir after my grandmother, if I die. All he has to do is wait, and he’s proven he can be patient. What did you do to Lucien?” Ian switched topics seamlessly. “Is he dead?”

“No, but he will be. I hit him hard enough on the back of the head to fell a horse. When the fire starts later, he’ll never wake up in time to get out.”

Francesca made a choked sound. Why was Ian behaving so calmly? It was eerie to see, in these circumstances.

“You plan to . . . what, make it look as if I finally went over the edge, and shot Francesca and then myself before bringing this place down.” He glanced coldly at the dusty, ancient canopy. His calm manner completely bewildered her, adding a touch of the surreal to unfolding events. “Not a bad idea. I thought of burning the place down a half a dozen times. It’ll go up like a matchstick.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Gerard said levelly. “I brought along some fuel. It’s precisely the type of thing a madman would plan.”

“True,” Ian said. “And I suppose you engineered some kind of alibi, just in case suspicion fell on you?”

“Of course,” Gerard replied. “But it won’t. Everyone at Belford has expressed concern for your mental stability. Even she,” he waved the gun at Francesca. “Had her doubts.”

“There’s only one problem,” Ian said.

Gerard looked both amused and insulted. “There’s no problem,” Gerard assured.

“There is, unfortunately. His name is Edward Shallon. He’s the man I hired to tail your every move. He called me earlier when you flew into Paris, where he followed you.”

Gerard’s expression sagged. “You’re lying,” he said numbly.

“I’m not. Unfortunately, he lost you in traffic. I didn’t realize you knew about Aurore or Trevor Gaines, or I would have expected you here. As things were, I assumed you were in Paris on business.” He glanced at the computer at the foot of the bed. “Obviously, your surveillance equipment was in my room at Belford as well. You figured out my password on my computer. That’s how you got the information about Gaines. I had file upon file of information I’d compiled so far saved on it. And the video of Francesca, which you added to your surveillance tapes in order to convince her I was as sick as Gaines. Or you, as the truth would have it.”

Francesca glanced nervously at Ian when he said the last, hearing the cold fury in his tone.

“But Shallon definitely trailed you to Paris. He’ll be able to testify to that. Do you have an alibi in Paris?” Ian persisted. “It’s my understanding you left Clarisse in Stratham.”

“Clarisse?” Francesca mumbled, confused by the reference.

The color drained from Gerard’s face. He swallowed thickly, his expression nowhere near as confident as it’d been. Hope flickered through Francesca, but then his face darkened again with rage. She’d always thought him handsome, but he looked truly revolting in that moment. A wild thought struck her that his hatred for Ian had been brewing for a long, long time. How had he possibly disguised it so well?

“It doesn’t matter,” Gerard said. “I’ll figure something out. It’s too late to turn back now. I’d continue at this point, only for the pleasure of finally getting rid of you. Bloody nuisance.” He raised the gun. Francesca started at what she saw behind Gerard, but Ian tightened his hold on her shoulder, sending a desperate, silent command for silence. It felt like her own heart was going to choke her, it seemed to swell to take up her entire chest cavity.

“One other thing,” Ian said as Gerard took aim at Ian’s head, and Francesca’s lungs burned in gripping terror.

“What?” Gerard asked derisively, clearly done talking.

“You may have disabled Lucien, but I have more than one brother.”

Gerard’s vaguely puzzled glance turned to wide-eyed shock when Kam Reardon jerked his head back in a chokehold at the same moment that he wrenched the arm that held the gun, pointing it away from Ian and Francesca. Ian leapt from the bed so fast it was like he’d been ejected from a coiled spring. She followed him instinctively, unwilling to just sit there in bed, stunned. Ian rushed the struggling pair, but Gerard wasn’t defeated yet. He jabbed his elbow into Kam’s solar plexus hard and threw his head back viciously. The two men were close in height, Kam being a few inches taller. The back of Gerard’s head smashed into his face, jarring him. Kam grunted and stumbled back, dazed, losing his hold, crimson blood shooting from his nose. Ian plowed into Gerard, reaching for Gerard’s gun arm to restrain it. But Gerard had already been lifting it to an upward angle. They grunted as they vied for control.

The gun went off. Ian and Gerard stood as if frozen in some kind of bizarre dance. She stood there next to them, horrified. She gave a muffled scream when the gun fell from Gerard’s hand and he fell to his knees. Ian backed away slightly and she saw the small circle of blood on Gerard’s white shirt in the area of his abdomen. He wore a blank expression, his brown eyes wide. Ian ducked to retrieve the weapon, but Gerard was closer to it.

She saw it as if in slow motion. Fortified by years of hatred and a desire for revenge, Gerard must have had one last surge of adrenaline in him. Gerard whipped the gun away before Ian could grab it, grunting in pain. He jerked the weapon wildly in Ian’s direction, but he paused for what must have been the smallest fraction of a second. A malicious glint fired in Gerard’s face as he met Ian’s stare.