Beth Kery - Because We Belong

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.

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.