Beth Kery - Because We Belong

She rubbed her eyes groggily, trying to gather herself. “I could have used it. I feel like I’m waking up after a weeklong sleep.”

He removed a tendril of hair from her cheek, his fingertips lingering to caress. His body stirred against her. She went still in abrupt awareness.

“I know. You were dead to the world when I put the pillow under your head. I’m glad you slept so well,” he murmured. “You needed the rest. I was worried about you.”

Remembered images and sensations from the previous night pummeled her awareness, recollections of her submission to the punishment, of her multiple orgasms as he made love to her with such sweet, ruthless precision, of his total possession . . . of her admission. Deep, satisfied sleep had staved off uncertainty, but it slinked into her awareness now.

Her torso still twisted around, she looked into his gaze cautiously. The early morning light streaming through the sheer curtains seemed to make his cobalt-blue eyes glow. The vision of him filled her consciousness. She blinked.

“I don’t know how you stood it, growing up with all these servants. Didn’t you find it intrusive?” she asked, striving to change the topic from the incendiary one of how his volatile, intimate lovemaking hadn’t only broken her defenses, but also made her sleep like a baby in his arms.

“I found it horribly intrusive when I first came to live here. There was actually more staff then than now. Most of the ones you see here now are temporary, hired for the holiday and visitors,” he said idly, sliding his palm to her sheet-covered hip. He didn’t push her tighter to him, but something about the possessive placement of his hand made her hyperaware of his cock pressing against her ass. More likely she was increasingly focused, however, because he was growing more erect by the second. It felt decadently arousing, lying there in a comfortable, mussed, sun-warmed bed plastered against Ian’s swelling flesh. With a herculean effort, she scooted onto her back and came up on her other hip, facing him this time, their bodies separated by a few inches. She pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts.

“I can imagine,” she said, ignoring his frown at her sudden movement. “You were so independent when you had to take care of your mother as a child. It must have been odd to all of the sudden have people everywhere ready to meet your every whim. Now that I’m here at Belford, I’m starting to appreciate how blatantly bizarre of an alteration it must have been for you.”

His slight scowl remitted when she settled, the soft down pillow pressed between her arm and resting cheek. He must have thought she was going to get up and flee. For a second, she’d thought about it, but as always, the draw of him was too great. She’d always prized those moments in bed with him when he opened up to her, revealing his depths.

“I considered running away,” he said starkly, bracing his head with hand, his bent elbow still on the mattress.

“Where would you have gone?” she murmured.

His expression flattened. “I fantasized about finding my mother’s grave. I couldn’t think about much beyond that.”

Her heart went out to him. She knew that Anne and James had told him that his mother had died when he was a child, hoping to protect his already scarred soul from further witnessing her descent into madness. When Ian had finally discovered the truth about Helen being alive when he was a young man, he hadn’t spoken to his grandparents for a year.

“I can understand how you eventually came around . . . came to love Belford,” she said. “Despite all its grandeur, it’s a beautiful home. Your grandparents have made it that way.”

“Gerard helped,” Ian said. He nodded toward the bedside table behind her. She twisted her chin to look. It was a round table with a lamp. Several silver-framed photos were placed on it. She saw one of a dark-haired, solemn boy standing next to a handsome young man wearing a half grin. Ian and Gerard. They looked to be in a garage and were standing in front of an antique roadster. In another, they both posed next to a motorcycle—the first one they’d rebuilt together, no doubt—and in that one, Ian’s smile was every bit as wide and proud as Gerard’s.

She sensed him studying her when she turned to face him again. “Has Gerard been coming on to you?” he asked.

She blinked, startled by his direct question. In a split second, a dozen different answers sprang into her head. She was well aware that if she told Ian the truth, it could permanently damage a relationship that by all reports, had been a very positive one for him. The last thing he needed at this point in his life was another reason for misery.

“Like I told you, Gerard’s been very kind to me. Solicitous. In fact, between Anne, James, and him, I feel as if they’ve been treating me like I’ve just recovered from a terrible illness,” she said with a small smile. She met his gaze levelly when he examined her closely. Ian scowled and she had the distinct impression he knew she’d sidestepped his question.

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been interested in the same woman,” Ian said.

“Really?”

He shrugged negligently. “The women never mattered that much to me, so it never bothered me until now.” Against her will, warmth flooded her at his words. He was admitting he was jealous because it was her. “Gerard was an orphan, too,” Ian said quietly after a moment. She suppressed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t further pursued the topic of Gerard’s romantic interest in her. “He lost his mother and father when he was barely of age. Officially, Gerard chose to be independent, becoming master of his parents’ home. He was at school most of the time, but when he was ‘home,’ he was usually here at Belford, not Chatham. I guess you could say we learned what it meant to be orphans together.”

“And thanks to Anne and James’s support and love, you both survived the trauma,” she said, turning to face him again.

His dark eyebrows made a flicking motion in acknowledgement of her statement, but he seemed distracted. “What is it?” Francesca asked.

“Nothing. It’s just . . . I was wondering. Were there any more incidents with photographers?”

She stared at him blankly.

“In Chicago. Lin sent me a photograph that was in the Chicago Tribune business section of you at Noble Towers getting off the elevator.”

“Oh,” she said, comprehension rising. “No, that was the only time. Security was a little lax—”

“Because of the Christmas party,” Ian finished for her.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

His eyelids narrowed. “I’m just wondering if that photo had something to do with the attack in Chicago.”

Her eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Maybe some sicko caught sight of you and became obsessed. Or maybe it signaled to someone that you were in a position of power at Noble and they planned a kidnapping. I think it was the latter, given the fact there were at least two men—the man who attacked you and the driver. Two people rarely share a twisted obsession, but will easily team up over greed.”

She came up slowly, bracing herself with her elbow.

“You’ve really been thinking a lot about this, haven’t you?”

“Almost about nothing else,” he admitted grimly.

“And so that really is the reason you came back. The only reason. Because you believed I was in danger.”

He caught the edge to her tone. His expression went carefully blank. “I came back because I was worried about you, yes.”

She just stared at him as her heartbeat began to pound in her ears. “The idea of me being harmed is the only thing that could penetrate your misery in regard to Trevor Gaines,” she stated more than asked.

He didn’t respond, but she saw the flash in his eyes—that one that always hinted at a storm on the horizon.

“What exactly have you been doing since you’ve been gone, Ian?”

There. She’d said it. She couldn’t take it back now, not it or that underlying subtext that accompanied the question. What is more important than me? Than us?

“Ian? What were you doing in France?” she prompted when he didn’t speak, just watched her with those dark-angel eyes.

“I told you,” he said. “I’ve had business there.”

A chill seemed to settle in her heart, but unfortunately, it didn’t numb off the flash of pain she experienced. “I see,” she said quietly. “So you don’t trust me enough—or care enough—to tell me, in other words.”

“Francesca, it’s not that—” he said sharply, but she interrupted him by flipping back the sheet.

“Excuse me,” she murmured before she left the bed and hurried to the bathroom, walking past her discarded clothing on the floor. She’d find a towel to cover her nakedness before she retrieved them. The last thing she wanted to do at that moment was expose herself to Ian any more than she already had.

It was a cool, crisp, windless morning. She went for a long walk with Anne and Elise on the grounds after a light breakfast. She struggled to focus and take part in the conversation as they walked through fields, gardens, and woods, but could tell from the other women’s concerned glances that her distracted, withdrawn state hadn’t gone unnoticed. At Elise’s request, they stopped in the ultramodern stables on the return to the house.

“You’re very quiet this morning,” Anne said privately to Francesca as Elise stroked a russet-colored mare in the distance.

Francesca blinked, rising out of her ruminations. She gave Anne a smile. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the painting.”

“You’ve been thinking a lot about Ian.”

She started. She saw Anne’s sad, knowing smile. “Is he coming around any?” the older lady asked hopefully.

Francesca ground her teeth together at the question. “No. He won’t budge. He’s determined to be miserable.”

Anne sighed. “In my experience, people are seldom determined to be alone and depressed. It’s more that they feel they can’t escape it.”

Regret sliced through her. “I know,” she assured, frustration edging her tone. “But why is he so insistent that Trevor Gaines matters? Ian never even knew him! He’s dead, thank God,” she muttered bitterly under her breath.

Anne put her hand on her forearm. “I know it must be so difficult for you to understand, given your situation with Ian.”

“You’re right,” Francesca said in a burst of honesty. “I’m furious with him for being so stubborn. And are you honestly saying you do understand him?”

“Yes. I don’t agree with him, and I’m extremely worried about his state of mind, but I do understand,” Anne said. She shook her head. “Ian had such a fractured childhood, caring for Helen as if he were an adult, worrying day in and day out he’d be put in an orphanage if the townspeople understood how mad she was, dreading the times when his own mother would cringe away from him in fear. I think that moment when Lucien showed him that photograph of Gaines, and it looked so much like Ian, might have been the worst minute of Ian’s life, but one of the best, too.”

“Best?” Francesca asked, stunned.

“Well not best, perhaps, but . . . significant. He could never make sense of his past. He always tried, but it’s as if Helen’s disorganization, her insanity, made it so hard for him to focus. The questions he used to ask us when he came here as a child: What makes a person go mad? Would he become like his mother? If his father wasn’t schizophrenic, was there a chance he wouldn’t be? Who was his father? Why hadn’t he taken care of Helen?” Anne grimaced in memory. “The concept of an adult looking out for him was so foreign to him, he never even asked once why his father hadn’t taken care of him.”

Francesca closed her eyes to shield her pain.

“He always guessed his father had taken advantage of Helen’s vulnerability,” Francesca said after a moment. “He worried she’d been raped. I don’t understand how finding out all his suspicions were valid—even worse than what he’d suspected—could have been remotely a good thing for him.”

“Because you know how important clarity is to him,” Anne said. “Ian has to be one of the most focused, methodical people I’ve ever known. He prizes seeing clearly above all else, partly I believe, because he was forced at a young age to deal with his mother’s disorganization and irrational behavior. Do you realize how hard it would be, to understand who you are when your only guide is a woman ruled by madness? He coped by making their world as orderly, as controlled, as predictable as he possibly could. But still, so many questions remained for him. His early life—his very identity—still felt blurred to him.”