BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE

PART VIII

BECAUSE I AM YOURS

Beth Kery

Because I Am Yours Copyright © 2012 by Beth Kery

The right of Beth Kery to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by arrangement with InterMix Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Cover Image © Masterfile

First published in this Ebook edition by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 4722 0065 5

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

An Hachette UK Company

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.headline.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Also by Beth Kery

About the Book

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Special Excerpt

Beth Kery lives in Chicago where she juggles the demands of her career, her love of the city and the arts and a busy family life. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. She is the bestselling author of over thirty books and novellas. She also writes under the pen name Bethany Kane. You can read more about Beth, her books and upcoming projects at www.bethkery.com or follow her on Twitter @bethkery.

Also by Beth Kery

Wicked Burn

Daring Time

Sweet Restraint

Paradise Rules

Release

Explosive

One Night of Passion series writing as Bethany Kane

Addicted To You

Bound To You (e-novella)

Captured By You (e-novella)

Exposed To You

Secrets are exposed, love is challenged, and the future is compromised, when Francesca and Ian face an inevitable decision that will change their lives for ever as international bestselling author Beth Kery’s Because You Are Mine comes to a spellbinding conclusion…

Because You Are Mine, Part Eight

Because I Am Yours

From the moment Ian and Francesca first met, the attraction was mutual – a purely, exquisitely physical charge that ignited between them. It couldn’t be ignored – only indulged, evolving into a bond of pleasurable subjugation. But Francesca’s open sensuality left her wanting more. Getting it from a man as mysterious and resolute as Ian was a challenge she never anticipated.

Francesca knows there’s only one way for them to move forward – to follow Ian to London and show him that she doesn’t want him to suffer alone. But when Ian’s past and inner torment is revealed, he experiences a nearly unbearable volcanic mix of emotions for the woman who has dared to love him, despite his inner demons. After exposing Francesca to the limits of his anguish, he wonders if he’s lost her for ever. Can he bend enough to compromise to true intimacy…and something called love?

Chapter Fifteen

Davie offered to come with her to London, but Francesca flatly refused. When she’d told Davie about her plans, she’d been purposefully vague and misleading, saying that she’d learned from Mrs. Hanson that Ian was having a family crisis in London and she’d decided to go there to offer support.

In truth, she didn’t want Davie to realize she’d undertaken such a foolish plan without having a clue as to what she was going to do when she alighted from the plane at Heathrow. The only thing she knew is that whatever Ian was doing in London, it caused him anguish, and that he’d chosen to protect others in his life from that pain.

He would be furious at her, if, by some miracle, she ever actually located him. Yet she couldn’t stand the idea of him suffering alone in any way, and she had become utterly convinced that these “emergency” visits to London related to the spiritual demons that plagued him.

Besides, if what was in London was destined to destroy whatever they might have together in the future, wasn’t it best just to find out now instead of delaying the inevitable?

Ian had called her during the flight from O’Hare to Heathrow, she noticed as she deplaned. This had been what she’d hoped for, considering she really had no plan of action once she arrived in London. However, when she tried to return his call, she got his voice mail.

Discouraged, she lingered in the airport, exchanging currency, picking up her luggage, hoping for some kind of miracle revelation as to the location of Ian’s apartment or his whereabouts. When nothing came to her, and she still hadn’t successfully made contact with Ian, she got into a taxi and told the driver the only place she’d ever connected to Ian and his London trips.

“The Genomics Research and Treatment Institute,” she told the driver, referring to the hospital and research facility for schizophrenia that she’d read about on Ian’s tablet. She recalled how Dr. Epstein had mentioned “the Institute.” Could she be referring to the Genomics Research and Treatment Institute? What other clues did she have to his possible location?

Forty minutes later, the cabdriver pulled up to the ultramodern glass-enclosed entrance to the facility, which was housed on beautifully landscaped grounds within a wooded park. In the far distance, she glimpsed several pairs of people walking in a lush green meadow, one of the pair always wearing white. Were they nurses or attendants with patients?

Uncertainty hit her like a blow now that she sat there in the back of the cab. What in the world was she doing? What madness had made her jump on a plane and come to a hospital in a remote part of London, where she knew no one and had no reason to be present?

The driver was giving her a questioning look.

“Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked him nervously as she handed him payment.

“I can wait ten minutes, tops,” he said brusquely.

“Thank you,” she said. If this trip ended up being a dead end, she’d know soon enough.

She blinked when she entered the lobby a moment later. It wasn’t precisely like the Noble Enterprises lobby in Chicago, but there were similarities—the elegant, warm woods, pink-beige marble, and neutral-toned furnishings.

“May I help you?” a young woman sitting behind a circular desk asked her when she approached.

For a few seconds, Francesca just stood there speechless. Then something hit her brain, and she said the thought before she’d fully processed it.

“Yes. I’d like to see Dr. Epstein, please.”

Her heart seized in her chest for a split second that stretched surreally long as she stared at the woman’s blank expression.

“Certainly. Who shall I tell Dr. Epstein is visiting?”

She exhaled in a burst of relief and immediately experienced a subsequent wave of anxiety. “Francesca Arno. I’m a friend of Ian Noble’s.”

The woman’s eyes widened at that.

“Right away Ms. Arno,” she said, picking up the phone.

She waited on pins and needles as the receptionist spoke to several people, the last Dr. Epstein herself. What could the doctor be thinking, being told that a complete stranger who said she was a friend of Ian Noble had shown up at the Institute asking for her? Unfortunately, Francesca couldn’t glean much from the one-sided conversation she overheard. The receptionist set down the phone.

“Dr. Epstein says she’ll come to the lobby to get you herself. May I offer you any refreshment while you wait?”

“No, thank you,” Francesca said. She didn’t think anything would stay in her stomach, it was frothing so much. She pointed at a comfortable seating area just behind her. “I’ll just sit and wait.”

The receptionist nodded once cordially and returned to her paperwork. It was five minutes before Dr. Epstein appeared in the lobby—five long, tortuous minutes. Francesca shot up from her chair like she was on springs when she recognized the doctor, now wearing a white lab coat over a sophisticated dark green dress. An elegant woman walked next to her, her clothing casual but obviously of the highest quality and taste. Francesca got a fleeting impression that although Dr. Epstein’s companion was older—in her seventies, perhaps—she was brimming with vibrant health.

“Francesca Arno?” Dr. Epstein queried as she approached. She extended her hand, and Francesca took it.

“Yes, I’m sorry to pounce on you unexpectedly like this, but—”

“Any friend of Ian’s is welcome.” The doctor’s tone was warm, but was that curiosity or puzzlement she saw shadow her features as she studied Francesca. “I understand you haven’t yet met Ian’s grandmother? Francesca Arno, the Countess Stratham, Anne Noble.”

Francesca glanced in shock at the attractive elderly woman. For a horrified moment, she wondered if she was supposed to bow or something to a countess? Surely there was some etiquette that she didn’t know, and her gauche Americanness would be showcased right from the start?

Thank goodness the countess noticed her discomfort before she began to stutter like a fool.

“Please, call me Anne,” Ian’s grandmother said warmly, extending her hand. Francesca looked into eyes that immediately called Ian to mind—cobalt blue, sharp, and incisive.

“I guess I did come to the right place,” Francesca muttered as she shook Anne’s soft hand.

“You weren’t sure?” Anne asked.

“No, not entirely. I was . . . looking for Ian.”

“Of course you were,” Anne said matter-of-factly, ratcheting up Francesca’s anxiety and confusion. “He mentioned your name to me, although I didn’t realize you’d be coming to London. Ian is out for a walk on the grounds at present, so I came to greet you in his stead.”

“So Ian is here?” Francesca asked, her voice ringing with shock.

Anne and Dr. Epstein exchanged a glance.

“You didn’t know he was?” Anne asked.

Francesca experienced a sinking sensation as she shook her head to the negative.

“But you must have known about my daughter being here, at the very least?”

“Your . . . daughter?” Francesca asked, her head spinning. The glass-enclosed entrance suddenly seemed too bright, casting a surreal brilliance onto everything. Hadn’t Mrs. Hanson said that Ian’s grandparents had only one child?

“Yes, my daughter, Helen. Ian’s mother. Ian is taking a walk with her right now. Thanks to Julia’s and the Institute’s hard work,” Anne gave a warm sideways glance to the doctor, “Helen is having an amazingly lucid period. James, Ian, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

“We must take things one day at a time . . . one hour,” Dr. Epstein cautioned.

Both women glanced at Francesca. Anne reached out and touched her elbow. “You’re very pale, dear. I think it would be best if we let this young lady sit down somewhere comfortable, don’t you Dr. Epstein?”

“Absolutely. We’ll take her to my office. I have some orange juice there; perhaps you’re blood sugar is a bit low? Should I send for food?”

“No . . . no, I’m all right. Ian’s mother is still alive?” Francesca croaked, her brain fixated on that single piece of news.

A shadow passed across Anne’s face. “Yes. Today she is.”

“But Mrs. Hanson . . . she told me Ian’s mother had died years ago.”

Anne sighed. “Yes, that is what Eleanor believes.” It took Francesca a few seconds due to her bewilderment to realize Eleanor was Mrs. Hanson’s given name. “James and I made the decision once Helen was returned home to England that it would be perhaps . . . best? Easiest?” Anne mused, her expression heartbreakingly sad as she tried to find the right words for a decision made decades ago, during a time of stress and anxiety. “For those who had known and loved Helen before she became ill to remember her like she was rather than to see how this cursed disease had ravaged her, taking away her identity . . . her very soul. Perhaps it was wrong of us to do. Perhaps it wasn’t. Ian certainly didn’t agree with our decision.”

“Well . . . he was only ten years old when Helen was returned to England, isn’t that right?” Francesca asked.

“Nearly,” Anne replied. “But we didn’t tell Ian his mother was alive and being cared for in an institution in East Sussex until he was twenty—old enough to comprehend why we’d made the decision in order to protect him. Ian, like almost everyone else, thought his mother had died.”

The silence rang in Francesca’s ears.

“Ian must have been furious when he found out,” she said before she could edit herself.

“Oh, he was,” Anne said dryly, not taken aback in the slightest by Francesca’s bluntness. “It was not a good time for Ian, James, and me. Ian barely spoke to us for almost a year while he was in school in the states. But we did eventually come to terms, and our relationship was mended.” She waved her hand in a vague sense around the elegant entryway. “And then Ian had this facility built, and the three of us worked together to develop it, finding some common ground. The Institute has been a place of healing for our relationship with our grandson as well as for Helen,” she said, giving Dr. Epstein a grateful smile, even though her eyes remained sad.

Anne seemed to rally and tightened her hold on Francesca’s elbow, urging her to walk alongside her. “I can see that you’re shocked by this news. I think it’d be best if Ian was the one to talk with you further about the matter, given the . . . unusual circumstances.”

“Ian and Helen will arrive at the morning room following their walk,” Dr. Epstein mentioned to Anne.

“We’ll go there, then,” Anne told Francesca, suddenly brisk and purposeful, as they walked to a bank of elevators. “James is already there. I’ll be able to introduce you to Ian’s grandfather.”

Too stunned to argue, Francesca followed along, her brain seemingly vibrating with the news that Helen Noble was still alive and apparently being treated at this facility, her heart squeezing in anguish for Ian.

They took the elevator to a lower level. When the door opened, Dr. Epstein bid them good-bye, saying she must return to her lab.

“She’s a brilliant scientist,” Anne told Francesca confidentially as they made their way down a hallway that ended in a light-filled, many-windowed room. A few patients shuffled past them, casting curious glances at Francesca. “Now that the human genome has been decoded, Dr. Epstein and her colleagues have been using the information to come up with better medications for schizophrenia. Ian funds all of her work. It’s truly been groundbreaking. A medication that Dr. Epstein developed has been recently approved by the European Medicines Agency, and she recommended Helen be put on it. There have been some ups and downs with the treatment so far, but just this week, there have been some dramatic improvements. Ian is so happy. Helen often didn’t recognize Ian, her father, and me, her psychosis was so severe, but now . . . what a difference. She’s even been allowed a pass to go out onto the grounds, something that hasn’t been possible ever since she first arrived here six years ago.”

“That’s wonderful,” Francesca said, glancing around as they entered what Dr. Epstein had called the morning room. Many large windows overlooked a lovely wooded area and meadow. Patients, attendants, and perhaps family members were scattered across the comfortable room, some playing board games, others talking and enjoying the view. Francesca supposed the patients here were some of the luckier ones whose symptoms were more controlled. They appeared to be very high functioning and moved in and out of the room of their own volition, without attendants escorting them.

A robust-looking older man stood when they approached him. His tall, fit form reminded her of Ian.

“Francesca Arno, I’d like you to meet my husband, James,” Anne said.

“A pleasure to meet you,” James said, taking her hand. “Ian mentioned your name to us yesterday—something we took note of, as it’s a rarity for him to mention a woman, much to Anne’s and my disappointment,” James said, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “We were with Dr. Epstein when she got the call that you were here. We didn’t realize you would be coming to England.”

“That’s because I came on the spur of the moment.”

“Ian doesn’t know you’re here?” James asked, looking politely confused.

“No,” Francesca said. Perhaps James noticed her anxiety over that fact, because he patted her shoulder kindly, his gaze transferring to the windows overlooking the meadow. “Well, he’ll know soon enough. I see Helen and him approaching. Dear God—”

James’s fingers tightened momentarily on her shoulder. Francesca had glanced out the window when he’d spoken, following James’s gaze. She started as well at what she saw. Ian was walking next to a fragile-looking woman wearing a blue dress that hung loosely on her painfully thin figure. As James had been speaking, the woman had abruptly swung around, her fist striking Ian in the abdomen. She’d stumbled and started to fall, but Ian had caught her against him. His attempts to stabilize his mother were interrupted, however, by Helen’s struggling as if she suddenly feared for her own life at Ian’s hands.

“Call Dr. Epstein,” James said sharply to one of the attendants who had also noticed what was happening out the window. James and three other attendants started for the door that led to the meadow in order to assist Ian.

“Oh no. Not again,” Anne said in a strangled voice as she and Francesca watched, horrified. Helen flailed wildly as Ian tried to subdue her. Her opened hand struck him on the jaw. Francesca’s heart seemed to spasm in her chest when she saw the stark, distilled anguish on his handsome face as he received the blow. How many times had Ian seen his mother behave in this way? How many times had his loving, kind woman disappeared only to be replaced by this violent, frightening stranger? A piercing wail could now be heard in the morning room—the sound of Helen Noble’s fear and her returned madness.

“Wait,” Anne said in a thick voice, grabbing Francesca’s elbow, halting her when she started toward Ian, unable to stand still while he was at his most vulnerable. “They have her now.”

She and Anne stood side by side, watching miserably as the three attendants expertly lifted and restrained the struggling psychotic woman and began to carry her writhing form toward the facility. When they passed Francesca and Anne in the morning room, moving rapidly toward the hallway, she caught her first glimpse of Helen’s face—her teeth bared in a grimace, spittle running down her chin, her blue eyes huge and glazed, seeming to focus on some terrifying nightmare that only she could see.

No, Francesca thought. That wasn’t Helen Noble. Not really.

A nurse ran down the hallway toward the attendants, Dr. Epstein trailing behind her at a rapid pace. The attendants carefully laid the shrieking woman on the floor, and the nurse gave her an injection.

Anne began to cry silently as she watched them carry her daughter away. Francesca put her arm around the older woman’s shoulder, at a loss for what to say, still in a state of shock herself.

“Ian,” she exclaimed when she glanced around and saw him and his grandfather walking in their direction. She’d never seen him so pale. His facial muscles were rigid.

His glance at her was glacial.

“How dare you come here,” he said as he approached her, his lips barely moving, his mouth and jaw were drawn so tight. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. She’d never seen him this way . . . so anguished, so furious . . . so exposed. She couldn’t think of what to say. He’d never forgive her for coming here uninvited, for seeing him at what was perhaps one of the most vulnerable moments of his life.

“Ian—”

But he cut her off by merely walking past her in the direction where they’d taken his mother. James gave his wife a sad glance and followed his grandson.

Anne took her hand and led her to a chair. She sat down next to her, all the vibrancy Francesca had noticed upon first meeting her seeming to have drained away.

“Don’t blame Ian,” Anne said hollowly. “Helen and he had been sharing a wonderful morning and now . . . all ripped away again. He’s upset, obviously.”

“I can understand why,” Francesca replied. “I shouldn’t have come. I had no idea—”

Anne patted her forearm distractedly. “It’s a ravaging disease. Brutal. It’s been hard on all of us, but the hardest by far for Ian. From an early age, he had no choice but to be Helen’s sole caretaker. He told me after he’d lived with us for a while and started to open up that he had to constantly monitor her, for fear her madness would be exposed to the townspeople in too flagrant of a fashion, and they’d take her away to the hospital and send him to an orphanage. He lived in daily, hourly fear of her harming herself or of being separated from her. He barely attended school like the other children, because he needed to look out for Helen. The town where Helen ended up—we, to this day, don’t know how or why she ended up there—was very remote and a bit backward. I have little doubt some kind of child protection agency would have been contacted about Ian’s poor school attendance if it’d been more centrally located. As it was, he managed to keep Helen’s illness a good secret, learning where Helen kept her reserve of money and managing it frugally, taking up odd jobs around the village, running errands, and once it was learned that he had a genius for fixing electronic things, repairing small appliances. He did all their shopping and housekeeping, cooking for them, making their little cottage as neat as he was able and securing it with various safety measures, given Helen’s odd behaviors and occasional violence during her psychotic episodes . . . such as the one you just witnessed,” Anne mused wearily. She gave a heavy sigh. “All that, and when we finally discovered Helen and him, Ian hadn’t yet passed his tenth birthday.”

Francesca shuddered with silent emotion. No wonder he was so controlling. Oh God, that poor little boy. How lonely he must have been. How brutal for him to experience moments of love and connection during his mother’s lucid periods, only to have them vanish from him when psychosis hit . . . just as it had today. Suddenly, she recalled that expression he wore once in a while that tore at her so deeply and bewildered her so much, the look of someone who not only had been abandoned and lost but who knew with certainty he would eventually be rejected again.

“I’m so sorry, Anne,” Francesca said, feeling the inadequacy—the shabby thinness—of her words.

“Dr. Epstein warned us not to be overly optimistic. But it’s so hard not to hope, and Helen was making such progress. We saw her, ever so briefly, talked to her—her, our Helen. Dear, sweet Helen.” She sighed heavily. “Well. There are other treatments that are still in the works. Perhaps . . . some day . . .”

Francesca couldn’t help but feel, however, given the barren quality of Anne’s tone and the slight grayish cast to her skin, that she was very close to giving up hope of ever seeing her daughter happy and well. She wondered how many times the Nobles had seen some improvement in Helen, only to have their hopes dashed again and again as madness reared its head.

Francesca stood up shakily several minutes later when Ian reentered the morning room. “She’s asleep,” Ian told his grandmother, his gaze ominously avoiding Francesca. “Julia has pulled the medication. Mom will go back on the regime she took before. At least it kept her stable.”

“If stable means sedated, I suppose you’re right,” Anne said.

Ian’s mouth twisted slightly at that. “We have no other choice. At least she wasn’t harming herself.” He looked at Francesca. She cringed inwardly when she saw the ice glittering in his eyes. “We’re leaving,” he said. “I’ve called my pilot, and he’s getting the plane ready for departure to Chicago.”

“All right,” Francesca said. She’d be able to try and explain why she’d come once they were aboard the plane. She’d apologize for horning in where she wasn’t wanted. Maybe she could make him understand . . .

. . . although every time she thought of how vulnerable he’d been . . . how raw, she quailed, dreading he could never forgive her.

***

He hardly spoke to her in the car ride to the airport, just stared straight ahead as he drove, his knuckles white as he gripped the leather-bound wheel. When she tried to break the silence with an apology, he cut her off briskly.

“How did you know where I was?”

“I’ve seen you several times with Dr. Epstein . . . once in Paris and another time at the penthouse. I heard her mention ‘the Institute,’ and Mrs. Hanson told me that she was a doctor.”

He flashed a glance in her direction. “That’s not an explanation, Francesca.”

She shrank in the passenger seat. “I . . . I noticed that you’d visited the Genomics Research and Treatment Institute Web site several times while I was borrowing your tablet to study for the driver’s test.” Guilt made her wilt further when she noticed his outraged glance.

“You checked my history?”

“Yes,” she admitted miserably. “I’m sorry. I was curious . . . especially about where you’d run off to so abruptly. Then Jacob told me you never took him to London, and I started connecting the dots.”

“Well, I could never accuse you of being stupid,” he grated out, his hands tightening on the wheel. “You must be so proud of your detective skills.”

“I’m not. I’m miserable. I’m so sorry, Ian.”

He said nothing, but his mouth was strained and his skin looked especially pale next to the contrast of his dark hair. His silence effectively stopped her from any more communications until they boarded the plane.

The pilot’s voice came through the intercom, saying they had clearance to take off.

“Sit down and buckle up for takeoff,” he said tersely, nodding toward the lounger where she usually sat. “But once we’re airborne, I want you in the bedroom.”

Her mouth fell open at that. Something in his tone told her exactly why he wanted her in the bedroom. She buckled her seat belt with trembling fingers. “Ian, it’s not going to make you feel better to try and control me because you feel so . . .”

She trailed off when she saw his eyes flash in barely subdued fury. “You’re wrong. It’s going to make me feel fantastic to turn your ass red and ride you hard. You’ve been on the pill long enough now. I’m going to fuck you raw and come so deep in you, I’ll be spilling out of you for days.”

She flinched, not because of his crudeness—under different circumstances, his raunchy talk would have aroused her. But it wasn’t another circumstance. He’d said what he’d said to intentionally hurt her for having the temerity to see him at his weakest.

“You wanted to gape into my private world, fine. Just remember that you might not like what you see,” he said quietly.

“Nothing I saw today made me think less of you,” she declared hotly. “If anything, it made me understand you about a hundred times better . . . it made me love you about a thousand times more.”

His expression flattened. The small remaining vestiges of color drained from his face. Her heart throbbed in her ears in the strained silence that followed. Why didn’t he speak? She barely noticed when the plane left the ground. She couldn’t believe she’d just blurted out the truth she’d been trying to hide from him.

The silence stretched for an eternity, seemingly made worse by the pressure on her ears as they gained altitude.

“You are such a child,” he finally said, tight-lipped. “I told you from the very beginning this was purely a sexual relationship.”

“Yes, but I thought . . . over the past few weeks, it seemed as if things had been changing,” she said weakly. Her heart plummeted when he shook his head slowly, his stare never leaving her face. He unbuckled his seat belt. “I want to possess you, Francesca. Dominate you. See that stubborn streak in you submit to pleasure . . . to me. That’s what I offered you. You insisted upon interfering in my world, so now you can stop deluding yourself with a girl’s fantasies. That’s all I can offer you,” he said, pointing in the direction of the bedroom. “Now go in there, take off all of your clothes, and wait for me.”

For several seconds, she just stared at him, still reeling from the wound his words had inflicted. She was about to refuse when she thought of the stark, concentrated pain on his face when his mother had begun to randomly attack him. His wounds were so much deeper than hers. Perhaps it would help him, to feel in control after experiencing so much helplessness and pain? Didn’t people act out their anguish all the time during sex, using the intense physical act to ground themselves in the midst of chaotic emotion?

Yes. She could be there for Ian in that way. She understood that his anger stemmed from his pain at being so exposed . . . so vulnerable.

She unbuckled her seat belt slowly.

“All right. But I’m only doing it because I really have fallen in love with you. And I’m not a naive little girl. I think you love me in return and are just too proud and stubborn—and hurt about what happened with your mother today—to have recognized it.”

A spasm of pain flickered across his rugged features ever so fleetingly, and was gone. He said nothing as she stood and headed to the bedroom.

Chapter Sixteen

Ian entered the bedroom ten minutes later. His body immediately tightened with lust when he saw her sitting nude at the corner of the bed. She’d piled her hair onto her head and fastened the rich glory of it somehow. Her pink nipples were mouthwateringly erect, and not, he suspected, from arousal, but from chill. He’d known there was no robe in the bathroom. It’d been wrong of him to make her wait while she was exposed. Nevertheless, something about her pale, naked body struck him as potently vulnerable and almost painfully arousing.

“Stand up,” he said briskly, refusing to soften at the exquisite vision of her. Would he ever meet a more beautiful woman?

Would he ever be affected by another female the way he had been by Francesca? A volcanic brew of emotion had begun boiling in him when she’d blurted out those incendiary words.

“It made me love you about a thousand times more.”

It’d been too much for him. He’d already been slain by the news James had given him just after the attendants had carried away his raving mother, that Francesca was in the morning room . . .

. . . that Francesca had witnessed everything that had happened.

He experienced an untenable need to punish her for seeing not only his mother when she was so vulnerable, but himself. He’d spent a good portion of his life guarding Helen from prying, horrified gazes. Somehow, knowing Francesca had witnessed the full extent of his mother’s madness felt exponentially more painful than a stranger’s observance of it.

He went over to the bureau and unlocked a cabinet. A jolt of excitement went though him when he saw her eyes widen as she stared at what he carried a moment later. “Yes. I keep only a few items here on the plane, and not the ones you’re used to. We’ll start with your punishment and then move onto other ways to make you squirm.”

Her cheeks turned pink at that, but he couldn’t tell if her reaction was from arousal or anger at his words. But he did want to see her squirm, he thought as he picked up the black elastic flesh plumper. He wanted to see Francesca squirming in regret and undiluted lust; he wanted her to beg him through those pink lips that haunted his dreams . . .

. . . he wanted to hear her say she loved him again.

The thought was banished almost as quickly as he had it. He maneuvered a padded chest that sat at the end of the bed toward the center of the room.

“Step into this,” he told her a few seconds later, approaching her, holding the elastic restraining strap. Standing this close, he could the smell clean, fruity fragrance of her shampoo. “Hold onto my shoulders to steady yourself.”

“What is it?” He tried to ignore how soft but sure her grip felt through his dress shirt.

“It’s a band that will bind your legs while I punish you, restricting you. It might be a little uncomfortable, but it will give me great pleasure.”

“I don’t see how,” she said, her face grimacing as he stretched the black, five-inch-wide, circular elastic band, pulling it up until it rested just below her buttocks, binding her thighs tight and plumping her ass over the edge, displaying firm flesh for his hand and paddle. He reached out and molded a buttock in his palm. His cock jerked.

“Now do you see?” he asked her pointedly, reluctantly letting go of her plumped ass. The elastic binder achieved the equivalent of what a bustier did for breasts, fully showcasing her ass, even as it bound her.

“Ian!” she exclaimed in surprise when he suddenly lifted her into the air, carrying her toward the padded bench.

“I have to carry you, with your legs bound,” he said, lowering her knees onto the cushion. “Stay on your knees for a moment. Don’t move.” When he returned, he carried a pair of handcuffs. Unlike the soft leather ones he typically used with her, given her sensitive skin, these were metal. “Wrists at your lower back,” he said. He frowned after he’d fastened her hands at her back. “I don’t want you struggling against those cuffs, Francesca. You might bruise yourself.”

“O . . . Okay,” he heard her say. He met her stare, looking into dark, velvety orbs. A wild surge of something went through him—lust, raw need, anger—when he recognized what shone in her eyes.

“Why do you look at me with so much trust?” he bit out.

“Because I do trust you.”

“You’re a fool.” He touched her elbow, guiding her. “Stay on your knees. Bend over. Expose your ass. Rest your breasts against your knees. Press your forehead to the cushion and keep it there throughout your punishment. Do not look at me, or I will punish you harder.” She truly was a nymph; her eyes possessed some kind of magic over him. If he looked into them enough, he’d soon start to believe in what he saw there shining like a steady, unwavering beacon.

He went and got the paddle. He knew why her eyes had gone wide upon seeing it a moment ago. It was made of varnished wood, long and narrow—only three inches wide. It was a more serious tool for corporal punishment than the black leather paddle he preferred for her delicate skin.

But he was determined to make her pay for her impulsive decision to follow him to London. He was determined to make her pay for igniting this storm of feeling inside him.

He barely restrained a groan as he approached and took in the vision of her. The elastic binder displayed her shapely ass to cock-jerking effect. He caressed one cheek, then the other, lifting the buttocks fully out of the restraint so that he might touch and punish every precious bit of the firm, fulsome flesh.

She started when he landed the paddle on the sweet lower curve of her ass, but he sensed that she held back her cry. Her restraint pleased him.

Just as everything about her did . . .

. . . everything but her impulsiveness; everything but her foolishness and innocence in believing she loves me.

Everything about her . . . especially her impulsiveness, and an innocent wisdom that should be cherished, not scorned.

He paddled her three times in quick succession, obliterating the confusing thoughts from his brain. His cock lurched in the increasingly confining material of his pants. Yes, this is what he needed. Lust would guide him through the bewildering brew of emotion he experienced.

Lust always did.

She couldn’t suppress her cry this time, and he paused, soothing the satiny heating ass cheeks with his fingertips.

“I can’t believe you came to London,” he said, his voice vibrating with anger.

“I’d have gone farther to find you.”

He paused, his expression stiffening when he heard the quiver in her voice.

“Are you crying?” he asked sharply, studying the back of her head.

“No.”

“Are you in undue pain?”

“No.”

He tightened his hold on the paddle and swatted her ass twice. “This is the first time I’ve punished you without the clitoral stimulant. Perhaps the discomfort is trumping the pleasure,” he said, swinging the paddle back and landing it, snarling at the erotic sight of the blow reverberating through her firm, plump flesh. He grabbed his aching cock through his pants, wincing.

“No, it’s not that,” he heard her say in a muffled voice. She jumped slightly in her kneeling position when he paddled her again.

Curious as to what she meant, he pushed his fingers into the tight crevice of her thighs just above the binding restraint. Warm wetness coated his forefinger. Without making a remark, he withdrew his hand and whacked her ass several more times.

He would never truly control her, because she slayed him every time he tried.

Her ass was red and hot to the touch by the time he’d finished with her. She panted softly, and her cheeks were stained pink when he lifted her from the chest and placed her on her feet. He knelt before her, peeling the black elastic binder off her thighs and then down over her feet.

He unfastened the cuffs. She made a sound of surprise when he looped the elastic binder around her neck and began to work the wide strap down over her breasts. It wasn’t easy, but by the time he’d finished, her beautiful flushed breasts were plumped and displayed just as erotically over the top of the thick binder as her ass had been. He grunted in approval and cuffed her wrists again at her back.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him uncertainly when he picked up a black leather flogger. It was a supple one, meant more to enliven and sting the flesh than whip and cause pain. He understood the flicker of fear in her tone. He’d never used a flogger on her before.

“Your punishment isn’t finished yet. This is a flogger.” He held it up for her to examine the thin, foot-long, supple straps attached to a leather-bound handle. “Don’t look so fearful . . . it looks more ominous than it is. It’s safe enough, in my hand. It will cause a nice sting and awaken your nerves.”

Her eyes went huge when he lifted it, but she didn’t protest when he brought the leather straps down on the side of a pale breast. “There. Is that too much?” he asked gruffly, pausing to caress and gently squeeze the firm globe. When she didn’t answer, he looked into her face. Her expression was a little helpless, but her eyes glowed with arousal. She shook her head, apparently speechless.

He hid his grim smile and brought down the flogger on her other breast, then back to the other, watching in fascination as the pale globes deepened in color to a pale pink and the nipples grew tight and hard, making his mouth water.

“Do they sting?” he asked her a moment later after he set down the flogger and massaged her breasts in his hands.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. You deserve it,” he murmured. He pinched gently at both of her nipples and she shuddered in pleasure. “If I weren’t so careful of you, I’d be giving you much worse right now for what you dared.”

“For falling in love with you?”

He paused in his lewd squeezing of her breasts and met her stare. She was panting heavier now, causing her flesh to rise and fall subtly in his molding palms.

“No. For nosing into my business and prying into my life.”

For seeing my mother at her most vulnerable . . . for seeing my pain.

“I told you I was sorry, Ian,” she said through flushed pink lips.

“I don’t think you are,” he said, suddenly furious again. He leaned over and seized her lush mouth in a ravaging kiss. All he could think about was burying his cock in her tight, wet pussy and losing himself to the forgetfulness of pure, slamming pleasure. Her breath was warm and sweet as she panted against his lips a moment later.

“You aren’t going to change my mind,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes as if to prevent the rush of feeling that went through him. His desperation mounted.

“We’ll see,” he said, turning her so that he could unfasten her cuffs, his gaze lingering on her still-red ass. He’d paddled her harder than he ever had before, he realized with a stab of regret, but she hadn’t complained, even when he’d given her the chance. And the abundant moisture he’d felt between her thighs had told him loud and clear her arousal was greater than her discomfort.

“Turn around and bend over at the end of the bed. Put your hands on the footboard to brace yourself.”

She followed his instructions without hesitation, leaning over the bed, bent over while standing. She didn’t look around when he approached her from behind, although he sensed her focused curiosity and anxiety.

Sweet, trusting Francesca.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “This time I will see you submit to pleasure, not pain.”

He turned on the Rabbit vibrator to a low setting, peeled back her buttocks, exposing the entrance to her pussy. His cock jumped, throbbing furiously when he saw how slick the tiny hole was, how glistening her sex lips and entire perineum were from her arousal.

He pushed the vibrator into her vagina all the way. She gasped, and then jumped when he turned on the rabbit ears and they wiggled energetically over her clitoris.

“Oh!”

“Nice?” he asked as he drew the vibrator out of her slit and pushed it back in. Her pussy clung around the silicone like a little sucking mouth. God, he couldn’t wait to get into her . . .

. . . but he would wait. He’d see Francesca submit first . . . beg him. Why he needed that like he did his next breath of air remained a puzzle to him, but he couldn’t dampen the potent desire.

He manipulated her with the vibrator, stroking her pussy, letting the rabbit ears do their work on her clit, listening all the while to the sound of her gasps and whimpers and cries . . . gauging. When her breathing became ragged, he turned off the clitoral vibrators and just pleasured her pussy lips and vagina with the sex toy.

“Oh, please,” she moaned after a moment. He knew she’d been about to climax before, and that while the vibrator in her pussy was pleasurable, she wanted the rabbit ears on her clit.

“Your clit is too sensitive. You’ll make things end too quickly.”

“Please, Ian,” she repeated, sounding mindless as she firmed her hold on the footboard and began to pump her hips, riding the vibrator.

He smacked her bottom hard enough to sting. She paused in the frantic grinding of her hips.

“Who is in charge here?” he asked quietly.

“You,” she whispered after a pregnant pause.

“Then hold your ass still,” he ordered, before he began to slide the vibrator in and out of her again, letting the rotating beads and ribbed shaft do their work. Her moan a moment later sounded harsh and desperate. He relented and turned the motor to a higher vibration.

“Ohhhh,” she mewled. “Oh, Ian . . . let me move.”

“Stay still,” he ordered, plunging the vibrator deep into her until he felt her heat and moisture against the ridge of his forefinger where he held the handle. His vision narrowed to the intensely erotic image of the silicone shaft sliding in and out of her tight slit. Her moans and aroused, frustrated whimpers filled his ears. He tormented her, keeping her right on the edge, relishing in his power.

“Please . . . let me come,” she begged, her plea bursting out of her throat. He paused in his thrusting motion when he heard the strain in her breaking voice. He yearned to deny her. He longed to give her everything she ever asked for . . . and more.

The conflict warring inside him was too much. He removed the vibrator and tossed it onto the bed.

“Stand,” he said, arousal making him sound harsher than he intended. The color in her cheeks had deepened when he spun her toward him. A sheen of perspiration shone on her brow and upper lip. She was beyond beautiful. He burrowed the ridge of his forefinger into the drenched crevice between her labia. She gasped, but he kept his hand motionless.

“If you want to come, show me,” he demanded.

She looked up at him, her eyes glazed with intense arousal, but he saw her confusion.

“You may come against my hand, but you have to show me you want it. I’m not moving.”

She bit at a trembling lower lip, and he almost gave in. Almost.

“Go on,” he prompted.

She shut her eyes, as if to protect herself from his gaze, and began to thrust her hips against his finger. A moan fell past her lips. He watched, enthralled, keeping his hand, finger, and arm firm, but not stroking her, making her work for it.

“That’s right. Show me that you have no shame. Show me that you can submit to desire,” he rasped. She bobbed her hips more stringently, hopping up and down against his hand . . . so desperate for her pleasure. When a small, frustrated cry popped from her throat, he almost relented.

Almost.

“Open your eyes, Francesca. Look at me,” he demanded, his voice breaking through her wild quest for relief.

She opened her eyelids sluggishly as she continued to ride his stationary hand. He saw her desperation, her utter helplessness, her fear that her need was greater than even her pride.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “You’re more beautiful to me right now than you’ve ever been. Now come against my hand.”

He flexed his biceps, applying pressure, giving her the relief she so desperately needed and deserved. He shut his eyes briefly at the delicious sensation of her warm juices anointing his fingers as she climaxed.

A moment later, he spun her and managed to get out a couple words from his lust-dazed brain, telling her to bend over and brace herself against the footboard again. When he finally drove his cock into her clinging liquid heat, his eyes sprang wide. It was like entering a woman his first time—no, immeasurably better—a whole new arena of life, a fresh, intimidatingly powerful experience.

He lost himself in her, everything seeming to go black for a period of time as pleasure and need swamped him, pummeling at his consciousness. He bucked against her like a wild man, his lungs burning, cock aching, muscles clenching . . . soul tearing.

“Francesca,” he grated out, sounding angry, even though he wasn’t anymore. He opened his hands around her delicate ribcage and pulled her up so that she stood before him, her upper body slightly bent forward. He continued to fuck her, feeling her heart beating rapidly in his hands, the shudders quaking her flesh as she climaxed, the muscular walls of her pussy clamping and convulsing around his pillaging cock.

Without thinking, he pushed her upper body down again, his hands falling to her hips, fucking her with short, hard thrusts, his teeth bared in a rictus of blinding pleasure. He jerked her against him, his muscles clenching so tight he lifted her feet off the floor.

Orgasm ripped through him with the power of a lightning strike. He groaned in agonized bliss as he began to come at Francesca’s farthest reaches. A sharp, primal need overwhelmed him, even in the midst of his crisis—a need to mark her, to utterly posses her . . . make her his.

He jerked his steaming, glistening cock out of the heaven of her pussy and pumped, ejaculating on her ass and her back, until his essence pooled on her skin.

He just stood there for a full minute after the cyclonic storm had passed, his cock gripped tight in his hand, gasping for air, and staring down at the powerful image of her nude body dripping with his semen. He thought of how ruthlessly he’d punished her, of how he’d forced her to swallow her pride and bring herself off on his hand, of how he’d fucked her like a madman.

Regret flickered into his awareness. Then it roared.

He helped her to stand, then went to the bathroom to retrieve a towel. He gently dried her, then unbuttoned his dress shirt and draped it over her nakedness. It’d been wrong of him to expose her so greatly.

He met her solemn stare with supreme effort as he buttoned up the shirt, covering soft skin that he wanted to linger over . . . to cherish. He opened his mouth to speak, but what could he say? His actions had been harsh and selfish and probably unforgivable.

He’d intended to prove her foolishness for believing she’d fallen in love, but now that he’d likely succeeded, he felt nothing but a bone-deep regret.

Unable to stand her dark-eyed gaze a moment longer, he turned and walked out of the bedroom.

* * *

Ten days later, Davie stood in her closet wearing a tuxedo and whisking hangers along the rack while Francesca looked on listlessly from where she sat at the edge of her bed.

“What about this?” Davie asked, coming out of the closet holding a dress.

She blinked when she saw that he held the boho dress she’d so foolishly worn to her celebratory dinner at Fusion several months ago—the night she’d first met Ian. It seemed impossible that her life had changed so drastically in such a short span of time. It seemed unlikely that she’d fallen so profoundly in love, and then lost at it with Francesca-like expertise. But then when she considered everything, it made depressing sense.

Davie noticed her less-than-enthusiastic appraisal of the dress. He held it up and examined it. “What? It’s cute.”

“I’m not going, Davie,” she said, her voice sounding hoarse from not being used.

“Yes, you are,” Davie said, giving her an uncharacteristic fierce glance. “You’re not going to hole up in your room for your entire Thanksgiving vacation.”

“Why not? It’s my vacation,” she said dully, picking up a decorative pillow and picking at the tassel. “I haven’t bailed on anything I was supposed to do. Don’t I get a chance to veg out in my room, if I want to?”

“So . . . the truth finally comes out. Francesca Arno is the very type of girl that she used to despise, who sulked and refused to eat after breaking up with a guy.”

“Ian and I didn’t break up. We just haven’t spoken in a week a half.” And we’re likely never going to speak again. She thought of the way he’d looked before he’d left her standing in the plane’s bedroom suite—his regret, his bewilderment . . . his hopelessness. She believed he had something to offer her beyond sex, but he didn’t. And wasn’t it a two-way venture? What did it matter if she had all the faith in the world, yet he doubted? “Besides,” she continued, “breaking up implies that we were together to begin with, and we weren’t. Not in any traditional sense of the word.”

“Have you even tried to contact him?” Davie said, hanging the dress in her bathroom.

“No. I can still feel his fury. It’s like it’s emanating all the way from the Chicago River to our house.”

“It’s not fury,” she thought she heard her friend mutter under his breath.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s your imagination, ’Ces. Why don’t you call him?”

“No. It wouldn’t matter.”

Davie sighed. “Both of you are so stubborn. You can’t engage in a standoff forever.”

“I’m not in a standoff.”

“Oh, I see. You’ve given up entirely, then.”

For the first time in days, anger flickered into her hopelessness at Davie’s words. She shot him an irritated glance and he grinned, holding out his hand.

“Come on. Justin and Caden are waiting. Plus, we have a surprise for you.”

She exhaled in frustration, but stood. “I don’t want to be cheered up. And even if I did want to be, why would you guys drag me to a stupid singles meet-up—a black-tie event, no less—in order to do it? You knew I didn’t have anything good to wear. I hate these events. You used to, as well.”

“I’ve changed my mind. This is for a good cause,” he said as she passed him on the way to the bathroom.

“What, saving my ravaged heart?”

“I’d settle for getting you out of this house,” Davie replied, unaffected by her dripping sarcasm.

* * *

The singles black-tie event was at a new, trendy club on North Wabash, downtown. Caden and Justin were in rare form in the car on the way to it, Friday-night buoyant and brashly handsome in their newly purchased tuxes. Francesca, on the other hand, was already ready to leave, and they hadn’t even gotten there yet. Horrible, wonderful memories had started to barrage her when she put on the boho dress and recalled in vivid detail the last time she’d worn it.

The woman wears the clothes, Francesca. Not the other way around. That’s the first lesson I’ll teach you.

She shivered at the memory of Ian’s rough, quiet voice. How she missed him. It was like an open wound deep inside her, a place she couldn’t reach in order to soothe.

Davie was having trouble finding parking near their destination, and they’d been circling around for a while now. She looked out of the car window as they crossed the Chicago River and saw the Noble Enterprises building towering a few blocks away.

Was she really the same naive young woman who had attended her celebratory cocktail party there, she who’d been so brittle, so uncertain . . . so defiant lest anyone would notice? And was it really she who had first entered Ian’s penthouse, her enthrallment associated more with the enigmatic man who stood beside her than the sight of his magnificent penthouse and display of art . . . the stunning view.

“They’re alive, the buildings . . . some more than others. I mean they seem like it. I’ve always thought so. Each one of them has a soul. At night, especially . . . I can feel it.”

“I know you can. That’s why I chose your painting.”

“Not because of perfectly straight lines and precise reproductions?”

“No. Not because of that.”

Her eyes burned at the potent memory. He had seen her so well, even then, seen things in her she hadn’t. He’d cherished those things, cultivated her strengths until . . .

. . . no. The answer was no. She was no longer that same young woman.

Davie parked in a paid garage on Wacker Drive, south of the river, farther east than their desired destination. Francesca shivered uncontrollably when the river wind sliced straight through her thin wool coat as they crossed the bridge. Davie noticed and took her under his arm. Justin got into the spirit and put his arm around her from the other side, hunkering around her, their bodies helping to protect. Caden, too, had to join in on the gallantry, much to her amusement, hooking arms with Justin to help block her from the brutal, east lake wind. They’d bundled her so close between them that as they guided her down the sidewalk once they cleared the river and bridge, Francesca stumbled.

“You guys, I can’t see!”

“But you’re warm, aren’t you?” Justin asked jovially.

“Yes, but . . .”

Suddenly Justin and Caden were pushing her into a revolving glass door. Her eyes sprang wide when she realized where they’d maneuvered her. She balked, but Justin was pushing from behind her and she had no choice but to go forward into the Noble Enterprises lobby.

She stared around, aghast to find herself in Ian’s territory so suddenly . . . so undesirably.

Several dozen faces looked around at her ungraceful arrival. She saw Lin’s familiar, smiling face, and Lucien’s and Zoe’s . . . and—she gasped—Anne and James Noble beamed at her from a distance. That elegant man with the salt-and-pepper hair that held up his champagne glass to her in a silent salute, wasn’t that Monsieur Garrond, the curator of the Musee de St. Germain whom Ian had introduced her to in Paris? No. It couldn’t be.

Her eyes widened in sheer disbelief when she recognized her parents standing awkwardly next to a fern, her father tight-lipped, but her mother doing her best to attempt a warm smile.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” she whispered to Justin when he stepped up next to her. A panic rose in her chest at the surreal scene before her. Justin kissed her warmly on the cheek.

“It’s a surprise. Look, Francesca. It’s all for you. Congratulations.” She gaped at where he pointed, the once-empty swath of wall that dominated the lobby. Her painting had been framed and mounted. It looked awesome . . . perfect . . .

Justin gently tilted her jaw when she couldn’t stop gawping at the centerpiece, urging her to see what else was in the room. The entire lobby had been filled with her paintings, each displayed on easels, all of them professionally mounted and framed. People were strolling around in black-tie attire, sipping champagne, and seemingly admiring her work. A small string quartet played Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2.

She glanced from Justin to Davie, slain. Davie gave her a reassuring smile. “Ian planned it,” he said quietly. “Some of the most affluent collectors, renowned art experts and critics, museum curators and gallery owners from around the globe are here tonight. This party is in your honor, Francesca . . . a chance for the world to see just how talented you really are.”

She cringed inwardly. Oh my God. All those people looking at my work? But no one appeared to be laughing or snidely incredulous, at least, she thought as she checked several faces anxiously.

“I don’t understand. Did Ian plan this before London?” she asked.

“No. He contacted me a day or two after your return from London and asked me to help him arrange things. I had all of the paintings mounted and framed. We’ve even managed to acquire four more of your paintings to add to the collection. Ian can’t wait to show them to you.”

A sudden prescience struck her, and she looked into the crowd.

Ian stood next to his grandparents, looking somber, regal, and devastatingly gorgeous in a classic black tux with bow tie. His gaze was alight as it pinned her . . . soulful. Only Francesca, who had grown to know him so well, saw the shadow of anxiety ghosting features that would have looked cold and impassive to other eyes.

She thought she’d had a heart attack. She clasped her chest.

“Why’s he done this?” she asked Davie under her breath.

“I think it’s his way of saying he’s sorry. Some men send flowers, Ian—”

“Sends the world,” Francesca whispered through numb lips. Ian started toward her, and she followed in kind in his direction, moving like a sleepwalker toward the man she couldn’t take her eyes off of, and whom she craved more than anything she had in her life.

“Hello,” he said quietly when they met.

“Hi. This is quite a surprise,” Francesca managed, her heart seemingly crowding out everything else in her rib cage, squeezing her lungs. She realized distantly that probably dozens of stares were on them, but she only could focus on the warmth—the wary hope—in Ian’s.

“Did I have it hung to your satisfaction?” he asked, and she knew he meant the painting.

“Yes. It’s perfect.”

Her heart did its usual jump when he smiled. He held up his hands. Recognizing the familiar gesture, she unbuttoned her coat and turned. When he slid her coat off her arms she spun toward him, chin high, spine straight—yes, even in the boho dress. His gaze ran over her fleetingly and she saw he recognized the dress. His smile reached all the way to his eyes. He took two glasses of champagne from a waiter who was passing and murmured a request before handing the man her coat.

A moment later, he handed her a flute and stepped closer. Francesca had the impression that the other party participants tried to focus their attention back on their own conversations, giving them a little privacy. Ian touched his flute to hers.

“To you, Francesca. May you have everything you deserve in life, because there is no one so deserving.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, taking a reluctant sip, unsure as to how she should be feeling in these bewildering circumstances.

“Will you spend this evening with me, both now,” he glanced around the crowded lobby, “and later? There are some things I’d like to tell you in private. I hope you’ll listen.”

Her throat tightened when she guessed at what some of those ‘things’ might be. She suddenly doubted she could endure the next few hours, wondering what he’d say. A tiny part of her said she should refuse, the part that wanted to keep her heart safe. But then she looked into his eyes, and her decision was made.

“Yes. I’ll listen.”

He smiled, took her hand and escorted her into the crowd.

* * *

It was past midnight by the time Ian opened the door to his suite for her and she walked into the subtly lit, elegant room.

“I thought maybe I’d never be in this bedroom again,” she said breathlessly, glancing around, cherishing little details of Ian’s private sanctuary as she never had before. They’d been together all night, Ian never leaving her side, Francesca highly aware of him as he introduced her to movers and shakers from the art world or showed her the last four of her paintings that had been recovered, or they conversed with friends and family. All the while, she wondered what he was thinking . . . what he would say to her when they were alone in private.

She’d been courted by three renowned galleries for future collections and asked to do a showing at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. She’d looked to Ian for that, since he was the owner of her current paintings, and he’d told her point-blank it was up to her to decide. Four collectors had made bids on her paintings, although Ian had refused to sell, point-blank. To top it all off, one of the offers had been made in the company of her father, whose incredulity at the price mentioned had made her father turn pale. In general, Ian’s effect on both of her parents had been quite marked. They’d been so tongue-tied and eager to please in his presence that she was quite sure Ian must have thought her a liar about all she’d told him about them. Francesca was a little annoyed by this unexpected servile bent in their character, but mostly just relieved they behaved quiet pleasantly all evening.

Ian shut the door of his bedroom suite and leaned against it. She faced him.

“Thank you, Ian,” she said breathlessly. “I felt like the belle of the ball tonight.”

“I’m just glad that you came.”

“I doubt I would have if Davie and the others hadn’t tricked me. I didn’t think you would want to see me after London . . . after it all. You were so angry.”

“I was, yes. I haven’t been for a while, though.”

“No?” she asked in a hushed tone.

He shook his head, never breaking her stare. His mouth tightened. “No. But I also couldn’t quite figure out just what the hell I was. It didn’t take me long to know, but then I had to find a way to tell you in a situation where you couldn’t run away from me too easily. I apologize for the subterfuge tonight.” His mouth twisted as though he’d eaten something bitter. “I’m sorry, in general.”

She started in surprise at his harsh declaration. “For which part?”

“For all of it. From the first thing I said to you that was unappreciative and callous to the last selfish thing I’ve done. I’m sorry, Francesca.”

She swallowed thickly, unable to meet his stare for some reason. Even though she knew exchanges like this were necessary, given everything that had happened between them, it still seemed so secondary compared to what she’d seen in London.

“How is your mother?” she asked quietly.

“Stabilized,” he said, still leaning against the door. He exhaled after a few seconds and took a step toward her. She couldn’t look away as he removed his tuxedo jacket and laid it on the back of a chair, mesmerized by his male beauty. “There isn’t much hope that she’ll improve on this particular medication regime, but she won’t get worse. That’s something, at least.”

“Yes. It is. I know you don’t want my pity, Ian. I understand that. I didn’t go to London to offer you sympathy.”

“Then why did you?” he said, his quiet voice lending to the subdued, full moment.

“To offer you my support. I knew that whatever was in London pained you, even though I had no idea what I’d find there. I just wanted to be there for you. That’s all.”

He gave a small smile. “You make it seem like that’s such a small throwaway thing. No . . . I made it seem that way. I took your act of caring and kindness and threw it in your face,” he said bluntly, his jaw rigid.

“I know it made you feel exposed. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve had to protect her for a long time,” he said suddenly, following a long pause.

“I know. Anne told me,” understanding he referred to his mother.

He frowned. “It was grandmother who told me I was being a selfish, stubborn ass. She wouldn’t speak to me for a week when I confessed some of the things I’d said to you for showing up at the Institute. She’s never done that before,” he said, his brow furrowed as if he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to make of his loving, very elegant grandmother calling him an ass.

Her heart stuttered in grateful surprise at the news of Anne’s support. “I wasn’t there to judge. Even if I were, there would have been nothing to put on trial but a very sick woman and a son who loves her and hopes for her, despite everything.”

He jerked his chin, staring at the far wall.

“I treated you unfairly . . . wrongly. I like to punish you for sexual excitement, but I never truly want to hurt you. But that day on the plane—I did. Not completely, but part of me wanted to—”

“Make me hurt like you were hurting?”

His gaze flashed guiltily to her face. “Yes.”

“I understood, Ian,” she said softly. “It wasn’t what happened in the plane’s bedroom suite that upset me. You didn’t hurt me, and you must know I took pleasure in it. It was that you walked away from me afterward.”

She sensed his rising tension.

“I was ashamed. Of her. Of you seeing her. Of myself for still having that damn feeling rise up in me of not wanting others to see her. Why should it matter now?” he bit out.

The bitter words seemed to hang in the air between them, an expelled toxin, secret words that he’d carried deep inside his spirit since he was a child, perhaps the most crucial, powerful words he’d ever said to her . . . to anyone.

Francesca walked over to him and put her arms around his waist, resting her cheek on his white shirt. Inhaling his unique male scent, she hugged tight. She clenched her eyelids shut as emotion washed over her. She understood how difficult this was for him to say these things, a man who ritualistically guarded against vulnerability, who remained stoic and strong because he believed he had no other choice.

“I love you,” she said.

He captured her chin with his fingers and lifted her face to his. He brushed his finger over her jaw. She noticed his frown as he studied her.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“I didn’t give myself permission to fall in love with you.”

She laughed softly when she absorbed his starkly spoken words. So like him, to say something like that. Love swelled in her breast, so great and so pure, it verged on pain. “You can’t control everything, Ian, least of all this. Does that mean that you do? Love me?” she asked hesitantly.

“I think I might have loved you even before we met, since I first realized it was you who captured me on canvas . . . you who treated my pain with such a knowing hand. It shamed me, what you saw, but I couldn’t help but want you to see more of me. You’re too good for me,” he declared roughly. “And I’m sure I don’t deserve you. But you’re mine, Francesca. And for what it’s worth . . . I’m yours. For as long as you’ll have me.”

The words rattled and rocked her world, setting her off balance. But then his mouth settled on hers, and she found her center.

Read on for a bonus excerpt from Wicked Burn, available soon from Headline

One

If someone had told her when her alarm clock went off that morning that in a few hours she’d be calmly given the odds of her continued survival, Joy would have rolled her eyes and laughed her fears into the corners of her consciousness.

If someone had warned her that later that afternoon she’d be going down on a gorgeous stranger, she’d have told that person they were certifiably insane.

Wilkie shouted her name as she raced through the din of the makeup room. A photo shoot for movie posters and other promotional materials was scheduled today. The special effects makeup department was roaring in high gear. Wilkie James looked too busy to chat, so Joy merely slowed her rapid pace. Her friend held an airbrush and was staring intently at a female’s right breast as he turned it pale green, his shaggy, dark brown hair just inches away from a nipple.

“He’s in his lab, angsting for your talent. ‘I need Joy,’ he keeps moaning,” Wilkie imitated, adding a tremble to Seth Hightower’s gruff baritone for comic effect. “He’s been trying to reach you for hours. Where’ve you been, beautiful?”

“Don’t I have a life, or was that all my imagination?” Joy asked, grinning.

“You may have had a life before we began production on Maritime, but that’s all just a dream now, honey,” Wilkie drawled as he moved to the left breast, and his model yawned widely.

That’s all just a dream now.

Wilkie’s careless words struck her with frightening precision. She shrugged off the shadow of dread that hovered at the corners of her consciousness and walked on, willing the energy from her surroundings to distract her . . .

Numb her.

The drama and excitement of a Hollywood film set wasn’t Joy’s typical work world. As an art teacher for gifted high school students and a painter, she preferred the atmosphere of the classroom or her quiet, sunlit studio at home. Even the clamor and bustle of a Hollywood makeup department couldn’t fully penetrate her dread, however.

Not today.

She felt as if she were moving through a dream . . . something like the brilliant, surreal underwater world film director Joshua Cabot was creating for United Studios’s latest blockbuster,Maritime.

She willfully ignored the uncomfortable pounding in her chest and flung open the door to Seth Hightower’s office-studio. She needed to see the familiar, loved, bold-featured face of her uncle; he was the only true family member she still possessed. Seth glanced around at the sound of her tool kit rolling over the threshold behind her.

“There you are!”

“I didn’t get the messages until a half an hour ago. I was at the doctor. I came as quickly as I could.”

Seth looked contrite. “I know. Ignore me. I’m in a bear of a mood.”

Joy smiled. Her uncle was a bear of a man in stature, perhaps, but hardly in temperament. At least not with Joy, he wasn’t. He tossed a few tubes of paint and glue into his kit before he straightened, swept down on her from his great height and gave her a quick, affectionate kiss, his shoulder-length dark hair flicking against her cheek. “You’re not even officially part of my staff and I snap at you like an intern. Your mother would have my hide.” Seth focused on her face, his brows drawing together in a V shape, giving him an expression that anyone besides Joy would have found intimidating. “I know you had to take off school a few days last week. Is that why you were at the doctor? How’s the cough?”

“Better,” Joy said as she glanced around the meticulously organized room. As the makeup department head, Seth claimed the right to privacy. His office-studio was like the still eye of a storm. “I don’t have pneumonia,” she reported honestly. “What’s the emergency?”

“It’s coming at me from all directions. Our leading lady decided to drink some Coke spiked with vodka without a straw. The latex is lifting around her mouth,” Seth said, referring to the actress’s prosthetic mask. “She’s throwing a fit and holing up in her trailer, refusing to let anyone touch her up but me. Meantime, I’m running behind on the tattoos.”

Joy gave her uncle a humorous glance of sympathy. “There’s a cost to being the best.”

“Anybody on my staff could reglue Ellie, you know that. She’s just throwing her weight around by asking for me personally.”

“She must think you’re the best at a few things.”

“As if I’d ever give that little shrew the chance to find out,” Seth muttered with a disgusted, distracted air. Joy’s heart went out to him. This had to be one of the most hectic days of his life. “Anyway, that only leaves you who can do the last tattoo—”

Seth paused when someone rapped and the door opened several inches. Her breath caught at what she saw.

Joy had helped Seth with projects for Hightower Special Effects on several occasions, and she’d assisted him with the illustrations for his initial proposal to win the contract from United Studios and director John Cabot for Maritime. As such, she was used to Seth’s fantastical art concept for the film. She wasn’t so immune, however, that she didn’t stare in wonder at the bizarrely beautiful head of the part man, part exotic sea creature that appeared around the edge of the door.

Her uncle was going to have an Academy Award sitting on his mantel for sure, she thought with a mixture of admiration and pride.

“Hey, Tommy told me I should stop by,” the walking piece of art said.

“Perfect timing,” Seth mumbled. He pointed at an illustration and some scribbled notes on the table. “Here’s what I need, Joy. You’re the only one I trust to do it. Go ahead and touch him up after you finish the tattoo. I won’t have time before the photo shoot. Wish me luck,” he said, glancing at both of them.

“Luck. You’ll need it,” the marine man said, his lips twitching subtly.

Seth snorted in agreement and rolled his kit behind him toward the door. The man, who was probably one of dozens of extras, stepped into the room so that Seth could pass. Joy noticed distractedly that her uncle and the aqua-colored male were nearly the same height—an oddity, as her uncle was usually the tallest man in the room. The two men nodded to each other before Seth shut the door behind him. Joy lifted her kit to the table and began to extract her paints, brushes and tattoo pens.

“Give me just a minute, and I’ll be right with you,” she said as she checked Seth’s notes and began to mix her colors.

He didn’t respond, but Joy was too focused on her preparation to mind. Actors and extras reacted to prosthetic and makeup application across a spectrum that ran from stoicism to whining to outright acting out. Hours and hours of sitting or standing motionless were often required while an artist created his magic. Maritime was a particular challenge. Over a hundred actors and extras required waterproof prosthetics and full-body makeup in order to transform them into exotic sea creatures. Only dozens might be required to be in full makeup and costume during a given day of shooting, but Cabot had decided he wanted the entire cast in full regalia to give the grand scope of the movie for the photo shoot.

Joy was working up a sweat as she mixed her paints. She walked over to the unit air conditioner and turned it on high, the sound of the fan muting the cacophony of voices, music and movement just feet away from Seth’s office-studio.

“So you’re Seth’s niece?”

She paused in the action of removing her hoodie. His deep, resonant voice had taken her by surprise. She met his gaze for the first time and blinked. His eyes were a clear aquamarine. The elaborate foam latex prosthetic he wore on the upper half of his face and the sublime makeup application only added to their brilliance. His gaze struck her as startlingly alert. Compared to this man, other people’s stares were those of sleepwalkers.

She had the strangest sensation seeing his eyes peering through the elaborate costume he wore, as if she’d caught a glimpse of his soul through the beautiful artifice. Seth’s makeup, which subtly alluded to the emerging humanity of the sea creature, only added to the impression. The body paints included brilliant blues and greens, but flesh colors rippled and swirled over chiseled muscle and bone as well, creating a stunning living landscape. He was beyond beautiful, the subtle shadowing wrought by the air- and paintbrushes highlighting every ridge and smooth, hard plane of his long body.

His gaze flickered downward.

She became aware that she was holding both sides of her cotton hoodie wide open in preparation to remove it. Her breasts felt tight suddenly, straining against the fabric of her bra and a thin layer of her cotton tank top. Her nipples beaded, as if he’d reached out and brushed a finger over the sensitive flesh instead of just glancing at her.

She blushed, her reaction surprising her. Joy was an artist, and she’d long ago grown accustomed to partial and full nudity. She didn’t work full-time in the movie industry, but she’d had sufficient experience, thanks to Seth. Gorgeous models and want-to-be actors were the norm in Hollywood, as commonly found as a cornstalk on a July day in Indiana.

She whipped off her hoodie and tossed it on the table.

“Yes. I’m Joy.” She nodded to a spot in front of the table and reached for a chair, all brisk business.

“You’re the art teacher.”

She met his stare and was once again snared.

“Seth told me,” he said quietly, shapely blue-and-white tinted lips barely moving.

“We better get started or you’ll miss the shoot,” she murmured, discomfited for some reason by the idea of Seth sharing even the smallest details of her life with this stranger.

He walked to the spot she’d indicated. Joy sat and rolled her chair directly in front of him, her face situated in front of his abdomen. Without another word, she picked up a tattoo marker and began to outline the design in Seth’s illustration on her human canvas. Seth had altered the tattoo art somewhat from his original proposal. The brilliant starburst through rippling water was bolder and much more intricate than his original design. Joy liked the change.

She never looked at his face once while she worked, but she was highly aware of him. Her knuckles brushed occasionally against warm, dense flesh. Her nose was just inches from his body. The alcohol base from the body paint filtered into her nose. Beneath it, she smelled the musk of his skin like a subtle, living thread twining through the chemical artifice. The fragrance was potent somehow, sending a loud, clear message of male virility to some ancient part of her brain.

Only a stretchy, seaweed-like boxer-brief costume covered his genitals. Joy couldn’t help but be conscious of the fact that her chin was mere inches from the fullness behind the flimsy material. She worked steadily, but a dull, pleasurable ache began to grow at her core.

A light glaze of perspiration had dampened her brow and upper lip by the time she leaned back. She glanced up at him, a calm—entirely fake—expression plastered on her face.

“You’ll have to lower your briefs enough for me to make the transition look natural,” she said.

The air conditioner made a loud, chugging sound and then resumed its typical hum. She saw his throat convulse. Was he as uncomfortable with this situation as she was? He held her stare with those striking eyes and moved his hands, folding down the seaweed brief and exposing the stretch of skin just above his genitals.

She lifted her tattoo pen and paused.

Seth had used the airbrush below the brief, but not in a thorough manner. Joy could see several patches of naked, golden skin along with a smattering of light brown hair. Pubic hair was usually several shades darker than hair on the head, which meant he must be blond beneath the beautiful headpiece affixed to his head.

Below that strip of skin, the flimsy material barely contained a virile package. The vision was nearly as striking as that of the man’s eyes peering through the elaborate mask. What was it about that stretch of skin below the belly and just above a man’s cock that spoke of sensitivity . . . vulnerability?

His arm muscles clenched tight. He kept his hands on the material of the briefs, as if he wanted to be prepared to jerk the garment back into place at the slightest provocation. Joy didn’t know whether to feel compassion for him or annoyance. He was the six-foot-four-inch tower of brawn here, not her. She was hardly going to attack him. She disliked this intimate aspect of her work, but the human body wasn’t something that could be ignored when it came to art. He was just a backdrop, not any different from the canvases in her studio.

Her expression hardened at the thought. She leaned forward and continued her design, the tip of her marker slipping across firm flesh. She was doing fine for the next minute or so until she noticed the brief was stretching and expanding to contain his erection. His cock rode along his left thigh. The column of it was clearly delineated beneath the insubstantial garment.

Shit.

She glanced up at him anxiously. He was looking down at her. She’d known he would be. She’d sensed his stare on the crown of her head the entire time. He closed his eyes briefly. She sensed his regret even through his half mask.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a gruff voice. “Just . . . just ignore it.”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she looked away.

How mortifying.

It wasn’t uncommon for a model to occasionally experience an unwanted erection during a makeup application, but the evidence had never been so . . . close to her before. Nor had it ever been so appealing.

For a few dreadful seconds, she felt like she couldn’t expand her lungs. They finally released, however, and she reached for a pot of paint.

“Do you want to take a quick break?” she asked, striving to keep her voice even.

“No. Go ahead.” His voice sounded so strained, she glanced up at him in concern. She saw the rigidness of his angular jaw. His eyes blazed through the prosthetic mask.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said.

“I can take it if you can.”

She wasn’t quite sure she could take it. Things had gotten warm and wet between her thighs. She looked down at her lap and used her forearm to wipe at the thin layer of perspiration on her upper lip. Her heartbeat segued from a throb to a roar in her ears. She swirled her paint—twice right, once left, twice right, once left—the familiar task of moving the brush through the thick liquid striking her as rich for some reason . . . sensual.

She lifted the brush to his skin and began to paint. It was a little like working while a ravenous lion raced toward you in the periphery of your vision. She was acutely aware of the power in him, the incipient energy, like a giant spring that was being held down tight with effort. She worked steadily for the next half hour or so in the area of his lower abdomen, creating the impossible—a flare of fire in water.

The realization hit her as she moved to the lower left quadrant of her design that she should have told him he could release the garment until she began to work in that area again. He’d kept his hands on the sides of the brief the whole time, however, exposing that strip of sensitive skin. Something about his pose excited her for some reason. It was as if he were frozen in the moment of offering himself to her . . .

Giving her a taste.

Her cheeks burned at the uncontrollable thought. She leaned away from him, feeling the loss of his subtle, radiant body heat on her cheeks and lips. She exchanged her paints and went back to work.

What was wrong with her? She’d never had this reaction before while she’d been working. Her skin felt flushed and prickly with awareness. There seemed to be some strange, inexplicable connection between where her paintbrush stroked his taut skin and her clit.

Why did she want to hold on to that brilliant flare of lust that the stranger’s fierce eyes and hard cock promised? Maybe because you were told today that life and a future aren’t a certainty, that both of those things were as ephemeral, as difficult to hold on to as an unexpected lightning strike of desire?

Joy didn’t want to let go. She wanted . . . no, she needed to hang on.

The air around them seemed to have taken on a weight. She forced her lungs to move as she exchanged brushes and reached for a paint she’d deposited at the far end of the table. When she touched him with the wet tip just below his hip bone, his taut abdomen muscle twitched. She glanced up and saw a small smile on his mouth.

“It’s colder than the other ones,” he said.

“I’m sorry. The paint was sitting right in front of the air conditioner.”

“It’s okay.”

His mouth moved again, but no sound came from his throat. Some instinct inside her told her this man didn’t typically become speechless.

She felt a surge of liquid heat at her sex.

She swallowed with difficulty and resumed painting, the feeling of moving in a dream only amplifying. How long would this surreal sensation last? When would the reality of her diagnosis of cancer really set in? Her grim future seemed impossible to grasp as she sat there, flushed with arousal, painting a brilliant tattoo on a beautiful, virile male she’d never seen before that moment, and would probably never see again.

“It’s finished,” she murmured minutes later as she placed the solvent that set the paint on the table. From the corner of her vision, she saw that he didn’t move his hands, keeping his briefs lowered. The fullness behind the seaweed design hadn’t dissipated during the past forty-five minutes.

“Joy.”

She glanced up slowly, both hesitant and anticipatory at once at the sound of his hoarse voice.

“I hope you don’t think I’m a complete jackass for saying this, but that had to be the most erotic thing I’ve experienced since Peggy Barton let me touch her breasts when I was fourteen years old.”

She just stared at him in amazement for a second before she laughed. The strangling sexual tension fractured slightly, letting her breathe. He smiled, full-out and brilliant.

Her laughter ceased.

Oh my God, she thought, stunned. Her sunburst tattoo would be considered dim next to that smile.

Suddenly, unaccountably, fear broke over her. She stared at the very image of vibrant life. What would it be like to be snuffed out of existence, no longer able to see, to hear . . . to feel?

Her gaze sunk over him. She absorbed his image hungrily, drinking it like an elixir that vanquished terror. His cock jerked in the briefs when her glance landed on it.

The realization struck her that if she wanted to touch him, if she wanted to stretch this strange, powerful moment, she was going to have to make the move. Who knew? Maybe she wouldn’t even be here this time next year.

It felt nowhere near as anxiety-provoking as she would have thought it would to touch him. In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.

She thrilled to the heaviness of his cock beneath the cloth. Arousal spiked through her, and those life-altering words—primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma—scattered to the periphery of her consciousness like frightened moths.

“Do you mind?” she asked, looking up at him, her voice vibrating with barely restrained emotion.

His nostrils flared slightly. “Are you kidding?” He sounded downright incredulous at her question. Their gazes held as she felt his heartbeat thrum against her palm. He reached up and ever so gently, careful of his paint-covered skin, touched her jaw. A strange, strangled sound escaped her throat at his caress.

She carefully, deliberately reached inside the pocket of the costume boxer-brief, intent on not ruining the makeup application on his thighs. She bit her lower lip when her hand closed around the circumference of his cock. She drew out his length.

For a moment, she just stared.

It was like holding life in her hand.

His naked penis stood in stark contrast to the elaborate makeup applied to his body. The long, straight length of it running from root to fleshy cap struck her as sublime. She held him up before her face, the tip slanting toward the ceiling. She ran the tip of her tongue from the ridge beneath the head all the way to the base, flicking a firm testicle experimentally.

He made a muffled gasping noise like his lungs had deflated in an instant. His male scent filled her nose. She twitched her fingers on the shaft, relishing his sheer virility, his weight and firmness.

Yes. This is what she needed.

She tightened her grip, closed her eyes and arrowed his cock between her lips. She abandoned herself to the voluptuous, eternal moment, escaping into it like a fugitive from a harsh, meaningless world.

* * *

Everett Hughes became distantly aware that his muscles were so tense, they felt like they’d break given one more ounce of pressure. He ached.

Everywhere.

He studied the crown of her head like he thought his stare could bore down into her brain and read her thoughts. It would probably do him good to read her mind, he thought with grim amusement. Her thoughts were undoubtedly mundane and matter-of-fact. Nowhere near as X-rated as his had become ever since he’d walked into the room and seen Seth Hightower’s niece standing there, looking like a fresh wild flower amidst a field of artificial and hothouse blooms.

She’d been about as aware of him as she was the paint on the wall as she prepared to work. It was an unusual feeling for Everett, to be overlooked. He relished the opportunity to study her openly.

If he’d gone by her face alone, he might have guessed her age in her midtwenties. Only her swift, sure movements as she prepared her paints and the feminine curves accenting a slender, toned body hinted to him that she was likely nearer to thirty than twenty. He knew that Seth was part Pueblo Indian. He saw some evidence of Native American heritage in Joy, but to a lesser extent than in her uncle. Mostly her still, calm expression and smooth, apricot and copper-hued skin called that strain of her heritage to mind.

Everett had become disenchanted with the term beautiful long ago, feeling the hollowness of the term as it was applied to every second woman he met. But this woman—Seth Hightower’s niece—she didn’t just deserve the descriptor. She epitomized it without trying.

He found himself staring at the top of her long mane of chestnut brown hair as he endured the erotic sensation of her felt-tip marker sliding across his skin. His cock was thickening. He couldn’t seem to help it. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, trying to envision the mechanics of a particularly challenging scene with Ellie Granolith, the leading lady in Maritime. Every scene with Ellie was a trial to get through, but this one was particularly difficult.

His half-assed attempts to distract himself fractured when Joy’s marker stimulated a patch of sensitive skin just below his hip bone.

He looked down into a pair of large hazel eyes.

You’ll have to lower your briefs enough for me to make the transition look natural.

His heart had lurched next to his breastbone when she’d said that. Everett was not unfamiliar with recognizing a spark of desire in a woman’s eyes. If he was seeing it in Joy Hightower’s solemn gaze, it had to be the result of wishful thinking, though.

His throat felt tight when he swallowed. He reached for the side of his briefs and lowered them. It felt very vulnerable for him, to expose himself in this way. He typically preferred being the dominant during sex, and something about this situation seemed to speak of the opposite of control. First off, this wasn’t a sexual situation. It was inappropriate for him to be aroused. He couldn’t control his sexual response, however, and that made him both uncomfortable and, paradoxically, more aroused. When she paused for a moment, staring at him while she clutched her marker, he felt sweat bead on his upper lip.

Seth was going to slug him if he ruined his makeup. The makeup department head was formidable, not the sort of man Everett would choose to piss off.

Seth would likely skip punching and go straight to killing him if he knew what Everett was thinking about doing with his gorgeous, wholesome niece at that moment.

Seeing her lovely face so close to the midportion of his body, studying the outlines of her full, thrusting breasts from above, feeling the whisper of her breath on his skin while the tattoo pen rolled over supersensitive nerves; all of it had been titillating. But when Joy transferred to using her paints, Everett entered the realms of torture. His cock swelled so large, he didn’t think there was room in his skin anymore. His jaw hurt from clamping it shut. He was going to explode, and all he could do was tell himself to stand still. It was like telling a lit fuse to be calm.

He couldn’t hide his arousal. How could he? Regret sliced through him when she glanced up, and he saw the anxiety in her eyes. His baser nature had prevailed, however. He’d told her he could handle his discomfort. How could he possibly move away from the temptation of Joy and her slippery, cool brush sliding just inches away from his straining, hurting cock?

Why was he having the most debauched fantasies about taking advantage of her, of wrecking her smooth, calm exterior . . . of making Snow White so hot, she begged for it?

He suppressed a laugh at his idiocy. He really was losing it.

He wasn’t young anymore. A man in his position in Hollywood learned quickly enough that casual sex often didn’t end up being as casual or as sexy as a novice might expect. He’d become extremely particular about whom he associated with in the past several years. So particular, in fact, that his sister, Katie, had taken to calling him jaded. Maybe Katie was right, because in the past few months, he’d been choosy to the point of abstinence.

Maybe that was what made this unexpected experience feel so sharp, so imperative.

Seth could come in at any moment. Dozens of people moved and talked and shouted just feet away from the still room where he stood and Joy sat, etching her magic on his flesh. More importantly, Everett didn’t pull stupid, crazy stunts. Not anymore, he didn’t.

But a moment later, when her laughter had morphed into that still, sublime expression, he would have dared much, much worse than to explore the promise of her inner fires.

Then she’d spoken . . . and he’d almost had a heart attack at age thirty-six.

“Do you mind?” she’d asked.

He minded, all right. If he didn’t get the opportunity to feel her touch where it counted, he was going to boil and cook in his own sweat.

It’d felt like he was balancing on a narrow, straining wire the entire time Joy had sat before him and caressed him with her marker and tickled him deliciously with her paintbrush. When she so carefully reached into the briefs and extricated his cock, he fell right off that thin line of enforced rationality straight into a vat of need.

His cock felt like it was steaming when she wrapped her cool fingers around it. The image of her removing his length from the stupid seaweed pants was so exciting, he nearly came then and there. Her tongue was surprisingly red when she delicately licked him. Energy arced between them at the direct contact, their naked flesh becoming a conduit. She dragged the tip of it from head to pulsing root. Ripples of pleasure shot up his spine.

He bit his tongue hard enough to make him wince in pain. He’d be damned if he was going to ruin the richest erotic experience he’d had in . . . he couldn’t remember how long by exploding before he truly got to enjoy it.

The metallic flavor of blood spread in his mouth before he allowed himself to pry open his eyes. He groaned upon seeing her spreading her lips wide and angling his cock into her warm, wet mouth.

Christ, his cock was iron hard, so how was it that he felt like he was melting on her tongue?

She may look fresh as a wild rose, but she knew how to suck. She pulled at him. He winced in pleasure as he slid across her tongue, going deeper into the humid, hot glory of her. How could he have thought she was so contained, so cool?

She was a raging fever on the inside.

His hand moved, seemingly of its own accord. He cradled the side of her head. He withdrew and flexed forward again, suppressing a groan.

“God, that’s good,” he mumbled.

She ducked her head, sucking and sliding his cock between tightly pursed lips, taking him on a thrill ride of a lifetime. With every pass, she took him deeper. Her hunger was a palpable thing, the strength of it shocking him, a force that drove her farther and farther down onto the shaft of his cock. He watched her with a tight, feral stare, taking in every nuance of her—the way his erection strained her lips wide and stained them a dark, vivid pink as she pumped at his cock with a furious focus.

The sight of her consuming him like she thought it was her last meal was so powerful, he shut his eyelids to protect himself. Sensation still bombarded him: the feeling of her firm, sweet suck; the slippery sounds of his cock moving so forcefully in wet flesh reaching his ears even through the hum of the air conditioner. She continued to pulse him in and out, her unceasing suction assuring him he wasn’t going to continue this little side trip into fantasyland for very long.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, unable to hold back any longer from the singular power of the experience and his own demanding nature.

He tightened his hold on the back of her head, stabilizing her, and began to thrust between her lips, his ass flexing tight. It was like plunging straight into the essence of pleasure. It surged through him in bursts, spiking through his flesh.

Ah, Jesus. This is what he’d stooped to—face-fucking Snow White while only a few feet and very thin walls separated him from dozens of coworkers.

His face collapsed in regret when he sensed her recoil slightly at his demanding possession, but then she was back—fiercer than before, sucking him until his eyes crossed.

He felt his balls pinch in delicious pain when the muscles of her throat closed around the tip of his cock. If he hadn’t been holding it in, his shout of pleasure would have made him hoarse. As it was, it scalded his throat as he strangled it.

Pleasure ripped through him. He held her head steady as he erupted, not because of his dominant nature, but because his body had been paralyzed in a rictus of sensation. As the second wave rocked him, he recognized the discomfort he caused her. He released her with a slight jerk, rocking them both. She made a sound in her throat—God, he hoped it wasn’t of dismay—but then his body tightened again in release. He came on her tongue, and his worries were buried by flooding pleasure.

He groaned gutturally, feeling like he was being emptied and filled all at once.

* * *

The need for a long, full breath overcame her at last. She slid his softening—but still formidable—penis out of her mouth. The slick, fleshy cockhead pressed against her cheek as she gasped for air, filling her lungs. His hold on her gentled. He stroked her hair as she desperately tried to catch her breath.

It was as if she’d just been caught up in the furious twist of a cyclone, only to be suddenly tossed out again into a motionless, hard world. Her mind struggled to make sense of what had just occurred. Fragments of vision and sensation bombarded her awareness.

“Are you okay?”

She froze on an inhale at the sound of his voice.

She felt a slight pressure from his hand, as if he were willing her to look at him.

Her cheeks burned. Dear God, what had she just done?

“Joy?” he prompted when she didn’t move.

Keeping her head lowered, she leaned back, separating herself from him. She carefully raised his boxer-brief and covered him, keeping her gaze averted from his glistening cock.

He was just as beautiful to her satiated as he had been rigid with need . . . so naked, so vulnerable. She began to anxiously search for damage to his makeup.

“What the—”

His bewildered-sounding voice stopped abruptly when someone shouted in the distance.

“Seth!”

“What?” Seth Hightower barked impatiently, his voice sounding as if it came from twenty or thirty feet away.

“I need you to take a look at this.”

Joy stood so abruptly, the chair she’d been sitting in rolled backward several feet. She met the man’s startled gaze.

She didn’t even know his name.

“He’ll be here any second,” she said. She immediately picked up her paints as the first wave of panic started to flow through her. He caught her wrist.

“Hold on. It’s going to be okay, Joy.”

She was mortified to realize tears had sprung to her eyes.

“No. No, it’s not.” Not for me, it’s not. He looked taken aback.

For a second or two, the silence swelled.

“Of course it is,” he said, smiling even though puzzlement shadowed what she could see of his features.

She swallowed and looked away from his smile. “I need to touch you up,” she said, realizing for the first time that her voice was hoarse from taking his cock so deep. Another wave of heat flooded her cheeks. She tried to move to gather her paints—to gather herself—but he continued to hold her wrist.

“Joy.”

She glanced up at him doubtfully, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“Meet me later. After the shoot. Please?” he added when she just continued to stare in the vicinity of his collarbone.

“I . . . I don’t know what . . . why . . .”

“I understand,” he said quietly. He released her wrist and touched her cheek until she looked at him. “I’m not sure I know, either. But I want to figure it out. Meet me at the statue? The studio statue? After this craziness is done? Just give me enough time to get out of this getup and shower, and I’ll be there. I just want to talk to you. Please, Joy.”

Something squeezed at her heart a little when he entreated her. In the distance, she heard her uncle’s voice as he approached.

“I haven’t got time right now. You’ll have to handle it,” Seth called out, as if he was walking away from whomever had interrupted him.

“Joy?” the stranger said sharply.

She looked into his clear aquamarine eyes and nodded once.

“Say it. Say you’ll be there.”

“I’ll be there,” she whispered.

* * *

Six hours later, she checked her watch yet again.

He wasn’t coming.

She should have known better than to come herself.

The photo shoot had been completed now for almost three hours. She’d kept herself busy in Seth’s studio during the shoot itself. Seth had returned after a while in order to oversee prosthetic removal. Joy had helped him, but she hadn’t caught sight of the man she’d promised to meet.

She’d been waiting by the United Studios’ statue of the seven muses for long enough. There was no way the man was still occupied. Not when almost everyone else on the set had long since showered and left. He’d stood her up, plain and simple.

She stood from one of the benches that lined the little park at the north studio entrance. One of the bronze muses caught her eye.

Joy lowered her head and walked toward the gate. She didn’t need the muse’s somber stare to know it was time for her to leave the whimsy of fantasyland and deal with the reality of a harsh world.

* * *