Because We Belong (Because You Are Mine #3)(16)
“I know what you are, too,” Ian grated out, jerking his forearm so that the other man gagged and his head clunked against the wall. “You’re a thief and a poacher and a waste of space upon this earth.”
“Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all his nasty leavings, no better than those rotten panties you just found? Just think,” Reardon said in choked voice, his eyes gleaming with malicious merriment. “Some of those pretty little things might have been your mother’s.”
A white-hot fury pulsed through every fiber of Ian’s being. He pulled back his fist to strike, but unintentionally met the vagrant’s stare. Piercing light gray eyes speared through a slightly grimy, heavily bearded face. Lucien’s eyes—
It was as if a pitcher of ice water had been thrown in his face.
He started back, horror seizing him. “Get the hell out of here,” he rasped. “Now, before I bury you with all of this other trash and burn the heap around you.”
Reardon’s teeth flashed surprisingly white and straight in his swarthy countenance. “Fitting, wouldn’t it be? Brother.”
Ian winced, realizing he’d betrayed the truth of what he’d seen with his display of acute revulsion. Reardon straightened and brushed off his jacket, as regal and disdainful as an offended prince who wore the finest of coats instead of something that looked like it’d been salvaged from the trash. His mouth curling, eyes burning, he leaned forward. “You should watch out,” Reardon breathed softly. “You look an awful lot like him, wandering around this place. People will start to swear that dear old daddy’s ghost is haunting this garbage dump.”
Ian closed his eyes at the sound of Reardon’s heavy boots on the stairs, fighting down the bitter taste at the back of his throat.
* * *
Later that evening, he shoved aside an uneaten dinner that had mostly come from a can. He stood to remove the meal from the quarters where he’d been staying and noticed his reflection in the mirror. After a strained moment, he set down the plate and glass on the dusty bureau, his mission forgotten. He peered closer at his image.
When had his two– and then three-day overgrowth become a full-blown beard? When had he gotten that feral look in his eyes? When had he started to resemble Kam Reardon?
Resemble worse than Reardon?
You’re starting to look like him. People will start to swear that dear old daddy’s ghost is haunting this garbage dump.
He hissed, smashing his fist into the bureau and sending the china plate crashing to the wood floor, where it shattered jarringly.
Stupid f*ck. Ian was nothing like Trevor Gaines. His entire reason for buying this godforsaken house, for sifting through every item in its rat-warren rooms, was to purge that criminal from his mind and body. It was an exorcism of sorts.
He’s in your very blood, a nasty voice in his head reminded him. You’ll never be free of the taint of him.
His other life—the once methodical, organized, sterile one that had recently been transformed by Francesca, blessed by light and laughter and love—was starting to feel like a dream to him, an elusive memory that he couldn’t quite grasp with his clutching fingers. His world was starting to become a watered-down nightmare—not terrifying, necessarily, but dirty and gray, vague and pointless. A personalized version of hell.
“No,” he said roughly out loud, his gaze growing fierce in the mirror. He did have a purpose . . . a goal. Once he understood who Trevor Gaines was, once he comprehended why his biological father had become so depraved, he could more easily separate himself from the man. There was a method to his madness.
Just be sure the madness doesn’t get you before the method ever works.
He snarled at the sound of the sardonic, taunting voice—his voice, his own doubts about his mission breaking through the surface. He turned away from the vision of the disturbing image in the mirror.
Just a little longer.
He’d search just a little longer. Surely there was something in this old ruin that would help him pigeonhole Gaines, categorize him like a neat, labeled forensic specimen; something that would allow him to wrap his brain around the enigma of a man that had become like a spear piercing deep within him, its handle broken so that he couldn’t get an adequate hold to extract it and allow the wound to heal cleanly.
He muttered a curse and threw himself on the dusty, sagging canopy bed, staring up at the ceiling. His fury had become his constant companion. It was the only thing that ever penetrated his numbness, coming upon him in frightening, savage waves.
No. There was one other thing that made him feel, even here in this gray wasteland: the sharp pain of desire. Against his will, Francesca’s beautiful, anguished face rose in his mind’s eye as he’d seen her last night on his computer screen, the image rising to torture him. He clamped his eyelids tightly, trying to banish the evocative, haunting image . . . and failing.
As usual.
He did this for her, he recalled with furious desperation. If he didn’t exorcise his demons, how could he present himself to her with any honor? How could he offer himself to her with a stained spirit? She was lightness and warmth. Every casual glance she sent his way conveyed more love than he’d ever known, more than he’d ever even been capable of envisioning before she entered his life.
No . . . he wouldn’t be set off balance by Kam Reardon, another one of Trevor Gaines’s leavings. He wouldn’t be knocked off his path by his mad half brother.