Because You Are Mine (Because You Are Mine #1)(78)
“Get into the bed,” he murmured.
She lay down, curling onto her side, her front facing him. He came down next to her, his belly brushing against hers, and whipped the sheet and cover over them. He stroked the silky length of her hip as the heavy, pregnant silence settled upon them. Neither of them spoke for a moment or two, even though he sensed her alert attention on him.
Then she touched his mouth with soft fingertips. He closed his eyes, trying and failing to shelter himself from a rising tide of unwanted but unstoppable feeling.
He rarely allowed a woman to touch him so intimately, but he let Francesca. Her eager, searching fingertips tormented him for the next several minutes as she charted his face, neck, shoulders, chest, and belly. When she gently scraped a nipple with her nails, he hissed in a burst of sublime pleasure. He held her stare as she wrapped her hand around his cock a moment later.
Her touch was so gentle. Why did it feel like she ripped a bandage off a wound deep inside him when she began to move her arm, pumping him?
Unable to take any more of her sweet torture, he twisted around and located a condom in the bedside drawer, longing for the day when Francesca had been on the pill long enough, when he could be inside her naked.
A moment later, he lay on top of her, their bellies heaving against each other in tandem, his cock fully sheathed in her warm, clasping *. He opened his clenched eyelids and saw her staring up at him.
“Do I wrong you, Francesca?” he demanded toughly.
She didn’t answer for a moment, but he knew from the somber expression in her eyes that she understood he’d meant not just tonight but everything—his inability to resist this vibrant, talented, beautiful woman despite the fact that he’d inevitably taint her brilliance with his darkness . . . eventually make her turn away in hurt.
The thought of seeing rejection of him on her beautiful face sliced at him deep.
“Does it matter?”
A spasm clenched his facial muscles at her soft reply. He began to move, f*cking her with long, thorough strokes, shuddering at the distilled blast of pleasure.
No. It didn’t matter.
He couldn’t stay away from her, no matter the consequence to her . . . or to himself.
* * *
After they made love again, he held her and they talked like lovers—or at least that’s what Francesca suspected lovers talked like, not having any experience herself. It was a heady experience, listening to him talk about his childhood growing up at Belford Hall, his grandfather’s estate in East Sussex. She wanted to ask him about what his experience had been like with his mother in northern France—surely it had been a night-and-day experience in comparison with the luxury and privilege of an earl’s grandson—but she couldn’t muster the courage.
She anxiously brought up the topic of Xander LaGrange again. Ian was adamant, however, that her behavior hadn’t been the primary issue with the business deal going sour.
“It was just the final straw,” Ian said. “I hated having to court him in order to get that software. I’ve always despised him, ever since I was seventeen years old. It grated, having to smarm up to him. I’ve been avoiding meeting with him in person for weeks now.” He blinked as if in memory. “Actually, I was supposed to meet with him that first night we met, the night of your cocktail party at Fusion. I asked Lin to cancel.”
Her heart jumped at that. “I thought you looked annoyed when Lin approached you at Fusion because you didn’t want to have to waste time with meeting me.”
He nudged her chin softly as she looked up at him. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just imagined you had a lot better things to do than meet me.”
His low chuckle warmed her. He pressed gently on her head, and she contentedly rested it back on his chest.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Francesca. I had been looking forward to meeting you ever since I saw your entry painting and recognized you as the artist who painted Cat,” he said, shortening the name of the painting that hung in his library . . . the painting she’d inadvertently done of him. She pressed her mouth to his skin and kissed him, thrilled to the core by this little revealed truth. His fingers tightened in her hair.
“But what will you do about the software you need for your start-up company?” she asked after a moment.
“I’ll do what I should have done to begin with,” he said briskly, his fingertips massaging her scalp, making her shiver in delicious pleasure. “I’ll design my own. It’ll be an effort, and it’ll take extra time, but I should have gone that route to begin with instead of bothering with that ass. It’s never good business to deal with a man like LaGrange. I’d been kidding myself.”
Later, she told him about when she first began to understand she was an artist, during a camp for overweight children when she was eight years old.
“I didn’t lose a pound at that camp, much to my parents’ dismay, but I learned that I was an ace at sketching and painting,” she murmured, lying still with her head on his chest and feeling content and drowsy as Ian stroked her hair.
“Your parents seemed obsessed with your weight,” he commented, his deep voice vibrating up through his hard chest and tickling her ear. She stroked his biceps with curious fingertips, wondering at how dense and hard the muscle was.
“They were obsessed with controlling me. My weight was one of the few things they couldn’t manipulate.”