by BETH KERY
“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 no
thing, 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.
“Be
cause 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.