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“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 communication 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 to 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?