1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve

by Alexandra Ivy

  Ettore glanced at the boy who was looking up at him warily. He crouched down to his level and placed his hand lightly on the child’s shoulder. “You were very brave, keeping your mother safe in here until we arrived. Good work, Pietro.”

  He nodded shyly at the praise, and Bella’s heart squeezed to see the little boy’s fear melt away under Ettore’s gentle treatment of him.

  “How long will we need to stay away?” Chiara asked hesitantly.

  Ettore’s gaze met Bella’s as he stood up. She knew that heavy look, what it meant. The two killers who’d shown up tonight hadn’t succeeded, thanks to him, but it was almost certain there would be more behind them. The old vineyard and the rambling house where Bella was raised might never be safe again. Then again, it hadn’t truly been safe in years. Not since Massioni entered their lives.

  Combing her fingers gently through her little nephew’s dark hair, Bella met Chiara’s gaze. “We’ll figure all of that out later. Right now, we need to do what Ettore says, okay?”

  “Yes, of course. May I gather a few things for Pietro before we go? I promise I’ll hurry.”

  Ettore nodded and Bella glanced down at her red gown and bare feet. “I don’t suppose you have anything in your closet that would fit me, do you?”

  Chiara smiled warmly. “You can look for something in your own closet, sorella. I kept your room just as it was on the day you were taken, in the hopes that you would come home again one day.”

  The kindness of that gesture—the sisterly love from her brother’s widow—put a lump in Bella’s throat. “Thank you.”

  She pulled Chiara into a brief hug before Ettore brought them all out of the panic room and back into the empty villa to prepare to leave.

  A few minutes later, Bella was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and flats and a black T-shirt. Chiari held Pietro in one arm, a small bag containing his favorite blanket and toys and sundry other necessities slung over her other arm. Ettore took the bag from her and headed outside, leading the way.

  “We have to leave the Pagani,” he said, bypassing the two-seater sports car. “There’s not enough room in it, but we also need to avoid drawing attention. I don’t like the idea of taking Massioni’s men’s vehicle, but I can ditch it after we get to Matera in case anyone’s looking for it.”

  “I’ve got a truck out back,” Chiara said. She pointed to the barn behind the house. “It’s not fast, but it’ll get us where we’re going. And it’s plain enough that it won’t turn any heads along the way.”

  Ettore considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Sounds better than our other options.”

  They retrieved the rust-spotted old pickup truck and climbed in, Bella sandwiched on the narrow bench seat between Ettore and Chiara and Pietro.

  It was impossible to ignore the heat of Ettore’s thigh pressed against hers as they drove off into the thinning darkness. Being this close to him again, her senses overwhelmed with the warmth and strength and scent of him, Bella knew a contentment—a feeling of security—that had eluded her for so long she hadn’t recalled what it was like to feel safe and protected.

  She hardly realized how badly she’d craved that feeling until now. With him.

  Chiara and Pietro must have felt some degree of safety now too. They had both dozed off just a few minutes into the drive. No doubt the late hour and the stress of what they’d endured tonight had left them exhausted, but Bella knew their peaceful breathing had much to do with the man who’d surely saved their lives.

  Bella glanced at Ettore in the soft light of the old truck’s dashboard. His eyes were fixed on the open road, one hand slung over the top of the steering wheel. He seemed deep in his own thoughts until the weight of her gaze drew his attention. He looked her way, and although she was embarrassed to be caught staring at him, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t been.

  “Thank you for helping them,” she said quietly. “Thank you for helping all of us tonight.”

  He gave a small shake of his head. “There’s no need to thank me, Bella. I would do anything for you. Don’t you know that?”

  No, she didn’t know that. For all she knew, she’d meant absolutely nothing to him. Not ten years ago. Certainly not all this time later. “Why did you do it, Ettore? Why did you leave and never come back? Was it because of something I did?”

  “No.” His answer came swiftly, his brows furrowing in a scowl. “Christ, no. You didn’t do anything at all. Tell me that’s not what they let you believe…”

  “They?” A sick feeling opened up in the pit of her stomach. “You mean my family? You mean my father and Sal?”

  His silent stare was confirmation enough.

  “Tell me,” she prompted. “What did they do?”

  He glanced back at the road. “They were only looking out for your best interests, Bella. They noticed we were growing closer—they noticed my interest in you as a woman—and your father wasn’t pleased. Neither was Sal, actually.”

  “Are you saying they pushed you away? No… Surely they would not. Are you saying they didn’t want us together, so they forced us apart?”

  Anger clawed up the back of her throat. She could hardly stand the thought of what their interference had caused her. To think she had wept over her father’s murder. To think she had wept for Sal, even after he’d betrayed her to Vito Massioni.

  But selling her out to that criminal thug hurt less than knowing the two men she trusted the most all her life had actually betrayed her even more egregiously long before then, when they stole her chance at a future with Ettore.

  He slanted her a sober look. “They loved you, Arabella. Your father wanted to make sure you found a male who could provide for you, give you all the things you deserved in life. Your father and Sal both wanted only what was best for you.”

  Her answering scoff was brittle. “Look how that turned out.”

  “They couldn’t have known how things would end up,” he gently assured her. “But I wish I had known. I wish the Order had been on to Vito Massioni years ago, so I could’ve killed the bastard before he had the chance to lay a hand on you.”

  “It could’ve been worse,” she admitted quietly. “I endured his temper sometimes, but at least I avoided his lust.”

  When Ettore glanced at her, there was surprise in his gaze, and more than a little relief. “You mean, he never—”

  “Never,” she said. “I told him my gift for scrying would only last as long as I was a virgin. Since I made him wealthy with my visions, he apparently decided he enjoyed collecting his money more than he would enjoy abusing me.”

  He smirked. “Clever girl. Except for one thing.”

  She felt a blush creep over her cheeks at the reminder.

  She wasn’t a virgin. She had given that part of her to Ettore. It had been their one and only time together.

  The next night, he was gone.

  “Fortunately, Massioni never doubted me. I think he might’ve eventually, but he had other women to slake his needs.”

  “Thank God,” Ettore muttered. He frowned, his hazel gaze turbulent with stifled fury. “What about your visions, Bella? Did you never see any hint of your brother’s troubles in your scrying bowl?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see visions that relate to myself or the people I care for. My ability has never worked like that.”

  Which was why she’d never seen Ettore either, although it hadn’t stopped her from trying to find him with her gift over the years he’d been gone. But her scrying had never found him.

  Not even as he’d planned for and carried out his attack on Vito Massioni.

  She dearly hoped Ettore had been successful, because if Massioni were alive to get his hands on her now, his punishment would be beyond brutal.

  Ettore’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “I never should’ve agreed to leave, no matter what your family wanted. It wasn’t their decision to make. I didn’t understand that until after I was gone.” He reached over and stroked her cheek. “I should’ve
come back for you, Bella. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  She turned into his caress, feeling no animosity toward him, only gratitude. And an affection that went far deeper than that.

  Far deeper than the desire she felt simply for being seated so closely beside him, his comforting touch lingering against her face.

  “You’re here now,” she said, pressing a soft kiss to the center of his palm.

  His eyes flickered with sparks of amber light as her lips met his skin. She only meant the contact to be one of gratefulness and caring, but she felt the jolt of awareness too.

  Her chest tightened, heat spreading across her breasts, licking down to her core.

  Oh, yes, she still cared for him.

  She wanted him.

  Memories of stolen kisses and secret, tender embraces filled her head. She’d had only one night with Ettore, naked in each other’s arms, but she had held it close to her heart ever since.

  Neither the cruelty of time nor fate had diminished anything she felt for him. To the contrary, it had only made the craving deepen. It had only made her recognize how keenly she had felt his loss all this time.

  And how profoundly happy she was to be reunited with him now.

  Even if in a shadowed corner of her heart she dreaded that fate wasn’t nearly finished with them yet.

  Chapter 7

  Savage didn’t know how he’d managed to endure more than an hour in the truck, seated so close to Bella. Her thigh had rested against his the whole trip, contact that had distracted him, soothed him…aroused him beyond reason.

  It sent his mind spinning back in time, to another evening drive they’d taken together on vineyard business. The one that had ended with both of them undressed and tangled together on a blanket under a midnight blue sky streaked with shooting stars.

  “Come on, Ettore! Isn’t it amazing?”

  She grabbed a bottle of the newest Aglianico from the wooden cases in back of the truck and started running up the side of the nearby hill. He watched her go, her long legs bare and her curvy backside clad in grape-stained, faded denim shorts. He was always in a state of arousal around her, but seeing her dance away from him under the thin moon glow turned his cock to granite.

  “Bella, you’d better come back. I don’t think this is a good idea.” Nevertheless, he pulled an old wool blanket from behind the seat and jogged after her.

  She helped him spread it out on the cool grass, then pulled him down next to her. “Here, open this.” She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew.

  “I don’t drink wine,” he reminded her as he pulled the cork out with a soft pop. None of his kind did, but she knew that well enough.

  “Do you ever wish you could? Even a taste?”

  “No.” He had never craved wine, but then he watched her tip the bottle to her lips to take a sip and he knew a thirst unlike any he’d ever known. Her throat worked as she swallowed, her head tipped back, drawing his eyes to the creamy column of her neck.

  He cleared his throat, searching for his voice as his fangs punched out of his gums and his vision began to fire with amber. “Your father and Sal are expecting us back at the vineyard.”

  She slowly brought the bottle down from her mouth and set it in the grass. Her lips were wet, as dark as cherries from the wine. Long black lashes framed the solemn pools of her eyes. “Do you want to go, Ettore?”

  He knew it as the chance it was—his only hope to stop this need for Bella before it went too far. They had been circling this moment for weeks. Hell, from the moment he first walked on to the Genova property.

  Fleeting glances. Brief touches. Shared laughter. Then, later, after he’d fought his attraction for as long as he could, there had been a kiss, a few stolen embraces. Followed by heated caresses that had left both of them in flames.

  But she was an innocent, just eighteen years old to his twenty-five.

  Even worse, she was the Breedmate sister of his closest friend.

  The last thing he should be doing was sitting beside her in the starlight, staring at her throat and wishing he was a better man. One with honor enough to lie and say he wasn’t out of his mind with desire for her.

  “What do you want, Ettore?”

  “You.”

  He took her down beneath him on the blanket and unwrapped her as reverently as a precious gift. Each breathless moment was seared into his senses, from her soft moans as he kissed and licked and sucked every tempting inch of her…to her shuddering cries as he entered her virgin body and introduced her to an even deeper pleasure as the sea of shooting stars skated overhead.

  Savage groaned at the uninvited recollection and the need it stoked in him even now.

  By the time they reached the ancient hillside town of Matera, his body was rife with desire, his cock so hard it was a wonder he’d been able to drive.

  His palm still burned from the sweet kiss she’d placed there.

  His veins throbbed with hunger for her—a hunger that was startlingly more intense than simple desire. If he’d imagined that their years apart would cool his feelings for her, that tender kiss to the center of his hand had obliterated all hope of that.

  Holy hell, he was in trouble here.

  He should be thinking about his duty to the Order—and about the mission status that was uncertain at best—yet his mind was wrapped around Arabella Genova.

  So was his heart. Although to be fair, that part of him had been hers for a lot longer than his life had been pledged to the Order.

  How many times had he considered defying the wishes of her father and brother to go back and beg for her forgiveness and take her away with him forever? How many human blood Hosts had he drunk from, wishing it was Bella’s vein that was nourishing him instead, her Breedmate blood ensuring that she would always be his?

  Now, all he had were regrets.

  He only hoped he could somehow get the chance to make things right. But first he needed to make sure she was safe.

  “This way,” he told the women, after leaving the old truck in a church parking lot as Trygg had instructed.

  Carrying Chiara’s bag so she could focus on her child, Savage placed his hand at the small of Bella’s back and brought them to a flight of well-worn stone steps on the other side of the church. The stairs descended away from the quaint hotels and restaurants near Matera’s city center, into the thickly settled community of limestone dwellings that appeared to grow out of the walls of the broad ravine.

  Waning blue moonlight and the golden glow of random lanterns and street lamps illuminated the uneven trail Trygg had given them to follow. At the predawn hour, there were no tourists on the tangled network of stone paths and meandering steps of the sassi. The ravine was quiet, nothing but the sound of their footsteps on the dusty old cobbles and the occasional jangle of a sheep’s bell from the flock starting to awaken on a grassy flat across the way.

  Savage followed the path to the left, as he’d been told, which took them toward what appeared to be the low-rent section of the Paleolithic-era neighborhood. White limestone residences with the occasional flower box in their window or potted plant outside the door gave way to an unlit stretch of cobbles lined with rustic domiciles in various states of neglect, most with weeds and cactus sprouting out of their cracked and crumbling walls.

  “Stay close,” Savage advised the women as he led them deeper into the settlement. “We should almost be there now.”

  A few minutes later, just as Trygg had described, his brother waited up ahead on the walkway. At least, Savage hoped the immense, black-haired Breed male was Scythe.

  As they approached, Savage walking protectively in front of Bella and Chiara, the other male lifted his head and swung a glance in their direction. Long ebony hair hung several inches past his shoulders, and a trimmed black beard outlined the grave set of his mouth. The male’s eyes, as dark as jet, narrowed on Savage across the distance.

  Yep. Definitely Scythe.

  Savage nodded to him in greeting. Scythe’s
face remained expressionless within his curtain of dark hair. Dressed in a black leather trench coat that covered more black clothing beneath it, the male looked every bit a cold-blooded killer.

  Which was saying something, coming from Savage, a warrior whose stock-in-trade was dealing death.

  At Savage’s back, he heard Bella suck in a shallow gasp.

  “It’s all right,” he told her, touching her arm in reassurance. “This is who we’re supposed to meet.”

  Without introduction, Scythe turned and started walking away. Apparently, he was as people-friendly as his brother. So long as the male was trustworthy and his safe house was secure, Savage would give the lack of social skills a pass.

  “Let’s go,” he said, pausing to press a kiss to Bella’s forehead. “We’ll be safe here, I promise.”

  They followed Scythe to one of the last cave houses on the path, a squatty residence devoid of windows and accessible through a door that was reinforced with an iron grate. Savage wasn’t expecting much as the other Breed male opened the door and let them inside, but it turned out the place only appeared forbidding and neglected from the outside. They stepped into a comfortable, if minimalist, dwelling with hand-hewn furnishings, arched stone ceilings, and warm, rug-covered floors.

  Once they were inside, Scythe motioned for them to follow him farther into the place. More rooms were burrowed out of the rock of the ravine, connected by snaking tunnels large enough for both Breed males to walk through at their full height.

  “I don’t generally have guests,” Scythe announced, sounding none too pleased. His voice was low and dark, almost a snarl as he strode ahead of them, his words echoing off the walls. “There is a small bed in the chamber to your right, and a larger one in the room at the end of this corridor. Make use of them as you wish.”

  Savage glanced at Bella. “You and Chiara take the beds. I don’t need to sleep.”

  It was true enough. As Breed, he didn’t require a lot of rest, but he doubted his thoughts would give him much peace anyway. To say nothing of his body, which was still thrumming with want of Bella.

  She looked as if she meant to protest his sacrifice, but her sister-in-law was teetering on her feet and Pietro hadn’t lifted his head since they left the truck. “I’ll go help them settle in.”