by Elle Thorne
Tino didn’t know what made him do what he did next, for he knew that he couldn’t communicate with anyone outside his walls. He couldn’t communicate with Iniga, he couldn’t communicate with his father’s household servants, and he hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone else who’d come to the house. And yet, driven by desperation at the cruelty in Bruno’s voice, he spoke, his voice entering their silent communications.
“Do not threaten them,” Tino said.
Ana had opened her tigress’s mouth, as if preparing to roar, but Tino’s words halted her.
Her tigress eyes widened while the pupils contracted.
Bruno’s bull swiveled his head left and right. “Who was that?” He focused a glare on Ana.
Ana cocked her head. “I have no idea.”
“Lying cunt!” Bruno’s bull jerked his head in her direction.
The tip of one horn scored her shoulder deeply.
Ana growled, reared back, ready to pounce.
“Do it and your mother and sister pay. Shift immediately.”
The same sounds that Tino knew were the sound of shifting came as both Ana and Bruno shifted.
Bruno, of course, was nude, as he’d been before he shifted.
Ana was once more her luscious beautiful self, except that she looked as if she’d been wrestling, clothes askew and rumpled. Her shoulder was bloody though, and concern flared in Tino.
“I need to shift so I can heal,” she told Bruno.
Tino understood that now, since his lion had explained it to him after he’d shifted so Tino wouldn’t die. So neither of them would die.
Bruno stepped closer to Ana. “Who was listening in? Who was that? Do you have a lover?”
Ana gasped. Anger left red streaks on her cheeks. “What?”
“You can heal later.” He reached for her.
Tino shook the walls, causing even the ceiling to shake, making the light swing.
“What the hell?” Bruno stepped away from Ana, reached for his pants and pulled them on.
“I’ll be back later. I’m going to the cantina.”
He grabbed his shirt and slammed the door behind him.
“I hope you pass out and stay with your whores for a week.” A tear wound its way down her cheek. “At least until I am not ovulating, you pitiful miserable excuse of a man.”
Ana shifted, turning into her magnificent, queenly tigress, her head held high, her body lean, but thick with muscles. A dusky pink tongue came out, licking on the wound.
Tino watched this woman that turned into a tigress, and with every moment he watched her, the deeper he fell.
He knew he shouldn’t have. But he couldn’t help himself. “Why are you with him?”
The orange tigress leapt to her paws, scanned the room, turning around slowly.
“Are you the ghost?”
“I’m no ghost. How are we communicating like this?”
“Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you.”
“You first,” Tino insisted.
The tigress huffed. “Syncing, it is linking our minds together to talk. It’s the shifter way of communicating when we are in our animal form. But I thought our conversations couldn’t be invaded without invitation.” She sat, studied the wall as if she could see him.
He wondered if she could, surely not, or she wouldn’t have asked if he were a ghost, he thought.
“Your turn,” Ana added.
“I am a shifter.”
“Where are you?”
Tino released a deep breath. “Trapped in the wall. Where a witch put me.”
“Do you have a name? What type of shifter?”
“Cristiano Carrera. Ricoletti is my father’s last name. It’s a long story. My father is a lion shifter. After my mother died, I came to find him. Instead found his wife, a witch, who put me here.”
The tigress cocked her head, studied the wall.
“You are the reason for the things falling?”
“I am.” Tino couldn’t help the smile in his voice.
“It seems you’ve come to my aid more than once.”
Tino wasn’t going to tell her he also came to Isabel’s aid when Bruno had paused outside her door more than once.
“I have a question for you.”
Uh oh. He wasn’t sure about the tone in her voice.
“You can see us, obviously.”
He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Yes.”
“And when I was not dressed…”
Tino’s lion growled. “Truthfully?”
It looked like the tigress nodded.
“Only the first time. I’m sorry. I should have looked away.” But he couldn’t have. He was so entranced with her from the beginning. “After that, I never looked. Never saw anything inappropriate.” This was true, though God knew he wanted to watch her shower and even more.
“And my sister? My mother?”
What the fuck kind of creep did she think he was? “Never.”
“Why don’t you get out? Escape?”
“If I could, I would have already. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone. No one could ever hear me. I was shocked that you and the bull shifter could hear me.”
A shudder rolled over the tigress’s fur at the mention of Bruno.
“You’ve been very helpful to me.”
“I’m glad I could be.”
“It would be nice if I could help you, too.”
Chapter Eleven
Ana was anxious for her morning visit with Tino. She reached for the door handle. It’d been a month now, almost, and she’d spent time getting to know the man trapped in the wall.
All Ana’s life, Isabel had been the closest thing to a best friend that she had, but with Tino, she had a friendship that transcended the friendship she had with Isabel.
It was a deeper friendship.
And something else.
Ana didn’t want to say she flirted with him, she’d never seen him, had no idea what he looked like, how old he was, nothing. Nothing at all.
Her tigress snarled.
Yes, yes, I know.
Her tigress released a growl.
Ana knew what her tigress thought: they were fated. Ana had never believed in that.
“I don’t believe in shifter fairy tales,” Ana had always told Isabel when they had talked about love and finding their mates.
But this thing with Tino… these feelings.
If Ana weren’t mated—
But I am. And I have to stay this way as long as my family is in danger.
Morning with Tino, while her sister and her mother would think she was having her coffee in bed.
Afternoon naps weren’t spent napping anymore. They were spent visiting with Tino, talking about their lives, his father, his mother.
The first time he’d told her he was Ella Carrera’s son, she gasped.
“I love her! I’ve loved her since I was a little girl! She’s my favorite! My parents took me and Isabel to see her! I was so sad to hear that she’d passed.”
“It was a difficult time for me,” Tino had admitted. “And everything fell apart after that. I discovered my lion, then I came here, only to be put behind these walls.”
“Let me help you,” Ana had insisted. “Please.”
“I can’t bear the idea of you or Isabel being trapped behind walls if the witch catches you trying to help me. Or worse.” His tone was morose. “Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”
Ana balked. She didn’t care for that statement. Maybe it reminded her of Bruno’s brutish domineering ways, but it made her contrary.
Not that Tino was anything like Bruno. He wasn’t. Tino was considerate and kind and patient.
She wondered what he looked like. Wondered what his hands felt like. Wondered…
A heat flowed through her body. A heat she’d never felt for anyone else.
Her tigress released a chuffing sound of pleasure.
Stop that, Ana admonished her tigress.
Ana
turned the handle and entered her sitting room, then shifted into her tigress. She’d been doing that so much lately she’d become more adept at it than ever. It was painful, as always, of course, but with each shift, the process became quicker.
“Are you here?” She tilted her head, waiting for Tino’s response “Cristiano?”
“Where else would I be?”
The wonderful warmth he always caused within her flooded through her body. She felt scandalously aware of his presence, but didn’t feel the least sinful. How could she? Bruno was a business arrangement made by her father that she had to validate and conform to for the sake of her sister and her infirm mother.
One day, she told herself, one day I’ll be free of him and free to love.
She pushed the thought away, because the circumstances that would lead to that were heartbreaking, for it meant that her mother would no longer be with them and that Isabel would be off with whomever she chose as a mate.
Though Ana wanted her mother to live forever and Isabel had no interest in a mate.
Looked like she was in her prison for the long haul.
That doesn’t mean that Tino has to be in his, though.
Ana was determined she would help him, though she’d miss him. Somehow she’d set him free so he could have a life.
Sadness pierced her soul with an aching fierceness because Tino getting a life meant leaving her behind.
And having a family.
Which meant having a mate.
She exhaled a heavy sigh.
“What’s the most beautiful woman in the villa sighing about?”
Ana whirled around, trying to figure out which wall he was behind.
His laugh was warm, surrounding her like heated liquid honey, pouring over her lonely soul. “You weren’t expecting me? You didn’t call my name?”
“Cristiano!” She let out a low laugh so she wouldn’t be heard by her sister or mother.
In or out of their shifted states, shifters had supernatural hearing.
“Yes,” she confessed. “I was expecting you and I did call your name. I’m sorry I’m late. I had an early morning errand to run.”
She couldn’t tell him that part. What the errand was. Where she and Isabel went. What they were doing.
“Sounds mysterious.” His tone was teasing.
She had to deflect him. “Girl stuff.” She approached the wall from which it seemed his voice was coming. “Cristiano? Can I… would you mind if… I touch the wall?”
“I don’t mind. But you shouldn’t expect to feel anything but the cold stone that binds me.”
Ana reached out, hesitantly. Ever so slowly her paws approached the unyielding brown and gray stone wall.
She touched her paws to the wall and jumped back.
“It’s warm. It’s not…” Touching the wall was like touching a living thing, except it was made of the hardest of stone. “Cristiano, it’s as if I can feel you there. Wait. Let me check something.”
She ran across the room to the opposite wall.
Cold!
She ran to a third wall.
Also cold!
She ran back to Tino’s wall and placed her shoulder against it. Warmth, the same warmth as his voice, as his presence flowed from her paws throughout her body.
“I feel you!” Joy bubbled within her like champagne used to bubble in her mouth when she used to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her parents. “I feel you! You’re here!”
Chapter Twelve
Tino’s breath caught with a hitch. He felt her paws on his chest. Their heat surged through his body with as much intensity as if there wasn’t a wall between them.
She leaned in, her body hot against the wall, but it was as if she was pressed against him.
She rose onto her back legs, pressed her tigress cheek to the wall. It was silky softness on his chest.
His body reacted, hardening, his cock turning to steel within the wall’s confines. His need for her was powerful.
And he was powerless.
His lion roared in Tino’s mind.
Then Tino heard the responding roar. Her tigress’s passions came to life, wanting the lion as Tino wanted Ana.
Then it hit Tino with the force of a tornado seeking retribution—Ana wanted him.
And Ana could feel this thing between them.
“You feel it.” He didn’t pose it as a question. He knew she had to feel it.
Her head nodded against the wall that held his chest. “I do feel—”
Something caught Tino’s attention. Was it a sound? Was it his lion’s senses? Whatever it was, something was just outside the door. Could whatever, whoever, it was listen into their conversation the way he’d listened to her conversation with Bruno that day?
“Hush, love.” It hit him a second later he’d called her love, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on that. “Shift, Ana. Shift.”
Quickly—she’d become so adept at it, he noted, she shifted into her human form. The succulent, curvy creature he’d fallen in love with…
God. He had. He’d fallen for another man’s wife, mate, whatever it was called in the shifter world that he knew very little about. Ana had tried to tell him some of the rules, but it was so foreign to him, finding out there was a social and political structure of beings that were more than human.
“Why did I need to shift?” she asked him, her eyes mirroring her concern.
He couldn’t talk to her. Oh sure, he could talk, but in her human form, she’d never hear him.
The door handle turned.
Ana whirled to face the interloper who was intruding on their time.
Isabel walked in. “Can I meet him?”
Tino froze.
Isabel knew about him? When did this happen? When had Ana told her sister? He didn’t make it a practice to overhear their conversations, but it was hard to avoid most times, as he hated to leave Ana’s presence, out of concern that Bruno would start in on her again.
Ana ushered her sister out of the room, practically shoving her.
“Wait.” But he knew they couldn’t hear him. Not in their human shapes.
“Damn,” he let the word out with a whoosh of air. “What’s next?”
Chapter Thirteen
Ana froze. She could have killed her sister. “He doesn’t know you know.”
She knew Tino heard Isabel. Of course, he did, but what the hell.
She steered Isabel out of the room and to the garden. “What are you doing?”
“What?” Confusion was plastered to Isabel’s face.
“I haven’t told him that you know about him yet.”
“Oh no.” Then just as quickly, confusion was replaced with a smile. “Now you don’t have to.”
Impetuous Isabel. God, how that nickname from their younger days fit her today.
“I planned to break it to him slowly.”
“Why?”
Ana contemplated that. Truth was, she didn’t know why.
Or maybe it was because she didn’t want to share him.
No, she shook her inner head. That can’t be it.
Could it?
“Oh.” Isabel’s face lit up as if she’d come up with a brilliant idea.
Ana frowned. Isabel’s ideas worried her.
“Oh. I see.” More lighting up on her face.
Ana tilted her head. “What?”
“You. Are. In. Love.” Isabel clapped her hands rapidly, gleefully, then she jumped up and down and did a pirouette.
“No.” Ana stopped her pirouette with a hand on her arm. “No. No. You are—you have it wrong.”
Damn it.
Of course, Isabel would have figured it out. They were more than sisters. They were best friends.
“No. I don’t have it wrong at all.” Isabel hugged Ana. “You are completely and totally in love with him. I saw it on your face when I entered the room. That explains it.”
Ana shook her head. As if denying it could make it untrue. “You—I—What? Explains wha
t? What does it explain?”
“You wanting to save him from his prison.”
“It’s because we are friends.”
“It’s more than that. But I know you’d want to free him even if you weren’t in love with him. After all, you’re the one that set the goldfish free in the second grade. And the hamsters free in the third grade. And what about that fiasco at the zoo? Thank goodness Papa stopped you.” Isabel doubled over in laughter, then straightened up and looked her sister in the eye, all seriousness. “You’re right. We are going to save him.”
“We? We? No!” Ana wouldn’t have her sister visiting witch covens.
“Of course, we. You can’t go alone. Does he know?”
“Know what?” Ana felt like Isabel and the world were moving at the speed of lightning while she was ensconced in sludge.
“Does he know we went and talked to the witch?”
“Like I’d tell him that I shared his story of Iniga and his father with you. I didn’t have his permission yet.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind when he knows it’s to help free him.”
Oh, he’ll mind.
Ana knew he would. Tino wouldn’t want her endangering herself for him.
“So you didn’t tell him we talked to Desideria?”
Signora Desideria was what Ana and Isabel called her less than a decade ago. One of their teachers from the private school the girls had attended.
Desideria.
A minor witch.
She’d befriended the two tigress shifter sisters and they’d stayed in touch, though, of course, the sisters were no longer girls, and being friends with witches was frowned upon in the shifter world.
Even if the witch had a shifter great-grandparent and was hired by the school to teach shifters how to better prepare for interactions and conflicts with witches.
“No!” Ana shook her head vigorously.
“Guess that means you didn’t tell him about Desideria and Esmerelda.”
Ana simply shook her head. Again.
Of course, she didn’t tell him that Desideria had said to find Esme, as Desideria called her.
That Esmerelda, Esme was the highest powered witch on the continent.
She thought of her and Isabel’s recent visit to Desideria.