Shadow Flight

by Christine Feehan

  “That’s not going to happen.” He was very firm about that. “There are perks to all that money, Nicoletta, and the lawyers I have access to. One of those is getting my way. You better believe there won’t be an annulment or a divorce. I made that very clear. We need to stop going round and round on this issue and focus on moving forward.”

  “You’re very frustrating, Taviano.” She sent him a look from under her long lashes that made him want to lean across the small space between them and kiss her. “Do you see how entitled that makes you? You’re just proving my point.”

  “Why? Because I’m honest about what I want? I told you from the beginning I wanted you. I knew it was you. I didn’t make any bones about that. You ran, and I chased after you.”

  “You rejected me when I threw myself at you. It took a lot of courage to try to seduce you.”

  “We were both drunk, Nicoletta. That isn’t courage, it’s alcohol. The minute you freaked out, and you would have, what if I didn’t have the control to stop? Where would we have been then? Do you have any idea what it cost me to turn you down? I’ve had a permanent erection for far too long. It was indecent because you were too young, and I was supposed to be looking out for you.”

  “You did look out for me. It’s not your fault that I fell in love with you.”

  “Why the fuck do you have to say it like that?” Temper swirled in his gut in spite of his determination to go carefully with her.

  She winced. He rarely swore at her, especially since that night two years earlier. “Like what? How do you want me to say it? It’s the truth.”

  “Like loving me is the worst thing that anyone could possibly do. I’m sure that’s how my mother feels. Hell, I drive Stefano up the wall all the time as well. Maybe he feels that way, too.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Taviano. All you have to do is look at Stefano when he talks about you or to you and see the love on his face. It’s hard to miss. Your entire family looks at one another like that, but especially Stefano. And I don’t say it like loving you is the worst thing that anyone could possibly do. It’s difficult when it’s not the same kind of love given back.”

  He stared at her, hoping that somehow clarity would come to his brain. He considered himself an intelligent man, but he got nothing just looking at her. “At this moment, Nicoletta, I really want to shake you. You aren’t making any sense, when I’ve always considered you sensible. My family is going to be showing up soon, and I’d prefer not to be pulling out my hair when they arrive, so do a better job of explaining what the hell that means.”

  She heaved a sigh as if he wasn’t quite bright. “I know you love me. How could I not? You’ve looked after me for the last three years. There’s a difference between being in love with someone and loving someone. You can love children, Taviano, and siblings, and parents, but you aren’t in love with them. Do you see the difference?”

  “Why do you think I married you?” She exasperated the holy hell out of him sometimes.

  She shrugged. “Obviously, the investigation turned up the fact that my lineage would produce the right babies you needed, and our shadows tangled together way early and you couldn’t get out of it. You were kind of trapped into it.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “First I’m entitled and privileged, and then I’m this poor sap who was trapped into a loveless marriage by my own shadow. You know what I think, Nicoletta? I think you’re a little afraid to face the truth.”

  “I’ve never been afraid to face the truth, Taviano. I’d rather just know it and deal with it than skirt around it or wonder all the time.”

  “The truth is, I’m so in love with you—and have been for so long—I don’t know how I would survive without you. If you decided you couldn’t handle what we do, although shadow riding is who I am, I would find another way to live just to be with you. I knew some time ago, long before you knew, that I was born to be that man, the one to make your life the best it can be, and I intend to be that man.”

  Nicoletta stared at him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide with shock. Clearly, it was the last thing she’d expected him to say.

  He stood up and held out his hand to her. “The ants are going to eat you alive. Come on. We have to get back to the house. Stefano wants us to take the fight to the Demons instead of letting them get to us if at all possible. He’s got plans so they’re coming to the house. They gave us a little bit of time because they know we’re on our honeymoon.”

  She put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. “Are you serious?”

  “About my family coming here? The ants? The honeymoon? Which we’ll take after the real wedding. We are having a real wedding no matter what,” he added decisively. “I’m certain Grace has half of it already planned out with Francesca and Lucia by now, and it’s not quite noon.”

  “Not any of that. Loving me.”

  “Oh. That. I’m very serious, Nicoletta, and you should have known. I’ve never let you out of my sight. I ran off every boy that ever wanted to ask you out on a date. Two years ago, I informed Dario Bosco we were engaged so he’d back the hell off.”

  She gasped. “No way. That’s why he quit calling me.”

  “That, and I threatened to knock his head off if he went behind my back and tried to undermine me. Of course, the family helped by keeping you busy, and Lucia and Amo were wonderful and aided me as well. It was a great conspiracy.”

  “They knew?”

  “I told them I was going to marry you. I was just waiting for you to get to be a decent age. I couldn’t very well ask you to marry me when you were underage.”

  “I wasn’t underage.”

  “Eighteen was underage to me.”

  “I felt like a million years old.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. He knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes he felt the same way. He’d often looked at her when she’d been trying to fit in with the other schoolgirls and he’d known it would never happen. Her childhood had been ripped away, just as his had been.

  “How could I not be in love with you, Nicoletta? And why would I ever allow my shadow to tangle with yours so fast? I’ll admit it was a little shocking even to me, the way they bound together, merging so quickly, but I didn’t do anything to stop them. I didn’t want to. I knew immediately you were the one and I was going to have you.” He sent her a quick grin. “Once Stefano and the others realized our shadows were so fully merged, they got behind us very quickly.”

  “You’re kind of devious, aren’t you?”

  “You’re just now beginning to notice that about me? Absolutely I am, make certain you remember that. And I’m bossy, but in a good way.”

  “Is there a good way to be bossy?”

  “My way is,” he assured.

  They walked together, matching steps on the narrow pathway until his exasperation got the better of him. He stepped in front of her, effectively halting her, and framed her face with both hands, forcing her to look up at him. “Woman, I just declared I’m madly in love with you, and I get nothing. No reaction whatsoever from you.”

  A slow smile spread across her face until her dark eyes lit up. His stomach did a slow roll and his cock reacted with a hard jerk.

  “I’m a slow processor.”

  “My ass you’re a slow processor. You’re deliberately trying to make me crazy.”

  “And succeeding. I really hate that you investigated me.”

  “My family did that. And now it’s our family, technically.”

  Before she could argue with him, he bent his head and took her mouth. He loved that mouth of hers. The pouty lower lip that had always dared him to bite it. He didn’t. He kissed the hell out of her. He started slow. Gentle. Coaxing. She opened her mouth and let him in, and they both caught fire.

  Flames licked over his skin and heat rush
ed through his veins. He shifted his hold on her, sliding one hand behind her head to hold her in place, his arm a bar around her, locking her body to his. She melted into him, going boneless, her smaller, softer body intensely feminine. He felt every curve, her breasts tight against his lower chest.

  A single sound escaped her throat, a moan, sexy and low, one that reverberated through his body and went straight to his cock, carried on that wave of rising heat. The flames leapt higher. Warning bells went off in his head. “Dio, Dio, amore mio, we have to stop.” He whispered it against her lips.

  “I know. I can’t.”

  He couldn’t, either, but he had to. She wasn’t ready. She thought she was, but she wasn’t. He wasn’t risking losing her because he hadn’t waited. He hadn’t been careful enough. Kissing was okay. Stripping her naked in the forest and taking her like a man starved was not. He heard himself groan as he found her lower lip, that beautiful pouty lip he dreamt about, caught it between his teeth and bit down gently, somewhere between punishment and a sensual enticement.

  Nicoletta gasped, and he licked at the sting and then kissed his way down her throat before holding her against him so tightly with both arms he couldn’t tell if it was her heart pounding or his. He nuzzled the top of her head.

  “Dio, bella, we’re going to go up in flames if we keep this up.”

  “I was all for it.”

  Her voice was muffled against his chest, but he felt her breath with every word, warm and tempting, her lips like a sinful temptation against the thin material of his shirt. She wrapped her arms around his waist, nuzzling his chest.

  “You’re not helping me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, and you’re being so good, Taviano. I do appreciate it, too. Well, I do and I don’t. When you kiss me, I think I could really have wild, amazing sex with you. I want to. I really do.”

  She lifted her head and looked up at him, her dark eyes meeting his. She didn’t try to hide the mixture of love and desire. She looked a perfect blend of sin and innocence. Lust and trepidation mixed together in one tempting package.

  “We’ll get there, but when it’s right.”

  “How, Taviano? I’m so scared I’ll never be able to get there. When you’re kissing me, I can’t think straight. I’m not afraid. I just want you. But when I stop to think about the rest of it . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head.

  “Have a little faith, piccola. I have no doubt we’re going to have amazing sex. Don’t be in such a hurry.”

  Her hand slid down his chest to stroke over the material stretched so tightly over his aching cock. “I do have certain skills, Taviano. I’m really good. I made certain I was really good. I can at least take care of this for you, so you don’t have to walk around hurting all the time.”

  The temptation to let her was strong. Her fingers felt like magic, and his cock didn’t just ache. Frankly, it was painful. There was something in her voice—in her expression. And he’d been there himself. “Why did you make certain you were really good?”

  He felt her instant withdrawal. Her body stiffened just that little bit and separated from his by an inch or so. Her mind, so closely connected to his, slipped away. Their shadows, always tangled, always merged, began to shift, as if they might try to uncurl those tight knots.

  He caught her chin. “Nicoletta, we tell the truth to each other. That’s how I know how to keep you safe and to guide us through any sexual missteps. There are bound to be many. I don’t want problems we can avoid, so that means communication. You think I didn’t have to learn what oral sex was?”

  “Then you probably know that if you could get them to use your mouth, they often couldn’t use other parts of your body, although in my case there were three of them, so sometimes that didn’t work so well anyway,” she said.

  He caught the sheen of tears before she blinked them away. “Yeah, piccola, I learned that trick, but there were two of them, so it didn’t always work for me, either. I think we’ll wait until we’re mutually satisfying each other, not using oral sex out of fear.”

  “Do you think that’s why I was offering?”

  “I think you’re very frightened, Nicoletta, of not pleasing me. Of not being able to have sex the way you think I might want to have it.”

  She ducked her head. All around them the birds sang, calling out to one another, but she was no longer hearing the soothing symphony. She was screaming inside. He could hear it in his own mind. That was how close they were, even when she’d tried to separate them.

  “You’re very experienced, Taviano. I’ve seen the magazines. You’ve had so many partners. So many women. I’ve had those three monsters and Benito Valdez, who, quite frankly, was as big a monster as all three of the others combined, and I hated every second I was with them. I despised sex. Nothing about it was good. Nothing. Not one single thing.”

  He rubbed at her lips with the pad of his thumb. Her skin was so incredibly soft, but it was the woman and everything about her that melted the ice in him, that hard place inside him he had thought impossible to ever get past to find the real man.

  “That wasn’t sex, Nicoletta. That was rape. That was brutal animals trying to hurt you, to prove they had power over you. They didn’t. They never could. What it wasn’t, was sex. Sex between two people who love each other should be beautiful. It should be slow, staring into each other’s eyes, so intimate you know you belong together for eternity. It should be fun. It should be slam-against-the-wall, can’t wait to fuck. It should be anything you want it to be because you’re so in love you need to give each other so much pleasure you can’t stand it. But always, always, Nicoletta, whatever two people in love do, it’s consensual.”

  He brushed a kiss on her soft, tempting lips because he couldn’t stop himself. “If you get scared at any point and you want to slow down and take a breath, you say so and we slow down. You want to stop, you say so, then we stop. We try something new and it scares you, you say so and we stop and discuss whether you want to keep going or not. You don’t like something, we stop. End of story. Anytime you say no, it’s no. That’s sex with the one you’re in love with. That’s sex with me. That’s why it’s so important to always communicate honestly with me about what you’re feeling, and I promise I’ll do the same.”

  She stared up at him for a few more moments and then she nodded, her impossibly long lashes fluttering in that way that always moved him.

  “That’s why I love you so much, Taviano. You manage to make me feel so important to you. No matter what. You make everything all right.”

  “Everything is all right as long as we’re together. We’re stronger together, Nicoletta. You always have to remember that. Eloisa might try to take us down. Others might. They don’t matter. It’s always going to be you and me.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s go back to that beautiful home you managed to find, although I can’t believe you really can see stars. No one can see stars anymore.”

  “We can.” He poured confidence into his voice, allowing her to change the subject. They needed to switch to something much lighter. “We’re very far out.”

  “The city is too lit up. I think you have to be in the middle of the lake in order to see them. I looked it up once. I asked Lucia and Amo about going to an observatory, and even there, it’s not a really good shot at seeing them.”

  “It is here. The artist who built the house chose the location far enough away, across the lake and deliberately with seeing the stars in mind. He was an astronomer at heart, which is why most of the art pieces in the house or built into the ceilings and walls all have to do with the universe and galaxies.”

  They managed to walk side by side, with her tucked beneath his shoulder for most of the way, until they neared the house, and then he took the lead. She tucked her hand into his back pocket. She’d done that once or twice before, and Taviano liked it. Eloisa would lose her mind
if she ever saw Nicoletta do something like that.

  He knew that his relationship with Nicoletta would be very different from his brothers’ relationships with their spouses. He might be dominant—the Ferraros were born that way, and being riders only brought out that trait more—but he needed a warrior woman, a partner. He had known he wanted a woman who would work beside him. He hadn’t thought that until he met Nicoletta—until she opened her eyes on the plane heading back to Chicago and he looked into all that rage and confusion. That fight. Those eyes held the same emotions his held every time he looked in the mirror.

  He opened the kitchen door and stepped back to allow her into the house first. The dishes were still on the table right where he’d left them when he’d gone after her. Eloisa was gone. Thankfully, Henry had taken her away in the car, so Taviano didn’t have to worry about her riding the shadows with an injury. She no longer rode the shadows to bring justice to those who deserved it. She had taken the role of a greeter, but she still used the shadows to move around when she wanted to secretly get from one place to another fast.

  Nicoletta immediately cleared the table and helped him clean the kitchen. “I would have thought you would have an entire staff working for you.”

  “They clean,” he admitted. “But not my dishes. I’m one person. When I’m here, I like to be alone. I cook, and I do my own dishes. I have a couple of people who will come in after, and a regular cleaning crew while I’m gone, but otherwise, I just want to be left alone.”

  “I like that,” Nicoletta said.

  “Good.” He shot her a grin. “Because when we’re at the stage where you’re comfortable having sex, I’m fucking you in every room, on every table, over every couch, on the rug in front of every fireplace and on the roof as well. We don’t want to be stumbling over staff while we’re doing that.”

  Color swept up her neck and into her face. She arched an eyebrow at him. “All those places? Really?”