by Thorne, Elle
His breath ticked the hair against her neck. She couldn’t imagine how it must have been for Tino either.
“I could stay like this forever, you know,” he whispered in her ear. “Right here, with you against me.”
“Mmmm.” She understood completely what he meant.
“But we should get back.”
She nodded, unwilling to move away from him. “I suppose we should.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gio and Isabel’s ordeal lasted the whole night. The following morning, walking through the forest, the dew still perched on leaves and branches, Gio and Isabel made their way back to his property. He held her hand as if they’d always been like this, always the two of them. Neither spoke, enjoying the quiet.
Standing at the back veranda on his villa, Gio studied her face, his expression intent. “Let’s see where we go from here?”
Isabel paused then said, “Let’s.”
“Gio.” Tito exited the double door and joined them. “Where have you been? You were gone all night.”
“How are the children?” Gio didn’t address the question.
“They are fine. Sound asleep in their rooms. Three guards on each. But you’ve had us worried. And you didn’t even take your phone with you. You know better.”
Turn of events, Tito playing the older brother. Gio smothered a smile at his brother’s protectiveness.
He turned to Isabel. “I’ve got some work to catch up on. See you at lunch? A late lunch, with the children?”
Isabel nodded.
* * *
Late lunch? What was she supposed to do until then? A shower wouldn’t take that long. Neither would changing her clothing. And Isabel couldn’t spend a few hours alone. She wanted—needed—company. So she spent a few hours with Gio’s children. Their innocence and sweetness kept her grounded and her mind off of matters that were troubling. Like witches, traps, phantom tigresses, and a widowed alpha who had stolen her heart.
So hours later, she and the children made their way to the backyard, where they’d have a picnic lunch on the patio under the immaculate and ever-present garden of topiaries.
* * *
Gio watched Isabel and his children approach and it was as if this routine had been theirs forever. It was as if Isabel had forever been in his heart, in his tiger’s heart, and in his life.
Veila ran up to Gio, her face flushed and lips curved into a wide grin. “Guess what! Just guess!”
“What’s that, little tigress?” He pulled Veila into his arms, barely able to contain her, wriggling from excitement. He adored his little tiger shifter daughter and wouldn’t want the world to know she had him twisted around her pinky finger.
He sat her in her seat, pushing the chair in, then held one out for Isabel who took a spot, her scent fragrant from the shower, hair gleaming in the sunlight.
Vittorio took a seat opposite Veila, to the right of Gio’s chair.
“You don’t need to hire a nanny! That’s what!”
Gio glanced at Vittorio who looked at his father and nodded. “Veila’s right. You don’t need to.”
Gio made a show of taking his time to sit, arranging the napkin in his lap, then cocked his head to the side, wondering what his little ones had been up to. “Is that right? And why not? Will you be caring for yourselves? Teaching yourselves?”
“No!” Veila shook her head vehemently. “Isabel agreed to stay.”
Isabel had been lifting a glass of water to her lips. She lowered the glass. “Wait. What? That’s…”
“You said you would.” Veila pouted.
“True,” Vittorio agreed. “You did.”
“I agreed to a visit,” Isabel countered. “Do not try to con me into being your nanny.”
Gio looked at his son. “You’re trying to con her?”
“I’m going to be alpha one day,” Vittorio announced. “I don’t need to con anyone. They have to listen to me. And from now on you will call me Vax.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
Gio frowned at his headstrong son. Movement caught his eye. Isabel was nodding slowly, barely perceptible, giving Gio the clue that he should acquiesce.
“So, Vax is what you’ll be called?”
His son looked at him, as if not quite believing that his father would agree to this, then gave a nod.
“Then Vax it is. Though you know that’s not my preference.”
Another nod from his son.
A tiny smile crept to Isabel’s lips, curving them just so. They were still swollen and pink colored, reminding him of their kiss.
They ate slowly, extending the meal into a long visit with his children. He enjoyed watching the way their faces lit up when they talked to Isabel, how engaged and happy they seemed.
They dined on light fare, making the conversation noncommittal while Gio couldn’t stop thinking about Isabel. About keeping her there. Keeping her with him. Forever.
Maybe that’s what prompted him to ask, “How long will you be staying?”
Isabel gave him a questioning glance, a hint of darkness behind her eyes flared into an amber glow as her tigress surfaced.
“Go with Uncle Tito. I’ll come find you later,” Gio told his children. He was due a day with them. They’d become strangers to him, he’d been so busy with Tiero corporate interests and shifter business.
Tito took them by the hand and they walked away.
“Let’s take a walk.” He led her to the garden in the back.
Isabel walked next to him, her strides keeping up with his.
For a long time, they walked in silence, a comfortable serenity between them.
Finally, Gio cleared his throat. “So back to my unanswered question,” he said, “How long will you be staying?”
“How long will my invitation be extended?”
“Indefinitely.” He nodded, remaining cool, though in his chest, his tiger roared with a pleasure that threatened to make Gio’s head explode. “I need to tell you something. Federico called. Your sister’s attempt to save the stonebound lion worked. They are on the way back.”
“That’s good. I’m sure that Ana’s happy. Though I don’t know how well this will sit with Bruno when he returns. Hopefully, Tino will have cleared out and left before Bruno does come back.”
“There’s been an issue.”
Isabel stopped walking. “What sort of issue?”
“Bruno walked in. Went nuclear on my men. They didn’t know. They had to protect themselves, my brother, your sister…”
“You mean he’s not—he didn’t make it?”
“That’s right. My team had to take him out.”
Isabel was hard-pressed to give a damn. Bruno had been a tyrannical bastard. He’d made her sister’s life hell. “Don’t take this wrong, but the world’s better off without him.”
“Federico mentioned your sister wasn’t heartbroken.”
“Why would she be? You have no idea what she went through.” But Isabel knew Ana’s hardships. She’d seen the bruises and contusions. It had been a matter of time; she’d been thinking of ways to get Bruno out of her sister’s life. She’d heard Ana’s cries, late at tonight, after Bruno had—
Isabel pushed the memories of her sister’s life away. It was over now. And she didn’t have to kill Bruno. Because that was her next plan.
“Will you return to Rome with us?”
Gio’s question caught her off-guard. “You’re going back?”
“It’s better for me to be close to the center of my operations.”
“What brought you here?”
He glanced back at the house, then centered his intense gaze on her. “It’s a safe place. A place that very few know about.”
“Very few others than a witch that almost killed you?”
“I doubt Esmerelda would have wanted me killed. That trap wasn’t set for a Tiero. She’d be foolish to start a war of that magnitude between shifters and witches.”
“So then what were you hoping to escape from? Or whom
?”
“The white tigress you saw.”
“Is she a ghost? What does she want?”
“The children.”
Isabel gasped. “She wants to…” She was confused.
“She wants her children.” He stated it matter-of-factly, as if it was normal. As if it was an everyday thing. “It’s as simple as that. And they deserve their lives. That’s all there is to it.”
Isabel’s hackles rose. Her tigress snarled. At the very same moment, Gio spun around.
Chapter Nineteen
“What is it?” she whispered, knowing something was making alarms go off in her mind, and in her tigress, but she had no clue what.
Gio’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, his jawline tightened. “Someone’s approaching.”
More like something, Isabel thought, because this was no human setting off alarms like this.
From the depths of the forest appeared a being. A man, pale of skin, tall and lean in a sinewy way. Clad in a dark suit with an open collar and a jacket, the man appeared to have stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine.
He looked like he’d been to a formal affair. His clothing was impeccable, not a hair out of place. She’d almost call him attractive, except there was something inherently evil that oozed from his seemingly nonexistent pores.
She glanced at Gio whose full concentration was centered on the one coming closer. “Who—what is he?”
“He’s a—”
“Giovanni.” The man’s voice was hollow, ethereal, and if she had to use another word to describe it, she’d have called it otherworldly.
“Kristoph.” Gio was practically bristling, his voice displaying his tiger and a coldness that Isabel had never heard before. “What are you doing here?”
Vampire! Isabel’s tigress screamed the word in Isabel’s subconscious.
The word reverberated in Isabel’s mind. She’d been made well aware of the danger that vampires could pose to shifters.
“We have unfinished business.” Kristoph’s smile didn’t meet his eyes. Eyes that were coffee bean brown, but tinged with a dark crimson ring.
“You and I have no business.” His words were a growl.
The tone in Gio’s voice made Isabel tear her gaze away from Kristoph. Gio had begun to morph. Beneath his human skin, she could see his tiger stripes making a presence.
“You can’t take on a vampire,” Isabel told Gio, hoping to get him to stop his shift so they could escape the vampire.
“Listen to her; she speaks wisdom,” Kristoph said in a mocking tone.
“Shift and go to the house, Isabel,” Gio commanded.
“Yes, run, little white tigress. Run.” Kristoph gave Gio a smile that made Isabel’s blood run cold. “Do not worry, Gio. I have my own white tigress. Well—” Kristoph coughed twice, “former white tigress. But then again, I guess, you know that.”
Gio’s snarl came from deep within his chest, so vivid, it was vibrating in Isabel’s body.
Gio’s shift was immediate. Within seconds, he was in his tiger form, and pouncing toward the vampire.
The vampire hissed, and with a speed that defied even Isabel’s shifter sight, he was a blur as he moved, disappearing from Isabel’s view.
A nanosecond later, Isabel felt a cold gust of air against her neck. It was a windless day. Adrenaline-driven, she whirled around.
Kristoph laughed, standing so close to her that she smelled his breath. The scent of cloves permeated her senses. His breath was cold, not arctic cold, but cool, like the breeze that heralds winter and ushers autumn out.
She backed up, shivering from more than just that cool breath. Her tigress roared in her mind.
Quickly, before she could think to intervene, Gio surged forward standing between her and Kristoph. His tiger rose to its full height, his chest swollen, his muscles taut. Gio snarled a warning at the laughing vampire.
Immediately, Isabel’s tigress pushed for a shift, wrestling control from Isabel. With a gush of power coursing through her, Isabel felt her muscles begin their excruciating transformation. Seconds later, she was in her tigress’s body, facing the smirking vampire while Gio circled him menacingly.
Isabel felt a push for a sync nudging against her mind. She accepted immediately. She felt another push, and she accepted again, wondering why the first time didn’t work.
“Gio!” she exclaimed into the sync.
“Not Gio.” It was Desi’s voice.
“Who the hell?” This time it was Gio’s voice.
Isabel hadn’t realized at the time that she’d accepted a sync with Gio and with Desi.
Isabel’s tigress glanced about seeking Desi.
There Desideria was half hidden behind a tree.
Gio circled the vampire, keeping a solid distance between himself and the nightwalker, while at the same time setting himself up as a barrier to protect Isabel.
That evil smirk still planted on his pale face, the vampire’s malevolent gaze was fixated on Gio’s tiger, ignoring Isabel. A flash of movement, a breeze stirring in his wake, the vampire zipped toward Gio.
Isabel screamed.
Desideria stepped forward into the open.
The vampire froze.
Gio stopped in his tracks.
For a very still, very long moment, everything seemed frozen.
No sound.
No movement.
Just a deathly quiet in an unmoving forest.
The vampire raised a brow.
“Witch.” His voice was a hiss. “What are you doing here, witch?”
In the sync, Gio talked to Isabel. “Go away. Run. We can’t defeat the witch and the vampire.”
“The witch is on our side,” Isabel told him.
He swung his tiger head in her direction, brilliant tiger eyes narrowing, irises becoming slits. “You know her?” Gio asked Isabel in their sync.
“She’s a friend,” Isabel informed him.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Desi told Gio. “I can help.”
Kristoph’s gaze flicked from Desi to Isabel, to Gio, then back to Desi. “What are you telling them in their minds, witch? What are you plotting, Desideria?”
Isabel gasped in her tiger’s mind. He knew Desi. He knew her!
Kristoph took a step in Isabel’s direction.
Gio snarled and planted himself even more firmly between Kristoph and Isabel.
“Leave them be, nightwalker. What witch did you trick to give you the means to walk before it is fully dark?”
“I have many at my disposal. Your refusal to join me merely meant I had to find another. Do you regret not taking me up on my offer, Desideria?” His tone had taken a seductive note.
Isabel watched his face as he seemed to be turning on his charm, or glamour, or some sort of trickery.
“I do not. I live with few regrets.” Desi took a pace forward, then another. “You’ll regret it if you hurt these shifters. You’ll draw the wrath of Esmerelda and others.”
The vampire’s laugh was hollow. “I fear no witch.” Quicker than could be witnessed by a human eye, he stood next to Desideria, his finger tracing down her cheek, her jawline, his nail sharp, leaving a tiny crimson trail. And then just as quickly, he’d stepped away.
A glow surrounded Desi, a green glow that made Isabel think of the force field that had taken Gio into an unconscious state.
Isabel burst forward in a leap, aiming to sink her canines into the vampire’s neck.
Gio sprung in her direction, a mighty jump as his body slammed his tiger into hers, knocking her off course.
“You can’t bite him. You don’t want to risk sharing blood with him and becoming a hybrid.” Gio’s voice was a combination of a shout and a roar in her mind.
“Stay away,” Desi cautioned.
With that, she cast the force field into a wider pattern, encircling the vampire and herself.
Kristoph surged, his image barely discernible as he reached Desi, and leaned forward.
Nanoseconds lat
er, Kristoph was flung away from Desi, a supernatural projectile directly headed to crash into a large tree. He righted himself, landed on his feet.
“This isn’t the last you’ll see of me, witch.” He vanished into the forest, a blur of motion and black clothing, dark hair flowing behind him.
Isabel shifted into her human so fast, adrenalin pushing her into morphing so quickly that she barely noticed the pain.
“You’re bleeding.” She ran toward Desi.
Gio jumped forward, his body shifting into his human form in mid-sprint. He grabbed Isabel’s arm, pulling her away from Desi.
“No, Gio. She’s my friend.” Isabel jerked free of his grasp. “He bit you.” She reached for Desi’s face.
Desi lurched back, away from Isabel. “Don’t touch it. It’s… I’ll be fine. I’ve got to get some help.”
“You’re not fine.” Isabel stepped closer.
Again, Desi pulled away. “I will take care of this. I will get help. You need to get to safety. He could come back.”
“Let’s go. Now.” Gio took Isabel’s arm again. “Listen to your friend.”
Isabel wasn’t crazy about the way he said your friend, but she understood his hesitancy to trust a witch.
“Let me know you’re all right?” she said to Desi.
Desi nodded, and with that, she slipped into the forest.
Isabel kept pace with Gio’s long steps. She understood his desire to get out of the area.
“We have to talk.”
“When we get back.”
Chapter Twenty
Gio and Isabel had no sooner arrived at the villa when Isabel pulled him aside, taking his hand and drawing him into the front sitting room. “That talk.”
“Yes,” Gio agreed. “We should. I have a question for you as well.”
Tito approached.
Gio waved him away. “Give us a few.”
Isabel took a deep breath. “I have to know about their mother…”
Gio nodded. “I understand. Vanessa fell victim to a vampire. That vampire. Kristoph.” The way Gio said his name, it was as if uttering a vile curse.
