by Reina Torres
“Get up, Ana.” His voice was a caress, rather than a command. He tilted his head up toward the wall above him. “Take hold of the headboard.”
He moved when she did and a moment after her hands took hold of the headboard, she felt him tucked in behind her. Uberto leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Move back a little.”
She would have argued over his ‘instructions’ but she wanted and leaned back toward him. The thick head of his erection was there, spreading her folds open with a gentle pressure. She hesitated only a moment before she leaned back, taking him into her body with a moan.
He let her set the pace. She took what she wanted from him and gave him pleasure in return. She wanted his hands and he gave them to her, taking her pleasure to new heights and when she rose up higher on her knees he followed. When she needed his fingers between her legs that’s what she had and when she needed him harder and faster he growled into her ear, “Yes, love.”
And when they each found that point where they saw stars and felt their heat rocketing through their bodies, they found it together, each meeting the other halfway.
As they fell asleep tangled in each other’s embrace, Emiliana offered up a silent prayer that this wasn’t just a moment of time together, but a fresh start for both of them.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, he awoke before her and moved about the room, picking out his clothes.
“Leaving so soon?”
Nodding, he moved toward the bathroom.
“I’d like to go to the meeting with you today.”
That stopped him in mid-stride and he turned to look at her. “Ana-”
“Why not?”
“The representatives are a set list of elders.” He waited, and when she didn’t say anything he started back toward the bathroom.
“I could take notes.” She grinned at the pained look on his face. “It would make my father happy to see me in a role so befitting to my lowly station as a woman.”
“Ana-”
“You should consider standing there for a minute or so and argue with me some more.”
“Why,” he laughed, “I don’t like arguing with you at all.”
“I don’t know,” she sighed and stretched, “I’m enjoying the view from here. I can’t say I’m upset about the idea of you standing right there… naked.”
He looked down at his naked form before lifting his head. She still didn’t meet his eyes, but he enjoyed looking his fill of her.
Her dark hair was tumbled about her shoulders, her lips were still plump and swollen from his kisses, and her hold on the sheet had loosened dipping down over the rounded curve of her generous breasts. He didn’t need his bear to point out how beautiful she was.
He certainly had no problem taking in the view with his eyes and drawing in one deep breath after another.
His scent was still on her skin. Her scent on his.
His eyes dipped lower and he wondered if he could still see the mark he left on the inside of her thigh or if he’d have to try again to get the pressure right.
Emiliana still couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re still naked.”
His gaze settled on her mouth and he couldn’t help the memories that pushed forward in his brain to remind him where she had that mouth last night. What it had felt like for her to try to swallow him whole.
He heard her soft moan and blinked to refocus his attention on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Will you put on some clothes?”
His eyes narrowed just the littlest bit. “Are you serious about that?”
“I asked you to do it. Why wouldn’t I be serious about it?”
Turning, he moved to the chest of drawers along the wall and pulled out a pair of loose pants and pulled them on over his legs and up to his hips. “Is this better?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, drawing out the silence in the room.
“Ana?” he turned around again and saw her pull her gaze up to his.
“Yes?” Her expression was a study in the effort it took for her to give him the impression she was trying to make. “It’s fine.”
Rounding the bed on her side, he only needed a few steps to walk up to her knees. He saw the way the sheet parted over her leg, framing her knee with its pristine fall of fabric.
“Maybe you said that,” he moved his knee until it brushed against hers, “because me being naked didn’t upset you so much as bother you.”
She shrugged, and the sheet dropped lower showing him a tantalizing view of the side of her breast. Heaven.
“It’s the same thing,” she mumbled back at him. “You were just standing there,” she swallowed a breath as if she was in desperate need of air, “naked.”
“Was it because of your fa-”
“No!” She very nearly spat the word at him. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before she opened them again. “It’s not about him.”
“Then what, Ana?”
“You’re a distraction.”
“I was naked.” He shrugged. “Shifters don’t worry that much about baring skin-”
“Shifters, you mean the rest of you. The men…”
She shook her head and got up. The sheets were almost tugged free of her hands, likely a heel in the wrong place, but she didn’t let it go.
And he really wished she’d let it go, but this conversation was more important.
“What about men?”
She opened her mouth to talk and then snapped it shut again, waving her free hand in dismissal. She finally mumbled something out of the corner of her mouth. “Never mind.”
“Oh.” He gave her a grimace and held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry.”
She took a few steps and stopped. “Wait a minute.”
He tried to make his expression as neutral as possible, hoping to keep her claws out of his hide.
“Why did you apologize?”
He spoke the truth, there was no sense in trying to sneak one past her. Especially when her bear was glaring out through her eyes. “I did it because you said ’never mind.’”
That seemed to hit a glancing blow on her curiosity. “And?”
“And?” He shook his head. “There’s no and. You said never mind, and I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t going to fight it. I was just going to honestly tell you that I was sorry.”
“For what?” Her eyes narrowed on him.
“For making you upset. I don’t know exactly what it was that I did.”
“Then why apologize?”
She apparently didn’t want to let things go as much as he did. Taking a calming breath, Uberto tried to explain. “While Natale was pregnant, she was more often than not her normal happy self, and even when she had moments when things felt over whelming or if she was upset, Salvatore seemed to understand just what to say and do to help her.” He sat on the bed so he could tell the story without looming over her. “Personally, I was more than a little over my brother’s innate ability with his mate. Not all of the Orsinos seemed to have that skill.”
If she caught on to the little bit of self-depreciating humor, she didn’t let on.
“But one day he had apparently failed to understand his mate’s intended meaning. By the time they left for her workroom, my darling sister-in-law was ready to skin my brother. He was confused to say the least.”
He looked at Emiliana and saw her hesitant expression. “Salvatore?”
He shrugged. “It was hard to believe, but when they came home it was like night and day. They were as sickeningly loving as they had been the day before.”
“What happened?” Emiliana had moved closer to him, leaning her thigh against his as she listened to his story.
“Natale’s assistant had pulled him aside less than an hour into the workday. Apparently, the entire staff were so afraid that their gentle and loving boss was about to kill her husband that they decided to intervene.”
He felt Ana’s hand on his shoulder and tried to settle his nerves, bu
t it was hard enough when it was just her leg against his. Now, with two points of contacts they’d all but created an electric circuit that had a direct line to his cock. His luscious mate was likely to kill him with some kind of aneurysm, or a clot thrown from his groin to his brain.
“What did she say?” she wondered aloud. “Natale’s assistant.”
He smiled through the pain and concentrated on the point of his story. “She let Salvatore in on the secret language of women.”
“Wait!” The hand that Emiliana had on his shoulder turned into a loose-fingered fist and she clipped him on the shoulder. “There is no secret language.”
He gave her a look that spoke loudly on its own, telling her he knew better. At least in this case.
“Salvatore saved it on his phone. Apparently, it was on a meme. When Natale had told him ‘Never mind, forget it.’ He’d left it alone.”
He watched the realization dawn on Emiliana’s face. “Okay,” she laughingly agreed, “I see your point. So, after he learned this, you and your brothers have been nature’s gift to women?”
Even if it hadn’t been his instinctual reaction, Uberto knew how to answer that question… with truth.
“No, I was just the lonely brother, but you’d think Val had learned the lesson.”
Emiliana was suddenly perched on his thigh, leaning her shoulder against his chest. “No?”
He shared a smile with her. “No. My slightly older brother got into some trouble when Allegra had been mated to him for a little over a month.
“He had been protective of her from the beginning, but it seemed like the more that he knew she could do for herself, he wanted to do more for her.”
“Sounds like Allegra is really independent.”
He lifted a hand to take hold of an errant curl and drape it forward over her shoulder. “She is, and Natale too. Still, there’s nothing wrong with helping as long as she didn’t mind-“
“But I’m guessing Valerio didn’t see the line and crossed it?”
He smiled and nodded. “He told her his plans for something, I can’t even remember what it was exactly, but she had finally reached her limit with my sweet brother and told him ‘Fine! Go ahead if that’s what you want!”
Emiliana’s horrified gasp made him smile.
“Oh no!”
“By the time we came home and found them, Allegra had made him a bed on the couch.”
“So, when I said ‘never mind’ you knew-”
“I knew enough to make an honest apology.”
As he watched, he felt like she was thinking over his words. She sighed. “So, while I know we have to go soon,” she shifted on his thigh and her leg was pressed against the thick ridge of his erection, “we don’t have to get up right now, do we?”
He raised his hand and peeled her fingers gently away from the sheets in her hand. Freed from her hand, the heavy cotton pulled out of her grasp and pooled on the bed and on the floor at her feet.
Uberto turned his hand and trailed his fingertips along the side of her breast until his palm brushed over her nipple. It pebbles under his touch. “We can stay here for a few minutes,” he agreed with her. “What did you have in mi-”
She used her hand and held his jaw, lifting his chin so she could fasten her mouth hungrily on his neck. Kiss after kiss marked the length of his throat and when she reached the bottom, she dipped her tongue into the subtle depression at the base of his throat.
He tasted like salt and the heat of his against her tongue sent delicious shivers all through her body.
Her hands roamed over his chest as her bear pushed up just beneath the surface of her skin. She was hungry. They were hungry.
And it didn’t even matter if it was her human side that was in control or her bear. They both wanted the same thing, him.
The points of her fangs brushed along his skin, trailing little beads of blood in their wake.
She heard him hiss and swear under his breath a moment before she felt his hand in her hair. He tangled the lengths through his fingers and tugged. Her lips parted, and a throaty gasp burst from her mouth. “Yes.”
Emiliana felt his fingers twist in her hair, turning her face toward his.
“Open your eyes, Ana.” He drew out the first ‘A’ in her name and made it sound like a moan. How could she ignore him?
Her eyes fluttered open and as she met his gaze she felt her whole body draw tight like a bowstring. His skin was so hot against hers, she wondered for a fleeting moment if she would be burned by him in more ways than one.
But the next moment, when she felt his hand slip between her thighs, she didn’t care much how much she was burned, as long as he left her panting and sated afterward. Parting her thighs, she gave him enough room for his fingertips to slip through the silken curls at the apex of her sex and stroke her folds.
He found a rhythm after a few strokes and she encouraged him with a slight shift of her hips, splaying her thighs far enough apart that he was able to curl one finger and then two within her slick heat.
Uberto’s voice whispered into her ear as he made her writhe on his lap. “Ana?”
She melted at the thick rasp of his tone, but her eyes stayed locked on his. Something about the feel of his strong fingers sliding into her body while she looked into his eyes made her feel like she was just hovering on the edge of oblivion and if she fell over, she just might welcome it.
“Yes?”
“Tonight,” he promised her, “I’m going to take you, every way you’ll let me-”
All she could offer him was a soft gasp of sound.
“But right now…”
His thumb strummed over her clit, bowing her back on a soft shuddering moan.
“Right now, I want you to come for me.” He rubbed his cheek against hers and she could feel the scratch of his stubble. “Come for me, mia anima. Now.”
His fingers swept into her body like a wave on the beach, picking her up and tossing her headlong into ecstasy.
Emiliana wrapped her arms around his body and held on for dear life as she drowned in the tumbling sensations of her orgasm. A moment before she felt her lungs burst for lack of air, his mouth covered hers and he held her gently against him until she came back down to earth.
Chapter Nine
Damiano’s Bakery had always been a fond memory of his. The smell of freshly baked bread and the taste of homemade butter slathered on its side had been a delicious inducement to keep him attentive and quiet during the informal meetings that occurred in the front of the shop.
A look about the room gave him a new perspective. Gone were the days of sitting on the table, kicking his legs out over and over as he ate the sample of bread that Mr. Damiano never seemed to run out of.
As an adult. As the representative for the Orsino family, he had a new reason to be here, but remaining somewhat ignorant of the topics on the list for discussion. He was sure it was a way for Alfonse to hold onto the control of the meetings for as long as possible. Something he didn’t begrudge the man who had stepped in and up to care of their concerns while they’d been gone.
But even that patience was wearing thin. Standing along the wall, Uberto had left the chairs in the room for the other men to occupy. He wasn’t exactly sure how many men would be in attendance, and he would never have dreamed of occupying a chair that an elder should have for their own.
As the men entered, they walked into the room and crossed straight to Alfonse’s side.
Uberto didn’t perceive it as a slight. On the contrary, he considered it more than appropriate. Alfonse was the face that everyone saw on a regular basis. These men might not even recognize his face. The ten years that he’d been away had changed his features. Changed his attitude as well.
Something he was more than thankful for.
“Uberto?”
He felt the hesitant touch on his arm and looked up into the eyes of Ezio Bennetti. “It’s good to see you.”
Ezio nodded. “I feel much the same way.�
� He sighed, a soft sound that sounded almost like a memory. “I took one look at you standing here and I remembered your mother.”
The older man’s words confused him. “My mother?”
“Yes, your mother.”
Ezio’s eyes darted to a nearby chair and Uberto took the man’s elbow and walked him over and seated him against the wall.
“She was gone before you were old enough to remember much of her. Your father did his best to take care of you boys, but he had none of her sweet disposition to pass on.”
Uberto felt a strange tingling feeling behind his eyes. “My father’s disposition was anything but sweet.”
Ezio’s grin was bright and his eyes held a mischievous glint. “Truer words, son.”
The two shared a laugh before Ezio spoke again.
“Maybe that’s the way of things with a mate bond.”
The words caught Uberto’s interest. “How so?”
“Your father had power and a fire in his gut that served him well. A warrior through and through like his father before him.” Ezio’s sigh was a fond one. “But your mother was gentle and soft. She could tame your father even when he was in a rage. Her touch drew his human back to the surface, kept him whole.”
Uberto considered his words. “That sounds like Valerio.”
“That may be,” the older man explained, “but I see the three of you boys and think of how we see your parents in you.”
“As you said. I didn’t know my mother much. Maybe that’s why I can be such a boar. It’s in my nature and without my mother’s nurturing love, I have more of my father in me.”
And the thought didn’t sit well with in him.
Ezio folded his arms across his chest. “That’s not what I said, Uberto, but perhaps you’re not ready to hear it.”
Alfonse walked into the room and all of the conversations stopped. One could point to the fact that they were all of an age and from eras where civility and respect were expected.
Or there was the alternative that the men in the room knew exactly how strong Alfonse Bruno was, and didn’t want to test the man’s anger.
