Shadow Flight

by Christine Feehan

  “And the bed. We have a lot of beds to break in. There’s a swing chair out on the porch as well. And a porch railing.”

  She burst out laughing, just as he’d hoped she would. “You have sex on the brain.”

  “I’ve come here a lot in the last three years, tesoro. I spent a lot of time fantasizing about the two of us.” It took self-control not to drop his hand to his cock and show her just what went on when he was fantasizing. “Did you? About me?”

  She nodded, the blush starting all over again. “Yes. All the time. Especially in the bathtub. Once, you almost caught me. You came into my bedroom just as I was finishing up.”

  “Finishing up?” he echoed. His heart accelerated. He remembered that night so vividly. He had come into her bedroom through the window. He’d heard the splashes of water in the tub. Moans. So soft. She sounded frustrated. Near tears. He’d stood just outside the door, one hand on the doorknob, knowing how inappropriate it would be, how wrong of him, but it was clear she was sexually frustrated and in need. He wanted to be the one to send her over the edge. To help her get where she needed to go. Instead, he’d done the right thing and backed off.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t. I think I’m so afraid of feeling anything because it was all so wrong. Everything was so wrong.”

  He hated the defeat in her voice.

  “Nothing is wrong now. Everything we do will be right,” he promised. “We’ll try a few things to see if you like them. Nothing scary.”

  She laughed unexpectedly. “It’s all going to be scary.”

  “Isn’t that half the fun? I’m not scary, so it’s just what we try. You can relax and only worry about whether or not it’s too good.”

  She snapped a dish towel at him. “How can something be too good?”

  He grinned at her. “Ask me that question after the family leaves.”

  The smile faded from her face. “What?”

  “You heard me. I’ve decided I’m going to start with just laying you down on the bed, spreading you out and devouring you. Eating you like candy. I bet you taste like honey and lavender. You always smell like that.”

  The blush was back. “Taviano.” There was cautious excitement in her voice.

  “Nicoletta.” There was teasing firmness in his.

  “I’m not going to be able to concentrate on whatever Stefano says, you know that, right? I’ll be thinking about you trying to do that.”

  His eyebrows shot up as he handed her the last cup. “Trying? Amore mio, have a little faith. I have spent more than a few years thinking about how you’re going to taste. I will savor every drop and make certain you enjoy every moment. There’s not going to be any worries about that, but you may find it might be too much, in which case I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath before I start again.” He gave her another wicked grin, caught up the towel and hung it on the rack to dry in the sun and took her hand.

  “You’re really enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

  He was. There was no question about it. She was in his home. Finally. Nicoletta. His Nicoletta. His ring was on her finger. The ring his cousin had made specifically for the right woman, and it fit perfectly, much like Cinderella with her glass slipper. She might have an army of gangbangers coming after her, but she had an entire family of riders swarming to protect her, and he would bet on them every time.

  “Didn’t you have second thoughts?”

  “Of course I did,” he admitted. “I’m a man. I was a bachelor. Women threw themselves at me. The thought of marriage, being with one woman for the rest of my life, was a very different prospect. That was fleeting, I’ll admit. And only when I thought about an actual relationship. It isn’t like I had a good example with the parents. But then I kept going to your room every evening and talking to you. Listening to you. Laughing with you or holding you when you were crying and knowing how strong you were to survive what you did.”

  She shook her head as she settled into the chair in front of the fireplace. “Both you and Stefano act as if I saved myself. I was going to kill myself. That was my only way out. They were going to hand me over to Benito, you know that. You came in when they were desperately trying to save themselves. They knew if they didn’t give me to him, he would kill them. If I was dead, he would kill them. That’s the kind of man Benito is. I wasn’t brave right then. I was a coward. I couldn’t face Benito and what I knew he had in store for me.”

  “I thought you were very brave. You saw us kill your step-uncles. You might not have known how we got there, or even how we killed them, but they were dead, and you knew we were the ones responsible. I took your weapon from you, and I asked you if you wanted to come with us. You said yes. That was brave, Nicoletta. You said yes and we’d just killed them.”

  “I looked at you and knew you were better men.”

  “When you woke up on the plane, you knew we’d stripped you naked. You were wearing my shirt. You didn’t scream, and you didn’t fight me. You just looked at me and then to the door, and you went back to sleep. That took courage.”

  “You drugged me.”

  “You remember being in the tunnel. You weren’t that drugged.”

  She kicked off her shoes and drew her feet onto the chair, a small smile on her face. “That’s true. I do vaguely remember. That’s why the feeling of being in the shadows was somewhat familiar to me. It was looking into your eyes, Taviano. I just trusted you. I did. I can’t tell you why, but I did.”

  He poured them both a chilled glass of water before sinking into the chair beside hers. The glasses were placed on the small figure eight table between the two wide-cushioned chairs. The detail in the little table was exquisite. It was another one of the artist’s creations that he’d left behind with his house.

  Taviano thought the figure eight table fit perfectly with the two laid-back seamless chairs he’d bought at a gallery. The material was painted in bold stripes and round circles; the colors, muted purples and blues, reminded him of the night skies. Because the chairs were wide and overstuffed, they were extremely comfortable. Eloisa thought his “Bohemian” style of house and décor was atrocious, and she wanted him to allow her interior designer to take over, but he liked his unorthodox home and every art piece in it.

  “I love all the sculptures you have,” she said, as if she could read his mind, and maybe she could. They certainly were bound together. “I always wanted to learn to make pottery.”

  Something to give her. He could do that. She never would ask. He flashed her a smile. “Lucky for you, we have a little studio just waiting for someone to be interested enough to make pottery in it.”

  “I tried learning out of a book. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I happen to know people. Real artists, the best at their craft. They’ll show us.”

  “Us? You’d do it with me?” There was a note of excitement in her voice.

  “I told you, I’m the kind of man who wants my wife for a partner. You do it, I’ll try it at least. I haven’t shown you the training hall yet, but we have a full-sized gym, a meditation room and a pool for training. We have a shooting range, too.”

  “I still want to keep studying, Taviano. I can’t fall behind on languages. Fortunately, I learn fairly easily, but I don’t like taking time off.”

  “We’ll put together a schedule. I’d like it better if Lucia and Amo would move to the guesthouse now, but I don’t think we’ll talk them into it this soon,” he said. That meant they would have to schedule in time for visits.

  “They like being close to Lucia’s Treasures,” Nicoletta admitted. “I can’t imagine them moving this soon, either.”

  Taviano wasn’t giving up all hope. Lucia and Amo loved Nicoletta and wouldn’t want to be too far from her. They might consider hiring a manager for the store and just going in later if he could arrange that for them. That way, they could
still be close to Nicoletta.

  “We could always have a baby right away. They’d give up the shop for a baby,” he suggested, straight faced.

  She gasped and swung her head around to glare at him. “I did not just hear you say that. No one has a baby so their foster parents will close down a store and move next door.”

  “We could be the first ones.”

  Nicoletta stared at him a moment and then burst out laughing. “You’re so awful. I’m going to have to get used to your terrible sense of humor.”

  He was going to have to make a list of the pros and cons of getting her pregnant. He hadn’t thought about that. Cons were, no sex all over the house if they had kids right away, and he had to ease her into wild sex. That would take time. Babies meant she would find it harder to keep her running shoes on, and that was going to be a very hard pattern for her to break.

  “Taviano, you have that look on your face.”

  “What look?” He tried for innocence.

  “The one that says you’re up to no good.”

  “I think my family is arriving.” Just in the nick of time, too. No one was supposed to be able to read him. It was just his bad luck that his wife saw too much.

  CHAPTER TEN

  New York cousins are in town,” Stefano reported. “Have you met them yet, Nicoletta? They came right away. Salvatore, Lucca and Geno are here with their bodyguards. The LA cousins are here as well.”

  Nicoletta knew Stefano was warning her so she wouldn’t panic when they all showed up. Although she trained with them, she was still unable to overcome that uneasiness when the Ferraros were together in the same room. There were just too many of them and there was too much testosterone, too many alphas, although Stefano was always the acknowledged leader. Maybe it was that even with Mariko and Emmanuelle in the room, there weren’t enough women to balance out the men.

  Taviano shifted from his chair to hers, supposedly to make more room for the others, but she knew it was to give her more support and she appreciated it. He didn’t make a big deal of it. Before he sat on the arm of her chair, he made certain everyone had something to drink and he gestured to Ricco and Mariko to take his place, so it looked very natural that he would sit with her.

  “I haven’t met the cousins from New York yet,” Nicoletta admitted, “although I did see some of the Los Angeles cousins when we were there.” She hadn’t really officially met them.

  “And Elie Archambault? He’s been working as a bodyguard with Emilio Gallo, another cousin. You’ve met him, of course,” Stefano persisted.

  Nicoletta nodded. “Yes, we’ve trained together a little here and there.”

  Elie smiled at her. “Stefano tells me that your father was an Archambault, a distant cousin of mine.”

  “So they say. I can’t keep track of who is related to whom,” she said. It was the truth. Every rider seemed related distantly to someone else. She resisted pressing a hand to her rapidly beating heart. Could they all hear it? They all seemed to have acute hearing, just like she did.

  Mariko shifted in her chair, just a minute movement, barely perceptible, although Ricco noticed. His arm slid across his wife’s shoulders, but he glanced at Nicoletta with one of his rare smiles. It was warm and genuine.

  “I can barely keep track, either,” he said. His lips, as he spoke, brushed Mariko’s cheek. “And my wife doesn’t ever try. She just smiles at everyone and assumes they’re related in some way.”

  “Aren’t they?” Mariko asked, looking surprised.

  Nicoletta knew the couple was drawing attention away from her, and she was grateful to them. Mariko, almost from the first time they’d met, had been a gentle, exotic creature, so sweet it was impossible to think of her as a skilled and very experienced rider—but she was just as lethal as the men. She had, from the beginning, offered her friendship to Nicoletta.

  Nicoletta glanced at Emmanuelle. She sat on the other side of Elie looking every bit a Ferraro. Even in the pinstriped suit she wore, she looked very feminine and beautiful. There wasn’t a doubt that she was all woman. There was a sadness in her that hadn’t been there a couple of years before. She had the same dark blue eyes that Taviano had. They used to light up when she smiled, but Nicoletta hadn’t seen them do that, not in a couple of years.

  She was always sweet and kind, she shouldered her responsibilities without a murmur and always took any extra rotation if any rider needed time off. If riders from other locations asked for help, it was Emmanuelle who volunteered to go. Nicoletta could tell that the entire family was worried about her, even the cousins. Even the bodyguards. Even Elie.

  “Detroit Demons sent eighteen of their finest our way,” Stefano announced. “They told Benito they’d soften us up and pick up Nicoletta for him. Benito did say they weren’t to touch her. They could have whatever friend she cared about but not touch her. He would punish her his way, but no one else was to lay a hand on her.”

  “That’s a big mistake,” Nicoletta said. “Doesn’t give his army a lot of room.”

  “I don’t think they have a lot of control when it comes to women, so don’t count on them listening,” Taviano said. “I don’t want any of them to ever lay eyes on you unless it’s necessary for some reason we determine.”

  She nodded and leaned into him. “I’m good with that.”

  “Salvatore and the others have been monitoring the talk between Benito and the Detroit crew. They tried getting to him, but so far, they haven’t been able to. He’s moving all the time, and they can’t pinpoint his location.”

  “Is he moving in this direction?” Taviano asked.

  His hand settled around Nicoletta’s neck. She was already acutely aware of him, but the moment he did that, surrounding her bare nape beneath her hair and stroking with the pads of his fingers, her entire focus jumped to those pinpoints of sensation. Each caress sent little streaks of lightning rushing through her bloodstream, creating heat. She knew she should stop him, because it was making it difficult to follow the conversation, but she didn’t want him to stop.

  Taviano made her feel connected to him, but more importantly, through that connection, she knew he needed to touch her. He hadn’t had anyone to love him the way she did, so unconditionally. Giving herself to him when she didn’t think she was going to get anything back mattered to him. She’d loved him for years. Even when she’d been pushing him away, he’d known she loved him. She adored him. He needed that from her. He needed to know that he was first in her life and that he always would be.

  Nicoletta breathed through the lightning jolting her, the little strikes that seemed to carry such awareness to her breasts and then lower, between her legs, to her clit, to her core. She leaned into Taviano’s hand and tried to concentrate on what was being discussed, telling herself it was good practice to learn to be aware no matter how pleasurable the circumstances.

  “We have to assume that Benito is heading straight for us,” Stefano said. He glanced at Nicoletta. “No matter what, bella, this man cannot have you. You are famiglia. None of this is your fault, and whatever they do, whoever they hurt, is on them. It is important to learn to disassociate. It’s perhaps the most difficult of all the lessons.”

  Nicoletta felt the weight of their gazes on her. Her heart accelerated, and for a moment her breath was trapped in her lungs. Almost wildly, she looked around for the doors, or the windows, needing to know where the exits were. She’d already found them once—that was part of their training from day one—but she felt as if she needed to reassure herself that she could get to one of them quickly and no one was blocking any of them.

  Taviano’s fingers stilled their motion and then tightened on her skin, digging into her shoulders. There was a touch of possession there, but there was also the feeling of partnership.

  “Breathe, tesoro. Everyone in this room is famiglia. No one will ever harm you.”

  She knew that
. She hated that she still had panic attacks. Stefano would never think she could go into the shadows with Taviano and be an asset to him, when she knew with a certainty that she could.

  Mariko again came to her rescue. “It is true, Nicoletta. I have had a difficult time disassociating when the crime is too close to me.”

  Emmanuelle uncrossed her legs. “Unfortunately, I think all of us do. It’s a human trait. We try, but when something is so close and we feel responsible, or someone hurts someone we love, we can’t help wanting revenge.”

  Vittorio put his arm around his sister. “I chased a man, Grace’s foster brother, a serial killer who had made her life a nightmare. He shot her, intending to shoot me, after selling her to the Saldis to pay a gambling debt. I wanted to hurt him before I delivered justice to him. It wasn’t going to be justice, either. I wanted to kill him for the things he’d done to her. It took a great deal of self-control before I was able to fall back on my training and deliver justice for justice’s sake. Disassociation is the hardest lesson and the most important there is, whether you are the victim or the one sent to deliver justice.”

  Nicoletta had gotten her breathing and racing heart under control, thanks to Mariko, Emmanuelle and Vittorio. She sent each of them a small smile of thanks.

  “I understand what you’re saying, Stefano, although, as everyone says, it is difficult, and I know if they get their hands on Lucia or Amo, I don’t know how I would react.” She could hear the raw honesty in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She loved her foster parents, and if Benito threatened them, she’d do anything at all to get them back. “I’d do whatever it took, including give myself up to him.”

  Taviano dropped his hand to her thigh and her heart nearly stopped. Her entire body reacted to his touch, in spite of the enormity of the conversation. Her core throbbed and burned. His declaration earlier, the promise of stripping her naked and devouring her, reverberated through her mind. She couldn’t believe she could be distracted just by his hand on her thigh. His palm was burning a brand through her skirt to her thigh. His hand was high up, so close to where her heart beat right through her pulsing clit.