Shadow Flight

by Christine Feehan

  Taviano pulled back. He needed some control. This was dangerous for both of them whether she knew it or not. She was enjoying herself and he was in paradise, but it could turn ugly in moments. He wasn’t going to let that happen for her.

  “Baby.” It was a protest. “You had dessert. I get mine.” She had a beautiful pout.

  “How do I taste?” He couldn’t resist asking.

  “So good, the best. And all mine.”

  That was the right answer. He was all hers. He rubbed his brutally aching cock along her lower lip and then pressed down in a silent command. She opened her mouth immediately for him, stretching wide to accommodate his size. He pushed inside slowly. A single sound escaped his throat. A low moan of pleasure.

  Paradise. Hot. Wet. Exquisite. He narrowed his eyes, closing until they were mere slits. He needed to see her, but he wanted to savor the incredible feeling of her mouth turning into a vacuum. A tight suction. One moment, her tongue was lashing him, flicking hard, stabbing at him, then lapping and curling as she bobbed up and down his shaft; the next, she was hollowing her cheeks and sucking as if she meant to pull every bit of his boiling semen from his tight balls.

  His hand dropped to her hair. He had been careful not to touch her, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was difficult not to feel dominant when she knelt at his feet, even though she was in that position voluntarily. He liked the way her gaze never left his face. He liked the expression of adoration in her eyes. She enjoyed what she was doing to him. She knew she was damned good at it.

  Still, he needed to make it easier to stay in control. He felt for the bed. It was a good height. Slowly, he sank down, legs spread wide so she was between his thighs and he could push deeper. Just a little, watching her. Testing the waters to see if it scared her. She wrapped her hand around the base of his cock, freeing both his hands.

  The tight erect buds standing up on her breasts called to him, and he reached down and caught her left one, first using his thumb to strum it, and then he flicked it before catching it between his finger and thumb and clamping down for just a moment. He watched her face the entire time. Watched the way she took the small sting and the blood rushing back when he let her loose. Color swept up her body and between her legs, fresh liquid glistened.

  “You’re so perfect, Nicoletta. Can you take more of me?” He pulled back to let her breathe. She gave him a wicked smile and lifted her right breast as she leaned into him, widening her mouth as he pushed his cock toward her lips.

  His thumb strummed and flicked and then he pinched her nipple, this time pushing deeper as her breath hitched. More of his cock slid into her mouth and he felt the narrowing. The roof of her mouth. The velvet of her tongue. The suction. The cage of teeth. His heavy vein pulsed with his heartbeat as his cock bore its way into that exquisite tunnel. Another inch.

  “I’m not going to be able to stop in another minute, tesoro,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. He was barely able to control his hips. Already he was thrusting into her mouth. Small little pushes, but he had promised himself he wouldn’t take any control. His fingers had already fisted in her hair, holding her head tipped back and still. His other hand was wrapped around her throat so he could feel her heartbeat, that rapid rhythm that beat for him. It was possible, if she could do it, that he would feel the invasion of the thick bulge of his cock. The thought was exciting. His cock in her throat. Would she swallow him down? Swallow his semen? Take him that deep into her? Be that intimate with him?

  He hoped he was man enough to stop when she said no. He needed her to tell him now. This minute, while he still had his sanity. Those dark chocolate eyes never stopped looking at him. Never once looked away. She didn’t hesitate. She actually swallowed, the sensation like a wet massage, constricting him like a vise, and then she relaxed and did it again and again. All the while she breathed through her nose. As she did so, he watched more of his cock slip into her mouth, and under his palm he felt that monster like an invader, working its way into her. Deep. His woman.

  His balls drew up in a frenzy. The volcano was a fiery mass of hot magma and then he couldn’t think, only feel, as his body took over. He’d never experienced anything like she gave him, the release explosive, rocketing through his entire body, a wild ride that flung him somewhere into outer space. The orgasm encompassed every cell in his body, a violent, brutal eruption as jet after jet of semen was wrung from him.

  Taviano was barely aware of anything but mind-numbing pleasure, that hot, wet cavern, the constriction, the ease and the lap of her tongue, so gentle, an exquisite torture. He collapsed across the bed, desperate to find his air, his lungs refusing to work, his mind nearly frozen. He was aware of Nicoletta moving, but he couldn’t even turn his head to see what she was doing, he was that far gone, something that had never happened in his life. He felt thoroughly drained, thoroughly sated—and he hadn’t even been inside her yet.

  On that thought came another, his mind beginning to slowly function again. Too slow. He groaned, rolled over and buried his face in the duvet. This was supposed to be for Nicoletta. All for her. An introduction to lovemaking, not just sex, but real love between a man and a woman. He wanted to show her something selfless. Unconditional. Give her something, her first real orgasm, a beautiful, loving gift between a husband and a wife. She had admitted she had perfected her oral sex techniques—just as he had—in order to avoid anything else.

  He groaned into the duvet and then hit it with his bunched fist. Thumped the mattress twice. Had he played right into her hands? He hadn’t planned to make love to her. He wanted her to choose when the time was right, but had she decided to ensure that he didn’t touch her by falling back on a tried-and-true method? He detested that. He didn’t want to be in the same category as her step-uncles, or Benito Valdez, a man she thought she had to control with her mouth.

  The mattress dipped and he felt her crawling up onto the bed beside him. Her hand slid up his bare back. It was an intimate gesture and surprised him. Nicoletta rarely touched him of her own accord.

  “What’s wrong, Taviano?” She sounded hesitant but determined. “Did I do something wrong? You need to just tell me if I did.”

  He forced himself to turn his head toward her, his eyes on her face. If she could be courageous, so could he. She looked beautiful. Flushed. She had obviously washed her face and rinsed out her mouth and brushed her teeth. She’d thrown on his shirt but hadn’t buttoned it up, and he could see the curves of her breasts peeking out at him. Her hair had slipped partially from the topknot and tumbled around her shoulders and down her back, a wild mass of unruly waves framing her face and breasts. The sight moved him.

  “No, amore mio, this was all on me. I should have stopped you. I wanted this to be for you. A gift. I didn’t want you to be afraid that I would expect something in return.”

  Her hand crept up the back of his neck and then her fingers were in his hair. Her touch sent little sparks of electricity down his spine. She began a slow massage, the pads of her fingers pressing into his scalp, relieving some of the tension that had begun to build just thinking about the mistakes he was making being selfish with her.

  “I wasn’t afraid you expected anything from me, Taviano.”

  Her voice was soft with love. The emotion was stark and raw and very genuine. She didn’t try to hide it from him. She just laid it out for him to feel. She wrapped him in love and it felt damned good. He’d wanted to give her a gift, and she’d ended up giving him something priceless, something he’d felt he’d never have. He had to turn his head away from her. The lump in his throat was becoming too large to swallow and the burn behind his eyes too enormous to hide.

  “I wanted to make you feel the way you made me feel, so we could share such an amazing moment together. It was beautiful and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I hope you will as well. I wasn’t putting you off. And I wasn’t afraid you’d demand more than I was willing t
o give.”

  He had to say something, but it took a moment to get his emotions under control. “I won’t ever forget this, either, Nicoletta. I’m still shocked that you’re really mine.”

  She laughed softly and flung herself down beside him. “Well, I am. It seems you’re stuck with me now. If for no other reason than I love the house. And your mouth. I could be addicted to that. And then there’s your taste.”

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her to him so he could nuzzle her belly with the bristles along his jaw and then press kisses there before laying his head on her. “I want you to be addicted to me, Nicoletta, but you never have to get on your knees or put my cock in your mouth if that’s not what you really want to do.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” she whispered.

  Her hand dropped back to the top of his head and then her fingers were once again moving in his hair. He could stay there the rest of his life with her, just like this, and be happy.

  “Dogs or cats?”

  He frowned. “Not sure what you’re going on about, piccola. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

  “Which do you prefer? Dogs or cats?”

  “I never really thought about it. We never had pets growing up. Can you imagine Eloisa with pets? She’d probably sacrifice them every full moon.”

  She tapped his head, but he heard her muffled laughter. “That’s not nice. She’s your mother.”

  “I’m not altogether certain of that,” Taviano said. “I’ve often fantasized that one of my aunts got in trouble at a very young age and had to give all of us up. Eloisa took us in.”

  Nicoletta pretended to mull that over. “That doesn’t sound very reasonable, Taviano. I doubt that Eloisa would have taken in any children.”

  “True, and I remember her being pregnant with Ettore. She complained all the time.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “My last childhood fantasy destroyed.”

  “I have the feeling if we had dogs, Eloisa wouldn’t come around very often, and she definitely wouldn’t walk in unannounced if they were big guard dogs,” Nicoletta said.

  Taviano tipped his head up at the speculation in her voice. She had a dreamy expression on her face, one he loved. He wanted to etch that image deep into his mind for eternity. She seemed to be concentrating on his hair, her fingers moving on his scalp, sending delicious sensations through him just with those small touches. It was her voice that convinced him she wasn’t just idly making conversation.

  “Do you want a dog, Nicoletta?”

  Her gaze moved from his hair to his face. Her eyes met his and he felt that familiar jolt. An arrow piercing his heart. Hell. He loved her. There was no getting around that fact. It went deep, and he was so far gone there was never going to be any turning back.

  “Maybe two. Big ones. Especially when we have children. If you want to have kids, Taviano, then we’re going to have dogs trained to protect them.”

  “You know we have personal bodyguards.”

  She shrugged. “I want dogs. They’ll alert us if someone comes near the house.”

  “You felt the energy in the house when Eloisa entered. If you hone that ability, you’ll always feel an enemy—or even a friend—approaching.”

  Her expression turned stubborn and she lifted her chin. He had the crazy desire to kiss the look right off her face. Someday he was going to take a little bite of that chin when she did that to him. Right now, he contented himself with nuzzling her belly again and kissing his way up to the underside of her left breast. He nipped her there, and when she yelped, he used his tongue to ease the sting.

  She tugged at his hair in retaliation, but not very hard. “I still want dogs.”

  Nicoletta sounded just as stubborn as her expression had been, and that made him smile. He kissed his way back down to her belly.

  “If you come to rely on dogs to warn you, you won’t rely on your abilities. You need to know your gifts won’t fail you. You have to teach those same things to our children. I know you want dogs, tesoro, and I want to give you everything you want, but it is necessary to be able to feel a presence before an animal alerts us. Once you’re capable of doing that, we can rethink the idea of guard dogs.”

  She studied his face for a long time. “I can’t tell if you mean that.”

  “I don’t lie to you. If you want guard dogs and they make you feel safer, then we’ll get them. We have to compromise, because it is really necessary for you to feel the energy of danger entering our home. Of anyone entering, but the differences in the energy. You need to be able to teach our children. We both have to do that. Once we know we can, the dogs will add an additional layer of protection.”

  She was silent for so long; he lifted his head to look at her directly. “Nicoletta?”

  “What if I can’t have children? What if any of the wives can’t have children? Francesca lost so many. She barely carried Crispino. Stefano doesn’t want her to try for another. Mariko hasn’t gotten pregnant and they aren’t using anything to prevent pregnancy.”

  He hadn’t known that. Women talked, but Ricco hadn’t confided in the others. Neither had Stefano. “Sasha? Grace? What do you know about them?”

  “Sasha and Giovanni are going to try. They haven’t been. They liked being together and wanted to spend some time alone. Vittorio and Grace are the same. He wants her to himself for a while, and since her shoulder is still very fragile from that terrible infection she got, he definitely doesn’t want her lifting babies and trying to take care of them. So they’re waiting. I know Vittorio wouldn’t care if Grace couldn’t have children, but what about you? It’s so important to the riders, so much so that they have to agree to an arranged marriage. If their wife doesn’t produce, is there a set amount of time and then she’s booted to the curb?”

  “Booted to the curb?” He tightened his arm around her waist, holding her to him. “I can see why you’d think that. I wonder if Sasha and Francesca think that way, or Grace. I should warn my brothers. Mariko should know better, but it’s possible, with her horrendous background, that she wouldn’t know, either, so I’ll just mention casually to Ricco to tell her, but we don’t kick our women to the curb, Nicoletta. I married you.”

  “Yes, with the idea that I can produce riders. But if I can’t, is another woman found that can produce riders? Do you take a mistress? Do you sever the shadows between us and get another woman pregnant so the rider lineage can continue?”

  He caught the underlying anxiety in her voice. No matter what he said, the voices in Nicoletta’s head were strong, and they told her she wasn’t good enough for him. His mother had added to those voices. If she found she couldn’t have children, she would be anxious that he would want to rid himself of her to find another woman who could give him what he wanted.

  Taviano sat up and pulled Nicoletta into a sitting position as well. He framed her face with his hands. “I need you to hear me, tesoro. I call you treasure because, for me, you have always been that. My treasure. My love. The Ferraro family are riders, yes. We might want children to carry on that legacy, we might even need them, but in the end, Stefano, not Eloisa, raised us. And maybe that was Eloisa’s gift to us. Stefano didn’t drill it into us, as Eloisa’s parents did to her, that we had to produce children no matter the cost to us.”

  “I don’t understand. You said a marriage would be arranged.”

  He nodded. “Given time for us to find the one we wanted. If that failed, then a marriage would be arranged. Sometimes those marriages turned into love matches, and that hope was always there. I married you because I love you. I want you more than I want children. I choose you. If we can’t have children, you will be my choice. If you want children and we can’t have our own, we will explore other options. But our marriage stands, and there will be no going outside of it for any reason by either of us.” He made that a decree as well as a promise.

  He
kissed her gently. She tasted like fresh mint. She tasted like what he was coming to associate with love. “Thank you for bringing up those fears, Nicoletta. If you have them, it’s possible my sisters-in-law do as well. I’m going to make certain my brothers have talks with them so they know they would never be put aside because they can’t produce a child.”

  “I know Francesca doesn’t think Stefano would really get rid of her, but she does feel that he is disappointed. She’s determined that she’ll have more children. She’s taking vitamins and working out, trying to make herself very healthy so she won’t have problems. I overheard both Emmanuelle and Mariko telling her that being healthy was never her problem, but she won’t listen to them. She said it doesn’t make sense that when every other woman in the world can have children, she can’t.”

  “Not every woman can,” Taviano said. “That’s just ridiculous and she knows better. She’s too intelligent for that.” He slid off the bed and made his way to the master bath, leaving the door open. “It’s a wonder Stefano hasn’t done something crazy like put her over his knee or something. That’s just nuts.”

  She followed him slowly. “It’s an emotional issue for a woman, Taviano, it isn’t nuts. You should have a little more compassion. And when the pressure of marrying into a family like yours is added, it makes it all the worse.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “Are you going to shower with me?”

  She had her hip against the doorjamb, draped artistically whether she knew it or not, his shirt looking like a dress on her, the open edges framing her midsection beautifully. She didn’t avert her gaze from his body as he turned on the water from the various sprayers. He liked the water coming at him from all angles. He arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I don’t know if I can do that yet.”

  “What’s the determining factor?” He couldn’t keep amusement from his voice. She made his life fun. “Maybe I can help with your decision.”