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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 to 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.”
“Are you going to keep your hands to yourself?”
He cocked his head to one side and then stepped under the hot water. It fell on him from above and came at him from three sides. “I have to be honest, amore mio, I don’t know. You’re tempting. The idea of washing you is hard to resist. I thought we might exchange tasks, but I’m willing to do all the work.”
She moved all the way into the room, slipping the shirt from her shoulders. “How very sweet of you, Taviano. I think I can manage on my own, and I’ll let you handle your own washing.”
He refused to be disappointed. She had come a long way as far as he was concerned. He hadn’t expected they would get as far as they had. And she was already pulling out the topknot and stepping into the double shower with him. That was a huge victory. He had hoped she would feel safe and comfortable enough to join him, but he honestly hadn’t thought she would.
He tried to appear as casual as possible, flashing her a little grin before using the gel to soap his body thoroughly. He wanted to be exceptionally clean just in case she decided she wanted to repeat their exploration of each other’s bodies later. He tried not to react in any way to the sight of her washing and conditioning her hair or gliding her hands over her breasts and lower to her belly and then those little ringlets that called to him, guarding the treasure just below.
No matter how disciplined he was, no matter how sated his body had been, the way her hands moved with the gel and then used the handheld water wand, his cock turned treacherous on him. He had to turn his back on her before his vicious erection had him in trouble.
“You’re killing me, woman.” He gave a little groan to prove it.
“I am?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her with open suspicion. She sounded just a little too innocent. There was definitely a little too much laughter in her eyes.
“Keep it up.” It was an empty threat. He couldn’t throw her over his shoulder—yet. There could be no tackling her. No play that involved holding her down. But verbal playing, he could introduce her to that.
“I intend to.”
Now her laughter was open, and the sound teased at his senses, creating an intimacy between them that surprised him. It was more emotional than physical, allowing his body a reprieve. He hadn’t thought that just playing could achieve as great an intimacy as having sex with a woman, but he found everything he did with Nicoletta contributed to their closeness.
He brought tea to her on the back patio. She combed out her hair, taming the wild waves into a thick braid while he watched.
“You have a recording studio,” she said.
She made it a statement, leaving it up to him whether or not he wanted to tell her about it. He debated. “I have an office, too.” He did. He helped design racing engines. The Ferraro engines were mainly his designs.
“Yes, I was very nosy this morning when you were making breakfast, and I walked around. Mostly, I was lost, so I peeked into all the rooms. I saw all the engine diagrams on the walls. Or CAD drawings, whatever you call them. Emmanuelle mentioned that you’re quite brilliant when it comes to that sort of thing. I think she was trying to tell me you weren’t a bored playboy.”
He laughed. Of course Emme would try to convince Nicoletta that Taviano was worth something. His sister knew he was in love with her.
“Francesca told me you are an amazing chef. That you’d learned in Europe and would be welcome in any of the best restaurants in the world.”
“They were laying it on thick, weren’t they?” But he was pleased his family would go to bat for him.
“That’s not all,” Nicoletta assured. She picked up the teacup and took a sip. “I love this. There’s nothing quite like a great cup of tea, is there?” Her eyes were on the setting sun.
“What else did they tell you?” His voice darkened with suspicion. What else could they tell her? Everything went downhill from there.
“Sasha said you are so good with knives it’s unbelievable. Throwing knives, but you don’t even need the weighted real thing. She claims you can use a kitchen knife with deadly accuracy. I did see your targets and all the knife holes in them. It looked as if she might have been telling the truth.”
“A by-product of being good in the kitchen.”
She took her gaze from the sunset to glance at him for just a moment, amusement shining at him. “Is that what you’re going w
ith?”
He nodded. She turned her head to look back at nature’s display of color and power.
“Mariko said you have the soul of a poet, the heart of a warrior and your hands were gentle enough to hold Crispino lovingly and yet strong enough to keep him safe.”
His sisters-in-law spoke highly of him. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. And he was touched. They were good people. He admired, respected, and loved all four of them.
“Did they sway you at all toward me?”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
“I think I trapped you into marriage,” he said, without remorse.
“That was my shadow trapping yours,” she argued. “I saw the recording studio,” she added.
They were back to that. She was his wife and she was living in the house with him. Sooner or later she would know. It was silly not to just tell her. She had her eyes on the sky, not on him, and that made it easier to act like it didn’t mean a thing when it was intensely personal.
“I record music. Lyrics. I play a little guitar and sometimes I write songs. Nothing monumental, just mostly garbage, but I get them out of my head.” Even to his own ears he sounded casual and he was proud of that.
She reached out to him and he immediately took her hand and brought her palm to his thigh, pressing it tightly to him. She knew he wasn’t as casual as he sounded. That’s what he loved about Nicoletta. She knew him. They knew each other.
“I’ve never seen you play an instrument.”
“I’m not the best, tesoro. In my family, if you aren’t the best at something, you keep practicing until you are. I play, but I don’t play for others. Only for myself. I practice and I have friends give me lessons, but I don’t let others hear me make my mistakes.”
He knew that was a leftover childhood thing. Ferraros were expected to be perfect at everything they did. They had perfect accents when they spoke other languages. They got perfect grades and learned every subject fast. They were skilled in every form of self-defense and in the use of weapons. Any sign of weakness wasn’t tolerated. No excuse was accepted. That had been drilled into them from the time they were toddlers.