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“Leo!” Bario bellowed. “Get up to the roof and tell Hector and Angel to get down here. Hurry. The van will be here any minute.”
Leo nodded curtly and rushed toward the broken wall. It was the easiest way to climb to the roof. The moment he was on the outside of the building, Taviano was on him, breaking his neck and lowering him to the ground. He slipped back inside. Only Bario and Alan were left. Stefano was already close to the two leaders. Both were agitated, showing signs of breaking down under extreme pressure. The two were sweating profusely, unable to stop moving, muttering to themselves and then swearing loudly.
They occasionally passed inside and out of one of the gray streaks thrown by the yellow streetlights. Stefano signaled Taviano to use the shadow while he stalked the two men from the darker walls of the warehouse. Taviano detested that his brother always took the more dangerous route, but he’d been protecting the rest of his siblings all of their lives and he wasn’t about to change now.
As Taviano reached the mouth of the shadow, close to ten feet from Bario and a good fifteen from Alan, both men suddenly turned toward Stefano. His brother was still in the darker part of the warehouse, but something had alerted the two men to his presence, or maybe they had become aware of the eerie silence. The pall of death hung in the air. Whatever it was, they lifted their guns, and Taviano’s heart nearly stopped.
Something moved through the air so fast it whistled. A rock hit Bario in the middle of his back. On the heels of that missile came a second one. Alan was treated to the same fate. The rock was small, but the force was enough to send both men staggering. They whirled around to face the new threat, Alan stumbling.
Taviano covered the distance in seconds and had Bario’s head in his hands, wrenching, muttering the prescribed “justice is served” and dropping him, and then whirling to try to get to Alan before the man turned back toward Stefano or caught sight of movement.
Alan started to turn, his gun swinging around, spraying bullets. Another missile announced its presence, whistling through the air with deadly accuracy, smashing directly into Alan’s temple, driving his head sideways. His arms suddenly went limp, both dropping straight toward the floor, the gun falling from lifeless fingers.
Taviano was on him before he hit the floor. Alan’s eyes turned toward him, filled with hatred. For a moment he looked as if he might struggle, but it was already too late. Taviano wrenched, and he was gone.
“Justice is served.” Taviano laid him on the floor, where mold and sludge covered the cement. He turned and moved back into the shadow, following Stefano, going back outside to Nicoletta.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicoletta lay very still, trying not to wake her husband. Husband. Taviano. That still didn’t quite penetrate her brain. She’d been exhausted and she hadn’t even waited for him to finish his conversation with Stefano when they’d arrived home. She just wanted to sleep. She had a whale of a headache, which she didn’t want to mention to anyone. She also didn’t want to hear Stefano’s assessment of her abilities in the shadows. They’d both told her not to move under any circumstances—but she had, and she’d interfered by throwing rocks to keep Stefano from being shot. They probably could have gotten out of it by flying through the air with some double karate kick to the head, but she couldn’t help herself. If he grounded her for that, so be it. Right now, she just wanted to sleep.
She’d made her way through the house to the bedroom, peeled off her clothes and tumbled into bed without a stitch on. That was how tired she was. She had awakened when Taviano came to bed. She smelled him, that masculine scent that seemed to surround her and always made her feel safe. He had slipped into bed beside her, under the covers, his body curling around hers.
Nicoletta was certain the reason she remained so relaxed was because she was so tired. She couldn’t summon up the effort to stiffen and be afraid when he wrapped one arm around her rib cage right under her breasts and pressed his hips tight against her buttocks. She felt his heavy erection snuggled against her cheeks. His warmth took away the ever-present cold that lingered from the shadows. She’d felt his breath, warm on her shoulder as he leaned his head into her, his lips soft and firm as they kissed her before he settled on the pillow. Then she’d fallen back to sleep.
Taviano must have pulled the privacy screens because the bedroom was dark, and she knew it had to be daytime when she opened her eyes. She’d been asleep only a couple of hours, but her brain refused to stay quiet. She had so much to lose. Taviano. The love of her life. She knew he wasn’t perfect; she wasn’t foolishly blind or deceiving herself.
Taviano was a Ferraro, with a Ferraro’s temper and arrogance. He’d been born into wealth and he had a sense of entitlement that he wasn’t even aware of. With that, he was a generous, caring man, one who put her first before himself. He would do the same with their children.
She couldn’t lose him. She just couldn’t. More than anything else, finding a way to be a good partner to Taviano was the most important thing she could possibly do. She knew she had issues—big ones. Huge ones. He was so patient and so willing to wait until she was ready to be with him. She always felt like her body wanted his, and her brain certainly did, beyond anything else, but then panic would well up. Why? She knew she was safe with him. He would never hurt her. Why was she so afraid that she wouldn’t try with him?
She also knew she was born to be a shadow rider. She had to be a rider. It was there in her blood, the need, the drive, a terrible compulsion that grew and grew until it consumed her, until it became who she was. A part of her soul. She understood Taviano and his family. That compulsion wasn’t to put their body into a shadow and move from one place to another, it was a burning need to give justice to those who had been denied it. People like her, those who couldn’t receive it through normal means and never would.
She understood why they had to learn to separate themselves from the crimes that had been investigated so thoroughly. When emotions were involved, mistakes were made. They had to learn control and discipline. She had to learn those things. Could she do that with Benito Valdez? Separate what he had done to her and so many other young women so she could make his crime impersonal when it was so personal? She knew it would be impossible.
Stefano, as head of the family, with one word could take away her ability to live out that process of providing justice to others like her—and truthfully, she could see why he would do that. She was old to learn to be a rider. She could put them all in jeopardy. She could easily make one wrong move and put herself in a dangerous position.
Taviano’s arm was heavy across her rib cage, and she needed to move. To breathe. She had to think. Very gently, because she couldn’t lie there one more moment, she lifted his arm enough to slide to the side so she could sit up and scoot so her back was to the headboard and she could pull her knees up.
Taviano stirred immediately, his eyes opening. “What is it, amore mio?”
“Nothing, go back to sleep.” She dropped her hand to the top of his head, fingers tunneling in his thick, dark hair. The moment she felt the silky strands, she couldn’t help massaging caresses into his scalp. She wanted to spend a lifetime touching him like that. Soothing him back to sleep. Showing him without words, just by her touch, that she loved him.
“You certain, tesoro?”
She could see him making an effort to rouse himself from a deep sleep. The shadows had taken a toll, but it was more than that. When she had emerged from the shadows, there had been that terrible, deep craving for sex. She knew it would be far worse for him. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t demanded anything from her, not even oral sex—and as tired as she was, she would have provided him with that relief.
Nicoletta closed her eyes briefly, disappointed in herself. She had wanted him. The need was there, but it hadn’t been a need rising from her love of him. It had been the adrenaline-laced aftermath of riding the shadows. She didn’t want her first time with Taviano to be anything but making love with him.
“Go back to sleep, love,” she whispered.
Taviano relaxed under her stroking fingers, taking her at her word. She was grateful he did that. She really needed to think things through. That was how she did things. She processed. And she had a lot to process.
She had used oral sex to keep from having a man touch her body. She didn’t want to do that with Taviano. It had been so humiliating when she’d arrived at Lucia and Amo’s home and the doctors had inspected her body, including her throat, explaining to her that more and more young women and men were developing sexually transmitted diseases in their mouths and throats due to oral sex, thinking it so much safer. It wasn’t. Oral sex prevented pregnancy, but it didn’t stop diseases. She had been treated and counseled on every disease under the sun. She had been placed on birth control to get her cycle back on track.
She had been put in counseling for her trauma. She had gone from a happy, loving home, with parents who rarely exchanged a cross word, to an environment she didn’t understand or have any knowledge of. She had been a virgin. Of course she knew about sex, she’d discussed it with her mother and friends. It had been her decision to wait until the right man came along. She wanted him to be someone she was really into. Someone she cared about. Instead, three men had brutally raped her in every possible way they could.
Once Benito Valdez had spotted her, her life had become worse. Her step-uncles hadn’t wanted to give her up, and he had become obsessed with acquiring her. In an effort to appease him, they had “shared” her on more than one occasion. He was every bit as brutal as they were, wanting to show her ownership and teach her lessons by beating other women in front of her and selling them into trafficking to show her what could happen to her if she didn’t cooperate with him. All of that had contributed to making her feel very worthless and dirty. It had taken Taviano to shake her up and make her remember who she was and where she came from.
Nicoletta looked down at his sleeping face. Even with the privacy screens, she could see him well enough to appreciate the definition, the sheer power and raw masculinity in his bone structure. He was a beautiful man. Each time she looked at him, he moved her. Deep inside she always felt that shift, that wave of love that was so overwhelming it left her frozen, unable to move or speak at times. He didn’t know how extraordinary he was.
Taviano Ferraro gave her everything. He might have gotten angry with her at times when she hurt herself, back when she was so out of control, but he was the one sitting on her bed when she woke from her nightmares. He was the one holding her when she cried. He came back night after night, even when she punched him and told him she didn’t want him around because she was so ashamed. He never turned away from her. Never. His love for her seemed unconditional. She knew her love for him was.
She rested her chin on the top of her knees and kept her eyes on his face. That beautiful face she loved so much. She wanted to be normal for him, yet he’d never asked her to be normal. He’d never indicated in any way that it was important to him. He hadn’t tried to hurry her or push her into having sex with him. No matter how many erections he got around her, he never asked her to take care of him. She had been the one to initiate the only time she’d done it, and even then, he had resisted at first, telling her she didn’t have to.
A part of her had insisted at first because she did fear he would want to have sex, and she knew she wasn’t ready. That hadn’t been fair to him. She didn’t want to be like that. He was so completely casual about communicating with her on all subjects, sex included. She needed to give him that same courtesy. She loved him so much. She didn’t want to disappoint him—or, if she was honest, lose him. She was so afraid she would have a panic attack the moment they really had sex.
She pressed her lips together to keep from making a sound. She wanted him. Her body wanted his. So badly. So much. She couldn’t sleep with wanting him. Waking next to him, inhaling that sandalwood scent that was uniquely his, sent her body into a slow burn that kept building until she felt like there were flames licking over her skin. In her veins ran thick lava, hot as hell, spreading through her entire body to pool low, a sinful heat. The temperature kept rising until little beads of sweat dotted her forehead and ran down the valley between her breasts. That was how much she wanted him.
He was right there. All she had to do was reach for him. It would be that simple. She was slick with need. Her breasts ached. Her clit pulsed with the blood pounding through it. She pressed her thighs together to try to calm the desperate craving for him. It would never go away. Every time she looked at him it was there. It had been almost since the moment she’d laid eyes on him, even back when her body had repressed every sexual reaction. For Taviano, there was still a reaction, a response, it was just buried deep, barely known, but it was there.
With the passing years, as she had been in closer proximity to him and she had grown to understand she was safe, her body had been free to respond. With that, the heat had matured, become a fire, then a firestorm, and now was just a conflagration burning out of control. She didn’t have the first clue what to do about it.
“Nicoletta?” Taviano opened his eyes.
It was the last thing she wanted. He was instantly alert, frowning. Sitting up, concern on his face.
“Tesoro, tell me.” His thumbs brushed at tears she hadn’t known were even on her face.
She couldn’t lie to him. She never wanted lies between them. She shook her head. “Go back to sleep, I’m just trying to think things through.”
He looked her over, taking in too much. He framed her face with his hands. Her heart turned over. “Taviano.” He always saw her. He always would. There was no hiding from him.
He leaned over her raised knees and brushed kisses over her eyes. So gentle. The touch of his cool, firm lips sent little shock waves rippling through every cell in her body. His tongue caught at her tears, taking them from her face. He kissed his way down one side of her face, following the path of her tears, and then the other, right to the corners of her mouth.
Her breath caught in her throat. The way he touched her was reverent. So different. Such contrast. So loving. Then his mouth was on hers, kissing her. Sweeping her away in the way he did, that slow gentle start, coaxing her to open her mouth for him. She parted her lips because it was Taviano and she wanted his fire. She wanted to feel the heat and possession. The safety and love that came with the flames that burned every time he kissed her.
Then she couldn’t think, only feel, her body melting into his, legs sliding down the mattress, his arm behind her back locking her to him. Her arms went around his neck and she kissed him back, her tongue dueling and dancing with his. There were the familiar flames engulfing her, the burn that began in her throat and traveled through her body to pool into a steady pulsing need that refused to leave. Desire grew and grew until her hips bucked restlessly, seeking relief.
Taviano’s hand cupped her left breast, his thumb stroking her nipple, and she arched her back, desperate for more. His mouth left hers and he kissed his way down her throat to the top of her right breast, all the while stroking and flicking the left nipple. His touch sent shock waves through her, each harder and more intense than the last. Her breath turned ragged. She’d never quite felt the sensations he was producing, and she wanted more.
His mouth closed over her breast and he sucked hard, using his tongue on her nipple while he tugged and rolled on her left nipple just a little harder. Now the waves rolled through her like a storm. She could barely catch her breath. She never wanted it to stop. The tension deep inside coiled tighter and tighter. She grew slicker and hotter. So hot.
He switched his attention to the other breast, his tongue swirling gently around her left nipple before his mouth closed over her breast. He began that tugging and rolling sensation on her other nipple, interspersing rough and gentle so she couldn’t quite catch any rhythm. It was so perfect. So unbelievably perfect. But she needed more. She needed him.
His mouth left her breast a
nd he began to kiss his way down her belly. She caught his head in both hands. He raised his gaze to her face. Her heart accelerated at the absolute love she saw there.
“I want you to make love to me.”
“I am making love to you, Nicoletta,” he said softly. “Don’t you feel it?”
“Every time you touch me, I feel it. I want you inside me.”
He went very still. “You have to be certain, amore mio. You have to be ready. Don’t say that because you want to do it for me.”
“For both of us. If it doesn’t work this time, I know it will be all right.” She poured confidence into her voice. Her fingers slipped into his thick hair and held there. She wished they weren’t trembling, but there was no way to control the fear rising.
It wasn’t fear of Taviano but of failing him. Of failing both of them. Of letting her step-uncles win. She was already afraid of being pinned down and looking for a way to escape.
Taviano pressed a kiss into her belly button and rolled over. “Come here, piccola. Be my beautiful little cowgirl.”
She turned her head and looked at him, one eyebrow up, but she was used to doing what Taviano wanted, so she was already sitting up. “Your cowgirl?”
He caught her leg and tugged. “Ride me.”
He looked enormous. One hand was casually fisting the base of his cock, the other tugging her leg over him so she would straddle his body.
“You might be a little intimidating, Taviano,” she admitted, but she wanted him inside of her. She needed him there.
For the first time in her life, this was her choice. He made that very clear. No one was holding her down. He simply waited for her to decide, stroking himself, his eyes on her face, so much love shining at her it was close to worship.
She straddled him, sliding her body over his, her entrance slick and throbbing with desire so profound she shook. The moment he was pressed against her, that thick, velvet-steel crown, she hesitated, fear gripping her. He didn’t move, just his fist, a lazy pump up and down, his gaze never leaving her face.