Elie didn’t care how selfish he sounded. He knew she’d saved both Leone’s and Raimondo’s lives. She had, and on many levels, he was proud of her for saving them. But she was a female shadow rider. For that alone she should have gone into that safe room and been protected. That was why she had bodyguards—to ensure she didn’t die and so shadow riders could continue. But she was also Elie’s wife. She should have gone into the safe room or ridden the shadows out of harm’s way in order to protect their union. It was all he could do not to leap across the room and shake her until her teeth rattled.
“Elie, when you take a rotation, do you think of me, or do you do your job? You’re a shadow rider, born and bred, taught from age two, the same as I was. I began my training at two. I have the same mindset as you do. I can’t just change what I was shaped into.”
“You stopped training.” He wanted that to have changed everything.
“For a very short period of time I stopped officially taking rotations. I immediately started training again when I left for Spain. There were three months that I stopped going into the shadows, and during those months, I kept up physical training and stepped up mentally training to cope with the sickness I had to combat.”
What was he supposed to say to that? It was instinctive in a shadow rider to protect others. He would have done exactly what she did. He didn’t have to like that she had protected her own bodyguards, but he understood the need. It was ingrained in the riders to use the shadows. Her mind would have been calculating the odds against them and already making the decision. Her body would have just done it, taking the dive into the shadows almost before she was even aware that she’d made the decision.
“We haven’t talked about how sick you get when you go into the shadows.” Deliberately, he switched tactics. He couldn’t think too much about what had happened to her. Or what she’d admitted about her feelings for him. Or even what he’d admitted to her.
Elie studied her features closely as she settled back against the headboard and pulled the blankets around her carefully, clearly stalling for time. Yeah, the sickness was very bad. What had she said? She’d used the three months off to mentally train to cope with the sickness in the shadow tubes.
“Brielle? I expect an answer. An honest one.” Originally, he had been going to go with her into the shadows, but her internal injury had her sidelined for a few weeks. That was a good thing, but it also meant he couldn’t see for himself how bad her reaction was. He had to rely on her actually telling him.
She bit down on the side of her lip, always a sign of nerves with her. “I apparently feel sensations on my nerve endings very easily; at least that was what one of the doctors said to me. When I go into the shadows, all my nerve endings become inflamed and my mind plays tricks on me. I start to hallucinate. When I’m on a mission, I’m very focused, so I don’t have a problem. I complete the mission without a problem, but once it’s done, then I have a difficult time keeping the hallucinations from merging with the sensations I’m feeling on my body because they’re so intense and extreme.”
He studied her averted face. She refused to look at him. She was telling him the truth, but not all of it. There was more, things she didn’t want to admit to him, although he couldn’t imagine what. That was bad enough.
“Are you aware Stefano lost his youngest brother, Ettore, in the shadows? Riders die in the shadows, Brielle. The sickness is very real, and once it takes hold, you can get turned around and never get out.”
She nodded slowly, still not looking at him. “I’m very aware, Elie. It’s terrifying.”
“And yet, you persist on going in.”
Her chin went up. “I’m a rider. I was born to ride the shadows.”
He stalked across the room to the side of the bed, leaned over, planted a knee on the bed and caught her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You were born to be with me. Not for the shadows to swallow you. Not for you to kill yourself saving your own damn personal protectors. To be with me. For us to be a family. To have children together. So you can be a mama bear or a little tigress for our children. That’s why you were born, not to ride shadows. I’m not giving you up to them.”
She blinked up at him, liquid gathering in her eyes, deepening the color to an emerald. “I really didn’t think, Elie. I reacted. I don’t know how to stop that reaction. I want to promise you it won’t happen again, because I really want a life with you, but I don’t know how, if something like that comes up again and then there’s this weird thing that sometimes happens.”
Again, she put her head down.
Elie sank down onto the edge of the bed. “Brielle, you have to be able to tell me anything. We established that communication between us is extremely important.”
“You didn’t tell me how you felt about me.” She lifted her long lashes and gave him an accusing look.
He wanted to tell her it was because he was waiting for the perfect time. He’d certainly thought about it enough times. He had a lot of ideas. A rug in front of the fireplace in the great room, music low, no lights, just the flames from the fire. He had ideas. Lots of them. But that wouldn’t be the truth and they’d promised each other the truth. If he expected honesty from her, he needed to give it.
He spread his fingers wide and looked down at his hands rather than at her. “For the first time in my life, Brielle, I was a coward. I didn’t want to lose you by telling you I couldn’t live without you. I didn’t expect you to love me back. I expected rejection. I’d already had it from you and wasn’t going to chance it again. You’re everything. I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Elie.” She whispered his name in her little accent, this time with love that ate at his heart, both melted and terrified him at the same time.
“I told myself I was finding the right moment, Brielle, but I was deceiving myself because I was too afraid of losing you. I was choosing to be a coward rather than risk losing you.”
“You are anything but a coward.”
He turned his head to look at her. Love could be damned overwhelming. “The same is true of you, Brielle. Just tell me. You’ve been afraid, just like I have. Let’s be done with these secrets.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s just that it’s rather humiliating. The pain thing I have. I guess it started from childhood. I don’t like too much, but I have to have some in order to have an orgasm. I’m not a total exhibitionist, but yet the thought of it excites me. I’m a shadow rider, yet I’m not. I’m such a contradiction.”
“A mystery,” he corrected. “Mysteries are always the best because they keep a man on his toes.”
She smiled at him but he could see she was still distressed. “There’s pain in the shadows. And fear.” She blurted it out and then just stopped and looked at him for condemnation.
Elie slid his hand up her back until his fingers settled on the nape of her neck in a slow massage to ease some of the tension out of her. “Don’t you think I know how addicting the pain and even the fear can be for someone like you? That only makes riding the shadows more dangerous for you.”
“I know. I did talk to the counselor about it before I went back into training. I was worried. I stayed in the classes for mental preparation and began going to the underground clubs hoping to find my limits and what I would like or wouldn’t like. I thought doing those things would stop me from becoming addicted to the pain and fear of the unknown in the shadows.”