Shadow Warrior (Shadow Riders 4)

“I wanted to taste your cock. To have it in my mouth.” There was no hesitation. Her chin went up and her eyes sparkled like twin gems, the hunger in them making him want to push the denim from his hips and give her anything she wanted. “I want to give you pleasure.”

“That’s exactly what I want at this very moment as well, Grace.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her lips. “A few more days, then we’ll both be satisfied.”

He sank into the chair next to her, much more gingerly than he would have ordinarily. Wanting Grace wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. He stretched his legs out in front of him to ease the ache in his cock. “There is a tracking program on your phone, Grace. We’re putting it in your apartment.”

She was horrified. “No, Vittorio. You should have asked me. I need it back for work. You can’t just decide to—” She broke off, her hand to her mouth as realization clearly dawned that he would be arbitrarily making some decisions based on what he felt was right for her safety or health. He’d warned her many times. Living with him wasn’t going to be easy.

He waited in silence.

She turned her head to stare out over the colorful flowers to the lake just beyond the garden and beach. “My notes for the upcoming event as well as several others were in my phone.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Vittorio said.

Grace twisted back toward him so fast, a small cry escaped and he saw her wince. He caught her arm to steady her.

“Don’t, Grace. You’re going to hurt your shoulder for no reason.”

“You copied it for me, didn’t you?”

“As well as your contacts. I had to be careful. I sent everything to my computer geniuses to make certain I wasn’t giving you anything that could infect a new phone.” He pulled the phone from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s set up for you and all your contacts and notes are right where they were in your old phone.”

“I’m sorry. I should have trusted that you would have done that.”

“Why? Trust isn’t given overnight, Grace, and I don’t expect you to just blindly give it to me. The notes were important. I didn’t find the tracking program. I’m not an expert in technology, but I have cousins who are. I took your phone to them, so they could get the photographs off your phone, the ones Haydon sent you of where he was living. We thought we might be able to figure out where he was by the various photographs. They’re the ones who discovered the tracking program. No way was I bringing that back to you, so I just got you a new one and told them to take off everything to do with your work and make certain it was clean.”

“Thank you. I should have known. More than once he took my phone from me and demanded to know my pass-code. I thought it was to see my schedule, so he could threaten me by hanging around.”

“He can’t get to you now, Grace,” he assured.

She stared down at the cell phone in her hand. “He gets very angry when he doesn’t know where I am. I got used to him demanding my schedule.”

Vittorio frowned. “I want you to really think back, cara. Even when you were children, was he always with you? Did he depend on you to do anything for him?”

She didn’t answer right away. His thoughtful Grace. He liked that trait in her. The stillness in her. She brought a sense of peace to her surroundings. She’d lived in a potentially violent world every minute of the day since she became aware of what Haydon truly was. From that, possibly because of it, she’d developed inner tranquility, a place inside her that she could depend on when everything around her turned to chaos.

“He’s older than I am by a couple of years, but he didn’t talk much. When I first went into the foster home, he was already there. He was thin, and very small. Back then, I was extremely small, and I think he liked that I was littler than he was. It made him feel big. My other foster brother, Dwayne, was a bully. He liked to push us both around. I stood up for Haydon when Dwayne kept tripping him. That’s where it started with us.”

“No one had probably ever stood up for him before.”

She put the phone on the table and reached for the pitcher of icy strawberry lemonade Merry had placed on the little table beside her glass. Vittorio’s hand got there first. He would have to talk to Merry about expecting Grace to pick up a full pitcher of ice and juice. It was too heavy. He poured a glass for her and then went to the small, freestanding bar to pull out a glass for himself.