His features hardened again, just like they had before. His hand reached out and caught her chin, pulling her closer to him, so that she tipped sideways in the bed. He framed her face with both hands and stared directly into her eyes, forcing her to look at him when she wanted to look away.
“Do you honestly think I’d let you go? That’s not going to happen, Emmanuelle. The only way you’re ever going to be free of me is to put a fucking gun to my head and pull the trigger. If you want out of our relationship, you may as well do it now. Don’t hide behind your brothers like a coward, just do it yourself, because I’m not letting you go. You’re lying to yourself if you say you don’t love me, because you fucking do.”
“I never once said I didn’t love you, Val. I’m trying to keep you alive.” One of them had to be calm, and she was no liar. “Let go of me now. We have to figure out a way to undo the way our shadows are tied together, and you know it.” She forced her voice to be even. “Neither one of us will be able to get on with our lives if we don’t. All this nonsense of spying and moving from one place to another …”
“Don’t start trying to lie to me, Emmanuelle. I’ve been around you now for years. I’ve watched you. Everything you do. Everything you say. I watched you when you didn’t know I was around. When you didn’t want me around.”
“That’s stalking behavior, Val.” She tugged at her hand, wishing her stupid heart weren’t reacting to his declaration. It never seemed to matter what Valentino said or did. When she was too close to him, all she wanted was to be closer. Her brain turned off, and her body turned on.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know that everything I’ve ever done when it comes to you is against every code of honor I have?”
Was there a kernel of bitterness in his voice? She met his blazing-green gaze again, and the pit of her stomach bottomed out. There was a storm brewing there, and storms with Valentino were bad. “That’s not love, Val. It’s obsession. You saw the way our shadows reacted and felt that jolt. It’s a rush.”
“It’s not just a rush, Princess. I have a hell of a lot more experience than you do when it comes to sex. What we have together is off the charts.”
“It’s still not love, Val. This is still about our shadows, not about us. It isn’t real and it’s wrong.” What woman would go into a relationship with a man knowing she was only worth something to him because of his shadow’s reaction to hers?
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s wrong or not, Emme. I don’t care if you want to call it obsession. Not when it comes to you. We aren’t going to try to break the ties between us, not that I think it’s actually possible. If anything, we’re going to keep strengthening them.”
She twisted her wrist and yanked it away from him, rolling off the bed and coming to her feet. “That is the last thing we’ll be doing, Val. I mean it. We aren’t going to have a relationship even if we can’t break the ties. Once this is all over, and hopefully we defeat Miceli and his army, I’ll have no choice but to tell my brothers about this.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why? This is between us, Emmanuelle. It’s always been between us. We work it out, no one else.”
“Because your family is a threat to ours. Grace was threatened. Nicoletta could have been. Obviously, I was.”
“Baby.”
His voice went soft, that voice that always played along her nerve endings like his melodies, running through her body and spreading like electrical charges. He waited until she looked into his eyes. Until she was drowning there.
“I have never, at any time, been a threat to your family. I’ve only tried to protect them. You know that. In your heart, no matter how angry or hurt you are, you know that to be true. I’ve protected you and what’s between us, and I’ve kept it between us.”
He was making it so difficult to do the right thing. She had no choice. He had to see that she had no choice. She hadn’t admitted she was a shadow rider. That she could move from one place to another, but he knew. She saw the knowledge in his eyes. He’d told her that he’d watched her. Just knowing the truth of her family would put him under a death sentence. If he knew about her family—and he would someday head one of the most notorious crime families in Chicago—the Ferraro family would be compromised in all of their vast businesses.