Shadow Flight (Shadow Riders 5)

“Same kill method,” Juan said. “We’ve got to get out of here now.”

“I didn’t hear a sound,” Marcos said.

“Yeah. Like I said, we’ve got to get out of here.” Juan looked around carefully and then slowly straightened up. He indicated for Marcos to lead the way.

Marcos didn’t protest, simply taking the lead, using longer strides to make his way toward the other end of the alley. Juan came behind him, watching all sides and occasionally throwing a glance over his shoulder. Ricco used the one shadow that would take him ahead and to the right of the rapidly walking men. Marcos passed him.

Ricco fell into step behind Juan and without hesitation, caught his head between his hands and wrenched. The crack was loud in the silence of the night. Marcos spun around, his gun coming up, looking for a target, finger on the trigger. Mariko was on him before he could squeeze and get off a shot. She had wrapped him up with her legs and her hands were already in the perfect position. She gave the same wrench, and both of them simultaneously uttered the required line. “Justice is served.”

The bodies dropped to the ground.

Ricco stood looking for a long time at his wife. He couldn’t see anything else. Only the perfection that was Mariko. Heat coursed through his body. Flames licked at his skin. Lust and love mixed together until he didn’t know where one started and the other ended, the two emotions so intense and so intertwined. Her eyes shone at him, dark with her own need, watching him the way she did, that focused look that always told him she was all his.

He caught her hand and tugged her into the shadow leading back up to the roof. The heat was so intense, burning through him as he stepped out of the shadow tube. He didn’t try to control it as he normally would have.

“Take your clothes off, Mariko.” Even in his heightened state, even commanding her, he used a velvet-soft voice. He watched her through half-closed eyes as he pulled the red silk rope from beneath his jacket and shook it out, beginning to run it through his hands to check for any splinters.

Dio, but she was beautiful. She wore nothing under her pristine pinstriped suit, and it was off in seconds, carefully folded and set aside near the shadow entrance. He slipped a rope around her wrist and bound her hand to the neon sign with the giant café letters. Stretching her arm out, he paced over to the end of the sign, as close as he could get, stretching her other arm, the rope a shackle around that slender wrist. He could easily slip the knots in seconds and break her free, or she could, if necessary, but she looked a prisoner, the huge letters standing tall behind her, going off and on while her naked body appeared small and vulnerable.

He could barely contain his raging cock as he began to frame her breasts in a harness of red. He worked fast, laying his ropes carefully, checking with her to ensure that no line was uncomfortable, his hands sliding over her soft skin, flicking her nipples, his mouth on the pulse at her neck. He spread her legs while he framed her sex, his thumb circling her clit and flicking it and rubbing. Several times he couldn’t resist pushing his finger deep to coat it and then licking it clean. She tasted so good. Once he dropped to his knees to inspect his knots and he couldn’t resist lapping at her. Once he started, he couldn’t stop until her soft little moans and familiar music drove him insane.

He was on his feet again, lifting her. “Wrap your legs around me, farfallina mia, I’m not going to be gentle.” He couldn’t be. He was too far gone.

“I don’t want you to be.”

She was helpless in the ropes, but she looked so gorgeous, the red silk framing her breasts, emphasizing her feminine form, the ugliness of the sign a counterpoint to the beauty of a woman. Her sex, framed in the red harness, with intricate knots that dripped down her mound, over her hips and down her thighs but pulled tight around her lips and between her cheeks, gleamed with each pulse of the neon sign.

Ricco drove his cock into her snug, wet heat, wanting to fling back his head and howl as the fire raced up his spine. She was paradise. Sheer paradise. Everything to him. Wild sex on a rooftop and then home, where he could make love to her all night, knowing they had done what they could to keep Nicoletta safe. Yeah. He called that a win.CHAPTER THIRTEENNicoletta dressed carefully in the pinstriped suit Taviano handed her. His instructions were very clear. If she wore underwear, it had to be silk. There were a lot of new clothes in the drawers. She hadn’t wanted to touch things that hadn’t belonged to her, but she was Taviano’s wife, and she would be expected to accompany him wherever he went. That meant wearing clothes that cost the Earth.