He had always been so good with her. So understanding. No matter how terrible she’d been to him. How many times she’d said mean, cutting things and tried to push him away. He understood, and he kept coming back. He knew. Another wave of love for him washed over her. He hadn’t had anyone, when he should have had an enormous family to help him through. That was almost worse than what she’d been forced to deal with.
“Your parents, Taviano. What were they thinking? You should have had counseling and so much love and support, just what you all offered to me.”
“My mother was thinking she didn’t want to give up being a rider. If Phillip left her, that’s what would have happened.”
“She chose riding over her son? Never. Never in a million years, Taviano. Oh my God. I can’t stop crying. You have to help me stop.”
He shifted back and turned her into him. She found her face pressed against his bare skin, and she was breathing him in. That scent that was only his. Only Taviano.
His arms were around her, holding her tight, the way he’d held her so many nights after her nightmares had awakened her. No one had held him. No one. Not even when he was ten years old.
“Stefano would have held you, Taviano. He would never have rejected you.”
“I know, amore mio.”
Her heart leapt at his use of the endearment and the quiet acceptance in his voice. God, why did the world have to be such a vile, ugly place? The Ferraros appeared to have everything. Taviano was a golden prince. Damn Eloisa and Phillip to hell for their selfish decisions.
“We’re not doing that.” Her declaration came out muffled and her lips tasted his skin. He tasted like love and temptation. “We’re not ever doing that.”
“What aren’t we doing, piccola?”
His tone was gentle, in total opposition to her decisive, belligerent, ready-to-go-to-battle war cry. She didn’t care. She meant every single word of her declaration.
“We’re not sending our children off to foreign countries and strangers to train them no matter what the traditions are. If you insist, or Stefano does, then I’m going, too, and I’ll be sitting right there to make certain no one touches one single hair on their heads.”
He rubbed his thumb over her forehead and then pressed his lips there twice. Her heart jerked hard in her chest before settling down to a wild rhythm that threatened to pound through her veins in tune with her overwhelming connection to him.
“I’m with you one hundred percent, Nicoletta.”
“How can you stand to look at her?”
“Eloisa?”
“She says the ugliest things to Emmanuelle and all the other women and yet you know what she did. If the others knew …”
“And they never will. She changed after that. I didn’t see it at first, because I was a kid and I was so hurt. I withdrew and acted out. I hated myself. I didn’t want to be around my brothers, especially Stefano. I was afraid he would see something was different, something was wrong with me. That I was ‘dirty.’”
She couldn’t help squirming uncomfortably. She understood exactly what he was talking about. It was no wonder he knew exactly what she had been doing in those first few years. He’d been so young, with no one to turn to. No one to guide him through. His own parents had effectively cut him off from all help.
“I realized, as I grew older, that Eloisa, although she’d been a shit mother to us when we were babies, had gotten better when we started training. She laughed more and did things with us. She’d begun to interact with us. She wasn’t the greatest, but she seemed to be learning, especially with Emmanuelle. Eloisa reverted back to her cold ways after the incident. I think that’s why Emme is so much more tolerant of her than the rest of us. She remembers that and is always trying to get it back.” He nuzzled the top of her head. “Or maybe Emme’s just more compassionate than the rest of us.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed into him. “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, Taviano. You deserve so much more than you’re going to get with me, but I swear I’ll always have your back, no matter what comes at us.”
“I’m well aware of that, Nicoletta.”
He pressed another kiss onto the top of her head and then with his casual strength, turned her so that she once more faced away from him, settled her into her favorite sleeping position and then wrapped himself around her.
“I really hope your sister tells Eloisa we’re married tonight so she can stay awake all night and lose her freakin’ mind.”
Taviano laughed softly. The warm air blew against the back of her head, sending little shivers of awareness down her spine. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, so emotionally overwrought, she would have responded physically, but she closed her eyes and savored the idea of lying in bed with Taviano while his mother stewed somewhere, furious that he was with Nicoletta.