Shadow Storm (Shadow Riders 6)

“Breathe, Val. Everything’s all right. I’m here with you.”

He was really upset, going somewhere she didn’t want him to go, not when it agitated him so much and he’d been wounded. He didn’t just sound possessive, he sounded protective, and that broke her open when she needed to be completely closed off to him. She couldn’t have sympathy for him. He was her greatest love and her greatest enemy.

“You don’t understand, Emme. If I can see your shadow, and what it means, others can as well. You’re tied to me. I made certain. So tight no one dares to try to take you. Dario saw Nicoletta, and he worried for her. Grace was in such danger. Miceli saw her. Angelo. Tommaso. Three women who could be tied and used for these purposes, and all at once. Not only does Miceli have to kill me, but if he doesn’t succeed in killing me, he has to kill you because you’re tied to me.”

“How do we get untied? There has to be a way.”

Most of the time, Valentino looked at her with gentleness. So much so that she forgot he was the son of a crime king and capable of the very things she had trained in from the time she was a toddler. His features hardened. Her heart nearly stopped. He looked entirely different. Scary different. Not at all like her Val. His hand was still around her wrist, and now his thumb slid back and forth on her skin as if soothing her, as he knew he was scaring her.

“I should have asked more about the story Giuseppi told you,” she said, lowering her lashes so he couldn’t see her expression. “How would you be able to spy on an enemy? How would that work?”

Some of the tension eased from Val’s body. His thumb continued that slow glide back and forth over her inner wrist. “According to the story, you can move from one place to another using the shadows.” He fell silent.

Emmanuelle’s heart jumped. Began to pound. She realized his fingers had settled over her pulse.

“Emme? That’s how you got past the guards and into my house. Into my bedroom.” He made the statement quietly.

She didn’t confirm or deny it, but she did try to pull her hand away from him. He settled his fingers firmly around her wrist again.

“Don’t, Princess. We’re talking this out, just like we said we would. You asked me. If the story is correct, you move in the shadows, but you’re tethered to me. If I have a very small hold on you, I can only use that hold for small things like having you listen in on meetings in the enemy’s home, but I have to be close enough that the ropes will extend through the shadows to where I want you to listen and see the enemy.”

“So I would spy for you and bring that information back to you.”

“That’s the way the story goes.”

“In essence, what I heard in your bedroom that night was really true. Giuseppi really did tell you to find me, hold on to me to ferret out the Ferraro secrets, just not in quite the way you told her. And I didn’t know anything about sex. You had to teach me everything. You didn’t lie, Val; I can’t fault you there.”

His grip tightened on her wrist, although he was gentle. His thumb moved along her skin, and this time she felt the strange melody running along her nerve endings that always sent that peculiar awareness of Valentino charging through her like electricity, bringing her alive in a sensual way that devastated her after the things he’d said about her to another woman.

Emmanuelle thought about the young girl—Brielle Couture—whose self-esteem had most likely been destroyed by the things she’d overheard Elie say about her, just as hers had been when she heard Valentino say terrible things to another woman. She knew she would never forget a single word Val had said to that woman in his bedroom for as long as she lived. Men didn’t realize the long-reaching effects the things they said or did could have, especially on a young woman in love.

“Baby, you have to know it was never like that for me. Yes, my father told me the story. Both fathers told me that story. It’s handed down generation after generation, but I don’t know if Giuseppi believed it or not. I didn’t tell him about you. I felt guilty not telling him, but something stopped me. I didn’t want anyone to know. Not my parents, not Dario, whom I regard as a brother—no one. What was happening between us, I didn’t understand, but it was intimate, and belonged just to us. Eventually, Dario knew, but no one else.”

He turned her hand over. “You were a kid, Emme. A teenager. I was a grown man. I was already very experienced, but I’d never been hit so hard like that in my life, the way I was attracted to you. And it was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stay away from you. I did try. I told myself you were too young and that what happened between our shadows wasn’t real, but none of that mattered, only seeing you again.”