Shadow Fire (Shadow Riders 7)

Francesca wasn’t nearly as nervous around Val or Dario as Brielle had expected her to be. In fact, she was genuinely warm and welcoming. She looked tired, and took the chair her husband pulled out for her right beside Grace. Ricco and Mariko arrived with Giovanni and Sasha. Nicoletta came in right behind them.

The room should have felt crowded, but it didn’t. The dining table was long and seemed to accommodate all the chairs with space in between. The noise level went up, but if anything, it was all laughter. Brielle was introduced to the family. She would have been extremely shy but Elie stood right beside her and she continued to work on the soufflés, putting them in the little ramekins so they could bake in the oven.

She tried not to be nervous with all of them there. Everyone felt welcoming. It was just that there were so many of them. They worked together like a smoothly oiled machine as if they’d been doing it for so long, they didn’t think about it. Dishes were put out on the table, along with silverware and wineglasses. Bottles of wine were opened. Angel hair pasta was put in large bowls and placed in the middle of either end of the table along with bowls of salad, the cooked vegetables and garlic bread. Taviano placed large bowls of hot spaghetti sauce on either end while Elie took the last of the ramekins out of the oven.

Stefano and Francesca put the baby down in the nursery while Mariko deftly tied a bib around Crispino and placed him in his high chair between Stefano’s chair and Francesca’s. Brielle found herself intrigued, but felt out of place by the way the Ferraros interacted so easily with one another. Through it all, they kept up a running commentary, sharing news of their day, exchanging news of their households, just talking about their everyday lives. It was beautiful and poignant to her.

Brielle had always wanted a family. The Ferraros were the epitome of the big, loving Italian family she’d always read about. She didn’t know how to be part of something like that. She couldn’t relate to them. She found herself watching Elie. How had he managed to find his way into their lives? He seemed as if he’d always belonged. He laughed with them, teased, looked at ease. How had he managed when he’d been alone, the same as she had been?

Elie, sitting beside her, laughed at something Ricco said, something she missed because she was too busy concentrating on not getting up and running from the room. She swirled pasta on her fork, trying to look as natural as possible, wishing she had Elie’s ability to keep from giving away her thoughts on her face.

His hand dropped to her thigh, his knuckles stroking back and forth. She looked up at him, but his focus was on Ricco and Giovanni. The two were talking racing and cars, subjects she knew nothing about. The others at the table seemed to be listening. Even Crispino seemed to know more than she did, leaning toward the speakers eagerly.

Elie’s knuckles moved higher, settling between her legs, stroking light caresses from her mound to her entrance, then along her lips, tracing up to her clit. The breath left her lungs as he nudged her legs apart with his fist. All the while, he didn’t miss a beat, keeping up his end of the conversation. The pasta dropped off her fork back onto her plate. She felt a little like Crispino, who was trying to eat on his own. He wanted no part of the adults feeding him, determined to be one of them, just as grown-up, and they let him.

Elie turned his knuckles and tormented her even more, sliding his fist sideways in between her lips, rocking his fist, finding her sensitive spots and stroking them over and over, but so lightly, he only inflamed them, not giving her anything close to relief.

“Brielle?” Stefano’s voice penetrated her Elie-induced fog brain.

She sat up straight and hoped no one noticed her heightened breathing and the color creeping under her skin. Elie withdrew his hand and sipped at the wine as though he was completely innocent.

She focused her entire attention on Stefano.

“Tell me you didn’t already accept the job Val and Dario offered you, Brielle,” Stefano said, clearly repeating himself. “If it’s money, we can do better than they can.”

Dario made a sound of derision but kept eating. Valentino rolled his eyes. “Everything isn’t always about money, Stefano. Sometimes it’s about interesting versus boring.”

“Please tell me you are not calling our investigative work boring,” Giovanni said.

“Well, actually I am.” Val didn’t deny it. “You already have two teams of investigators. What is Brielle going to do? Twiddle her thumbs? If she works for us, she’s actually going to be doing what she loves. Chasing down leads, not getting the leftovers from your two lead teams.”

“That’s not what would happen, Brielle,” Stefano objected. “Is that the line of crap they fed you? If you haven’t yet given them your word, we need to sit down tonight and talk after dinner. We can throw their asses out and come up with a plan.”

“Stefano,” Francesca murmured. But she sounded on the verge of laughter.

“Asses,” Crispino repeated. Loudly. He tossed pasta into the air. It landed in his curls.

“Far too late,” Dario said before Brielle could respond. “I had to share lavender breath with her. Don’t do that often and there’s no going back. She owes me.” He added more spaghetti sauce to the second helping of angel hair pasta he’d put on his plate without looking up.

There was silence and then Emmanuelle burst out laughing. The others followed suit. “Unfortunately, Stefano,” Elie said, “Dario has a point. There’s no going back from that.”

“There’s a story there I missed,” Nicoletta said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll share,” Taviano told her.

Brielle noticed no one reprimanded Crispino for his language. Stefano calmly removed the pasta from his hair. When the baby went to throw more into the air, Stefano took the plate.

“Are you finished, son?”

Crispino shook his head.

“Do we throw food?”

Crispino shook his head.

Stefano put the plate back in front of him and then leaned over and kissed his temple.

“Dario.” Francesca’s brows came together. “You aren’t eating any of the vegetables. We can get a different recipe if you don’t like this one. Is it all the spices?”