“No, Princess, you obviously don’t see. Did you see my fucking cock hard as a rock like it is for you? No, you did not. I had to stroke myself to pretend I was the least bit interested, and even that wasn’t working. I tried thinking of you, and putting you in the room with her didn’t work. Suffice to say if you’d paid attention to me and not her, you would have noticed something was a little different from when I’m with you. I’ve got a monster when you’re around, babe—hard to miss. Where the hell was it?”
Emmanuelle’s heart clenched hard in her chest. She had looked at Valentino. Right into his eyes. His gorgeous green eyes. He’d looked as devastated as she felt. As shattered.
There were so many things wrong with their relationship. Too many things. Even if they straightened out what had happened with the blonde in the bedroom, she knew the ties binding their shadows together were far too dangerous to her family. She could never allow that to stand. If she told Stefano, he’d walk right into the room and shoot Valentino without even discussing the subject. She knew he would. He would never allow the shadow riders to be in danger.
She had to find a way to disentangle herself from Val, and then she could warn the riders of the dangers the Saldi family presented. Someone had to have known. That story had to have been told at some point in the past. It needed to be told to children in every family, in every country, to protect the riders.
“Did I want that woman’s mouth on me, Emme? Did I show one single sign a man would have with a naked woman crawling all around the floor, willing and eager, that I wanted her? You know damn well I didn’t. I wanted to find out about the trafficking ring. I wanted to protect you. And I wanted to make your family as safe as I could.”
Emmanuelle forced herself to look past the woman to Valentino’s body. His body was superb. Muscles on muscles. Tattoos drifting over his chest, back and arms, each one as beautiful as he was. He didn’t do colored ink; it was black and white. He had a little memorial wall tattooed on his body for his mother and father. Now Greta was there as well.
Emmanuelle’s name was inked on his chest in a nest of knotted ropes. Tied to his name. Bound to him. A captive in those ropes. Couldn’t Marge see Emme’s name tattooed there? It was intricate, letters swirling in the ropes; maybe Marge hadn’t cared enough to look or Val had given her an explanation she’d bought.
She rubbed her temples with her free hand. He still hadn’t let her wrist go, and she hadn’t fought too hard to break free. The pad of his thumb felt soothing on her inner wrist, and she needed it. She felt the burn of the tears she refused to shed.
He did have his cock in his hand. Caging it. Almost as if he were protecting it. And no, it wasn’t the beast it normally was. He had a wide girth as a rule. She knew because it was difficult to take him in her mouth. He was long as well, adding to the difficulty, but he’d been patient when he was first with her. He always bottomed out, and sometimes that hurt, making her sore. That had made his accusations of her knowing nothing about sex all the worse, because damn it all, she hadn’t known anything. He’d taught her everything she did know. She’d practiced, worked hard to learn to do the things that brought him the most pleasure.
“Maybe, Val, you’re not the best instructor when it comes to sex,” she muttered, scowling down at the blank screen of her phone, not wanting to think she had misjudged him for two years. Could she have gotten it so wrong?
Val pulled her hand to his chest. Over the bandages. “Finally, you’re starting to believe the truth. I didn’t let her touch me. I didn’t mean those things. My father doesn’t know about our shadows being tied together. No one does but Dario. Only the three of us.”
He brought her knuckles to his mouth. “You didn’t talk to me for so long. I couldn’t find a way to make things right between us, and Miceli was getting bolder. He was recruiting the younger members in our territory, promising them more money, and I kept hearing rumors of young girls being taken off the streets, but I couldn’t track them down. Then in your club, and in some of your businesses, things started to go wrong, and I knew it was Miceli, but again, there was no way to prove it. After the kidnapping attempt on Grace, I was worried that Miceli, Angelo or Tommaso had seen her shadow. The people murdered in Ferraro territory definitely were a very big message to me to back off. Miceli wanted to take the territories in one direction and Giuseppi in another. There was war brewing between them. I knew that. And your family was right in the middle.”
She snapped her head up and looked directly at him, eyes wide. Her family had thought the Saldis wanted to go to war with them. Not with each other. Valentino was saying that Giuseppi and Val had tried to protect the Ferraros. At least, to her, it sounded that way.
“Why didn’t you go to Stefano and talk to him, Val?”
Val shook his head. “Your brother made it very clear he would like to see me dead, not that I blame him. You were so young, Emme. I had no right to you, but once I met you, I couldn’t stay away. I did try. I want you to know that. I did try.”
“You never told me how we can undo the bindings on the shadows,” Emmanuelle persisted. It was important, and she had to keep to that if she was going to save his life.
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.”