She also knew she was born to be a shadow rider. She had to be a rider. It was there in her blood, the need, the drive, a terrible compulsion that grew and grew until it consumed her, until it became who she was. A part of her soul. She understood Taviano and his family. That compulsion wasn’t to put their body into a shadow and move from one place to another, it was a burning need to give justice to those who had been denied it. People like her, those who couldn’t receive it through normal means and never would.
She understood why they had to learn to separate themselves from the crimes that had been investigated so thoroughly. When emotions were involved, mistakes were made. They had to learn control and discipline. She had to learn those things. Could she do that with Benito Valdez? Separate what he had done to her and so many other young women so she could make his crime impersonal when it was so personal? She knew it would be impossible.
Stefano, as head of the family, with one word could take away her ability to live out that process of providing justice to others like her—and truthfully, she could see why he would do that. She was old to learn to be a rider. She could put them all in jeopardy. She could easily make one wrong move and put herself in a dangerous position.
Taviano’s arm was heavy across her rib cage, and she needed to move. To breathe. She had to think. Very gently, because she couldn’t lie there one more moment, she lifted his arm enough to slide to the side so she could sit up and scoot so her back was to the headboard and she could pull her knees up.
Taviano stirred immediately, his eyes opening. “What is it, amore mio?”
“Nothing, go back to sleep.” She dropped her hand to the top of his head, fingers tunneling in his thick, dark hair. The moment she felt the silky strands, she couldn’t help massaging caresses into his scalp. She wanted to spend a lifetime touching him like that. Soothing him back to sleep. Showing him without words, just by her touch, that she loved him.
“You certain, tesoro?”
She could see him making an effort to rouse himself from a deep sleep. The shadows had taken a toll, but it was more than that. When she had emerged from the shadows, there had been that terrible, deep craving for sex. She knew it would be far worse for him. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t demanded anything from her, not even oral sex—and as tired as she was, she would have provided him with that relief.
Nicoletta closed her eyes briefly, disappointed in herself. She had wanted him. The need was there, but it hadn’t been a need rising from her love of him. It had been the adrenaline-laced aftermath of riding the shadows. She didn’t want her first time with Taviano to be anything but making love with him.
“Go back to sleep, love,” she whispered.
Taviano relaxed under her stroking fingers, taking her at her word. She was grateful he did that. She really needed to think things through. That was how she did things. She processed. And she had a lot to process.
She had used oral sex to keep from having a man touch her body. She didn’t want to do that with Taviano. It had been so humiliating when she’d arrived at Lucia and Amo’s home and the doctors had inspected her body, including her throat, explaining to her that more and more young women and men were developing sexually transmitted diseases in their mouths and throats due to oral sex, thinking it so much safer. It wasn’t. Oral sex prevented pregnancy, but it didn’t stop diseases. She had been treated and counseled on every disease under the sun. She had been placed on birth control to get her cycle back on track.
She had been put in counseling for her trauma. She had gone from a happy, loving home, with parents who rarely exchanged a cross word, to an environment she didn’t understand or have any knowledge of. She had been a virgin. Of course she knew about sex, she’d discussed it with her mother and friends. It had been her decision to wait until the right man came along. She wanted him to be someone she was really into. Someone she cared about. Instead, three men had brutally raped her in every possible way they could.
Once Benito Valdez had spotted her, her life had become worse. Her step-uncles hadn’t wanted to give her up, and he had become obsessed with acquiring her. In an effort to appease him, they had “shared” her on more than one occasion. He was every bit as brutal as they were, wanting to show her ownership and teach her lessons by beating other women in front of her and selling them into trafficking to show her what could happen to her if she didn’t cooperate with him. All of that had contributed to making her feel very worthless and dirty. It had taken Taviano to shake her up and make her remember who she was and where she came from.