Quinn didn’t wait for Steven to reply. He walked away, closing the door behind him.
Steven never took his eyes off of her. His chest rose and fell as if he’d just run a five-minute mile but his expression had gone blank.
She didn’t know what to say, what he was thinking. There had been a time when she could read his every expression. Now she wouldn’t want to guess.
After several tense moments, he finally shook his head. “You think I’m ashamed of you?”
She inhaled to replace the stale air she’d been holding. “Yes. I think you’re ashamed of me. You think I’d taint the perfect world you’ve created for yourself in Florida. Away from the world you’ve tried so hard to forget.”
He looked away and she couldn’t tell if she’d hit on the truth or angered him again.
“My world is far from perfect, Bella. How can it be when the one thing I want, I can never have.”
As Bella’s eyes widened in shock, Steven turned and walked out the front door, not quite sure where he was going. Not caring.
He had to walk away. He couldn’t stand there and continue to hurt the woman he loved. Would always love.
Could never have.
Hands in his pants pockets, he walked past neglected brownstones with boarded windows.
There had to be a reason for Bella’s attempted kidnapping. A rational explanation.
One that didn’t include Charles Jones.
After his dad’s death and the aftermath, he’d changed his name, left behind everything that mattered to him, and moved to Florida to finish his law degree.
Charles had recruited him out of the Florida State University Law School. He’d been free with his praise of Steven’s skill and even more frank about his shortcomings. And the man had been honest. Steven had used the tiniest bit of forbidden magic to make sure.
For the past three years, they’d worked side-by-side and Steven had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Charles could be ruthless when he had to be but he was a damn good lawyer. Steven had fit into the firm as if it’d been born to it.
Had it all been a set-up?
And if it was, how would Charles know Bella was the key to controlling Steven?
Shit
. He stopped, the urge to hit something nearly overwhelming. Then he realized where he was. Marelli’s Trattoria on South Sixth Street.
This late at night, the restaurant was closed but Uni’s Temple, concealed in the back of the building, was open all hours.
From the outside, the brick building looked like all the others on the block. Three stories separated by only three or four feet. In the early part of the century until the late seventies, most of the neighborhood south of Penn Street had been populated by Italian immigrants and their families.
The barbers, grocers and doctors had names like Cambria, Puccini and Damato. Holy Rosary Church at Third and Franklin served that community and every Sunday morning after church, the parishioners stopped at ATV Bakery next door for bread for Sunday dinner.
The Etruscans lived among their fellow Italians, blended into the
eteri
society. Some even attended church to keep up appearances.
Today, the landscape hadn’t changed much but the demographics had. The Latin population had eclipsed the Italian, but the heart of the Etruscan religious community beat here, in the back of a century-old Italian restaurant.
The Temple of the Great Goddess Uni had an open door policy. Not only was its doors never locked to those of Etruscan descent, but anyone of Etruscan descent could enter. Including the
Mal
.
Slipping into the dark walkway to the left of the restaurant’s front door, he walked to past the kitchen entrance to the very end of the building. Steven finally stopped at an iron door disguised as an emergency exit. This door would only open for an Etruscan with
arus
in his blood.
Taking the skeleton key that always hung around his neck, the one his mom had given him when he was five, he inserted it into the lock and let the wards surrounding the building sense his
arus
, though he was careful not to let it rise. In this state, he could easily lose control.
The door opened silently. Steven took a deep breath as he slid the key back into his shirt and stepped into the hallway that led to the main sanctuary. It’d been years since he’d been here. Years that seemed like centuries.
He tried to dismiss the immediate lift in his spirits when he stepped over the threshold. But he couldn’t, not completely.
Like DownBelow, any
eteri
stumbling in would think he’d time traveled to ancient Rome because this truly was the domain of an ancient goddess.
The temple was open to the top of the three-story building, pure white marble walls reaching to the vaulted ceiling. Three columns on each side of a center aisle led to the wooden altar decorated with gold leaf.
Wooden benches lined the sides of the temple, leaving the floor mosaic uncovered. A skilled artist had created a Tuscan forest populated by the various members of the
Fata
and
Enu.
A half-hided
salbinelli
chased after a winged
folletta
. A mass of tiny human-shaped
candelas
glowing like fireflies danced around a tree stump as a
linchetti
couple, their pointed ears prominently displayed, lay entwined on a moonlit patch of grass.
A pack of
lucani
howled at the bright moon while a
strega
bent over a moon bowl and her male companion held an athame in his hands. The conical hat on his head signified his status as a
netsvis
, a priest of the gods and goddesses.
That one picture, the
netsvis
, had always drawn him for some reason. Maybe because the young man resembled him. The artist had created him with the same dark hair and blue eyes, the same body shape.
Steven had known, even before his parents had told him, that there was something different about him. Something that made his parents live apart from the rest of Etruscan society. Something in the way people looked at him when they went to temple.
When his power had manifested when he turned thirteen, his parents had told him the truth of what he was. How, because of a fluke of birth, he’d been born
Mal
.
Not that his parents had accepted that. They’d taught him to submerge his power. To live without it. To bury the emotions that made it harder for him to control the power.
It’d worked.
Until he’d met Bella.
Then everything had gone to shit.
He lifted his gaze to the statue of the Mother Goddess Uni behind the altar. She looked so damn serene. And he felt all the bitter anger he thought he’d gotten rid of rise up.
Why the hell was he here? Uni had never heard his prayer before. What made him think this time…this time, maybe she’d listen, maybe she’d—
A velvet-soft snout nudged the hand hanging at his side.
In a motion as natural as breathing, he lifted his hand and ran it along her sleek pelt, beginning between the pointed ears and following the line of her spine.
“Sorry. I just…needed to walk.”
She rubbed against his side, drawing his gaze away from the statue and down to her.
He’d never seen a more beautiful animal. Her silver fur sparkled and she stared up at him with brown, human eyes. She must have followed him, had probably watched over him as he walked blindly through the city. She wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him.
If she’d been hurt last week…
Would he have been able to live with himself?
His hand tightened in her fur and he forced himself to let go before he hurt her.
Don’t think you can more than you already have.
She bumped his hand again and shook her head, her jeweled collar jangling in her mouth.
“Yeah, I know. I left the rental at Harry’s. We need to get it.”
He bent to take the collar and leash. Bella hated those strips of leather, hated to put her control in someone else’s hands. She’d only ever allowed him to put a collar on her. Not Cole, not his father, not anyone.
She’d been right to bring it. They were in a city where unleashed dogs were taken to the pound. Or, in a shifter’s case, shot for its intimidating size.
He slipped the collar around her neck like he was fastening a string of pearls, stroking her soft fur at the same time.
“I guess I should be glad you’re not biting my hand right about now, huh?”
He knew she never would, at least not while she wore her pelt. The bite of a
versipellis
in animal form could result in that person becoming
versipellis
. If they lived through the transformation process.
Bella cocked her head to the side and stared at him with a look so haughty, he couldn’t help but smile. He left the collar loose so it wouldn’t bind then clipped the leash to it.
As she led him out of the temple, Steven held the leash loosely. They walked back to the club and his car without speaking. When they reached the car, Bella hopped in the back seat and tilted her head so he could remove the collar. Then she sat on her haunches, her face turned toward the window. She would never stick her head out the window. Too pedestrian. Still, he lowered the glass so she could feel the wind on her face.
They headed north out of the city, past the overdevelopment of Muhlenberg Township and into the relative peace of Alsace Township. By the time they got to Bella’s family house in Rockland Township, it was nearly three in the morning. The moon had set and tiny pinpricks of stars dotted the black velvet sky.
He turned off the main road and onto a side road that curved into gentle hills. The countryside here still held a patchwork of farms and woodland, although more housing developments encroached every year.
Cole and Bella owned nearly a thousand acres out here, the deeds to the property distributed between various dummy corporations his father had set up. They leased some of the outlying land to area farmers, but most of it remained forest. As it had since Bella’s grandfather had brought the property in the early 1900s when he’d first arrived from Sicily.
As Steven pulled into the lane that led to the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, Bella whined. He stopped in front of the house and got out to open the back door. As soon as she could, Bella leaped out of the back seat and dashed for the small field to the west of the house. On all sides, old-growth forest surrounded them, cool and dark.
Sliding onto the warm hood of the car, he watched her run, a pale blur in the night. The grass had been mown recently and she tore through the stubble, startling a couple of rabbits and a family of quail. She gave chase but she wouldn’t hunt. Not while he watched.
He drew in a deep breath of crisp, clean air, not tainted with the stench of city. Just a faint hint of cow manure, so different and so much more alive than the salty breezes in Florida that could turn rancid in seconds.
He loved Florida, loved living in a place where nine months out of the year you didn’t have to worry about the temperature dropping below sixty. Still, he missed the fields, the woods, the hills of Pennsylvania. You could drive for miles in Florida and never find more than a bump in the road.
He turned his gaze to the woods that flanked the field. The trees had barely started their autumn show, the brilliant leaf colors muted in the dark.
He’d lost sight of her, though he knew she wouldn’t go far. From the trees, he traced the line of the creek at the woods’ edge. She’d stop there for a drink eventually. At least a mile up the hill in the woods, the creek bubbled out of an underground spring and ran through the woods, cutting across the middle of the field and passing within a few hundred yards of the house.
Out here, the land still retained some of its wildness. That wildness called to him.
He couldn’t let it.
He should leave now, before he found himself slipping into old ways he’d fought to suppress. He should get back in the car and drive away. She wouldn’t be stranded. There was a car in the garage and a closet full of clothes. The pantry and freezer in the basement were stocked, always ready for unexpected visitors. Or fugitives.
Leaving now made sense—
He saw her then, standing in the creek. The water had to be cold but she had returned to her own beautiful skin.
She stared straight at him, and he couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to leave only seconds ago. When she started toward him, collar in her hand, he let his gaze take in every inch of her perfection.
It’d been three years since he’d seen her. It could be forty and he’d still be blown away by her.
Her chestnut-brown hair fell in a mass of curls to just below her ears and her dark eyes stared into his, wide and unyielding. Her delicate features were almost too pointed to be pretty. Still, he’d never known anyone more beautiful.
When his gaze dipped to trace the curves of her breasts, he saw she wasn’t unaffected. He wanted to reach out and grab her hips, press his throbbing erection against the slight swell of her stomach. Force his knees between her strong thighs and spread them so he could run his fingers through the darker curls of her mound.
He lifted his gaze to hers, trying to control the rate of his own tortured breathing. Sliding off the hood to stand, he straightened until he towered over her. She waited until he’d met her gaze before she let hers drop to wander over him. When she’d gone from head to toe, and everywhere in between, he knew he’d lost the battle.
Would always lose this fight. But couldn’t bear to win, either.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, he pulled her against him. She had her mouth tilted at the exact perfect angle for him to cover it with his and he sank into the kiss with a groan of surrender.
Arm curled around her, he lifted her until she could wrap her legs around his waist, pressing her breasts and her mound against him. His free hand sank into the curls at the back of her head and held her steady for his outpouring of raging emotions.
Her mouth opened and she tasted exactly as he remembered, exactly as he’d tried so fucking hard to forget. Hot and sweet and so familiar he nearly couldn’t stand it.