Stonebound: Shifters Forever Worlds (Skeleton Key) (5 page)

A
na was
anxious for her morning visit with Tino. She reached for the door handle. It’d been a month now, almost, and she’d spent time getting to know the man trapped in the wall.

All Ana’s life, Isabel had been the closest thing to a best friend that she had, but with Tino, she had a friendship that transcended the friendship she had with Isabel.

It was a deeper friendship.

And something else.

Ana didn’t want to say that she flirted with him, she’d never seen him, had no idea what he looked like, how old he was, nothing. Nothing at all.

Her tigress snarled.

Yes, yes, I know.

Her tigress released a growl.

Ana knew what her tigress thought. That they were fated. Ana had never believed in that.

“I don’t believe in shifter fairy tales”
,
Ana had always told Isabel when they had talked about love and finding their mates.

But this thing with Tino… these feelings.

If Ana weren’t mated—

But I am. And I have to stay this way as long as my family is in danger.

Morning with Tino, while her sister and her mother would think she was having her coffee in bed.

Afternoon naps weren’t spent napping anymore. They were spent visiting with Tino, talking about their lives, his father, his mother.

The first time he’d told her he was Ella Carrera’s son, she gasped.

“I love her! I’ve loved her since I was a little girl! She’s my favorite! My parents took me and Isabel to see her! I was so sad to hear that she’d passed.”

“It was a difficult time for me,”
Tino had admitted.
“And everything fell apart after that. I discovered my lion, then I came here, only to be put behind these walls.

“Let me help you,” Ana had insisted. “Please.”

“I can’t bear the idea of you or Isabel being trapped behind walls. Or worse.”
His tone was morose.
“Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

Ana balked. She didn’t care for that statement. Maybe it reminded her of Bruno’s brutish domineering ways, but it made her contrary.

Not that Tino was anything like Bruno. He wasn’t. Tino was considerate and kind and patient.

She wondered what he looked like. Wondered what his hands felt like. Wondered…

A heat flowed through her body. A heat that she’d never felt for anyone else.

Her tigress released a chuffing sound of pleasure.

Stop that,
Ana had admonished her tigress

Ana turned the handle and entered her sitting room, then shifted into her tigress. She’d been doing that so much lately she’d become more adept at it than ever. It was painful, as always, of course but with each shift, the process became quicker.

“Are you here?”
She tilted her head, waiting for Tino’s response
“Cristiano?”

“Where else would I be?”

The wonderful warmth he always caused within her flooded through her body. She felt scandalously aware of his presence, but didn’t feel the least sinful. How could she? Bruno was a business arrangement made by her father that she had to validate and conform to for the sake of her sister and her infirm mother.

One day,
she told herself,
one day I’ll be free of him and free to love.

She pushed the thought away, because the circumstances that would lead to that were heartbreaking, for it meant that her mother would no longer be with them and that Isabel would be off with whoever she chose as a mate.

Though Ana wanted her mother to live forever and Isabel had no interest in a mate.

Looked like she was in her prison for the long haul.

That doesn’t mean that Tino has to be in his though.

Ana was determined she would help him, though she’d miss him. Somehow she’d set him free so he could have a life.

Sadness pierced her soul with an aching fierceness because Tino getting a life meant leaving her behind.

And having a family.

Which meant having a mate.

She exhaled a heavy sigh.

“What’s the most beautiful woman in the villa sighing about?”

Ana whirled around, trying to figure out which wall he was behind.
“You snuck up on me!”

His laugh was warm, surrounding her like heated, liquid honey, pouring over her lonely soul.
“You weren’t expecting me? You didn’t call my name?”

“Cristiano!”
She let out a low laugh so she wouldn’t be heard by her sister or mother.

In or out of their shifted states, shifters had supernatural hearing.

“Yes,”
she confessed.
“I was expecting you and I did call your name. I’m sorry I’m late. I had an early morning errand to run.”

She couldn’t tell him that part. What the errand was. Where she and Isabel went. What they were doing.

“Sounds mysterious.”
His tone was teasing.

She had to deflect him.
“Girl stuff.”
She approached the wall from which it seemed his voice was coming.
“Cristiano? Can I… would you mind if… I touch the wall?”

“I don’t mind. But you shouldn’t expect to feel anything but the cold stone that binds me.”

Ana reached out, hesitantly. Ever so slowly her paws approached the unyielding brown and gray stone wall.

She touched her paws to the wall and jumped back.

“It’s warm. It’s not…”
Touching the wall was like touching a living thing, except it was made of the hardest of stone.
“Cristiano, it’s as if I can feel you there. Wait. Let me check something.”

She ran across the room to the opposite wall.

Cold!

She ran to a third wall.

Also cold!

She ran back to Tino’s wall and placed her shoulder against it. Warmth, the same warmth as his voice, as his presence flowed from her paws throughout her body.

“I feel you!”
Joy bubbled within her like champagne used to bubble in her mouth when she used to celebrate New Years’ Eve with her parents.
“I feel you! You’re here!”

T
ino’s breath
caught with a hitch. He felt her paws on his chest, their heat surged through his body with as much intensity as if there wasn’t a wall between them.

She leaned in, her body hot against the wall, but it was as if she was pressed against him

She rose on her back legs, pressed her tigress cheek to the wall. It was silky softness on his chest.

His body reacted, hardening, his cock turning to steel within the wall’s confines. His need for her was powerful.

And he was powerless.

His lion roared in Tino’s mind.

Then Tino heard the responding roar. Her tigress’s passions came to life, wanting the lion as Tino wanted Ana.

Then it hit Tino with the force of a tornado seeking retribution—Ana wanted him.

And Ana could feel this thing between them.

“You feel it.”
He didn’t pose it as a question. He knew she had to feel it.

Her head nodded against the wall that held his chest.
“I do feel—”

Something caught Tino’s attention. Was it a sound? Was it his lion’s senses? Whatever it was, something was just outside the door. Could whatever, whoever, it was listen into their conversation the way he’d listened to her conversation with Bruno that day?

“Hush, love.”
It hit him a second later he’d called her love, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
“Shift, Ana. Shift.”

Quickly—she’d become so adept at it, he noted, she shifted into her human form. The succulent, curvy creature he’d fallen in love with…

God. He had. He’d fallen for another man’s wife, mate, whatever it was called in the shifter world that he knew very little about. Ana had tried to tell him some of the rules, but it was so foreign to him, finding out there was a social and political structure of beings that were more than human.

“Why did I need to shift?” She asked him, her eyes mirroring her concern.

He couldn’t talk to her. Oh sure, he could talk but in her human form, she’d never hear him.

The door handle turned.

Ana whirled to face the interloper who was intruding on their time.

Isabel walked in. “Can I meet him?”

Tino froze.

Isabel knew about him? When did this happen? When had Ana told her sister? He didn’t make it a practice to overhear their conversations, but it was hard to avoid most times, as he hated to leave Ana’s presence, out of concern that Bruno would start in on her again.

Ana ushered her sister out of the room, practically shoving her.

“Wait.”
But he knew they couldn’t hear him. Not in their human shapes.

“Damn,”
he let the word out with a whoosh of air.
“What’s next?”

A
na froze
. She could have killed her sister. “He doesn’t know you know.”

She knew Tino heard Isabel. Of course he did, but what the hell.

She steered Isabel out of the room and to the garden. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Confusion was plastered to Isabel’s face.

“I haven’t told him that you know about him yet.”

“Oh no.” Then just as quickly, confusion was replaced with a smile. “Now you don’t have to.”

Impetuous Isabel. God, how that nickname from their younger days fit her today.

“I planned to break it to him slowly.”

“Why?”

Ana contemplated that. Truth was, she didn’t know why.

Or maybe it was because she didn’t want to share him.

No, she shook her inner head.
That can’t be it.

Could it?

“Oh.” Isabel’s face lit up as if she’d come up with a brilliant idea.

Ana frowned. Isabel’s ideas worried her.

“Oh. I see.” More lighting up on her face.

Ana tilted her head. “What?”

“You. Are. In. Love.” Isabel clapped her hands rapidly, gleefully, then she jumped up and down and did a pirouette.

“No.” Ana stopped her pirouette with a hand on her arm. “No. No. You are—you have it wrong.”

Damn it.

Of course Isabel would have figured it out. They were more than sisters. They were best friends.

“No. I don’t have it wrong at all.” Isabel hugged Ana. “You are completely and totally in love with him. I saw it on your face when I entered the room. That explains it.”

Ana shook her head. As if denying it could make it untrue. “You—I—What? Explains what? What does it explain?”

“You wanting to save him from his prison.”

“It’s because we are friends.”

“It’s more than that. But I know you’d want to free him even if you weren’t in love with him. After all, you’re the one that set the goldfish free in the second grade. And the hamsters free in the third grade. And what about that fiasco at the zoo? Thank goodness Papa stopped you.” Isabel doubled over in laughter, then straightened up and looked her sister in the eye, all seriousness. “You’re right. We are going to save him.”

“We? We? No!” Ana wouldn’t have her sister visiting witch covens.

“Of course we. You can’t go alone. Does he know?”

“Know what?” Ana felt like Isabel and the world were moving at the speed of lightning, while she was ensconced in sludge.

“Does he know we went and talked to the witch?”

“Like I’d tell him that I shared his story of Iniga and his father with you. I didn’t have his permission yet.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind when he knows it’s to help free him.”

Oh, he’ll mind.

Ana knew he would. Tino wouldn’t want her endangering herself for him.

“So you didn’t tell him we talked to Desideria?”

Signora Desideria, was what Ana and Isabel called her less than a decade ago. One of their teachers from the private school the girls had attended.

Desideria.

A minor witch.

She’d befriended the two tigress shifter sisters and they’d stayed in touch, though of course the sisters were no longer girls, and being friends with witches was frowned upon in the shifter world.

Even if the witch had a shifter great-grandparent and was hired by the school to teach shifters how to better prepare for interactions and conflicts with witches.

“No!” Ana shook her head vigorously.

“Guess that means you didn’t tell him that Desideria told us to seek help from Esmerelda.”

Ana simply shook her head. Again.

Of course she didn’t tell him that Desideria had said to find Esme, as Desideria called her.

That Esmerelda, Esme was the highest powered witch on the continent.

She thought of her and Isabel’s recent visit to Desideria.

* * *

“
E
sme is
the highest powered witch on this continent. Or at least high powered enough to counter Iniga’s spell.” Desideria said.

Esme, the same name as the witch that Tino’s mother had visited to have his lion repressed. That fact hadn’t escaped Ana’s notice. She was hoping to appeal to Esme’s sense of justice in helping free Tino from Iniga’s spell.

When Ana had first told Desideria that Iniga was the one who’d imprisoned him and that Tino had seen a key, and that she wanted to find the key, Desideria had shuddered.

“The Skeleton Key. You will never find it. Your only hope is to find a witch stronger. More powerful. One able to override Iniga using the key.”

“Would Iniga seek retribution?” This did concern Ana. She didn’t want her family to pay for her decisions.

“Iniga is no more. She messed with the wrong witch.”

“Then how is her spell still active?”

“Because of the Skeleton Key.”

“Could you break her spell, then?” Isabel asked.

Desideria laughed. “No. Only one I know is Esmerelda.” Another shudder. “My half-sister.”

Hope had flourished in Ana. “Can you talk to her? Tell her Tino’s plight?”

“Ha.” The sound was mirthless. “No. We do not speak. But I can tell you where to find her, in a province outside Rome, in the forests, near the volcanic cliffs.”

“Can you be more specific?” Isabel asked.

“No. But do be careful. That is Tiero territory, and Giovanni Tiero is very—and I mean very, very, very—territorial. He has been the least resistance to change in the shifter world. And his father ran the European Shifter Council.” Desideria shook her head. “Do not trifle with the Tiero family. They don’t play nice.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Isabel agreed.

Have I been living under a rock? Why don’t I know this? “I wasn’t aware,” Ana murmured.

“They don’t do publicity,” Desideria affirmed.

* * *

I
sabel shook
Ana back to the present. “So are we going today?”

Ana shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Bruno’s gone for a week, right?”

“True, but Mama—”

“We will have someone take care of Mama.”

A thought occurred to Ana again. One that she couldn’t seem to shake. Would she ever see Tino again after releasing him? How would she keep Bruno’s advances at bay without Tino’s distractions?

Would she end up pregnant with Bruno’s son? Images flew through her mind of younger, smaller, equally brutish miniature versions of bull shifters like Bruno raising Cain in a playroom.

A shiver touched the base of her spine, then traveled upward.

It doesn’t matter. Tino can’t stay there. Not any longer. It’s not fair to him.

“We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Isabel jumped with joy. “Now take me to meet your lover—”

Ana gave her a doubletake and a dirty look.

Isabel cleared her throat. “Sorry. Your friend.”