Stonebound: Shifters Forever Worlds (Skeleton Key) (4 page)

T
ino came to with a start
. Except there was a problem. He was…

He tried to move his hands, arms, legs, they moved. But he went nowhere.

He opened his mouth.

Spoke. “Hey.”

Sound came out.

But…

Confusion set in.

A roar in his head.

His lion.

Glad you’re here.

The lion chuffed a soothing sound, but Tino could hear the anger in his tone.

“I can’t move.”

The sound of his own voice was comforting.

A noise came from nearby, Tino glanced around, recognizing the surroundings.

He was in Marco Ricoletti’s sitting room. But…

It took Tino a moment to put it together. He could move about in a small area but he couldn’t leave.

The sound came again. Soft laughter.

Suddenly, Iniga appeared in front of him.

“You should not have come. I won’t kill you and risk Marco’s ultimate wrath should he ever find out, but I will keep you here forever.”

“Where’s here?”

Her face was unmoving. Was it possible he could hear her and she couldn’t hear him?”

“Are you awake, lion shifter?”

She can’t hear me. Can’t she see me?

“I know you can hear me.” She paused, a look of uncertainty on her face. “If you’re awake.”

Tino beat his hands against the stone prison he pummeled the wall.

A frame fell off, smashed into several pieces with a loud crack.

Iniga laughed. “You are awake. You are!” She clapped her hands, as if she’d accomplished something major.

“Enjoy your new home, lion shifter.”

* * *

T
ino was stuck
. He was stuck in the walls of the villa, traveling about the mansion within the old stone walls, a captive to the witchery that put him there.

This can’t last forever, can it?

His lion was silent.

A shadow crossed the room.

Iniga.

“Since you won’t behave, I’ve taken your lion away. If you show me you can be trusted, you can have him back. Otherwise enjoy some alone time.”

“Iniga.” A deep baritone voice came from the other room.

She whirled around.

“Coming, my love,” she called out, then turned back. “You behave,” she whispered.

“Where were you? I’ve been gone two days and you don’t seem very excited to see me.”

Tino caught the glimpse of a man, broad shouldered, olive skin tone, before the man vanished from sight.

Tino’s acute hearing picked up their departing conversation.

“Of course I’m excited to see you. Let’s go to the back veranda for some tea.”

Frustrated, Tino beat on the wall, causing a large painting to fall and crash into a small table, sending it flying.

“What the hell was that?”

Loud footsteps came from the hallway.

“Are you entertaining?” Marco Ricoletti’s tone carried suspicion.

“You are silly. Look.” Iniga appeared in the doorway. She waved her hands about the room. “See? No one. Only the mess from that picture falling.”

Marco appeared at the doorway.

Tino stared at the man who was his father. The resemblance was eerie.

Marco crossed his arms over a broad chest. “Hmmm. How did the picture fall then?”

Iniga stepped close to Marco and tiptoed her fingers up his chest to his neck. She wrapped her arms around him. “This place is haunted. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about selling it and moving.”

“Haunted? Are you…?”

Iniga burst into tears, though from his angle, Tino could tell she was faking.

Tino beat on the wall to warn his father that she was putting on an act.

A curio cabinet rattled.

“See?” Iniga half-smiled, vindicated. “Haunted. I won’t live here. Not another day. Not a single night.”

“
Cara mia
, you know I don’t like to see you upset. “We’ll move. Immediately. We’ll stay in my suite near the square, then find a suitable home for us. That isn’t haunted.”

Iniga’s smile was victorious.

T
ino’s eyes opened
, just as they had for months—or was it years, now?

He’d lost count of time. At least he had his lion for company in the solitary prison he called home.

At least the witch hadn’t done anything to make the lion go away again.

Shortly after Marco and Iniga had left, the lion returned.

The villa sat empty for most of the months.

Until one day, the sound of laughter filled the room.

Female laughter.

Tino’s sound deprived ears perked.

A couple walked into the room. A large hulking man and a blonde woman with a short skirt and breasts like melons that were half on display.

Tino studied the two.

“What do you think, Melania”? The man smacked the woman on the ass.

“It’s lovely, Bruno. Your wife will enjoy it.”

“Do you know what I’d like to enjoy right now?”

The man pulled the woman close, then placed his hand on her head, guiding it down.

She lowered herself to her knees.

Tino averted his gaze when he heard the sound of a zipper, then the sloppy wet sounds followed by the man’s grunting and a loud bellow of release.

Great. This is who my new roommates will be.

It was later he learned, that wasn’t exactly the case.

A
na pushed
her mother’s wheelchair toward the garden in their new home. Her mother had become weaker and weaker since Papa’s death a year ago, and then even weaker after they’d left their home to come to the new villa on the outskirts of Rome.

It broke Mama’s heart that Bruno had decided they needed to move.

When he and the realtor Melania had shown Ana and Isabel the villa, Isabel had protested, but Ana had wisely kept her mouth shut. She was too familiar with her husband’s cruel ways when she angered him. She had the bruises on her body, where no one could see them, to show for it. She had the ripped and torn flesh between her legs where he’d mistreated her.

Thankfully he stopped that behavior when they’d arrived at the new villa. Now he performed a perfunctory duty with Ana, only when she was the most fertile, and even then only briefly.

Ana knew why she no longer garnered his attention.

Oh, yeah. She knew.

She knew there were other women. She saw the signs. But she was thankful, not jealous. She was thankful that his cruelties and passions were sated elsewhere.

“I miss him, Ana.” Mama’s voice was pitifully weak.

“I know, Mama. I miss Papa, too.”

“And I miss our home. That was our home all those years. Why did you want to move?”

Damn him
, she cursed Bruno.

Bruno had lied to Mama and told her that it was Ana’s idea they move.

Ana hadn’t argued. She didn’t want her mother dragged into anything that would stress her out more than her life already did.

But Isabel knew. Isabel knew way too much. She’d seen the way Bruno acted. She’d dragged Ana to their father’s lawyers and asked them what it would take to divorce Bruno and retain their father’s estate.

The lawyers shook their heads sadly. “There is no way. The paperwork was signed by your father. All of his property reverted to Bruno upon his marriage to you.”

“No. I can't allow you to do that. That can't be true.” Isabel wrung her hands.

“Oh but it is. I have the paperwork.” One of the attorneys began to shuffle through papers and files.

“Give it up.” Ana rose to her feet, not one bit surprised.

After they had left the attorneys’ offices, Isabel turned to her, “What will we do?”

“Plan.”

Ana and Isabel went for coffee after, to regroup.

On the patio of a local café, under the shade of the canvas umbrella, Isabel and Ana sat next to one another, their chairs drawn close for privacy, even though they knew no one in the area.

“So what’s the plan?” Isabel asked.

“I will try to avoid getting pregnant. We will stay the course. We will make as few waves as possible. At least as long as Mama is alive.”

Tears glistened in Isabel's eyes. Her white tigress’ presence glowed silver flames in the depth of her eyes, angry at the helplessness of their situation. “I don't want to think like that."

Ana was thankful that Bruno was gone more often than he was at home. She didn't mind the new house, although it was spooky the way that things seem to fall off the walls every now and then. When she'd run into some neighbors, they had told her stories about the house being haunted.

Ana had laughed. She didn't believe that for a second.

“I hate the new home.” Isabel exclaimed. “I feel like I’m always under surveillance. Do you think he has the place bugged?”

Ana giggled, then sobered. “And the way things fall.”

“Haunted.” Isabel put down her coffee cup hard, liquid splashed over the top.

“Come on. You know ghosts aren’t real.”

“I know no such thing,” Isabel hissed. “Some think that shifters aren’t real.”

“Point taken.” Ana dipped the biscotti in her coffee, watched it crumble when she’d left it too long, didn’t want to think of the parallel, what with how her own life had fallen apart. “We can’t do anything. We can’t upset Mama. She’s been through too much. Battling Bruno so that we could leave would wreak havoc.”

“I know.” Isabel frowned.

Ana didn’t like the look on her sister’s face. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think I don’t know what he does to you? How often he did it?”

Ana tightened her jaw, drawing her lips into a line. “I don’t care if he cheats.”

“I’m not talking about the cheating. I’m glad he does that. I’m talking about the raping.”

Ana gasped.

“How could you think I wouldn’t know?”

Ana couldn’t speak. She looked at the plaza, little kids playing soccer, pigeons pestering tourists, old women talking to each other, hands flailing for emphasis as they argued points in disagreements that she couldn’t hear.

Finally, she shook her head and looked in her sister’s eyes. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You should have killed him.”

“And be charged with murder and punished if humans find out? It’s even worse if the shifters find out. That would leave you and Mama where and with what means? You can’t have his property if it’s gained because of murder. The Shifter Council would never let that happen. I’d be in front of the Shifter Supreme Court immediately. Then I’d be sent to Wyt’s Skerry.”

Wyt’s Skerry. An island, isolated, remote, where all shifters who were sentenced to life—which was a long time for the shifters, since longevity was a shifter trait. Hundreds of years spent in isolation on an island.

“Then let me kill him.”

Horrified, Ana dropped the coffee cup she’d just picked up. It clipped the edge of the table and careened to the concrete, smashing to pieces.

Immediately, before Ana could say anything to Isabel, the waiter was there with a towel, sponging up the mess on the floor, using another towel to dab at the coffee on Ana’s shoes.

“Thank you.” Ana took the towel from him. “I’ll do this.”

As soon as he’d finished, she turned to Isabel. “Never say that again. I can’t have you at Wyt’s Skerry. That would kill Mama. Let me deal with this. One day…”

Ana didn’t want to say the rest. She didn’t want to tell Isabel she would live with and deal with this life until her mother and Isabel were both out of danger. One way or another.

T
ino could not peg
the moment he fell in love with the quiet beauty that lived in the villa which held him stonebound and prisoner.

He watched her gentle ways with her mother. He noted the way she loved and cared for her sister. The only thing Tino could not handle was the way her husband addressed her. Tino feared that there was more to it than just the way he spoke to her.

The way Ana flinched when Bruno approached spoke volumes and made Tino burn with an anger that seared for hours. It also made his lion bellow so loudly in Tino’s ears that he’d have a headache that persevered for days.

Ana was the target of Bruno’s irritation, and it would seem she was also the cause, even when she did nothing more than breathe.

Today, Ana was in the sitting room adjacent to the bedroom she shared with Bruno. Tino was in the wall across from her, keeping a watchful eye over the woman he’d fallen for. The woman that his lion insisted was their fated mate.

Tino still didn’t understand the shifter ways, didn’t understand how his lion said or did the things he did. He didn’t understand anything. He wished he’d had a chance to train with someone familiar with these ways.

Ana was sitting in a chaise lounge, perusing a magazine when Bruno strode in the room. He had just returned from a business trip, not greeted anyone, then spent a minute on the phone.

Now here he was, red-faced and blustery as always.

He approached Ana.

“The doctor said this is good timing. Today is the day. Lucky I’m back from my trip now.”

Ana’s beautiful olive skin faded to a pale bone white, then two angry splashes of crimson colored her cheeks.

A tiny snorting sound came from Ana, though her lips barely moved. It was a sound of disgust and disbelief, if Tino had to describe it.

He didn’t have a second to deliberate over the context or meaning of her snort because Bruno had dropped his clothing on the floor and stood before her, naked and proud, his rod fully extended and swollen.

Tino wanted to look away.

There was no way he could watch this. There was no way he could sit by and witness the woman he’d come to love—granted, another man’s wife, but still the only woman he’d ever loved—while she had sex with Bruno.

It would be too painful for Tino, even though he’d have never done anything to further their relationship if he weren’t stuck behind these stone walls. He was no homewrecker. He respected the bonds of love and marriage.

He was already slipping away to another room when the sound of flesh slapping flesh stopped him short.

He had to look. That did not sound like passion. Not at all.

Ana stood before Bruno, angry finger marks from a slap marring her skin.

Bruno hands were on his hips. “I said, suck it.” His voice was not loud, but it was dangerously threatening.

“I’m not some
putana
you found on the streets. You do not treat me that way.”

“You’re my bought and paid for
putana
. Make no mistake.”

“What did you pay when you stole my father’s fortune with your high-priced lawyers, Bruno Vergo?”

Bruno pulled one arm back, cocked, then released a punch that sent Ana into the wall behind the chaise lounge. She lay there, motionless.

Tino couldn’t contain himself. He shook the walls, making shelving and pictures fall. Mortar dust rose, and still the old walls of the villa held.

Bruno turned to survey the damage. “Damned earthquakes.” Reaching down, he jerked Ana to her feet. “Now. Strip. Get on the bed.”

Ana glared at him. “I will not.”

“You will.” He cocked his arm again.

Tino heard a sound he’d heard before. He knew that sound.

The creaking and the stretching, the snapping. Yes, he knew that sound.

But his shock was no less when before his very eyes, Ana morphed from the curvy, dark-haired woman to a black and vividly orange tigress.

The tigress stood before Bruno.

Tino didn’t have time to absorb what had just happened.

That now he knew another shifter. That now he was not alone in the world, except in his own stonebound world, of course he was.

Bruno laughed at the tigress before him.

She snarled.

He laughed again.

She bared her teeth at him.

“You think I am afraid of you, tigress?”

And then the sound again, the sound that Tino knew so well. Too well.

Bruno shifted into his animal form.

He stood before the luxuriously furred tigress, a large bull with lethal long horns.

Hell, now there were two shifters crowding the room.

The tigress growled.

The bull grunted, saliva dripping from his lips. He tossed his head in the air, as if threatening. One large hoof pawed at the plush rug.

And then the strangest thing happened.

Tino felt it first. He couldn’t describe the sensation, but he felt it. Then he heard it.

“Want me to have fun with your sister? How about your mother?”
Bruno’s voice was in his head.

“You will do no such thing or I won’t be able to stop my tigress from killing you.”

Tino didn’t know what made him do what he did next, for he knew that he couldn’t communicate with anyone outside his walls. He couldn’t communicate with Iniga, he couldn’t communicate with his father’s household servants, and he hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone else who’d come to the house. And yet, driven by desperation at the cruelty in Bruno’s voice, he spoke, his voice entering their silent communications.

“Do not threaten them,”
Tino said.

Ana had opened her tigress’s mouth, as if preparing to roar, but Tino’s words halted her.

Her tigress eyes widened while the pupils contracted.

Bruno’s bull swiveled his head left and right.
“Who was that?”
He focused a glare on Ana.

Ana cocked her head.
“I have no idea.”

“Lying cunt!”
Bruno’s bull jerked his head in her direction.

The tip of one horn scored her shoulder deeply.

Ana growled, reared back, ready to pounce.

“Do it and your mother and sister pay. Shift immediately.”

The same sounds that Tino now knew were the sound of shifting came as both Ana and Bruno both shifted.

Bruno of course, was nude, as he’d been before he shifted.

Ana was once more her luscious beautiful self, except that she looked as if she’d been wrestling, clothes askew and rumpled. Her shoulder was bloody though, and concern flared in Tino.

“I need to shift so that I can heal,” she told Bruno.

Tino understood that now, since his lion had explained it to him after he’d shifted so Tino wouldn’t die. So either of them wouldn’t die.

Bruno stepped closer to Ana. “Who was listening in? Who was that? Do you have a lover?”

Ana gasped. Anger left red streaks on her cheeks. “What?”

“You can heal later.” He reached for her.

Tino shook the walls, causing even the ceiling to shake, making the light swing.

“What the hell?” Bruno stepped away from Ana, reached for his pants and pulled them on.

“I’ll be back later. I’m going to the cantina.”

He grabbed his shirt and slammed the door behind him.

“I hope you pass out and stay with your whores for a week.” A tear wound its way down her cheek. “At least until I am not ovulating, you pitiful miserable excuse of a man.”

Ana shifted, turning into her magnificent, queenly tigress, her head held high, her body lean, but thick with muscles. A dusky pink tongue came out, licking on the wound.

Tino watched this woman that turned into a tigress, and with every moment he watched her, the deeper he fell.

He knew he shouldn’t have. But he couldn’t help himself.
“Why are you with him?”

The orange tigress leapt to her paws, scanned the room, turning around slowly.

“Are you the ghost?”

“I’m no ghost. How are we communicating like this?”

“Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you.”

“You first,”
Tino insisted.

The tigress huffed.
“Syncing, it is linking our minds together to talk. It’s the shifter way of communicating when we are in our animal form. But I thought our conversations couldn’t be invaded without invitation.”
She sat down, studied the wall as if she could see him.

He wondered if she could, surely not, or she wouldn’t have asked if he were a ghost, he thought.

“Your turn,”
Ana added.

“I am a shifter.”

“Where are you?”

Tino released a deep breath.
“Trapped in the wall. Where a witch put me.”

“Do you have a name? What type of shifter?”

“Cristiano Carrera. Ricoletti is my father’s last name. It’s a long story. My father is a lion shifter. I learned of his death, came to find him. Instead found his wife, a witch, who put me here.”

The tigress cocked her head, studied the wall.

“You are the reason for the things falling?”

“I am.”
Tino couldn’t help the smile that was in his voice.

“It seems you’ve come to my aid more than once.”

Tino wasn’t going to tell her he also came to Isabel’s aid when Bruno had paused outside her door more than once.

“I have a question for you.”

Uh oh. He wasn’t sure about the tone in her voice.

“You can see us, obviously.”

He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him.
“Yes.”

“And when I was not dressed…?”

Tino’s lion growled.
“Truthfully?”

It looked like the tigress nodded.

“Only the first time. I’m sorry. I should have looked away.”
But he couldn’t have. He was so entranced with her from the beginning.
“After that, I never looked. Never saw anything inappropriate.”
This was true, though God knew he wanted to watch her shower and even more.

“And my sister? My mother?”

What the fuck kind of creep did she think he was?
“Never.”

“Why don’t you get out? Escape?”

“If I could, I would have already. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone. No one could ever hear me. I was shocked that you and the bull shifter could hear me.”

A shudder rolled over the tigress’ fur at the mention of Bruno.

“You’ve been very helpful to me.”

“I’m glad I could be.”

“It would be nice if I could help you, too.”