He kissed her again. Thoroughly. Hungrily. As if she were the only woman in the world, and he had to kiss her. Needed to kiss her. And then, abruptly, he lifted his head. His eyes glittered a fiery red above her head and for just a moment fangs gleamed white in the stark black of the passageway. “There is someone coming this way,” he said. His tone was free of all menace, but she caught a brief glimpse of the inherent violence in him. A beast roared for release, struggled for supremacy. His calm demeanor never wavered, but she felt it just as if it were in her.
She felt him reaching out with all his senses, inhaling deeply as if he could scent an enemy. “No one comes in here, Byron,” she whispered. “We store great treasures, artwork, and jewels. The rooms are designed to keep them in the precise temperatures needed to preserve them. Not even family comes in here without first getting permission from
Nonno
or from me.”
He placed his lips against her ear. “Someone is in the passageway and moving stealthily, not with confidence. I doubt they have permission.” He saw the glimmer of a light moving toward them. “They are nearing us. I can hide us from his sight, but the passage is too narrow for him not to bump into you. We will have to go into your history room and close the door.”
Byron felt her swift intake of breath in reaction to his words. The involuntary clenching of her fingers into a fist in the fabric of his shirt. His arm tightened around her. “You will be safe with me. I know the space is small, but I can get out, should something go wrong with the mechanism.”
There was complete confidence in his voice. Antonietta could not tell him of a world of suffocating darkness. Of waking up choking, strangling, her throat closed, fighting desperately for air. Her heart pounded with alarming force. She nodded wordlessly, not trusting her voice. She abhorred the mind-numbing fear that inevitably caught hold of her when she was on unfamiliar ground.
Byron drew her into the small confines of the little room and nudged the door until it swung shut, sealing them in. He dragged her close beneath the protection of his shoulder. With the door closed, the light was gone, hiding the Scarletti secrets as it had for centuries. Byron ran his fingertips along the wall. The carvings were smooth and precise, a work of art, even as it was a kind of diary of each generation. He caressed the figure of a shape-shifter, first in human, then half and half, and then fully in cat form. The Jaguar. A sad ending to a species. The blood was so diluted it was doubtful if more than a handful remained with full abilities. So many species gone or nearly gone from the earth.
Antonietta’s fingers found him, tracing over the same beautifully drawn figure.
If you are not, Jaguar, what are you, Byron?
Instinctively she used the more intimate form of communication. Somewhere on the other side of the wall someone skulked about the passageway with a hidden agenda of their own.
I am of the earth. My people have been in existence since the beginning of time, in one form or another. Then you do shift shape! You can, can’t you?
She was very excited.
His breath was warm on her face. His lips touched her cheekbone.
If I were to answer yes, would it in any way influence you to consider adding me to the Scarletti gene pool?
He was listening to the furtive footsteps as they moved past their hiding place.
That’s not funny.
But laughter bubbled up anyway. And joy. It was true. She wasn’t losing her mind as she often imagined when the beast rose up strong within her, roaring to be set free.
I’m too old to even consider having a baby.
She said the last to sober up. She was too old to consider a permanent relationship, even if the man intrigued her and made her feel beautiful and young and filled with happiness. It was infatuation, physical attraction, a crush that would soon pass. It had to pass soon.
His palm slid down the length of her hair, weighed the heavy braid in his hand.
You do not know what old is, Antonietta.
There was a wealth of amusement in his voice.
I would like to find out who is out there. He is male, and a member of your family. Normally I can easily scan human thoughts, but the Jaguar influence is prevalent in this area. He feels like Paul, but I cannot scan many of the people here as easily as most others. If I press, he will feel my presence. But I can follow him and see what he is up to.
Antonietta bit down hard on her knuckle to keep a protest from escaping. She had come into the maze of tunnels hundreds of times. It would be silly to be afraid of being alone. She could easily find her way back to her room once out of the history room. Byron would be the one in danger of being caught in the intricate labyrinth that ran through the many levels of the Scarletti palazzo.
Scan them? You read thoughts? I thought it was only me, that we just had some form of telepathy together. You can read everyone? And you do not? In the board meetings your grandfather insists on dragging you to, do you not hear what the others are thinking?
Before she could answer, he patted her hand.
I will return in a moment.
Antonietta opened her mouth. Whether she was going to agree or protest, she wasn’t certain, but he simply disappeared. His body had been warm and solid, and then it was gone. They hadn’t shifted position to open the wall entrance. She put out her hands, carefully explored all four walls. He had simply vanished. Silently. Completely.
She pressed her hand against her open mouth and leaned against her ancestor’s wall of records, shocked. What are you? She ran her fingers over the wall, searching every word, every symbol, and every picture in the hopes of finding another shape her people were capable of shifting into. There was nothing to indicate any of them could simply disappear. She believed in shifting shapes, but completely disappearing was an altogether different proposition. Why did Byron’s ability to vanish make her so uneasy when finding her family’s history had been such a relief?
Antonietta nearly had a heart attack when Byron’s body was suddenly crowding hers in the small confines of the room. She flattened herself against the wall as his much harder frame pressed against hers, but her fingertips went to his face, reading his expression, mapping his familiar face. As often as she did it, he never flinched away, never seemed to mind. “Byron.” She breathed his name aloud, thankful he was back, wanting to know his every secret.
Did I startle you?
He kissed the corner of her mouth, left a trail of flames down the side of her neck in apology.
It is Paul.
Antonietta went still. “Paul.” She said her cousin’s name aloud. “He never goes inside the passageway. He’s never even looked at a map. He doesn’t like confined spaces. His father used to lock him in a closet when he was angry with him. Which seemed to be all the time. Are you certain? What would make him chance coming in here?” Her fingers were already searching out the hidden mechanism to open the wall. “He’s bound to get lost in here. Unless you have the map and the key to the map, you could be lost for days.”
“It might do him good,” Byron said grimly. “He is up to no good.”
“You don’t know that.” The door slid open without a sound, telling Byron that Antonietta came to the room often enough to keep the mechanisms running smoothly. She had that faint haughty note in her voice that always made him smile. He followed her into the passage. “Which way did he go?”