When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love, #2)

by Giana Darling

This one is for every single woman who was taught she will never be enough. The simple act of being you inspires me. The strength and tenacity of the female spirit is unconquerable.

Loving him wasn’t the end of everything. It’s funny they always make it seem that way in the books and movies. Loving him was just the beginning.

I was in love with Dante. I’d loved before. So, why did this feel so different, so strange? Even at the height of my affection for Christopher and Daniel, I’d felt solidly independent, removed enough from my emotions to operate logically and efficiently. With Dante, I felt my edges blurring, my whole being smudged like a watercolor painting into the edges of him and his. I didn’t want space or logic.

Dio mio, I’d fled the country and my entire life to be with him. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking logically. But that was the craziness of it all. I didn’t care if I was acting outside of my own interests, that I was being impulsive and reckless and passionate to a fault. I didn’t care so much I felt like roaring with giddy, manic laughter. I was unhinged, ripped from the caged structure of my previous life by Dante’s ruthless grasp. I felt free. So free. For the first time ever.

He’d taken that bullet for me. Put his entire life at risk for me. That such a powerful man would gamble his kingdom and livelihood for little old me made me feel nothing short of a queen.

“Kissing you is the sweetest agony,” he murmured against my damp lips as one big hand moved to my throat. The feel of him collaring me that way should have been deplorable. Instead, it felt like the most exquisite necklace, one I wanted to wear with pride forevermore. “I never want to stop kissing you, at the same time it makes me hungry for more.”

“Elena, do not try to keep me from your beautiful figa.” My beautiful pussy.

“Sei bella,” Dante told me in an intimate murmur as he stroked a thumb over the top of my groin. “You are beautiful, Elena. From your red hair to your endlessly long legs, your velvet gray eyes and your elegance. Even, and especially, your pussy. This”––he dropped a chaste kiss to my covered clit that made me gasp––“is beautiful. Do not deny me the pleasure of kissing you here. Of tasting you straight from the well.”

“I want to be the one to make you lose control. I want to watch you bend and break beneath my hands so I can glue you back together with pleasure.”

“Lottatrice mia,” Dante rasped between kisses. “Watch me worship this pretty pussy, hmm? I want you to see how the taste of you undoes me.”

“There has never been another man for you,” he said fiercely, eyes flashing up to mine and filled with primal possession. “I am the only one to touch you this way, to bring you this pleasure. Forget the past, Elena, because I am the only man in your future.”

“Come for me,” he ordered roughly, his ruddy mouth slicked with my wet. “And Elena? Say my name when you do.”

“That’s it,” he purred like a conquering warrior reveling in his spoils. His fingers pumped gently inside me, wringing out every ounce of pleasure to be had. “Look at you coming all over my mouth and fingers like that. So fucking beautiful and all mine.”

“You see what you do to me?” he demanded in a war-torn voice as he fisted his cock almost viciously and jerked off inches from my face. I was transfixed by the sight of his strangled head moving wetly in and out of his grip. “Only you, Elena. Only with you do I feel like fucking you, marking you, owning you with my body and my cum. I’m going to paint you with it right now so you know you’re mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to cherish. Mine to love.”

“Tell me, donna,” he bit out. The tendons strained in his neck as he beat himself to climax. “Tell me you want my cum on this classy skin.” “I want it,” I admitted, feeling weak with longing, my skin already tingling in anticipation. “Come for me, my capo.” “Cazzo,” he shouted gruffly seconds before his hips snapped forward, and he started to come.

“Clearly, I need to work harder at leaving you comatose after a climax if you still have the ability to berate me for my foolishness after I’ve made you come on my tongue.”

“But Elena, you should know, I have never met a woman with such coraggio. And I have no doubt that whoever you felt you let down in your past let you down as well, si?”

“Partner? Mmm, I don’t think so. I like the sound of… my lover, my woman, innamorata mia, amora mia.” My love, my heart.

“You don’t understand this yet, but you do not need your armor all the time now. Not when you have me.” He lipped the edge of my jaw all the way up to my ear, where he spoke his next words on a purr. “I will be your sword.”

“She’s beautiful, D. What do you expect?” “I expect respect,” he countered. “You treat her like a piece of meat, amico, and I’ll let her treat you the same.” When they both looked at me, I raised a haughty brow at Frankie. “Next time ‘you look beautiful, Elena’ would suffice better than a catcall, Francesco.” He bit the edge of his smile as he saluted me. “Aye aye, Donna.”

I could admit to being a material girl. I loved gifts.

“Still have the taste of you on my tongue,” he murmured just for me. “It’s not enough. When we get to safety, I plan to lay you out on the bed and feast for hours. Could you handle that, Elena?”

When he looked back at me, his eyes were hot and solemn. “In New York, you were my champion, hmm? My lawyer and my advocate striving to keep me safe. Well, Napoli is my courtroom. Put down your weapons, relax your shields. For once in your life, you do not have to fight all your own battles. I will fight for you. Here and now, I will be your champion. Do you trust me?”

But trust? I hadn’t trusted anyone new in so long, I wondered if I even had the capacity for it anymore.

I wanted him to die for wanting her, and he hadn’t even tried to touch her yet. He would.

I was a man who only feared one thing, which I was learning was infinitely more dangerous than a man who feared nothing. I would not lose Elena. Not for anything. Not for my bloody kingdom and stacks of crisp bills. Not for my honor or my family, my Italian ideals. She was it. Mine. Forever.

“You love it when I worship your body,” I breathed against her ear as I cupped her sex and ground the heel of my hand gently into her clit. “When I use everything I am and everything I have to make you come spectacularly for me. Did you know, cuore mia, there is nothing more beautiful to me than the sight of you breaking apart with pleasure?”

“No woman before you matters to me. They are insignificante. They are dust,” I growled as I released her hands and turned her to face the mirror once more.

“Just as any man before me for you was nothing,” I continued, my eyes pinned on her in the mirror. Her face was swathed in the dim light from the Moreno glass fixture above the frame while mine was cast entirely in shadow. “I’ve told you, Elena, whatever you and I are made of, it is the same. No one exists for me but you. No one makes you come alive but me.”

“I’m going to make you come all over my cock with our enemies just down the hall,” I told her, watching as her mouth parted wider, her tongue peeking out as if to taste the filth of my words. “You’re going to suck on my fingers while you orgasm so they don’t hear your pretty cries.”

“Si, Elena,” I agreed, squeezing my hand at her throat just slightly, just to watch the shock widen her eyes and the desire tremble harder through her form. “Your capo. There is no one else. Only me. Only you. Only us.”

Magnificent. There was no other word for the way Elena climaxed for me.

“There is no shame in anything between us, lottatice mia. I will not have you feel embarrassed of your emotions with me. Embarrassed of the dreams I hope you’ll come to share with me. Most people have reason to fear me. I’d end them without blinking for even a slight offense against me or mine. But you?” I brushed my nose up her elegant neck and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her cheek. “You have nothing to fear in me, capisci? You have had enough to fear in your life and I will break apart the entire universe if it dares to harm you again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he murmured again and again in English and Italian as he set a punishing rhythm, dragging my own fingers in and out alongside his. “So beautiful like this. So mine.”

“That’s my girl,”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he assured me, stroking one big, strong hand over my head and down my back. “Do you know how good it feels to have you vulnerable in my arms? To know it is a gift you only give to me?”

“I always feel like a burden when I get emotional. It shouldn’t be anyone’s problem but my own.” He made a pained noise in his throat, then ran his nose from my forehead down the bridge of my own until he reached my mouth where he spoke the words like a secret. “It is a privilege, Elena, to know you intimately. To know what makes you hurt and what makes you blush. To know what your demons are so I can slay them for you when you don’t have the strength or watch you overcome your own nightmares because I love to watch my fighter conquer everything in her path. It is an honor to know you, and I won’t ever take that for granted.”

“You aren’t my lawyer anymore, Elena. Tu sei la mia regina.” You are my queen.

“Elena,” he called when I turned away, waiting until I looked back to smile and say, “You’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been before. You had the courage to follow me here and I won’t ever forget that or stop striving to be worthy of it.”

A gorgeous family until you looked a little closer.

But I realized, especially as I stared at the Polaroid of her on Tore’s wall, that I hadn’t been the same confidant to her. It made me want to keep my own secrets from her. It was spiteful and unhealthy, but that was my instinct.

This bastardo wasn’t just messing with me. He was threatening my woman. My Elena. The woman I was just coming to make my own.

But look at her. No matter the adversity, I could always count on one constant. Elena Lombardi was a weapon. And she was mine.

“Dante?” she probed when I just stared at her. I lunged forward to stamp a hard kiss to her unpainted lips. “Sei magnifica.” A little grin whispered over her lips before she nodded curtly at me to pick up the man’s torso. “You can prove to me just how much after we deal with this stronzo.” “Be still my heart,” I joked, clutching my chest as I staggered back toward his head. She rolled her eyes.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure both,” I admitted. “Even if it means sacrificing my own safety and happiness. No one has ever put my woman first, and I am not going to make that mistake.”

My mother loved me, but her love was worn through at the edges with stress and responsibilities. I was her daughter and her co-parent, her dependant whom she utterly depended on. It had been a long time since she had handled me like a child, and a secret part of me, deep in my heart, missed that.

So, yes, I had family, though a small one by any Italian standard, but I did not have much attention. And silly, twelve-year-old Elena made the life-altering mistake of equating love and attention as one and the same.

“All your life, men have hurt you. I didn’t understand until now. Seamus, Christopher, Daniel. None of them showed you how goddamn tragically beautiful you are, Elena. But I will. I’ll prove it to you every single day until I die, mi senti?” Do you hear me? I did.

He grabbed my hand and pressed it hard over his madly beating heart. “This beats for you. It bleeds for you. I am yours. Your sword, your champion, your lover, and your home. You don’t understand this yet, but I will never hurt you, Elena. I only ever hurt for you because fuck me, you’ve been through too much already. I will only ever hurt those who hurt you because I love you, and I won’t let anyone else ever get away with putting pain in your heart without consequences. Mi senti?”

“Cuore mia, my heart breaks for you,” he whispered raggedly before kissing the tears from my cheeks. “I won’t let yours break again.”