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January 21 - February 1, 2025
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.
“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.” – Anthony Burgess
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. In a way, it was the death of me.
And thirdly, most importantly, I was indisputably and irretrievably in love with a mafia Don, a man who could and most certainly had killed people with his big, bare hands. A man by the name of Dante Salvatore. A man who had changed my entire world.
“Perhaps it would help if I reminded you why it is you gave up everything you know to be with me,” he purred in that rich, dark voice I wanted to eat off his tongue like dark chocolate.
“Show me,” I told him, barely above a whisper. “But I don’t need reminding. I could never forget why I left it all behind. I could never forget you.”
“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.”
“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.”
It was almost impossible to feel my old shame when Dante was so completely unapologetic about his enjoyment of my body.
“Come for me,” he ordered roughly, his ruddy mouth slicked with my wet. “And Elena? Say my name when you do.”
“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
“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.”
“Come for me, my capo.”
“You wear my cum with pride,” he said in a way that was half order and half question.
“You are with me now, si? You are mine as I am yours. I told you once, I am the most honest man you will ever meet so do not ask questions you do not want the answers to.”
“You are here with me when I never thought you would take such a risk. For now, that is more than enough.”
“Partner? Mmm, I don’t think so. I like the sound of… my lover, my woman, innamorata mia, amora mia.” My love, my heart.
I’d never yearned for possession the way I did with Dante. I was a woman who valued my independence fiercely so I’d always thought that the idea of belonging to someone else was a direct contradiction to my independence. I’d been wrong. Owning the heart of a man like Dante Salvatore didn’t make me weak, it made me strong. I was proud to be seen as his because I was proud of the man he was and the woman he helped me to become.
“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.”
“I have a present for you, lottatrice.”
“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?”
“It doesn’t matter if you can’t. I’ll tie you to the posts and eat my fill.”
“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?”
I wanted him to die for wanting her, and he hadn’t even tried to touch her yet.
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.
“Come and meet your future wife, Dante. She’s missed you. While you are getting reacquainted, I will entertain the lovely Elena.”
No one was untouchable.
“As for Elena,” he continued in a lower register, one hand creeping over her thigh to stroke at the line of her muscle beneath the skirt. “You wanna have her stay with me for a while, I might rethink your options.” I was the only one who saw the gathering of energy in her long, slim form. She was a woman and a slight one at that, unintimidating despite her height. They never would have suspected what would come next, and honestly, if I’d been a smarter man, I would have stopped her before she could show them the biting edge of her anger. But I couldn’t resist watching the glory of the moment
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“It was so pleasant to meet you, Rocco,” she murmured in low, liquid Italian, her blood-red mouth brushing his cheek as she spoke intimately to him. “Do not ruin it by insulting my people, mmm? I belong with my man as much as he belongs with me. No one will take him from me, not God or the devil himself. Not even you, the mighty capo dei capi of Napoli.”
Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore. Whoever is against this love suffers and then dies.
I’d always found her meek and uninteresting.
Even filled with wrath, Elena was pure beauty.
“I still have to teach you everything there is to know about pleasing me. With your hands, with your red mouth, your sweet cunt, and your little arse.”
lottatice, your tight little arse. Has anyone ever taken you there?”
“I think you’ll like having me there. Do you know why?”
“You love it when I worship your body,”
“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,”
“Just as any man before me for you was nothing,”
“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.”
Never again would I want a woman the way I wanted her.
“You need me inside you, don’t you, lottatrice?”
“You speak in Italian when I play with you,”
