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February 23 - February 25, 2023
“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.”
“My outfit is part of my armor,” I told him even though it exposed a vulnerability. “I’ll be out in two minutes. Just give me time to change.” “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.”
“Surely, I don’t need that,” I whispered even as my fingers reached out to touch the cool metal. “You’ll keep me safe.” His features softened slightly, but he still shook his head. “No. Only a very foolish man thinks he will be able to protect his loved ones at all times.
“I’ll learn if it will make you feel better. But you should know, I never settle for mediocrity. If I’m going to learn to shoot, I’ll probably become a better shot than you.”
“Tu si l’azzurro dò mare sì duci e si amar,” I told her. You are like the sea, sweet and salty. “A sailor does not leave the sea because it storms, and it does not begrudge the ocean her moods. I have no intention of giving up on you, Elena, because there is no part of you I do not find worthy and fascinating. If this ends, it will be because you choose to end it, and you refuse to let me fight to win you back.”
“I’m willing to take a life-altering risk for a life-altering reward,” she told me steadily, her flames cooling to ice-cold surety. “I don’t know what love means to you, but to me, it means loving someone no matter what baggage they come with for as long as they’ll let you love them and as hard as you possibly can. The only risk I fear is one where I lose you. You fell in love with a fighter, Dante. Let me fight with you.”
It occurred to me that if she was right about being born for me and the life I could give her then maybe I’d been born for her.
This love was all teeth and claws, fight and passion. Light was easy to love. This love was dark. It was night as black as my eyes and as stormy as hers. It was seeing the shadows in each other’s souls and being drawn into their abyss. It was knowing we would never understand each other, not fully, and it was loving that challenge as much as the mystery. This was what happened when two villains fell in love. And it was as beautiful as anything I’d ever known.
I’d never been a lucky man, but standing there with Elena in my arms in the only place that had ever really felt like home even with enemies all around us, I felt like a fucking god.
You both have the biggest hearts of anyone I know and the courage to do anything to protect your loved ones.”
Io sono con te. I am with you. Elena, you don’t realize this yet, but I see you, I know you, and I’m undone by you. Sono pazzo di te. I’m crazy about you. Only you, Elena. Only with you do I like fucking you, marking you, owning you with my body and my cum. Mine to fuck. Mine to cherish. Mine to love. It is a privilege to know you intimately. It is an honor to know you and I won’t ever take that for granted. Tu sei la mia regina. You are my queen.
I knew I would hate myself if I let go of this man without a fight.
I’d always felt I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I was born with that inside me, but Christopher watered it for years then Daniel, unwittingly, cultivated it when he left me so callously for my little sister. My self-loathing and doubt had grown into something monstrous, blocking out all other light. Until Dante. I don’t want to be loved. Let me love you anyway.
I would love Dante to the fullest extent of my soul because he had taught me how to love again by healing my heart with his pure kindness and loyalty.
“You hit like a girl,” he spat, blood-tinged saliva falling to the desk. “I hit you like a bitch because you are one,” I told him matter-of-factly.
Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore. Whoever is against this love, suffers and then dies.”
It was funny to think of love as passive, as if you could fall into it like stumbling over a misplaced shoe. Love required work, it didn’t just happen. Like a flower it required tending to, a series of actions to make it beautiful and fulfilled. I’d always thought love just happened and then it just stayed. How wrong I’d been. Dante was right, love was worth fighting for and I’d been fighting for it unwittingly all my life.
“Some people have hobbies, art, music, playing sport. Mine is learning you.”