When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love Duet #1)

by Giana Darling

“Not all love is romantic,” he pointed out rationally, staring into my fearful eyes. “I don’t think you’ve had enough of it to know that, but I’m offering the love of a friend and the love of my body. The love of a man who can see you are not hateful. You are not villainous. You are misunderstood. And Elena, you don’t realize this yet, but I see you, I know you, and I’m fucking undone by the beauty of you.”

They say there is a thin line between love and hate. The moment Dante Salvatore twisted his hand in my hair and yanked me in for a savage kiss, I knew he had just pushed me over that invisible line into something infinitely more dangerous than hate.

At that moment, every single atom in my body was owned by him. One kiss. For one kiss, I risked it all. My career, my family, my freedom. And my life. But, Dio mio, I’d do it again and again if it meant feeling like this. So alive I burned.

“This is on pause,” he growled, his thumb stroking possessively over my thudding pulse point as if each beat spoke his name. “Now that I’ve had that red mouth, I’ll need it again.”

If I was going to damn myself anyway, I might as well do it by sleeping with the Devil of New York City.

“Molto bene, Elena,” he praised darkly. “Next time I kiss that gorgeous red mouth, I’m going to make you so crazy that all you know is Italian.”

I could give up the idea of being a hero and rise up the villain beside a man I was beginning to understand was so much more than that.

He was everything I’d feared and everything I’d never consciously known I longed for.

My feet hit the ground, and I was off like a shot, tearing across the space between us in my towering heels, each step as sure as if I was flat-footed.

His dark features were carved out of stone, harsh with possession and stark desire. There was no question in that gaze, but he didn’t need one.

“I’ve never wanted someone so badly it felt like I would die if I couldn’t take them,”

“You’ll feel every inch of my cock as I work it into this tight cunt.”

Dante pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes all black. “You can take it. I’ll make you.”

“Lottatrice mia,” he groaned, rubbing our noses together the instant before he pushed into me, my walls clinging hard to his fat head in a way that made us both shiver. “Figa mia,” he asserted, my pussy.

“My Elena,” he told me intractably, the way a monk spoke as if from God, with the kind of willful authority that made it seem impossible to doubt him.

But God, it only felt right to have him mark me that way, possess me in such an elemental way with his seed.

Dante released his still-hard length and lazily smeared his cum into my skin in wide, firm circles. A violent shiver tore its teeth into my spine, but I didn’t stop his possessive act.

It settled some primal need to be owned fully by someone else. To be wanted and accepted. To belong.

Seeing me when I’d been secretly fearful for so long that I would die unseen and unknown.

I focused on the feel of a strong man around me, shielding me from the outside world but also from myself. When I would have wanted to be alone for my rare and shameful breakdown, Dante had suffered no bashfulness and forced me to share it with him.

“It’s my natural-born charm. But it’s also this. Whatever you and I are made of, it’s the same. You don’t have to be good with me, right or true in any sense, but especially the conventional. You can be your worst self with me, because Elena, it’s the contradictory nature of your soul that intoxicates me.”

“There are many things I can and will make you feel,” he promised darkly. “Now that I’ve had you, I won’t let you go until I’ve had my fill, and I have a feeling that will take a very long time.”

I brought Jaco’s face to mine so I could sneer softly, just for him. “You call Elena a bitch ever again, Jaco, I’ll carve the word into your forehead with my blade, capisci?”

Yet the idea of giving her up made me mad. Crazed as a beast gone feral, foaming at the mouth. I was the only man who had ever made her come. The one to make her curse and make her beg. The one she allowed to care for her even though she hated to seem weak.

How was it possible there could be a time when she didn’t seem like mine? But donna. Boss. The queen to my kingpin. A partner not just in this case against me but in crime.

“You’re going to come all over my fingers for me, Elena.” She panted, her fingers trembling on the keys, her legs shaking beneath the piano. “And then I’m going to bend you over this instrument and bury myself inside you while you are still coming.”

“That’s it,” I praised her warmly, running my hands all over every inch of her body I could reach, currying her like I would a nervous mare. She settled under my touch, arching into every passing stroke. “You are breathtaking like this. Not because you are naked, but because you are vulnerable and for a man like me? There is no bigger turn-on.”

“I’ve got to fuck you hard,” I gritted out, sweat beading on my brow from the effort of my restraint. “I’ve got to own this sweet cunt, Elena. Tell me you want it.”

No matter how hard I fucked her, it couldn’t satisfy the bestial craving inside me.

I ground my hips even deeper and spilled myself inside her. My forehead pressed to her shoulder, and I came and came and came, filling her with my seed. Vaguely, I was aware of her gasp as she felt me kick and spurt within her.

Soft, content Elena. Somehow even better than the weapon of a woman she presented to the world. This Lena was only for me.

Fuck me, but this woman could be sweet under that brittle shell.

“Not everything is so black and white, Elena,” I murmured as I slid a lock of her deep red hair between my fingers. “Between the hero and the villain, there is the anti-hero. A person who may do evil deeds and seem unscrupulous, but who, within their own set of morals, possesses a big heart and the willingness to protect that which they know to be good. I know you well enough now that whatever cruelty you gave those two stemmed from the fact that they didn’t love you enough to treat you with kindness.”

Her admiration felt like an anointment from God.

Heroism was about your willingness to right wrongs, to sacrifice your own comfort and safety to affect change when you crossed something that needed changing. It was assuming responsibility for people who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves. It was about being brave enough to live life by your own rules and accepting who you were, flaws and all.

In all my life, the only person who had ever understood me despite my best efforts to stop them was Dante.

“Sono con te, lottatrice mia,” he said, “anche quando non lo sono.” I am with you, my fighter, even when I am not.

I couldn’t bear the thought of knowing I existed in a world where Dante didn’t.

“Don’t leave me here in this purgatory where nothing makes sense anymore except you.”

“Ti amo,” she told me as if the words couldn’t bear to go unspoken. “I love you, and I’m going with you.”

“They’re all afraid of you, and they all hate me. What a pair we make. Two villains in love. I’m not afraid of anything that will come at us, Dante. I just don’t want to be without you.”

I’d fight tooth and fucking nail to make sure I gave Elena Lombardi the world. It wouldn’t be the world she thought she wanted, but I’d make her regina of my dark kingdom

Hatred was more powerful than fear. One was a shield and an armament I could utilize while the other could only be weaponised against me.