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

by Giana Darling

The sight of it tripped the last of my mental defenses. Fucking on the hot hood of a car in a public parking garage with a beast of a man churning between my spread thighs, I cried out in fear and awe as an orgasm crawled through me, tensing every muscle until I vibrated. The need to burst apart, to unravel the tension almost terrified me, my breath caught on a choke in my throat.

“Vieni per me,” Dante gritted out between his teeth. “Come for me, Elena. Let me feel you come apart around me.”

I was all body and blood as the first true orgasm of my life ravaged me and wrung me completely dry. My mind floated in a kind of peaceful cloud for a moment before I struggled to find the earth again.

“You feel better than a dream.”

He loomed over me, shirt open around the tight, quilted tapestry of his abdomen, face tight with the wildness of his passion. I had never seen or imagined a man sexier than Dante Salvatore.

in him. It was base. So dirty it should have been wrong. But God, it only felt right to have him mark me that way, possess me in such an elemental way with his seed.

A violent shiver tore its teeth into my spine, but I didn’t stop his possessive act.

And that final act? Dante watching his hand massage his essence into my skin as if it would stay there like a tattoo, a brand, forever? It settled some primal need to be owned fully by someone else. To be wanted and accepted. To belong.

“Hush, hush,” he murmured as he stood, my body easy in his hold. “Io sono con te. I am with you.”

How did I learn to thank a man for the simple yet profound act of loving me? With his body. As a friend. Looking after me even though it was a wretched job I’d never be able to make easier. Seeing me when I’d been secretly fearful for so long that I would die unseen and unknown.

With a gusty sigh and another little sob, I let him press me like a flower between the pages of his heavy arms and strong torso.

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 was the first time for a lot of things, Elena. None of them bad.”

“Sometimes there is more strength in tears than in austerity.”

“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.”

He offered his sincerity to me like a jewel, this priceless treasure I wanted to lock away inside me forever. No matter what he said, we weren’t a thing that was made to last. We were too opposite, too set in our different ways. This was nothing but animal attraction, something I was experiencing for the first time in my life, something I was no longer willing to resist.

“No. If you want to share, you can. But I think I have a few ideas. The adrenaline crash alone would justify it. I’m just happy to have shared it with you. Being able to be there for you is a privilege I have the feeling you don’t afford to many people.”

“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.”

Because I knew, even if Dante didn’t, that no fire ever burned eternally, and one as hot as the inferno between us would burn out before we knew it. So I’d enjoy it––the pleasure, the bravery, the discovery––while I could.

But also, an even smaller voice in the depths of my lockdown soul whispered that I wanted him to fight me about it because it would show that he cared.

“Acted like a real donna,” he told me with admiration clear in his gravelly voice. “Made us proud.” Donna like the queen in a chess set or the queen on a playing card. Donna like a female boss.

But as I moved through security and into the elevator, a little smile crept over my face. Because apparently, not only did Dante care about my safety but the guys did too. And that felt better than it should have.

Much like the red-headed Italian woman who haunted my thoughts, she was a chaos of contradictions I wanted to spend my life untangling.

The fuckers were coming for me and mine.

“You call Elena a bitch ever again, Jaco, I’ll carve the word into your forehead with my blade, capisci?”

“Did I? I think you misunderstood. Maybe it was my accent, hmm? What I said was that a man in love has one weakness, his woman. It’s his Achilles’ heel. But that same love makes the rest of him impenetrable, strong as a god.” I clapped my free hand to the other side of his throat and strangled his neck for one brief moment so he could feel my strength. “What do you think, Jaco? Do I seem weak?”

She was too proper, too upstanding and moral. Too disgusted with the details of work that made up my entire existence. There was no way we could ever have a…relationship beyond the walls of my apartment, beyond the scope of this case. 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?

Triumph maybe, at the thought of corrupting her so fully. At the thought of having a woman like her stand beside me.

Wild dogs and armed Cosa Nostra soldati couldn’t have kept me from moving closer to witness Elena Lombardi like I had never seen her before.

This was the reason there was music; when words suffered from limitations, and the only way you could express those gargantuan nameless emotions was through song. I wanted to know if she played it for me. If the gold bright notes were about us.

“Sei bellissima,” I murmured as I touched my tongue to that fluttering pulse point. It was a habit I’d built around her, this need to feel her heart beat, to feel the woman who thought she was made of ice pulse with fire.

“Do you play for me, lottatrice? Because this sounds like the sweetest song of surrender,”

Seducing Elena was mesmeric. I got tangled up in the same mechanisms I used to soothe her, transfixed by her subtle, storied responses to even the slightest touch, the most innocent of phrases. There was such longing in her, a deep well of it that until now, until me, had gone untapped. It was drugging to know I had access to all that dormant sensuality.

“Bene, Elena, suona mentre io suono te,” I told her. Good, Elena, you play while I play you.

Because Elena wasn’t just gorgeous. Every single aspect of her fascinated me. I felt like an explorer discovering new lands as I rolled her nipples in my fingers and scratched my short nails lightly over the twin swells of her breasts. Every sensation I eked out of her was a fucking wonder.

“Nemmeno immagini cosa ho intenzione di farti.”

“I’m going to make you come like this on my hand, and you are going to play for me all the way through your climax,” I ordered. “Because I want to watch you fail. I want to see you lose control just for me.”

“Si, bella,” I encouraged her as she gave up trying to play, one hand slamming down over the keys discordantly. “Break apart. Come for me. And say the name of your capo when you do.”

She was such beautiful chaos, such a windstorm of contradictions that even she was helpless to understand their currents. Watching her break apart was as compelling as standing in the middle of a tempest as it surged through the streets of town, ripping apart buildings, tearing up trees. The sheer power of her splendor and intelligence was enough to raze even a man like me to the very ground.

“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.”

“You know I love to hear you say that,” I ground out as I pulled back completely, just the tip of my cock at her entrance. “Say it again, and I’ll show you what it’s like to fuck a capo.”

“Please, please. Per piacere. Per favore. Ti prego,” she chanted please in every way she could think of, mindless with need.

It was enough to feel that. To know I had made Elena Lombardi fracture so beautifully. To know I was the only man who had ever brought her such pleasure.

When I turned her in my arms, she wasn’t smiling, but there was a softness in her eyes, the gray velvet with contentment. It just about took my breath away. Soft, content Elena. Somehow even better than the weapon of a woman she presented to the world. This Lena was only for me.

“What? Capos need cuddles too.”

“How am I supposed to resist you when you act like this? The big bad capo and the boyish charmer with the big heart.” “Awe, she thinks I have a heart.”

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

“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.”