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October 6 - October 8, 2023
He ran the tip of his nose down the side of my ear and feathered his lips against the sharp edge of my cheekbone. “Let me show you passion, Elena. Let me teach you how to love again.”
It was ludicrous because, for one moment, I thought if anyone could understand what was written there, it would be this man with the black eyes and shockingly kind heart. “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.”
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.
My fingers curled around the key. Even though I didn’t want it to mean something that he trusted me to drive his million-dollar car, my heart panged like a plucked instrument in my chest. “Thank you,” I muttered, my focus on putting my coat on so I wouldn’t have to bear the brunt of his megawatt grin. “That sounds almost as good as please,” he told me in that smoky voice that made me high. “Not quite as good as your laughter, though.”
For the first time in my entire life, I felt as if I had come out on the other side of the conflict with the mafia as the winner. I felt as if the entire organization could come at me the way they had come at my family in Naples, and I could take them head-on in that fight. I could show them what it meant to battle a Lombardi, what it meant to face a woman at the end of her rope. What had happened was more than just a car chase. It was a pivotal point in my life.
There was no history of abuse. No nerves about how my newly recovered body might react to such passion. There was only Dante Salvatore. And me. Not Elena Moore or Elena Lombardi. Not lawyer or sister, bitch or loner. Just a man and woman tangled together in the most fervent kiss I ever could have imagined.
It was more than that, though. It satisfied a bone-deep longing I had for so long to be wanted fiercely, above all else. To the point, even, of insanity. 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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
Much like the red-headed Italian woman who haunted my thoughts, she was a chaos of contradictions I wanted to spend my life untangling.
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.
The queen to my kingpin.
“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.”
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. 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. Not so vaguely, I was aware that she reached one hand back to press into my hip in order to hold me closer.
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. I pressed another kiss to her forehead, needing to touch her again.
I didn’t want her to close down just yet, insisting she had to sleep in her own fucking bed and leave me there in a room still echoing with her song, still perfumed with us. So, I tugged her over to one of the couches and then wrapped her in a bear hug before lifting her from the ground and flopping to my back on the cushions. “You oaf,” she protested without fire as she tried to get up. I wrapped my legs around her too, pinning her against me. When she canted her head back to look into my eyes with a raised brow, I winked. “What? Capos need cuddles too.” “Ridiculous,” she muttered, but a
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Still, she didn’t ask. Instead, she put her cheek to my chest and cuddled just a little bit closer. “It won’t be easy, but I promise I’ll do whatever I can to get you free.” Fuck me, but this woman could be sweet under that brittle shell. “I know,” I told her because I did. “I’m happy,” she admitted after a minute, almost bashfully, adorably girlish. “For a long time, I’ve felt as if I didn’t deserve that.” Her words nearly winded me. I squeezed her, wishing I could extract the poison of her self-loathing through sheer will.
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. I stood on that snowy corner for a long time after Dennis and Seamus parted, letting my entire world view crumble at my feet, and when I felt my skin frozen but my blood on fire, I felt lighter than I had in years.
he cupped the same cheek he had just hit twice. His thumb rubbed over my split cheekbone, my blood staining his skin.
It was almost impossible to fathom the level of narcissism it took for Seamus to be able to spin his life story into a tragedy inflicted against him as the victim.
“I’ll warn you once,” a voice said from the top of the stairs. It was cold, low as fog rolling down the treads. “You touch another hair on her goddamn head, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands and then hand-feed the pieces of you to the neighborhood dogs.”
“You’re okay,” he said in that British-Italian accent I’d once hated. “Io sono con te. I am with you now, si? You are safe, Elena.” I blinked at him, falling into those night-dark eyes, finding solace in them when I used to find immorality. My hands moved over him, touching whatever I could just to reassure myself that things hadn’t ended differently in there. That he was alive and Seamus hadn’t succeeded in taking yet another thing from my life. And I knew it then. What it was to truly be in love with someone, body and soul, everything else be damned.
I tried to reassure him with a little smile, but it felt like cracked plastic between my teeth.
I cried, clutching at my heart through my chest like I could pry it from between my ribs and show him how it had been altered.
Knowing that Dante had killed for me, that he had risked his freedom to search for me and helped end the life of a man who had made me suffer the entire length of mine, resonated somewhere deep inside. It was the same place that burned when he touched me, when he taught me what to do with his body and what to do with mine. It was the same place that stirred whenever my family had been threatened in Naples and I’d stood up to protect them.
I nodded curtly, not ready to examine the wound to my chest. Not the insignificant bullet hole I’d have Frankie stitch up on the plane, but the gaping hole in my rib cage where Elena Lombardi ripped out my heart to keep it for her own. I didn’t mind. I wanted her to have it. But the pain was fucking excruciating.
The smile that spread across her face dazzled me as we moved toward each other, faster and faster. Then she was right in front of me. Elena Lombardi. And all I could think was mine. I opened my arms, and she stepped right into them, dropping her bag to wrap her hands gently around my neck so she didn’t jostle my shoulder. “I won’t go back to my life before this,” she murmured into my chest as she hugged me. “Don’t leave me here in this purgatory where nothing makes sense anymore except you.” “I have too much of you in my heart to say no,” I admitted gruffly, pulling her head back by the hair
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