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“You’re everything fire, and I’m solid ice,”
“Si,” he agreed gruffly. “That’s why I know I’m the one who will finally make you melt.”
“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.”
“But we are more than our flaws and our mistakes. Who told you that you were hard to love? Give me a chance to prove them wrong.”
None of the boogeymen in my life held a candle to the power Dante seemed to yield over me compared to the length of time I’d known him.
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.
I hadn’t lied. I was done with men. Unfortunately, Dante Salvatore was so much more than a man. He was a beast and, the truth was, he was the only one to ever make me feel like a beauty.
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. And all that, six-foot-five inches, two hundred thirty pounds of British-Italian man, could be mine. All I had to do was be brave enough to reach out and take it.
Just a man and woman tangled together in the most fervent kiss I ever could have imagined.
“My Elena,”
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.
“Sometimes there is more strength in tears than in austerity.”
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.”
Dio mio, how was any woman supposed to resist such stark and brilliantly cut honesty from a man? He offered his sincerity to me like a jewel, this priceless treasure I wanted to lock away inside me forever.
Being able to be there for you is a privilege I have the feeling you don’t afford to many people.”
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’d never been so affected by a woman. 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.
“Break apart. Come for me. And say the name of your capo when you do.”
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.”
“It’s you that’s made me happy today. A man I thought I’d hate is now one of the men I most admire. I just don’t know what that means.”
I’d happily follow him to Hell if it meant being with him forever.
I wasn’t sure if there was such a thing as happily ever after for people like us, but I’d fight tooth and fucking nail to make sure I gave Elena Lombardi the world.
I’d ensure every single one of my soldati would die for her just as they would die for me.
