When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

Where did one learn the right vocabulary for such things?

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.

I cried, and I cried until my chest burned and snot ran from my nose, hiccups the only way I could get air into my exhausted lungs.

Dante carried me into the apartment, through the living room where I knew some of his men were probably waiting for us. I wanted to ask him to take me to my bed, but he didn’t. Instead, he went through the kitchen to the back hallway that led to his office.

And his bedroom.

A shiver of anticipation pinched between my shoulder blades as he knocked the ajar door open with his shoulder and ferried us inside. He didn’t stop at the bed or the couch I glimpsed through my tear-damp hair near the windows. Instead, he powered us straight through to the black marble bathroom.

I tried to suck in some deep breaths while he perched me on his hip and a slightly raised thigh to lean into the massive walk-in shower and turn it on. Water fell from all three of the four sides. After adjusting the temperature, he moved us both inside the glass doors and backed up into the spray, lowering me to the ground only for long enough to take off my hastily righted clothes.

I shivered even though steam was beginning to billow in the glass and marble enclosure.

“Vieni,” Dante ordered softly as he tugged my naked body close.

Come.

I was too tired and overwrought to be embarrassed by my naked flesh.

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. He kept me there, hugging me, as the water rained all around us. Minutes passed, my diminishing tears lost to the spray, my breath evening slowly. 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.

I thought about being embarrassed then, in the wake of the emotional storm that left me ravaged like the wreckage after a tropical hurricane, but I couldn’t muster the energy even for that.

So, instead, I pressed my cheek harder to Dante’s steely pec and wrapped my arms around his torso to hold him close right back.

When enough time passed that I was certain our skin had turned to prunes, he finally shifted back enough to look down at me, pinching my chin to lever my face up at his.

“Better?” he asked, eyes solemn.

I nodded, biting my lips then shrugging weakly. “That was probably the first time you had sex with a woman who went to pieces in your arms afterward.”

He didn’t laugh or brush it off the way I thought he would. His thumb swept over the corner of my mouth, reminding me of the fact my makeup was probably running down my cheeks, and he said, “It was the first time for a lot of things, Elena. None of them bad.”

I’d never told him explicitly what my surgery had been for, but he’d spent the last four weeks watching me convalesce. Knowing Dante, he probably had a decent guess of the ailments I’d suffered from.

I forced myself to swallow the whimper that rose in my throat, done with weakness.

As if reading my mind, he bent his legs so he could drop closer to my face. “Sometimes there is more strength in tears than in austerity.”

I laughed limply. “How do you always know what to say? Is there some kind of class for that?”

His lips twitched. “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.”

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.

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.