When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

“You’re going to make me come,” she wheezed in Italian as she braced for impact. “Dio mio, Dante, oh my God.”

I took a risk and reared my hand back from her clit before slapping my palm lightly back down over it.

The single slap popped the top off her climax.

“Fuck,” she cried out, scrambling against the keys as she thrashed and trembled and kicked out against the force of the pleasure ripping through her.

I held on tight, her slick limbs slipping against my own. Her pussy clenched me so tightly I couldn’t thrust, only seat myself to the root and feel her break apart all around me.

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.

After, squeezed dry like a used tea towel, I sprawled against her, panting hard as I struggled to remember my own name.

“Well,” Elena’s soft voice sounded after a moment, muffled by her hair and the weight of me plastered on top of her. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to play the piano again after that without becoming aroused.”

I laughed, the sound deep in my belly, the feel of it almost as good as the climax she’d wrung from me. Giving in to my affectionate impulses, I rubbed my nose into the back of her hair before I stood to help peel her off the piano. 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.

“Maybe we should do that on my desk,” I suggested lasciviously. “It would make my accounting much more interesting.”

She giggled—giggled––and I wondered if she was a little love drunk, climax high.

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 smile haunted her lips. “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.”

I winced when she pinched my side in retribution.

We were quiet for a moment, the kind of easy silence that doesn’t need filling. I focused on recovering my equilibrium after my savage orgasm, already planning what I might do to her and with her next.

“Aren’t you scared at all?” she asked softly, stroking her fingers through my chest hair as if she wasn’t even aware she did it. “You’re on trial for murder, Dante. That’s serious.”

“No,” I said honestly. “No matter what happens, I’m not going to jail.”

She blinked at me, and I knew she wanted to ask questions, real questions about my business. She had been so careful to avoid any topic that might be too intimate or too criminal until then. But she was curious, and it excited me to see that the truth didn’t make her flinch anymore.

It made her think.

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. “Why wouldn’t you deserve that?”

For a short pause, she seemed to drown in all the things she wanted to articulate but couldn’t. “I’m not a very nice person sometimes. I-I lash out at people when I’m hurt and say horrible things. When I found out about Daniel and Giselle, I told them both they would never be a part of the family, that I would always hate them. I meant it at the time, and a part of me means it still, but…I ended up alienating my entire family because of it. Even though I was the victim, I ended up acting in a way that made me the villain of the whole situation.” She shrugged soddenly. “It’s been hard to live with that.”