When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

I tipped my head back to laugh at the ceiling as I hauled her even closer, flush against my chest. Through the thin silk of her dress and the crisp linen of my shirt, I imagined I could feel the hard points of her nipples.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, struggling slightly to pull away.

I clamped my hand over her hip and engulfed her hand on the opposite in my own before I ducked down to whisper over her lips. “I am dancing with you.”

“Indecently,” she hissed, her eyes scanning the crowd for any judgmental eyes. “Yara is watching.”

“Yara doesn’t care,” I countered as I moved us fluidly to the music, grinning at my man Davide as he spun his wife out beside us. “If you know the steps to the Saltarello, we could dance that instead.”

She rolled those pretty eyes at me, but her body was relaxing in increments against mine. I was reminded of her piano playing and made a note to play music around her more often. It was evident she was moved spiritually by it, even if the words were in her dreaded native tongue.

“Only old people dance the Saltarello,” she said. “Then again, you’re basically an old man, aren’t you?”

I scowled at her, the hand on her hip moving to the small of her back so I could press her fully to the quilted muscles beneath my suit. “I assure you, I’m still incredibly virile.”

“For an old man, maybe.”

“I’m thirty-five, Elena. I’m hardly ancient.”

She shrugged flippantly, but I caught a hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.

We danced then for the length of one song, and when she would have pulled away, I spun her back into my arms for another. I liked the way she fit there against me, tall enough I didn’t have to break my back to look down into her romantic face, slim enough I got an aroused kick out of knowing I could bend her easily beneath my hands.

Her eyes caught mine as I moved us in a bastardized version of the salsa. Our bodies moved together with a synchronicity that surprised us both. I stepped; she followed. I indicated an upcoming spin with a twist of my wrist, and she was already swirling out in a flare of red silk. We moved faster, tighter against each other. Her breath fanned against the open skin at my collar as she panted with her efforts, her chest cresting again and again pressed to mine, her nipples hard as diamonds abrading my skin beneath the fabric.

A fire built in my gut, a slow burn that built deeper and deeper than the ache in an overused muscle. Sweat beaded on my brow, but it had more to do with the effort to restrain myself from savagely taking her mouth with mine than from the dance.

“This is inappropriate,” Elena panted at one point, but even her eyes were dancing beautifully in time with me.

“Si, indecente,” I agreed.

Indecent.

And she was. Indecently tantalizing warmed with amusement and the heat of excursion. I wanted to trail the flush from her neck down her chest, discover if her nipples were pink or brown, sweet or salty with sweat.

I pressed her intractably to the swell of my cock trapped in my trousers, and she faltered, losing time and tripping over her heels to end up straddling my thigh. Her eyes were all black, the steel gray a fine frame for her blown pupils as she stared at me, afraid and alert to the presence of a predator.

I grinned wolfishly as I lowered her down the hard length of my leg, enjoying the way she shuddered against me. I opened my mouth to tease her, to enjoy the contrast between her sharp-tongued wit and her pliant body against mine when suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.

Elena frowned as I hesitated against her. “Dante? You look pale.”

I wanted to tell her I was fine, but the air seemed to have been vacuumed out of my chest. A bead of sweat dripped into my eye, blurring my vision as I angled my head to see the buttons of my shirt and shakily undo even more. My fingers fumbled on the buttons as my head swam.

“Dante,” Elena repeated, alarm in her tone as she wrapped her hands around my body, alerting me to the fact that I was swaying. “Tore!” she yelled over the music.

Her hand went to my neck, sharp tipped fingers digging into my pulse as she struggled to hold me up. “Tore, his pulse is really slow.”

The father of my heart was there, taking my other side to prop me up and lead me to the couch.

“Is Dr. Augustus Crown here?” he demanded of someone I couldn’t make out over his shoulder.

I blinked because my eyes were dry, but when I tried to open them again, the lids seemed weighted by cement. The last thing I heard before I succumbed to the blackness was Jacopo’s loud voice growling, “You, bitch. You did this!”