When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

I struggled out of his arms, face flaming, skin pricking with shame. “Excuse me for thinking for one moment that a man could have taken a genuine interest in me.”

I winced slightly as I realized the vulnerability of my words.

Some of the antagonism vibrating through Dante quieted as his expression morphed into somber consideration. When he shook me again by the shoulder, it was almost gentle.

“Elena,” he said, clearly exasperated. “You are the most complicated woman I’ve ever known. So tough and strong, a born fighter because life taught you the need to survive, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

I pulled away from him, stepping back because suddenly I couldn’t breathe well. He let me go, but his eyes were hooked through mine, forcing me to witness the sincerity there, to hear the words I knew would eviscerate me.

“Yet, you’re so afraid,” he said in a low voice, his words creeping across the space toward me like the slow roll of thick, ominous fog. “You’re so goddamn afraid of being soft and tender because all that silk beneath your armor would rip so easily in the wrong hands. This insecurity blinds you to the truth. It corrodes the goodness in you. If you saw what I saw when I looked at you, you would never doubt yourself again. You wouldn’t be tricked by the easy flattery of some stronzo like di Carlo into thinking he was good enough for you.”

“Oh,” I lashed out, hand slicing through the air as if my words were a knife I could wield. “And I suppose you are?”

His gaze was unnerving, unblinking on mine, so dark I lost my way in the black maze of those eyes. Finally, he shrugged that eloquent Italian shrug and put his hands in his pockets as if to contain them. “Forse.”

Maybe.

I shook my head, back and forth, back and forth, unable to stop because I didn’t for one second want to forget my denial. “Don’t be absurd.”

“I prefer romantic,” he offered, making light of me as he always did.

Only this time, it wasn’t funny.

It was dangerous and potentially lethal.

I backed up another step. “I’m your lawyer, Dante. Nothing more.”

“You were more than that from the moment I met you,” he countered, stepping forward, stalking me across the room step for step. “You were my best friend’s sister, the woman she admired most in the world. How could I not be intrigued? And then you saw me in the hospital room, and I thought you would fight me there and then to protect her. But it wasn’t until you pushed me up against the wall with your little fist in my shirt and threatened me with death if I ever hurt Cosima that I knew you were something special. A true lottatrice, a female gladiator.”

We were both across the room now, beyond the entrance at the back wall of books. I took one more step back, and my spine hit the shelves. Dante was on me in the next breath, his body a careful inch away from mine, but his hand, as it seemed to do, found the column of my throat and cupped it, his thumb stroking my pulse almost soothingly.

He leaned closer until his eyes were my entire world. “How could a man like me resist a woman like that?”

“Try harder,” I suggested, but the impact of my cold words was lessened by the heaviness of my breath and the mad beat of my pulse against the pad of his thumb.

“For once in your life, be brave,” he demanded. “And maybe I’ll give you what you’re too terrified to ask me for.”

“I want to leave.”

“No,” he purred darkly. “No, you want me to fuck you senseless without asking for your permission. If I don’t ask, you don’t have to pretend to be a lady and say no.”

My core clenched at the darkly provocative thought, my mind spinning the fantasy faster than I could quell it. His hands turning me around, pushing me into the books so he could undo the pearl buttons down the length of my blouse. His teeth on my neck, pinning me in place as he loosened my trousers and sent them pooling to the floor at my heels, then the sharp bite of satin at my hips as he wrenched off my underwear and used his fingers to spread me apart for his cock. He’d take me there, without preparation, working himself into me with short, powerful thrusts until I opened up around him, until I screamed as he seated himself to the hilt.

The air was thin in my lungs as I tried to regulate my breath, turning my head to the side so Dante wouldn’t see the desire I knew blazed from my eyes like neon lights. The hand on my neck moved up to grasp my chin, tilting my face back and up so he could look down into it.