“Only for you,” I muttered, some part of me still uncomfortable with what we’d just done.
It was easy enough to understand where my internal slut shaming came from. Christopher had always made sure to tell me I was a sinner, a deviant. That he was helpless against my temptation, my need for him to take me and use me. It wasn’t his fault, it was my own, as if my sexuality was something that lured him like a siren into dangerous waters.
I was a girl, I had no sense of my own sexuality beyond a burgeoning curiosity about male and female bodies. I was a blank slate Christopher had graffitied with his crass, poisonous point of view and until then, sitting satiated in a car with the first man I’d ever truly trusted, I realized how much of his ink still stained my thoughts.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as I fought to take a deep, steadying breath when suddenly, all I wanted to do was cry.
Dante, being Dante, noticed my shift of emotion immediately. He didn’t hesitate. One second, I was sprawled in my seat and the next he was coaxing me, half-lifting me, over the console and into his lap. It was a tight, almost ridiculous fit in the small car, but we made it work, my legs draped on either side of the gear shift, my back against the driver’s side door and my face tucked into his neck.
He smelled bright and masculine, like fresh squeezed lemons and sex. I realized he smelled like Italy, like the south with its citrus groves and ocean brine, its musky men and sweet breezes.
He smelled like home, but gave it a new definition. And for the first time since I got on the plane with him, eschewing my old life for an entirely unknown new one, I felt at peace about our future.
Dante was home so no matter what, I would never be homeless. I’d have his shelter, his protection, and his love to guide me through the worst of life and the worst of myself.
I only realized I was crying with I rubbed my salt-itchy cheek against his wet collar.
“Sorry,” I muttered on a sniff.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he assured me, stroking one big, strong hand over my head and down my back. “Do you know how good it feels to have you vulnerable in my arms? To know it is a gift you only give to me?”
I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. “I always feel like a burden when I get emotional. It shouldn’t be anyone’s problem but my own.”
He made a pained noise in his throat then ran his nose from my forehead down the bridge of my own until he reached my mouth where he spoke the words like a secret. “It is a privilege, Elena, to know you intimately. To know what makes you hurt and what makes you blush. To know what your demons are so I can slay them for you when you don’t have the strength or watch you overcome your own nightmares because I love to watch my fighter conquer everything in her path. It is an honor to know you and I won’t ever take that for granted.”
I laughed wetly. “How do you always know what to say? Seriously, did you take a class for that?”
“No,” Dante said solemnly, running his rough fingertips over my cheek to collect my tears. One by one, he brought his wet fingers to his mouth and kissed off my tears. “I just know what it’s liked to be hated, to feel alone against the world, to feel like a villain. I told you before, we’re not so different.”
“No,” I agreed, rubbing my thumb along the hard cut of his stubbled jaw. “I think we see the world the same way.”
“In black and white?” he teased.
“And red,” I supplied with a smile that broke my face in two clean halves.
“Bene, because you’re about to meet your new family,” he told me after pressing a kiss to my forehead and levering me back into my seat.
“I’ve met Tore before,” I reminded him as he had reminded me earlier that day.
His smile was dark, an expression of ownership. “Yes, but he and our men here haven’t met you are you are now.”
“As yours?”
“Not just as my woman, but theirs. The woman, la Donna, they will be expected to lay down their lives for just as I would,” he said almost casually, factually, as if he wasn’t altering my entire world again. “You aren’t my lawyer anymore, Elena. Tu sei la mia regina.”
You are my queen.
Six
Elena
Villa Rosa was nestled at the top of a hill an hour and twenty minutes outside of Naples in Parco Regionale Monti Picentini near the small town of Sieti. Lush green mountains dominated the landscape, but the villa itself had a riot of carefully cultivated plants that were in beautiful bloom even though it was December. I held my breath in awe as we wound up the ribbon of asphalt leading to the house, the drive lined by towering cypress trees.