When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  I could give up the idea of being a hero and rise up the villain beside a man I was beginning to understand was so much more than that.

  He was the kind of man who called his seven-year-old niece the love of his life and watched episodes of some cheesy vampire show to give a lonely woman some comradery. He was the kind of man to rip someone apart with his bare hands for wronging him or his, but he was also the kind of man to take the fall for a woman’s crime because she was the sister of his heart.

  He was everything I’d feared and everything I’d never consciously known I longed for.

  And all that, six-foot-five inches, two hundred thirty pounds of British-Italian man, could be mine.

  All I had to do was be brave enough to reach out and take it.

  Coraggio.

  By the time I pulled onto Dante’s street in Manhattan, my breath was coming fast for an entirely different reason than it had been before. Almost blindly, I followed Adriano into Dante’s private parking garage beneath the building.

  Dante was there standing on the asphalt by the elevator dressed in his requisite black, his hair noticeably disheveled, his entire body tensed like a beautifully carved sculpture in the underground shadows.

  As soon as I drove down the ramp into the space, he was powering across the concrete toward me.

  As soon as I parked, I climbed from the car, not even bothering to close the butterfly door after me.

  My feet hit the ground, and I was off like a shot, tearing across the space between us in my towering heels, each step as sure as if I was flat-footed.

  I didn’t stop. I didn’t even slow down as I neared him.

  I just hurtled myself into the marbled arms that opened instantly to catch me and haul me tight into his solid body. Instinctively, my legs locked around his waist, my arms around his neck. I burrowed my face in the junction of his strong neck and shoulder, my lips pressed to his pulse beneath his skin. Vaguely, I was aware of him squeezing me tight, of his orders to Adriano and whoever else was with us in the garage to leave.

  Only vaguely, because my lips on his skin were not enough. So I used my tongue to lap at his jugular, and when that didn’t satisfy the yawning abyss of desire cracking through my core like a crater, I sank my teeth into the muscle and sucked hard at the column. The bright and warm salt taste of him scoured through me, going straight to my head, fogging it with the heady idea that this skin was mine to touch and taste.

  A groan vibrated through his throat onto my tongue, his hands spasming on my bottom as he held me tight to him.

  Distantly, I knew people were still leaving, turning to face us as they entered the elevator before the doors closed.

  I didn’t care.

  When Dante wrapped my hair slowly, firmly around his wide palm, I could only pant as he pulled my head back so I was forced to look at him. His dark features were carved out of stone, harsh with possession and stark desire. There was no question in that gaze, but he didn’t need one.

  There was only possession, the same feeling echoed in the drumbeat of my heart pounding between my ears.

  A mad desire to beg and plead for his touch scorched through my blood, but before I could succumb to the flames, Dante was taking control, pinning my head in place with that hand in my hair so he could plunder my mouth.

  The first hot swipe of his tongue parting my lips, thrusting into my mouth like it belonged there, sent everything I’d ever known about sex and desire tumbling from my head.

  There was no history of abuse.

  No nerves about how my newly recovered body might react to such passion.

  There was only Dante Salvatore.

  And me.

  Not Elena Moore or Elena Lombardi. Not lawyer or sister, bitch or loner.

  Just a man and woman tangled together in the most fervent kiss I ever could have imagined.

  I couldn’t be close enough, and I couldn’t pretend I was okay with that. My hands pulled hard at the short strands of his inky hair, clutching him harder to my mouth, parting it wider for the hot expertise of his tongue. My legs flexed around him, hips shimmying as I rocked instinctively against the steel ridge behind his trousers.

  We panted, his breath my breath as he ate it off my tongue the way he’d once promised to.

  “I need,” I tried to tell him as he captured my lower lip and dragged it sensuously through his teeth.

  “Hush,” he ordered me, hands flexing hard on my ass before one ran down the crease of my buttock and thigh to dive beneath the edge of my rucked-up skirt. The rough pads of his fingers caught on the thin silk of my stocking as they trailed up to the bare skin of my cheek. “I’ll give you everything you need.”

  I didn’t doubt him, but the desperation coursing through me was new and all-consuming. I couldn’t seem to get a handle on the sheer extremity of it. My thoughts lost to its magnitude the second they tried to form.

  Dante started to move, his mouth still fused to mine, back toward the car. I gasped as he lowered me slowly, the muscles in his chest flexing against me as my back hit the still-hot hood of the Ferrari. The second I was down, I pulled at the buttons of his shirt, needing to feel the strength of his quilted muscles under my hands, needing to reassure myself with his strength. When my fingers fumbled for the second time, Dante cursed savagely and reared back just long enough to rip the shirt open, buttons popping and scattering across the hood and the ground.

  “Yes,” I hissed, wet flooding my sex at his display of ferocity.

  Leaving it open and hanging from his shoulders, he covered my body again. Impatiently, I claimed his mouth, loving the rough abrasion of stubble on my cheek, the contrasting plushness of his too-red lips.

  “I’ve never wanted someone so badly it felt I would die if I couldn’t take them,” he growled as he pushed my blazer off my shoulders then rucked up my blouse over my breasts before pulling down the cups of my bra to attack my furled nipples with his teeth and tongue.

  I hissed and gasped and moaned, making noises I’d always assumed only came from fake scenes in bad pornography. But I couldn’t stop myself, didn’t want to, and didn’t care. Nothing mattered but taking this beast of a man inside me, feeling him fill me up. I wanted to know how the new connections in my body would react to such a punishing invasion.

  “I need to feel you,” I panted even as I gripped his head to my breasts, shocked at the sensation he created there, the way he made my nipples burn and pulse with twin beats.

  “You will,” he swore, lowering even farther to place a surprisingly chaste kiss to my belly before swirling his tongue in my naval. My thighs jerked with the sensation. “You’ll feel every inch of my cock as I work it into this tight cunt.”

  I’d lifted my head to watch his progress to my inner thighs, the kisses he placed on the skin close to my core, but it thunked back against the hood as his words rattled through me.

  I’d never enjoyed dirty talk.

  It hadn’t seemed necessary at best and shameful at worst.

  But this, Dante’s exotic voice growling over my skin as he spoke about taking me like some kind of conquering victor was almost too much to bear.

  It validated the dark thoughts swirling in my heart and gave voice to the desire I had no hope to name myself.

  I tugged too hard at his ears, pulling him up my body and squeezing him close with my thighs. “Now,” I begged, undone by the sensations careening through me at dangerous speeds like the Ferrari through the Staten Island streets. “Cazzo, Dante, now!”

  Unwilling to wait, my hands dived down to his belt, undoing it with a harsh clang before unzipping and diving beneath the fabric to search for his length. I gasped, eyes wide with shock and a little fear as my fingers wrapped one by one around the broad shaft.

  Dante pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes all black. “You can take it. I’ll make you.”

  A shudder rippled through me at his words, at the kick of his length in my hands as I pulled it through his boxer briefs and the gap in his tro
users out into the cold garage air. Dante hooked a finger in the soaked satin placket of my panties, pulling it aside so I could notch the hot, broad head of his cock against my slick folds.

  The feel of him against my most intimate place rocked through me so hard it ripped feelings out from my locked-down heart: longing so acute it burned, belonging like I’d always hoped for, acceptance so sweet it made my teeth ache.

  “Lottatrice mia,” he groaned, rubbing our noses together the instant before he pushed into me, my walls clinging hard to his fat head in a way that made us both shiver.

  “Figa mia,” he asserted, my pussy.

  I gasped in affirmation, my head thrown back on the slick black hood, my eyes squeezed close as I fought through the pain-edged pleasure of taking that thick phallus to the root inside me. He worked himself in and out in short, hard strokes, taking more and more of me with each thrust.

  Poised at my entrance, he threaded his hands through the hair over my ears and forced my chin down so I had to look into those soul-destroying black eyes.

  “My Elena,” he told me intractably, the way a monk spoke as if from God, with the kind of willful authority that made it seem impossible to doubt him.

  Then he thrust straight to the hilt inside me, and sensation exploded through me like a grenade. Sharp pieces of pain and pleasure wheeled through my body; sexual shrapnel I had never known could feel so exquisitely excruciating.

  My long nails scored into the skin of his back beneath his open shirt as I met him thrust for thrust, as I coaxed him and scratched him in a silent bid for more.

  One hand moved to my throat, gently holding it with his thumb on my jugular to feel my breath and pulse, to remind me in the last possible way he could that he was the one fucking me.

  The one owning my pleasure and building it beyond anything I’d ever known.

  I started to panic as sensation swelled too high, threatening to overtake me. My breath fled my body like the ocean sucked back by the force of a tsunami.

  “Dante, Dante,” I chanted. “I can’t, I can’t.”

  “You can,” he promised, sweat beading on his forehead, sliding down his cheek.

  I reared up to lick it off, then sealed my mouth over his, needing the comfort of his tongue sucking at my own to deal with the barrage of pleasure hammering at me from every direction. My womb felt tight, my pussy wet and open, my breasts swollen as they brushed again and again against the short, crisp hair over Dante’s hard chest. His silver cross lay on my belly between us, swaying with the force of his thrusts.

  The sight of it tripped the last of my mental defenses.

  Fucking on the hot hood of a car in a public parking garage with a beast of a man churning between my spread thighs, I cried out in fear and awe as an orgasm crawled through me, tensing every muscle until I vibrated. The need to burst apart, to unravel the tension almost terrified me, my breath caught on a choke in my throat.

  “Vieni per me,” Dante gritted out between his teeth. “Come for me, Elena. Let me feel you come apart around me.”

  A scream burst from my compressed lungs like a gunshot tearing up through my gut, destruction following in its wake. I thrashed, pinned between Dante’s unyielding body and the car, shouting and crying at the sheer force of sensation searing through me, tearing apart the tension in each muscle, electrifying my heart until it pumped madly, and I thought I might honestly die.

  I was all body and blood as the first true orgasm of my life ravaged me and wrung me completely dry. My mind floated in a kind of peaceful cloud for a moment before I struggled to find the earth again.

  When I did, tears were cooling on my cheeks and a burn scorched my throat from all the yelling. My body was loosely wrapped around Dante as he churned slower now inside my wet pussy, the sloppy noises of our union making my skin flush and my tired sex clench hard once more all around him.

  Dante’s neck was strained with the effort to hold on, the strong column corded, his Adam’s apple bobbing harshly as he tried to swallow past his pleasure.

  The pleasure I was giving him.

  A different kind of satisfaction curled through me like smoke after the fire. I pulled him tight to me with rubbery limbs and sucked at the lobe of his ear before I whispered, “I’ve never orgasmed like that before.” And it was true, though he didn’t know how much. “Now, I want to see you come for me.”

  “Cazzo,” he cursed, squeezing his eyes shut as he powered hard into my slightly aching, buzzing pussy. “You feel better than a dream.”

  “Show me how much you love it,” I dared him, nipping at his lobe, then moving down his neck, sinking my teeth into that dense column to feel his strength as he fucked me harder and harder again. “I want to watch what I do to you.”

  With one last savage groan, Dante reared back, pulling his throbbing length from my clutching folds to wrap his own meaty fist around it. I watched, shocked and astoundingly aroused by the sight of him beating his cock so viciously over my prone body. He loomed over me, shirt open around the tight, quilted tapestry of his abdomen, face tight with the wildness of his passion. I had never seen or imagined a man sexier than Dante Salvatore.

  And then he slammed his free hand against the car beside my hip, the swollen head of his dick shuttling fast between his fingers, and he cried out roughly as the first spurt of his seed shot onto my naked, quivering stomach. I was enthralled by the sight as rope after rope of cum splashed hotly against my skin, coating me in him.

  It was base. So dirty it should have been wrong.

  But God, it only felt right to have him mark me that way, possess me in such an elemental way with his seed.

  Finished, panting as he braced himself above me, Dante released his still-hard length and lazily smeared his cum into my skin in wide, firm circles. A violent shiver tore its teeth into my spine, but I didn’t stop his possessive act.

  Emotion bubbled up in the wake of the passionate fire that had razed me so totally to the ground, new spring growth erupting from the fertilized soil of my soul.

  I knew it should have been filthy and wicked, what we did, so publicly and rabidly like animals in heat.

  But I’d just had the first truly erotic experience of my life at twenty-seven years old. Not just a flutter of pleasant sensation occasionally and the gentle intimacy of holding a man against me, but the teeth-chattering, bone-rattling euphoria I’d only ever read about in books or heard about from friends and family.

  It was more than that, though. It satisfied a bone-deep longing I had for so long to be wanted fiercely, above all else. To the point, even, of insanity.

  And that final act? Dante watching his hand massage his essence into my skin as if it would stay there like a tattoo, a brand, forever?

  It settled some primal need to be owned fully by someone else.

  To be wanted and accepted.

  To belong.

  Before I could tamp down the impulse, a sob fell wetly from between my lips. I hastened to cover my mouth, eyes wide over my hands as I stared at Dante who looked down at me in horrified shock.

  “Did I hurt you, cara?” he demanded, quickly tucking himself back in his pants and righting my own clothes before reaching down to collect me gently into his arms.

  It only made me sob harder, my chest a cold engine stuttering to life with furious emotion. I couldn’t stop. Panicked, I clutched at him even as I tried to hide my face in his neck, the tears sliding hot and heavy down my cheeks into the open collar of his shirt.

  “Hush, hush,” he murmured as he stood, my body easy in his hold. “Io sono con te. I am with you.”

  I could do nothing but cry. The tears scalded my eyes as they pooled on my lower lids, flooding my face until it was hot and itchy with salt. I rubbed my cheeks back and forth over Dante’s skin and shirt like a child unable to handle the amount of sorrow in their blood. I was inconsolable with emotions too big to be harnessed by words. Even when I tried to open my mouth as Dante took us into the elevator up to his apartment, onl
y whimpers and sucking gasps left my throat.

  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.