When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  She would be fucking magnificent.

  “Love’s made you foolish,” I finally told him, trying to shrug off the fantasy, let the idea of it roll off my back. “I live in the real world.”

  “You live in the world you create,” he corrected. “That’s why you’re the boss.”

  A growl worked in my throat, part frustration, part something else.

  Triumph maybe, at the thought of corrupting her so fully. At the thought of having a woman like her stand beside me.

  “If this plan doesn’t work out, we won’t be here to worry about that,” I reminded him.

  Because I was capo.

  I knew well enough that the best-laid plans often went to shit. So I had plans A through E. And not one of those included Elena Lombardi.

  They couldn’t.

  DANTE

  I heard it the moment the elevator doors parted.

  The music.

  The very quality of it had transformed my apartment from the familiar masculine oasis I’d spent the last three months of my life locked inside into something ethereal. I could picture the Italian countryside outside Tore’s house as if I’d stepped through a looking glass. The olive trees bursting with tangy fruit, the sloping waves of hillside gone from green to gold under the summer’s intense rays. I was reminded of the first time I’d visited as a boy, the wonder I’d felt at seeing grapes on the vine, the tart burst of an unripe merlot exploding like a sour grenade on my tongue. I’d always enjoyed music, but I’d never been to see a concert pianist, and now I wondered how I could have been so remiss.

  Because the magic Elena pulled from that instrument was art I felt plucking at the strings of my own soul.

  The last of the sunset spilled syrupy light like apricot juice through the windows, the glistening of it pooling directly under the grand piano no one ever played in the corner of my living room.

  She sat on the bench, head bowed as if in prayer, eyes closed lightly, lids just touching as she moved with the power of the song that flowed through her fingers and into the keys. Her hair was longer than it had been when I first met her, tumbling down her shoulders, a shifting, shimmering mass of carmine silk. The bare skin of her arms was pebbled with goose bumps as if she was just as affected by the force of her song.

  I moved closer.

  Wild dogs and armed Cosa Nostra soldati couldn’t have kept me from moving closer to witness Elena Lombardi like I had never seen her before.

  It was different this time than the first when she had played such a sad tune in her brownstone that night I showed up to test her mettle. The notes she stroked softly out of the ivory and black keys weren’t sad or lonely.

  They were bright as the syrupy sun, as that burst of tart grape juice on my tongue.

  This was the reason there was music; when words suffered from limitations, and the only way you could express those gargantuan nameless emotions was through song.

  I wanted to know if she played it for me.

  If the gold bright notes were about us.

  With Elena, it was never as straightforward as simply asking her for the answer. Like music from the keys, it had to be coaxed out with masterful hands.

  So I didn’t say a word as I crossed the room on silent, impatient strides. The sound swelled vividly all around us, so she didn’t notice when I stopped just a hairsbreadth away from her, swaying back in its black nightgown.

  I didn’t want to disturb the sonata, but my hands burned, and the only thing that could put out the fire was the cool touch of her skin against mine. Gently, I whispered my fingertips up her slender biceps, over her shoulders, and gathered her wine-red hair in my hands.

  She didn’t falter.

  In fact, my touch seemed only to spur her through the climax of the song, her fingers like water rushing over the keys, a river of sound.

  I moved the heavy length of hair over one shoulder, baring the long white column of her neck.

  I needed to know if the pulse that throbbed just there beneath the skin tapped out the same tattoo as the notes she played, so I bent to press my lips to her neck. The warm, floral scent of Chanel number 5 perfumed her satin skin. So lightly against skin so soft that I barely felt it as I feathered my mouth up and down that delicate throat.

  “Sei bellissima,” I murmured as I touched my tongue to that fluttering pulse point.

  It was a habit I’d built around her, this need to feel her heart beat, to feel the woman who thought she was made of ice pulse with fire.

  A little shiver worked between her shoulder blades, but her fingers didn’t miss their cue.

  “Do you play for me, lottatrice? Because this sounds like the sweetest song of surrender,” I continued low against her ear, my teeth scraping down the side of her throat.

  The soft hiccup of breath through her parted lips. They were free of red lipstick, a natural color like ripe plum I wanted to suck into my mouth.

  Seducing Elena was mesmeric. I got tangled up in the same mechanisms I used to soothe her, transfixed by her subtle, storied responses to even the slightest touch, the most innocent of phrases.

  There was such longing in her, a deep well of it that until now, until me, had gone untapped.

  It was drugging to know I had access to all that dormant sensuality.

  My fingers moved down both sides of her neck over the long jutting bones of her collar to the expanse of skin on her chest. She shivered against me, pulling music from the piano as I pulled pleasure from her, both of us in tandem set by some invisible metronome.

  Tiny straps held the lace edged silk nightgown in place on her shoulders.

  I broke one beneath my forefinger and thumb.

  Snap.

  Barely a whisper in the music.

  The fabric slid down the slope of her breast into her lap, revealing a peaked nipple adorning the soft swell.

  Snap.

  The other gave way, baring her chest entirely.

  Still, she played.

  “Bene, Elena, suona mentre io suono te,” I told her.

  Good, Elena, you play while I play you.

  My hands traced the underside of her breasts, testing the swell before I palmed them in my big hands. Those ruddy nipples caught between my knuckles, and gently, I pinched them.

  Then, when she gasped, missing a note, I did it again.

  Not so gently.

  Air sucked between her teeth.

  I dragged my nose behind her ear, inhaling the heady, feminine scent of her. Just that made my cock kick hard in protest within the confines of my trousers.

  I’d never been so affected by a woman.

  Because Elena wasn’t just gorgeous. Every single aspect of her fascinated me. I felt like an explorer discovering new lands as I rolled her nipples in my fingers and scratched my short nails lightly over the twin swells of her breasts. Every sensation I eked out of her was a fucking wonder.

  “I’m going to fuck you like this,” I promised her darkly, my excitement surpassing the tempo of her song, ratcheting too high to continue like this.

  I could still feel the impossibly snug squeeze of her walls around me as I wedged myself inside her. The way she’d shouted as she came, a coarse hallelujah of shock and awe. The way she’d rippled around me, clutched me to her as if any space between our bodies was unbearable.

  I was wholly consumed by the need to be inside her again.

  Impatient now, I left her swollen breasts, one hand arrowing up to her neck so I could hold that slender column in my palm, her femininity against my strength oddly compelling. The other slid, fingers and palms wide and claiming, over her quivering belly, under the pooled silk to the apex of her thighs.

  She wasn’t wearing anything beneath the nightgown.

  “You wanted me to find you like this,” I murmured against her neck, teeth plucking at her skin sharply so she hissed. “You played like the piper to beckon me here. Were you hoping I would touch you like this? Did you fantasize about this moment?”

  The song
shifted from one to the next, this composition warm and languid, honey spilling from the ivories.

  “Because, Elena,” I continued as my hand cupped her entire wet mound. “Nemmeno immagini cosa ho intenzione di farti.”

  You cannot even imagine what I am going to do to you.

  I hunched over her slightly until the angle was right and curled two of my thick fingers inside her hot cunt. Her head fell back against my shoulder, eyes fluttering closed as I began to rub them against her front wall, the heel of my hand pressing firmly into the swollen bud of her clit.

  “I’m going to make you come like this on my hand, and you are going to play for me all the way through your climax,” I ordered. “Because I want to watch you fail. I want to see you lose control just for me.”

  She shivered, her nipples hard enough to cut glass, her hips rolling gently against my ministrations.

  Still, she played, the notes sluggish, the song fading as if we’d walked away into another room.

  It only made me play her harder. I plucked at those achy nipples until they throbbed while my other hand owned her pussy, pressing and stretching the tight walls to accommodate a third finger. I wanted her stuffed full of me. Following the impulse, I brought my free hand to her mouth and offered her my fingers to suck.

  After a brief, humming hesitation, her mouth closed over my digits, her tongue sliding along the grooves.

  “I can feel how much you want to orgasm for me,” I purred into her ear because every time I spoke filthy words, her sweet cunt tightened and pulsed, and her skin flushed a deep red.

  She was embarrassed by her reaction, but it only heightened her response.

  “You’re going to come all over my fingers for me, Elena.” She panted, her fingers trembling on the keys, her legs shaking beneath the piano. “And then I’m going to bend you over this instrument and bury myself inside you while you are still coming.”

  “Dante,” she gasped, that same edge of fear in her tone as from the night before.

  This was new for her.

  Not sex.

  But the intimacy of taking pleasure from her lover, of wanting intercourse to satisfy her own longing.

  Fuck, it was gorgeous.

  “Si, bella,” I encouraged her as she gave up trying to play, one hand slamming down over the keys discordantly. “Break apart. Come for me. And say the name of your capo when you do.”

  That did it.

  Her neck arched as she threw her head back, eyes squeezed shut, legs stiff and straight, core tense before the explosion.

  And then bam.

  She broke.

  Cries fell from her lax mouth as she trembled softly against me, hands sliding from the keys to grip the piano bench as she shuddered through her second orgasm.

  She was such beautiful chaos, such a windstorm of contradictions that even she was helpless to understand their currents. Watching her break apart was as compelling as standing in the middle of a tempest as it surged through the streets of town, ripping apart buildings, tearing up trees. The sheer power of her splendor and intelligence was enough to raze even a man like me to the very ground.

  Whatever softness I’d been able to retain shattered as I held her through her climax. A roar built in my gut, a possessive, almost jealous rage that I hadn’t been seated inside her to the hilt while she came.

  So I did as I promised her.

  I dragged her to her feet, lifted one of her legs to place it on the keys with a cacophonous clang to get access to those gorgeous, dripping folds.

  “Hold yourself open for me,” I ordered as I unbuckled my belt, unzipped, and pulled my aching, leaking cock from my pants.

  Her fingers shook as she reached back with one hand to hesitantly hold the cheek of her raised leg.

  “That’s it,” I praised her warmly, running my hands all over every inch of her body I could reach, currying her like I would a nervous mare. She settled under my touch, arching into every passing stroke. “You are breathtaking like this. Not because you are naked, but because you are vulnerable and for a man like me? There is no bigger turn-on.”

  A little whimper escaped her mouth as she pressed her torso to the lacquered piano top and canted her hips just a little higher.

  I took the invitation for what it was and stepped closer, guiding my cock to her slick, pink folds. The first touch of my head to her heat made me hiss. The first gliding inch of my shaft inside her little pussy made my head feel like it was going to pop off.

  “I’ve got to fuck you hard,” I gritted out, sweat beading on my brow from the effort of my restraint. “I’ve got to own this sweet cunt, Elena. Tell me you want it.”

  “I do.” The words were almost sobbed as if she couldn’t bear the truth of them any more than she could bear to keep them unsaid. “Please, Dante.”

  “You know I love to hear you say that,” I ground out as I pulled back completely, just the tip of my cock at her entrance. “Say it again, and I’ll show you what it’s like to fuck a capo.”

  Her entire body shuddered violently as she clung to the piano, the knee propped on the keys jostling errant notes. “Please, please. Per piacere. Per favore. Ti prego,” she chanted please in every way she could think of, mindless with need.

  My next thrust sent me straight to the root inside her.

  Together, we cried out with the sheer beauty of it.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  No matter how hard I fucked her, it couldn’t satisfy the bestial craving inside me.

  The piano shook and jangled with sound as I thrust her again and again into it, her hands and raised leg banging into the keys.

  “I need more,” she cried out, shaking her head. She arched her back as if she was trying to climb out of her skin.

  “I’ll give it to you,” I promised, covering her back to clasp my teeth around her neck in a way that made me want to roar with pride.

  I pinned her there with my teeth and my body, one hand diving around her hip to frame her swollen clit with my fingers, sliding back and forth in her wet until the friction built like flame.

  “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 t
han 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.”