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“Let’s see.” He tipped her chin, and his lips found hers, slowly, as though he could stretch a night into a lifetime. She responded, instantly, and his hands found her waist. His kisses deepened, until he kissed her with the urgency of a man who hoped tomorrow would never come. He pulled back, breathless. “What was the question?”

“Hmm?” She blinked, dazed.

He bit his lip, looking quite pleased with his effect on her. “I still feel that… purr… or whatever you want to call it. But I think I like it.”

“You think?”

He answered with another kiss. Unequivocally.

She could have spent a lifetime savoring the slide of his lips, the dance of his tongue, the breath they passed between them as though it was the only air left in the world, and they would both die without it. She wanted to take her time exploring every fascinating part of him, but her hands were impatient, and once they found the strip of bare skin between his pants and shirt, her palms slid beneath. His abdomen was all firm ridges and taut muscles, but his lips were full and soft.

His fingers cupped her bottom, pulling her into him, and she melted, softness yielding to the hard planes of his body. When his hand cupped her breast, she forgot how to breathe. Refusingto let go of each other for the time it would take to walk to the couch, they tumbled onto it in a tangle of arms and legs instead.

She looked down at him through the fall of her curls, kissing the scruff of his chin, his lips, his neck, reveling in the husky rasp to his breath. After the third time he caught her halfway through falling off, Dante rolled with her, catching their fall. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, so he hauled her up with him as he stood, laughing into her neck as he carried her to the bed.

“I know they say these skirts were designed for Saverio’s stairs,” Dante murmured, trailing kisses across her belly. “But I have to believesomeonewas thinking of this.”

He nuzzled her through fabric, his breath warming the bare skin of her thigh, and the world faded away into velvet darkness and yearning, her hands tangling in his hair as she begged Dea silently to let it last an eternity, then not so silently.

But Dante the lover, like Dante the fighter, was determined to find her every weakness, and he did, until she arched against him and the breath shuddered out of her.

She was limp, spent, soft and drowsy, as he found his way beside her and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her neck—anything he could reach. She snuggled close, whispering against his neck.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She was. As sure as she’d ever been about anything. Pushing up to kneeling, she pulled her blouse over her head. The moon gilded her body until it didn’t look like hers at all, and Dante was stunned into immobility. Her skirt was more difficult, but that seemed to snap him out of his reverent trance. He unhooked it with a flick of his wrist, threw it on the floor, and she was naked and only a little self-conscious as he gazed at her.

Up to her, then. A smile played on her lips as she nudged him to lift his arms and she fought to remove his shirt. It hit the floor and she squinted, fumbling with the buttons of his pants. Her hand slipped inside but she jerked it back out at his strangled sound. “No,” he said with a ragged laugh. “Good pain.”

Like unwrapping a long-awaited present, she took her time undressing him, daring him to be self-conscious, but he wasn’t. His confidence was warranted. The sculpted muscles she’d admired when he was a stranger were even more captivating up close, now that he was anything but.

Even as her thoughts dissolved, Alessa decided Dea had surely spent extra time and effort crafting Dante, because she couldn’t find a single flaw. Although, if hehadone, it wouldn’t be a flaw to her. Still, every line and plane, ridge of bone and lean muscle, was more perfect than the last. To her eyes, to her hands.

Dante let her explore until it seemed he couldn’t take it any longer. Then, moving with a feline grace, he rolled her beneath him.

Somehow, every second of her life seemed to have led to the moment he settled himself above her. In the short time she’d known him, she’d learned to stand on her own, to take up space, and love herself, but she still had so much to learn, starting with what it meant to be one with another, even temporarily. She made a soft sound at the first bite of pain, and he stopped, soothing her with slow kisses until she begged him to continue. He moaned, and her breath hitched. Her eyes flew open. “Did I hurt you?”

“That’s—” He stopped to breathe. “That’smyquestion.”

It didn’t seem appropriate to laugh, but his eyes were smiling, so maybe it wasn’t so strange to laugh in a moment like that, ormaybe it was, but she didn’t care—before she could decide, his hips flexed, and she forgot all about laughing.

She could feel the strain of his control, but his lips were soft and coaxing, and bit by bit, she relaxed. And then there was no more pain, or only brief flashes, but the tiny hurts were banished almost immediately by his shared gift. “I can’t—”

She silenced him with a kiss, wordlessly urging him on. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—reach the peak again, but it didn’t matter. She wanted to watch him, to memorize his expression.

When he relaxed, so boneless and heavy she thought he might be asleep, she ran her fingernails up and down his back, rubbing her smooth cheek against his rough one.

She’dgiven him that. For once, her body—her touch—had shared pleasure, not pain. Power had been a bad thing for so long, something she needed to suppress, control, and fear. But this…thiswas power, too. The power to give, to connect, to convey the thoughts and feelings she had no words for.

For five years, she’d been told she was a window to the divine, and for the first time, watching Dante’s face, she’d believed it.

His muscles bunched as he gathered himself to move away. She whimpered a protest and clutched him to her.

Lifting his head, he kissed her nose. “I’ll crush you.”

“I’ll die happy.”

Rolling to the side, he pulled her with him and laid her head on his chest. “You can’t die tonight. You have to save the world.”