Page 157 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“It’s so wrong,” I whispered through dry lips as my orgasm tangled all my senses into a single pulsating awareness between my thighs.

“No, Elena, nothing is wrong between us. You spread open for me, playing for me, all of it is only ever right,” he declared imperviously.

And then his hand was moving up the inside of my thigh, tickling and tingling. I held my breath, heart thundering in my chest as his touch hesitated at the junction of my leg and groin then went arrowing down to the fingers filling my sex.

“Are you still tight, nice and swollen? Or loose and eager to be filled?” he asked.

I was too out of it to realize we had stopped moving, that he’d pulled off the highway onto a hill and parked beneath a massive, budding bougainvillea shrub.

“Filled,” I admitted on a ragged exhale. “I wish you’d slide inside me and fill me up properly.”

“Come vuoi,” he muttered.

As you wish.

A moment later, he wedged two thick fingers at my already filled entrance and pressed them in alongside my own.

A wrecked groan shuddered through my chest and filled the car as I slammed my head back against the seat at the overwhelming sensation.

“Yes,” he murmured again and again in English and Italian as he set a punishing rhythm, dragging my own fingers in and out alongside his. “So beautiful like this. Somine.”

It was theminethat broke me.

All I’d wanted my whole life was to be seen and loved all the way to my bones.

And there he was, this big beast of a brutal man who was everything soft and kind for me, and he was teaching me something I’d never really known.

Pleasure.

Mind-boggling, body-bending pleasure that made every self-loathing, critical thought I’d ever had evaporate in the steam of the flames erupting at my core.

I groaned and gasped and chanted Dante’s name the way most Italians prayed to Madonna and God. He kept touching me, gentle twists of the fingers inside me, increasingly light circles over my clit because I’d stopped the movements during my climax. He wrung my pleasure from me like wet from a towel until I was utterly boneless in my seat.

“That’s my girl,” Dante praised, his voice thick with lust and pride as he collected my tired hand and brought it to his mouth.

I watched from under heavy lids as he carefully cleaned each of my fingers with his mouth. His tongue curled over every digit, his full lips wrapped tight around me. My tired, lightly aching pussy spasmed at the erotic sight.

“You taste like the sea,” he told me on a growling hum when he was finished meticulously cleaning me off. Then he took my hand and pressed it to the iron length of his erection trapped in his trousers. “Feel what you do to me. I’ve been this hard since the moment you spread your legs for me.”

“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, so 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 onto 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 when I rubbed my salt-itchy cheek against his wet collar.

“Sorry,” I muttered on a sniff.