Page 189 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

My beautiful fighter.

I kissed him like one. Like a fighter and not a victim. Because I felt for the first time like the victim I’d been could be properly buried and grieved for, moved on from. There would always be a gravestone in my soul where what Christopher had taken from me was buried, but it wouldn’t define me.

I wouldn’t let it, and neither would this beautiful brute of a man holding me like I was his treasure.

“Should we go home?” he asked because he was just that dreamy.

I sighed, nuzzling into his neck because he smelled so good. “No, I feel okay.”

He made a noise of disagreement in his throat, so I pulled back to smile at him. “I promise, I do feel okay. I want to replace all those old memories I have with Christopher with something so much better. With you. Fuck the past. Let’s focus on the future.”

“I love to hear you curse,” he said to lighten the mood.

I kissed him lingeringly. “Wine and dine me, capo, and then later, I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”

“Che coraggio,” he murmured against my lips.What courage. “Okay,lottatrice, let’s go.”

We ate on the quay beside the glittering aquamarine ocean. Dante knew the owners of the small restaurant off the beaten path, around a massive cliff face from the major promenade filled with tourists. We started with Aperol Spritzes and moved on to wine to accompany our fresh seafood appetizers and pasta dishes, the meat course swimming in verdant green pesto, and a bitter espresso to finish it all off.

We laughed.

It was strange to think I could laugh after such a confession and that Dante could smile naturally after being so consumed by rage.

But that was the power of this thing between us.

We made each other come alive, in good ways and bad, everything heightened and poignant.

Dante told me happy stories about his childhood at Pearl Hall and promised we would visit the manor together one day so he could show me all his special haunts. I told him about being eight years old and dropping four-year-old Sebastian on his head. He’d had a massive lump for ages afterword, which was why we all affectionately called himpatatino, little potato.

When a little local string band started to play after the sunset and the string lights were turned on over the stone walkway, Dante asked me to dance.

I stared at his offered hand, remembering how he’d asked me to dance in New York at the San Gennaro party, and wondered at how far we’d come. From enemies to lovers, from rivals to a single unit locked tight with respect and adoration.

I slid my hand into his big palm and let him escort me into the empty space between the tables on the edge of the causeway and the restaurant tucked up against the cliff.

He spun me into his chest, then dipped me back over his arm, smiling down into my face. “How is it that even with enemies at the gate, I feel at peace with you?”

My heart turned over in my chest as he locked our groins tight, his hand dominating the entirety of my lower back as he pressed us together and led me into a series of tango steps. I followed him easily, drawn up in his gravitational pull.

“Because you and I are the same,” I said, and I meant it.

Our entire lives had led us to this moment. I caught the glint of Chiara’s cross around Dante’s neck through the opened throat of his white button-up, and I knew that she’d been right. Even our ancestors’ lives had brought us here.

Dancing beside the cool blue ocean on a hot winter’s night in a place that had once been the scene of a nightmare turned dance step by dance step into a dream.

“The men are watching you,” Dante growled in my ear as he extended his arm, showcasing me at the end of it as I undulated like a flame to the increased tempo of the jazzy music.

When he curled me back into his body, my back to his front, his words were hot on my neck. “They want you.”

I tipped my head back on his shoulder, rolling my hips into the bowl of his groin, finding the thickening ridge of his cock with my ass and grinding into it.

“You like them watching you,” he continued to murmur in that sensual commentary, matching me movement for movement, our dance swiftly turning from something fun and frivolous into something deeply erotic. “You like them admiring your beauty because you feel safe. You know I’d never let them have you.”

“Yes,” I panted as he placed his hands on my shoulder, gently escorting me down into a languid squat where I writhed for a moment before slowly moving upright, my body flush against the heat of his.

“I wouldn’t let them get close enough to even smell you.” His nose was in my hair, dragging in the scent of Chanel Number 5 and the lingering tang of lemons. “They don’t deserve that. They’re lucky they even get to look at you.”

“And the women?” I countered, spinning to face him, my fingers diving into the sweat-dampened hair at his nape as I straddled his thigh and melted into his torso.