Page 215 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

She laughed. “I guess you don’t need my blessing to hand her over.”

“I don’t need anyone’s blessing but her own,” he agreed easily, his eyes pinned to mine even as he spoke to her.

I stepped closer, capitulating to the magnetic force between us. There was something I wanted to say, but I was mesmerized by the depth of love and wonder in those night-black eyes.

“Dimmi si,” he murmured as he pressed his forehead to mine and cupped my hips in his big hands. “Say yes.”

My heart beat too hard and too slow in my chest, a heavy, aching knock on my rib cage. I realized he had been planning this for a while, since the first time he asked me to trust him, to say yes to him.

“Si. Yes.Sempre.”

Yes, forever.

His joy cracked through his expression, his ruddy lips widening until those sharp teeth shone, and his eyes sparkled like a clear night sky with twinkling stars.

“Farei qualsiai cosa per te,” he told me in that beautiful British, Italian accent, his hands finding my face, cupping it tight, tipping it up like a diamond to catch the light. “I would do anything for you, Elena. Men have said that to women before, but they couldn’t know what it means, not really. I will kill and die for you, but I will also shop for you because I like you in the clothes I’ve bought, and I’ll cook for you because I love to watch you rediscover the joy of indulgence. I will make love to you when your heart is aching and lonely, echoing with the past, and I will fuck you when you can’t stand to be empty of me for one second longer. I amcapo dei capiof the New York Camorra, but that is not the most important title I have anymore. In fact, it means next to nothing compared to the gift you are about to give me. The gift of being your husband and a lifetime of loving you fiercely, fucking you senselessly, and watching you awe me with your wit and beauty and drive every single day.”

His sigh feathered over my mouth, his lips following it to kiss me hard then soft. The embrace fluctuated like a flickering flame, bright and dark, tender and ruthless as if he wanted to show me the two sides of his love for me, the wholeness of our unity.

When we broke apart, he said quietly, “Resta con me per sempre. Be mydonnaand my wife. My forever love.”

Stay with me forever.

“Yes,” I rasped through my heart beating in my throat, threatening to choke me with love and overwhelming gratitude for this man and this moment. I reached up to clutch his neck, my thumb finding his pulse as he so often did with me. “Before you, I was empty and cold, a locked room in the deepest dungeon. Now, I can breathe again, feel again,burnagain. You proved to me that I am worthy of love, and I want to spend the rest of my life proving to you that you’re the best man I’ll ever know, and you made the right decision in trusting me with your endless heart.”

“Ti amo,” he said, the words too loud and forceful, two bullets fired in a holy place.

Behind us, the priest flinched, but I only smiled because I felt the power of those words throbbing in my hot heart too.

“Ti amo,” I said in the same voice.

We laughed, foreheads pressed together, the music traveling through us both in perfect harmony. Then unable to resist, Dante leaned down and ate the laughter off my tongue. I offered my mouth to him like a sacrifice, letting him take everything he needed from me.

“We don’t have time for you to make out all day,” Alexander pointed out dryly. “If you want to make your plane, we need the priest to marry you formally.”

Dante kept kissing me, pulling me closer so I was flush against his hard body, his hard cock pressing against my belly.

“Dante,” Tore warned a moment later.

I broke away from my man, pushing him back with two hands on his chest when he tried to kiss me again. Laughter suffused my tone. “Let’s get married, Dante. I want you to be my husband.”

His eyes flashed, lightning through a dark sky. “Now, that sounds better than any curse or please from your lips. Say it again.”

“Husband,” I teased. “Husband. Husband.”

A growl moved through his throat, his hands spasming on my face before one slid down to palm my neck.

“Andiamo,padre,” Dante ordered the priest without taking his gaze from mine. “I want to make this woman my wife.”

The little priest stepped forward, opened his Bible, and in twenty minutes of compact Italian vows, I went from Elena Lombardi, the coldhearted, lonely lawyer, to Elena Salvatore,Donnaand wife to Don Edward Dante Salvatore.

It felt like a baptism, a rebirthing, and when Dante slid thefede, the wedding ring, onto my finger, I knew with bone-deep certainty that every single bad thing in my life had happened as payment for the price of this colossal happiness, and I wasn’t bitter anymore, I wasn’t even scarred.

I was whole for the first time since I was sixteen.

It was a gamble.

A risk.