Page 69 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Maybe.

I shook my head, back and forth, back and forth, unable to stop because I didn’t for one second want to forget my denial. “Don’t be absurd.”

“I prefer romantic,” he offered, making light of me as he always did.

Only this time, it wasn’t funny.

It was dangerous and potentially lethal.

I backed up another step. “I’m your lawyer, Dante. Nothing more.”

“You were more than that from the moment I met you,” he countered, stepping forward, stalking me across the room step for step. “You were my best friend’s sister, the woman she admired most in the world. How could I not be intrigued? And then you saw me in the hospital room, and I thought you would fight me there and then to protect her. But it wasn’t until you pushed me up against the wall with your little fist in my shirt and threatened me with death if I ever hurt Cosima that I knew you were something special. A truelottatrice, a female gladiator.”

We were both across the room now, beyond the entrance at the back wall of books. I took one more step back, and my spine hit the shelves. Dante was on me in the next breath, his body a careful inch away from mine, but his hand, as it seemed to do, found the column of my throat and cupped it, his thumb stroking my pulse almost soothingly.

He leaned closer until his eyes were my entire world. “How could a man like me resist a woman like that?”

“Try harder,” I suggested, but the impact of my cold words was lessened by the heaviness of my breath and the mad beat of my pulse against the pad of his thumb.

“For once in your life, be brave,” he demanded. “And maybe I’ll give you what you’re too terrified to ask me for.”

“I want to leave.”

“No,” he purred darkly. “No, you want me to fuck you senseless without asking for your permission. If I don’t ask, you don’t have to pretend to be a lady and sayno.”

My core clenched at the darkly provocative thought, my mind spinning the fantasy faster than I could quell it. His hands turning me around, pushing me into the books so he could undo the pearl buttons down the length of my blouse. His teeth on my neck, pinning me in place as he loosened my trousers and sent them pooling to the floor at my heels, then the sharp bite of satin at my hips as he wrenched off my underwear and used his fingers to spread me apart for his cock. He’d take me there, without preparation, working himself into me with short, powerful thrusts until I opened up around him, until I screamed as he seated himself to the hilt.

The air was thin in my lungs as I tried to regulate my breath, turning my head to the side so Dante wouldn’t see the desire I knew blazed from my eyes like neon lights. The hand on my neck moved up to grasp my chin, tilting my face back and up so he could look down into it.

His own features were coated in shadow, his beauty stark and forceful in the low light. It took my breath away, the contrast between the ferocity of the body poised just over mine and the gentle way he cupped my chin. His night dark eyes swallowed me up as he looked into me, through me, behind every shield I’d painstakingly constructed.

“Coraggio,lottatrice mia,” he coaxed softly.

Courage, my fighter.

“Let me show you all the ways a man can appreciate a woman,” he continued, running his nose along my cheek to my ear, where he took the lobe quickly between his teeth in a sharp nip that made me gasp. “Let me teach you all the ways you can appreciate me.”

Helplessly, I tipped my head back against the books to give him better access to my neck, my fingers trembling uselessly at my sides.

Dio mio, I wanted him with an acuteness I hadn’t felt in years.

No, that was a lie I couldn’t begin to swallow.

I’d never felt like this. This hammering, all-encompassing fervor that struck through me with each beat of my heart like a lightning strike. I wanted to prostrate myself for this beast of a man and witness all the ways he could bring my body back to life.

He kissed the hollow of my throat, just a flutter of silken lips against warm skin, yet it made me want to cry. When was the last time someone had touched me with such reverence?

Never?

But it was more than sexual. That simple kiss laid roots through my flesh and bones, deep into the very center of my chest, where they wrapped intractably around my fragile heart.

The kiss waskind.

That was it. That simple and that profound for me.

Dante was showing me kindness, the depths of which I hadn’t experienced much of in my life.

It was a blow to the already fractured walls protecting my heart, body, and mind from intruders, and it was the last one I could stand to take. With a sound that was half growl, half shriek, I pushed Dante away with both hands on his steel chest.