Page 70 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

He moved away more as a result of my intent than my strength. I noticed he was breathing hard, that there was a sizable tent at the groin of his black pants I didn’t allow myself to focus on for more than a nanosecond.

“Elena,” he said, just the one word, just my name, but in it a wealth of promises, an invitation in.

Come to the underworld with me, it seemed to say.Come and play with me in the shadows where you belong.

But I didn’t belong there.

I didn’t belong anywhere, really, but certainly not on the dark side of life with a man on trial for murder, a man with blood on his hands and sin stained through his soul.

My head was shaking again, back and forth almost manically as I beat a hasty, backward retreat to the office door.

“I won’t go out with Gideone di Carlo if he calls,” I promised weakly.

“I forbid it,” he barked, face darkening immediately, body tensing to move toward me again.

I held my hands up between us as I moved to flee. “I won’t. But this can’t happen. This… this just cannot happen. Don’t push me on this, Dante. I’ll leave. I’ll ask to be off your case.”

“Elena,” he protested, and I hated the way he said it with the lyrical Italian accent as if it was exotic and beautiful. As if I was.

“No,” I said, locking down my battered defenses as I wrapped my hand around the door handle and opened it behind me. “I mean it. Forget this ever happened.”

“What if I cannot?” he defied, crossing his arms and bracing his feet apart like a general preparing for battle.

Good Lord, let him give up on me before it came to that. I was strong, and I was resilient, but I was not prepared to go to war with a man like him when the prize could mean more than my body.

“Per favore,” I asked softly, remembering the way he had reacted to the word in my mouth once before. “Please, Dante.”

And then before he could respond, I spun on my heel, and I ran like the devil was at my back. I didn’t stop until I was in the bedroom he’d given me, but even that didn’t seem safe enough, so I locked myself in the en suite and braced myself on the sink, breathing hard as I stared at my haunted eyes in the mirror.

My pale olive gold skin was flushed, my pupils dilated, my hair tousled as if from a lover’s hands. I looked well fucked, and he’d only kissed me on the neck, nipped my earlobe in those strong teeth.

What would he do to me if given the chance?

His demeanor held an unmistakable dominance, but from the first time since Christopher, I felt curious about it, almost entranced by it. Dante was dangerous, violence dressed in a thousand-dollar suit, but beneath it all, he was also the kind of man who wept at a friend’s hospital bedside and made pasta with a girl who called him uncle.

He was a contradiction, a bigger mess of contrarian values than anyone I’d ever known outside myself.

He was tall, dark, and sinfully handsome, a masterfully created man.

My heart raced, and the primal urge to flee spiked hot again through my veins because even though walls separated us, I knew instinctively he was not done hunting me.

And I thought, for the first time in my life, that I might have just met my match.

My life settled into an odd kind of routine over the next week. I woke up early every morning to use Dante’s state-of-the-art gym. Sometimes, I ran on the treadmill the way I had at my own gym, readingThe New York Timeswhile I warmed up, then doing intervals for forty-five minutes. Most of the time, I worked out with Dante and some assortment of his crew.

As I said, it was odd.

They were all criminals, rough wiseguys who cursed freely, flouted everything I stood for, and made money hand over fist through ill-begotten means.

I shouldn’t have liked them.

But I found I kind of did.

They were fun and free in a way I’d never seen people act before. They joked with each other just as easily as they delivered brutal blows when they fought on the sparring mats. There wasn’t competition between them as there was between every lawyer and me at the firm, that edge of envy and wariness that curdled socialization. They were brothers in crime, bonded over battles in alleyways and on street corners, in backrooms and ballrooms. They were as capable of sophistication—I learned Chen actually had a master’s degree in mathematics and Frankie was COO of the Salvatore-owned Terra Energy Solutions, a well-known energy and gas company—as they were of ruthlessness.

They were a tangle of contrasts I found myself wanting to sit cross-legged on the ground and pull apart until I held each individual thread in my hand. I was curious by nature, a puzzle solver by trade, but there was something primal in them that called to me like the howl of a fellow wolf at night.

I felt moved by them and moved by their acceptance of me when normally, I would have judged them and found them wanting without ever giving them a chance. It shamed me to acknowledge that as much as it awed me to know they were above that.