Page 195 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
I sucked in a deep breath, the taste sweet of lemons and the tang of olives on my tongue, and fired.
Snap, crack, tinkle.
“Ammazza!” I cried out as I discharged the empty casing and clicked the safety, then threw my hands up in the air.
I spun to face Dante, my hips moving side to side in a little victory dance as I began to belt the words to “O Sole Mio,” a traditional Neapolitan song that locals sang at the slightest provocation on any and all occasions.
Frankie held his belly as he laughed beside me while I started a little victory lap around my man.
It didn’t last long.
Dante’s long arm hooked around my waist and pulled me into him. I collided with his chest with anoof,then was carted up, up into his arms, his hands supporting my bum.
The gun had dropped to the ground so I threaded my fingers in the short sides of Dante’s hair and beamed down at him.
“I told you I’d become a sharpshooter,” I crowed unabashedly.
“You did.” He wasn’t smiling exactly, but his eyes danced like a night sky filled with constellations. “I knew you would.”
“Because I’m brilliant?” I teased, feeling light as air, so light I could float away if Dante wasn’t holding me in his big arms.
“Si, splendido,” he agreed solemnly.
I kissed him.
My hands held him still while I bent to take his mouth, the first taste of him making my head reel even more than the victory. He’d been eating freshly madetaralli, salt and yeast still on his tongue. I tangled it with my own, moaning as his hands flexed on my ass.
“Wow.”
The voice was familiar, but I was too mired in everything Dante to recognize it at first.
I angled my head steeply so I could kiss him more deeply.
“I’ve never in my entire life seen my sister make out with anyone,” that same voice, laughing now, mock-whispered close by.
That voice.
Speaking English with that lilt of Italian she’d never rid herself of, a hiccough of British muddling the mix. In a few years, she might even sound exactly like Dante.
I pulled away with a gasp, immediately turning toward the voice.
And there she stood.
My Cosima.
The hot Italian sun burnished her olive-toned skin, still caramel even though she was suffering through a cold British winter, and her long, thick hair hung in inky waves to her waist. She was in one of those beautiful dresses she’d always loved, a floral-patterned thing that hugged her curvy form and let her exposed skin do the talking.
She looked beautiful.
But more, she looked incandescently happy.
The reason for that stood slightly in front and to one side of her, as if we were threats he had to shield from his beloved wife. Alexander Davenport was the scariest man I’d ever known despite his gorgeousness. He had the coiled stillness of a predator always ready to pounce, an alertness to his gaze that never wavered even when he was supposedly relaxed on the couch with Cosima. It was as if he was ready for an attack at any moment, and I had no doubt any enemy of his would suffer and die a quick but horrifically brutal death.
Dante had the same capacity for savagery, but his was buried beneath layers of charm.
Alexander let it be seen in his silver eyes, sharp as weapons. Even though he had a slightly bemused look on his face as he stared at us, he still looked every inch the Duke of Greythorn in his custom St. Aubyn suit.
I could see it now, though, the resemblance that was hard to find between the brothers at first. Dante and Alexander were night and day, light and dark, utterly contrasted in their coloring and then reserved again in their personalities. But they were both massive men, tall and broad-shouldered, though Dante was packed with more muscle. Their features were carved out of marble, strong bones under fine golden skin, and the shape of their eyes when they smiled was similar, I thought, though I couldn’t remember Alexander smiling often.
