Page 56 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
She rolled in like a northeasterly winter storm, the air crackling with static, the wind through the open patio doors kicking up a gust as she powered out of the elevator and stalked on the harsh clip of her heels into the living room where I sat waiting for the thunder and lightning to fall.
It was obvious she had cried at some point by the slight smudge of makeup under those glimmering gray eyes, but I couldn’t picture how she might have looked vulnerable with tears when she presented such a force standing before me now with her hands fisted on her hips and her flaming hair tangled in the breeze tunneling in from outside.
“You’ve got some nerve demanding I move in with you just because you want constant status updates,” she began, each word punctuated with fury, dripping with disdain. “Poor little capo can’t take the consequences of his actions? Then he shouldn’t commit felonies. You reap what you sow.”
I tilted my head as I crossed a foot over my opposite knee, settling deeper into my couch as I studied her. “How fitting because you have sowed this.”
Indignation turned her delicate, overtly feminine beauty into something hard and deadly. It shouldn’t have turned me on to see such rage in a woman. It never had before, but something was deliciously wild about her energy like this, a static restless hunger I felt echoed in my own blood.
She was fucking magnificent.
“I’ve worked my ass off on this case already,” she countered, pointing her finger at me as if it was a loaded weapon. “We just succeeded in getting Mason Matlock’s statement suppressed, and we have dozens of people working on finding out who the other witnesses might be and what else the prosecution might have on you. How the hell you think I deserve this treatment is beyond me.”
“Cursing, Elena,” I said, clicking my tongue as I shook my head. “I thought such coarseness was beneath you.”
I watched as her skin warmed with a blush I wanted to taste with my tongue. It was so much fun to rile her up. I sincerely thought I could sit here and argue with her for the entire night.
“I should have known blackmail wasn’t beneath you,” she hissed, storming forward so that she could loom over me from where I reclined against the cushions of my couch. She was a tall woman made taller by those sexy as fuck high heels she was always wearing, but I found the position more arousing than intimidating.
After all, I probably had a hundred pounds on her, and the idea of clutching her wrist to send her tumbling down on top of me was practically impossible to resist.
The only reason I did was because Frankie, Adriano, and Marco were in the doorway to the entryway enjoying the show, and I didn’t want to embarrass Elena further by disrespecting her personal space in front of my men.
“You do make me out to be quite the villain,” I told her, adjusting my cuff as if the entire conversation bored me just to feel the way the air around her go molten because of my provocation. “Maybe I’m just trying to be the hero, here, Elena?”
She snorted, inelegant, more real than I’d ever seen her. “By forcing me to live with you? Forgive me for sounding dramatic, but I can’t see much worse a fate than that.”
I brushed my fingertips over my lips, watching the way her furious gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered before snapping back to my eyes. “Have you ever considered it may be dangerous for a woman living alone in a house with a security system? A woman who has become a known associate of a very dangerous man with enemies who will stop at nothing to hurt him.”
“Don’t pretend you made this move because you have a bleeding heart,” she scoffed. “You did this just because you could.”
“There may have been that as well,” I agreed easily with a wide, slow grin that dominated my entire face.
She blinked at the sight dispassionately. “I am your lawyer, Mr. Salvatore, not your slave and not your soldier.”
Oh, if only she knew the truth about my family and its history of taking female slaves. If only she knew that Cosima had paid that price in servitude to my brother before they’d actually fallen in love.
I wondered how the cool Elena would react, knowing the extent of the sacrifice her sister had made for her? If she’d be broken by the weight of it, knowing there was no hope to repay her. She seemed like the type of woman who could not abide a debt remaining unpaid.
I stood then, unraveling from the low couch to my full height. She was discomforted by my proximity, only a thin wedge of vibrating space between our two bodies, but she didn’t stand down. Instead, she cocked her chin high in order to look me dead in the eye, her brows arched with haughty disdain, her lush red mouth a contrast to the tightness in her jaw.
There was such a thin line between love and hate, just as there was between heroism and villainy. It all depended on the circumstance and perspective.
At that moment, I wanted to crush her to my body and ravish that prim mouth, dishevel that perfectly curled hair, tear open the silk bow on her blouse with my teeth, then rip apart the bra barely visible beneath that so I could suck on her breasts. I wanted to make her shake for me, quake for me, fuckingbreakfor me.
Because I knew no one had ever broken Elena Lombardi.
That fucker Daniel Sinclair hadn’t even come close.
I’d grown up around horses in England, learned to ride about the same time I learned to walk, and I knew all about the wild, willful beasts. Elena reminded me of an Arabian, she had all the raw power and majesty of the stead, but someone had mistreated her, taught her to bite and shy away from the rider.
I knew with the right training and a patient master, she would be glorious.
It was the worst idea I’d ever had, and I’d had my fair share, but suddenly, irrevocably, I wanted to be the one who earned that hard-won trust. The man who would be rewarded with the glory of those spoils.
Eyes locked on her, jaw clenched against the lust surging inside me, I lifted my hand and cupped her long throat easily in my palm, curling my fingers around the side over the mad thrum of her pulse.
“No,” I agreed in a low purr. “You aren’t a soldier or a slave. You are a fighter,myfighter until you’ve won this war with me. But I am the general, Elena, and the sooner you get used to taking orders from me, the better.”
