Part One
Napoli
One
Elena
Loving him wasn’t the end of everything.
It’s funny they always make it seem that way in the books and movies.
Loving him was just the beginning.
In a way, it was the death of me.
The woman of before, the cold, calculating, stubbornly moral lawyer with a layered life and carefully constructed personality was buried six feet beneath the earth in New York City.
This new being, born from the ashes of a fire ignited by one man, was reborn on a plane somewhere over the mid-Atlantic Ocean.
I was newborn, as blank as a white sheet of paper, my future hovering over it like a poised pen.
I only knew three things.
Fleeing the country with a known criminal made me a felon by association so for the first time in my life, I was officially on the wrong side of the law.
We were returning to my homeland, a place I had sworn five years ago that I would never return to willingly. More than that, we were going into the belly of the beast. Naples. The stinking cesspool that was the heart of the Camorra mafia. The villains of my entire youth.
And thirdly, mostly importantly, I was indisputably and irretrievably in love with a mafia Don, a man who could and most certainly had killed people with his big, bare hands. A man by the name of Dante Salvatore. A man who had changed my entire world.
It was the only positive thing on my short list yet it seemed the most all-consuming, the only true thing that mattered.
I was in love with Dante.
I’d loved before.
So, why did this feel so different, so strange?
Even at the height of my affection for Christopher and Daniel, I’d felt solidly independent, removed enough from my emotions to operate logically and efficiently.
With Dante, I felt my edges blurring, my whole being smudged like a water color painting into the edges of him and his.
I didn’t want space or logic.
Dio mio, I’d fled the country and my entire life to be with him. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking logically.
But that was the craziness of it all.
I didn’t care if I was acting outside of my own interests, that I was being impulsive and reckless and passionate to a fault.
I didn’t care so much I felt like roaring with giddy, manic laughter.
I was unhinged, ripped from the caged structure of my previous life by Dante’s ruthless grasp.
I felt free.
So free.
For the first time ever.
“Lottatrice mia.”
The low purr of his British-Italian accent hooked through my gut and pulled my focus from the oval plane window and the night ocean beyond to the very man I was thinking about.
Dante sat in the butter soft leather seat the way he sat in anything, big body sprawled out, thick thighs spread, heavily muscled torso sunk deep into the plush cushions. He should have looked lazy, even insolent in such an easy pose, but it somehow only served to make him look more powerful. As if that relaxed façade could coil and strike at only a second’s notice.
With his ink dark eyes pinned on me, it was impossible to take him for anything less than the predator he was.
“Your loud thinking is disturbing my peace,” he had the audacity to tell me with one of those Italianate shrugs that was barely a twitch of one shoulder. “If you cannot sleep, Elena, perhaps I can find something else to occupy your busy mind.”
I’d fallen into an emotionally exhausted slumber almost as soon as I’d buckled into my seat to take off and I’d only just woken up to the calamitous riot of my thoughts. Trust Dante to know I was awake and brooding even while he was busy conducting business on his phone.
I leveled him with a haughty look, but inside my chest something like joy bubbled up. “Excuse me for disturbing your peace, you’re right. It’s completely unacceptable that I’m stewing over the fact I just effectively destroyed my life in New York to chase after a runaway felon fleeing to a country I abhor. How selfish of me.”
There was the faintest twitch in his full mouth, but otherwise, he only continued to give me that thousand-yard stare over steepled fingers. “Frankie?”
“Yeah, Boss,” his second-in-command called from the rear of the main cabin where he was doing something on two computer monitors.
“Get out,” Dante ordered.
Without another word, Frankie powered down his application and got up. He shot me a sly wink before turning on his heel and disappearing into the back room.
Suddenly, my mouth was entirely parched.
I watched wide-eyed as Dante uncoiled that massive frame from his seat, straightened his cuff links idly, then moved across the space between us to loom over me. I could see the bandage taped beneath his left collarbone through the white shirt. Frankie had stitched up the bullet wound, but the sight of it scoured through me. He’d taken that bullet for me. Put his entire life at risk for me. That such a powerful man would gamble his kingdom and livelihood for little old me made me feel nothing short of a queen.
His eyes pinned to mine, he bent his torso to brace both hands on my armrests, effectively caging me into my seat.
My heart raced with a curious mixture of fear and excitement.
It was Dante’s unique charm that convinced you he might as easily kiss you as kill you.
“Perhaps it would help if I reminded you why it is you gave up everything you know to be with me,” he purred in that rich, dark voice I wanted to eat off his tongue like dark chocolate.
I was aroused, there was no denying it. A second pulse beat between my thighs, growing more and more insistent. My nipples were pebbled beneath my silk camisole despite the heavy cashmere cardigan I wore over it. The airplane air was cool, but every inch of my flesh itched with heat.
Yet, I felt nervous, awkward and almost irritated.
I wanted to play this game of seduction, but how in the world did I compete with the raw sexual magnetism of this man?
I felt when I had spent so many years quelling every emotion.
I trusted that, the feeling.
Even if I was wary of where it would take me.
So, I sucked in a bracing breath and raised my hands to slide my fingers around his warm neck into the short hairs at the back of his head.
“Show me,” I told him, barely above a whisper. “But I don’t need reminding. I could never forget why I left it all behind. I could never forget you.”
A growl worked through his throat as he dipped down to capture my mouth in a savage kiss. It was all tongue and teeth, a dance of ownership. I didn’t back down to his possession, desperate to show him how much I wanted to possess every inch of him too.
“Kissing you is the sweetest agony,” he murmured against my damp lips as one big hand moved to my throat. The feel of him collaring me that way should have been deplorable. Instead, it felt like the most exquisite necklace, one I wanted to wear with pride forevermore. “I never want to stop kissing you at the same time if makes me hungry for more.”
“Don’t stop,” I implored him, fisting my hands in his shirt collar so I could tug him harder against my mouth. “Kiss me.”
“Oh, I intend to spend the next hour doing just that,” he promised darkly even as he pulled away from me.
A noise of protest rose unbidden in my throat. He chuckled at me as he dropped to his knees before my seat and moved close, forcing my thighs wide apart to accommodate his bulk. A little shiver of discomfort tangled with desire and moved through me.