Chapter 15 Elena
ELENA
My breath catches painfully in my chest as reality crashes back in all at once.
I stiffen, every instinct screaming that I’ve overstepped, mistaking this small moment of shared grief as permission to rewind time.
I brace myself for him to pull away, for his voice to turn cold and tell me this means nothing and that I’m grasping for something that no longer exists between us.
For a split second, I consider pulling my hand back on my own and running before he can push me away.
He sits up slowly and as he does, his fingers slide down from my hand to my wrist. They close around it, not painfully but firm enough to feel possessive. The contact sends a sharp jolt through my body.
My heart stutters as he leans forward. He’s close enough now that I can smell the faint trace of his cologne, a scent that’s dark and clean layered over a musk that is simply, unmistakably Dante.
It pulls memories from me without permission—late nights, tangled sheets, whispered confessions neither of us had been brave enough to repeat in the daylight.
His gaze searches my face like he’s looking for something specific.
Permission, maybe? Or proof that this fragile moment isn’t another illusion waiting to shatter beneath his hands.
There’s conflict burning in his eyes. Longing collides with anger, grief with desire, until I can almost feel the tension radiating off him.
I’m almost afraid of what will happen if one of those emotions finally breaks free.
When his other hand rises, it’s used to cup my jaw. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. The tenderness of the gesture steals what little breath I have left. He draws me forward slowly, giving me time to stop him, to pull away.
I don’t.
Not now.
The second our lips meet, the world falls away. The fear that has been stalking us, the uncertainty of what comes next, none of it exists right now.
There is only this.
Only him.
Just as it always should have been.
A soft sound escapes me before I can stop it, relief and ache tangling together as the kiss deepens.
Dante responds instantly, tilting his head and pulling me closer, kissing me with a desperation that feels years in the making.
My arm slides around his neck, fingers threading into the hair at his nape as I draw him closer still.
For a moment, I forget the distance we’ve kept between us, the walls we built in the aftermath of betrayal. All I remember is how perfectly I fit against him, just like I always have.
Suddenly, the ground shifts beneath me. A small gasp slips from my lips as he lifts me effortlessly, settling back against the couch and pulling me into his lap. My knees fall to either side of him, the position intimate but strangely natural.
My hands come to rest against his chest.
For a moment, we don’t move. We just stare at each other, breath mingling in the narrow space between us. Beneath my palm, his heart is racing, completely at odds with the controlled man the rest of the world sees. The realization sends a quiet warmth spreading through me.
I’m glad I’m not the only one undone by this.
Something passes between us then, a fragile surrender neither of us is ready to name.
He leans in first again. I meet him halfway.
The kiss that follows is no less fierce, but softer at the edges now.
The tension we’ve carried, the anger, the grief, doesn’t disappear, but for this suspended moment, it loosens its grip on us.
In its place is the undeniable truth we’ve spent years trying to outrun.
No matter how far we are torn apart, some part of us has always belonged right here.
Together.
Dante’s hands slide up my spine. When his fingers reach the nape of my neck, he threads them into my hair and tugs just enough to tilt my head back, enough to make my lips part around a broken sound I don’t recognize as mine.
“Look at me,” he rasps.
I do so obediently.
His eyes are molten now. There’s no mask here, no careful walls constructed to keep his distance. Just him stripped down to the bone and looking at me like I’m the oxygen he’s been starved of after spending years underwater.
“You have no idea,” he says, his voice growing raspy, “how many nights I woke up reaching for you and found nothing but cold fucking sheets.”
My hips rock forward unconsciously, chasing the friction and proof that this is all real and not some wild hallucination. He meets me instantly, his hand clamping onto my waist to guide me in a slow grind that makes my vision blur around the edges. Heat coils low in my gut almost painfully.
“Elena.” My name is a plea torn straight from his throat. “Tell me to stop. Tell me you don’t want this. Because if you don’t say it right now, I’m not going to stop until you only remember my name.”
I should.
I know I should.
There are still a thousand reasons doing this would be disastrous. We will ruin each other all over again because that’s the way it always goes. It’s inevitable.
But I’m so damn tired of being careful.
I frame his face with shaking hands, my thumbs brushing along the defined lines of his cheekbones. I look straight into those green-gray eyes that he shares with our son and let the truth fall past my parted lips.
“I never stopped wanting you, even when I hated you. I want you now so much, it hurts,” I whisper.
A tremor rolls through his whole body. I have no time to react before he’s kissing me again.
His mouth moves desperately on mine, punishing in its tenderness that bleeds into desire.
His teeth graze my lower lip as his tongue strokes along the seam of my mouth, plunging inside as soon as they part for him.
I arch into him, my nails digging into his skin while the need to be closer overrides everything else.
The couch creaks beneath us when he shifts us, turning us around until my back is laid flat against it.
He hovers over me, his mouth still fused to mine.
His fingers find bare skin at the small of my back when he slips his fingers under my shirt, and I whimper into his mouth shamelessly.
This is all I ever wanted.
The thought crashes through me like a wave I can’t outrun, dragging me out to sea where every buried emotion floods to the surface until I’m drowning in it. His weight presses me into the cushions and I arch again, dragging him down with me.
Dante breaks the kiss only to sweep his tongue down the side of my throat, his teeth grazing the spot just below my pulse. He finds the spot that always made my knees buckle back then, the one he mapped out years ago when we were still young and foolish, and he bites down hard enough to mark it.
He lifts his head just enough to look at me.
His eyes are near-black with want, pupils blown so wide, there’s almost no color left.
He makes a low, broken sound deep in his throat and surges back down to kiss me again.
His hand slides higher beneath my shirt, callused palm skimming the curve of my ribs, thumb brushing the underside of my bra before slipping under the cup to touch my breast.
I gasp into his mouth, hips jerking up instinctively, seeking the hard length of him pressed between my thighs.
He groans against my mouth, pulling back just enough to say, “You feel that?”
He rocks forward once, letting me feel exactly how badly he wants this—wants me. Tears burn behind my eyes. I clutch at his shoulders, needing to hold on to something solid while the truth of his words rips me wide open.
“That’s what you do to me. Every fucking day since you left. Every night I tried to forget you and failed,” he growls.
“I tried so hard to hate you… to hate this. But it was always you. Always,” I choke out.
His hand leaves my back only long enough to shove my shirt up and over my head in one rough motion.
Cool air hits my skin, making me shiver, but his mouth is already there kissing the hollow of my throat, the slope of my collarbone, down to the swell of my breasts, worshipful and ravenous all at once.
When his lips close around my nipple through the thin lace of my bra, I cry out, my back bowing off the couch.
He switches sides, teeth grazing me through the lace while his other hand works the clasp at my back.
The bra is tugged off me and tossed and then he’s on me again, the contact is so overwhelming I nearly sob.
His tongue drags over one of my nipples before both of his lips wrap around it.
A choked cry is ripped from me before I can stop it.
Every nerve in my body seems to reroute straight to the point where his lips seal around me.
His teeth scrape just enough to sting, making the pleasure and pain blur into something blinding.
My fingers fist in his hair, not guiding him at all, just holding on for dear life as he switches to the other side, giving the neglected bud the same ruthless attention. Wet heat drags over it, then the sudden sharp tug of suction that makes my thighs clench around his hips.
“Dante…” I don’t even know what I’m asking for. More? Less? Mercy?
Maybe all of it at once.
His free hand slides down my side, rough palm mapping every trembling inch of me like he’s trying to memorize me all over again.
Fingers dig into my hip in order to hold me still so he can rock against me again, each one a promise of exactly what he plans to do to me once there’s nothing left between us.
I’m shaking so badly, I can feel it in my teeth.
When he pops his mouth off me, he lifts it just enough to look at me. His lips are slightly swollen, glistening from what he’s done to me. The sight of him undone like this sends another fresh wave of heat crashing through my core.