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, unmistakablyDante. 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.
Onlyhim.
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.”
