They glared at each other, nose to Roman nose, gold and black pressed together in a way that no woman could ever think was anything other than pure masculine beauty. I was arrested by the sight of them, by the fact that they both loved me enough to fight for me.
I was also completely done with their dramatic alpha antics, though.
“Get off your brother, Xan,” I ordered, pulling at his shoulder until he reluctantly acquiesced. “Dante, get up and step back.”
As soon as they gained their feet, I stepped between them and pressed a hand to both their lightly heaving, massive chests to ground the electric power charging through their veins. They both watched me narrowly, angry with each other, but also with me for interfering, for even interacting with the other man.
The headiness of stepping between them sluiced through me until I was almost light-headed. I was an organism entirely dependent on the male mind to survive. I needed them to want me, crave me, become enamoured with me.
The hole at the center of my being that had been ripped out of me when I left England fed on the meat of their attention, and as I stood between the two men who had become the center spokes of my world, I embraced my gluttony with verve.
“You both need to knock it off. I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions and speak for herself. Dante…” I turned to the man who had been my saviour the past four years, the man who had taken the tattered pieces of my body and soul and given them a home to recover in. He looked at me with soft, velvet black eyes, his mouth twisted up in one corner because he already knew he wouldn’t like what I had to say. “D, amico mio, Alexander came to save me from Ashcroft at Club Bacchus tonight. He didn’t hurt me, and honestly, I don’t think he means to hurt me ever again. I think…” I darted a glance back at the man in question and let his burning eyes fill me with conviction. “I think he wants to be with me.”
“I do,” Alexander confirmed in his Dominant voice, in that tone that brooked no argument. “Not that Edward deserves to know that.”
“Hush,” I scolded him before turning to Dante, hating the way his eyes went cold and his posture changed, his muscles tightening as if repelled by my hand on his chest. “Dante, you have to trust me to know what’s best for me.”
“My trust in you has nothing to do with it, tesoro, and everything to do with the fact that I haven’t been able to trust Alexander since he sided with Noel over our mother’s murder.”
I winced slightly because that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it?
Dante couldn’t trust Alexander, and I wasn’t sure if I should.
We both turned to him, questions in our eyes like lassos ready to capture him so we could demand answers.
“I don’t need you to trust me.” Alexander tugged down his shirtsleeves and adjusted his cuff links, insulting Dante with his every blasé move. “I don’t need you to trust me, Edward, because you never trusted me enough to come back home and tell me what you actually thought happened with Noel. You think I betrayed you? Well, brother, you abandoned me and left me with a man you knew to be a monster.”
The air in the room went flat like stale soda, sticky with tension, but void of the angrily bumping molecules. Dante seemed suspended in it, floating on shock and uncertainty.
Clearly, he’d never thought of the past in such terms.
Honestly, neither had I.
I watched as the blood caught on Dante’s upper lip from his slightly bleeding nose and warred with whether to comfort him or shame him for doing exactly what he’d always accused Xan of doing.
Abandoning his family.
“You think Noel is a monster?” Dante asked suspiciously.
I held my breath as I waited for the answer. There was no way Alexander knew about Noel and Rodger beating me, because only those two, Dante, and Salvatore knew the truth, but there were so many other ways Noel had proved his heinousness.
Alexander stepped forward, his mask slipping to reveal an expression I’d never seen hung on his features before, one of pure and lasting agony.
“Of course, Noel is a monster.” He opened his hands, clenched them around empty air, and released them with shaking fingers. “And I did monstrous things at his bidding, in his image. I am my father’s son.”
His wry twisted lips, self-depreciating and full of personal loathing, sliced my heart into ribbons. God, but this beautiful man thought he was uglier than his demons, and it broke my fucking heart.
I went to him before I could even think to curb the impulse, my arms slipping under his suit to press him so hard into my body it was as if I sought to absorb him into myself. Maybe my love would filter his self-disgust and leave him clean, reborn, and ready to adore himself as much as I did.