Page 30 of Beautiful Beasts

I know I am not ready for what I want to do with her or become for her. I don’t know if I will ever fully be ready, but I at least need to fucking try; she deserves that.

The books have helped me escape the violence and chaos of the world I have chosen to live in and allow me to enter into other worlds of violence and chaos. I know it sounds weird, but I get to be the male character in the books and experience what they do. Until Bella, the books have been the only way I have experienced love from a woman, true love from a woman.

I chose this life, where I take a life without thinking about it.

I chose this life, where I take what I want, and I make damn sure that every fucker stays in line.

The books allow me to be in power and control in a different way and submit in ways I have never been able to before.

Bella makes me want to be more than what I am right now. She makes me want to learn how to love the right way. She makes me want to let her in and be loved by her. Which is something that has never happened to me before. Fucking a woman, hearing a woman moan your name because you give them pleasure is one thing, but genuinely being in love with a woman to the point where fucking her is making love to her, and when she moans your name, it is not just because of the pleasure, it is because you are one. That is what Bella makes me crave now.

The only way I can do that for her is by allowing her to see the real me, the me that even fucking scares me. The me that I don’t fucking know, not really. My life doesn’t allow me to be how I once was. The only way to survive what and who I am is by not allowing the true me to come out, is by hiding the me that Bella needs.

The books I read help me to feel love, passion, desire, and understanding in a controlled environment. The men in the books I am obsessed with is not the man I am, but I want to, for her, I want to be.

I look over the same page I have been reading and looking over for the past few hours. I can’t seem to pay attention to the story when Bella is only a few feet away from me, curled up in the chair next to the fire, with a blanket wrapped around her and a book in her hand.

We haven’t said much since we sat down after I showed her my secret collection, but the silence is peaceful with her near me. Usually, I would try to make the silence disappear because it makes me feel uncomfortable, but with her here with me, the silence is nice.

I close the book and set it on the side table beside me. Bella looks up from her book, and a smile spreads across her beautiful face, warming my heart and thawing out some of the coldness my heart is engulfed in. I might not be like the men in my books, but she is like the women in them.

There is nothing Dante and I wouldn’t do for Bella. She doesn’t have to ask for anything because we will give everything to her freely and without question.

I never truly understood the love inside the pages of the books I have read over the years. I never thought that kind of love was true or possible to experience, but now I know the books had it right.

I walk behind the chair she is sitting in and look out the window. Through the trees, I see a car turning onto our road, their headlights blinding me momentarily.

My heart starts to race. “What the fuck?” I whisper.

“What?” Bella asks softly.

“Fuck,” I say through gritted teeth. Our men are running and start to shoot at the car as it crashes through the fence. My heart stops. “Bella!” I scream as I turn and grab her out of the chair, pulling her against me.

Rain is coming down hard, and I see lightning flash in the sky as the car speeds in our direction. I quickly shoved the chair out of the way and pushed Bella against the wall in the corner seconds before the car crashed through the window where the window seat was.

Bella screams as I shield her with my body. I reach behind me, pull my gun out, and turn toward the vehicle. The radio is blaring, and the driver’s side door is open, but no one is sitting in the car. I keep Bella behind me as I take in the scene.

My heart stops as my blood begins to boil. “I got you, Bella. I got you,” I say with as much confidence as I can.

I can hear gunshots in the distance. Whoever was driving the car must have run. Our men are trying to do their job, but from the sounds of continuous gunfire, they are failing because the fucker isn’t dead.

It is fucking war now, and whoever the fuck did this will not fucking survive what we are going to do to him.

21

Dante

I drop my phone to the ground and run out of my office and down the hallway, taking two stairs at a time.

I can hear the gunshots in the distance. My staff are running around in the house, and some are sitting on the ground shaking. I don’t blame them; in all my life, I have never had something like this happen. No one has had the balls to try and do something at my home. It looks like that has finally changed.

My heart races as I bust through the library doors. “What the fuck happened?” I say through gritted teeth as I try to calm my racing heart.

I look over the room rapidly. There is glass and pieces of the wall everywhere. The wind and rain steal the heat from the fire Harley made for Bella.

She has her face shoved into Harley’s chest. He has one hand resting on the back of her head, and his other arm is wrapped tightly around her. I look at where the car crashed through the window seat, trying to process what the fuck has happened, and that is when it hits me. If she had been in here alone, she would probably be dead right now.

Rage courses through my veins at the thought of having to lay her in the cold ground next to my mother.

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