Page 30 of The Villain

“We’re going to get to the truth, I promise.” He paused and then added in a rough whisper, “Trust me.”

Trust him.It should be easy, right? He might be a stranger, but he’d saved my life. Except knowing now that the man I’d loved and devoted my life to had betrayed the years of trust I’d built in him…

“How can I trust anyone anymore?”I asked brokenly, my mind as tangled as my strained voice.“I’m sorry. I just wish…”

My throat wouldn’t work to swallow.What did I wish? What did I need?It was all locked in darkness until he spoke.

“Tell me.”

My lips peeled apart, and somehow my tongue found its way over my words. “I wish I could see you.”An impossible wish.

The heat of his exhale reached my cheeks, quick and coarse.And then his big hands found mine, capturing them and lifting them higher and higher until he pressed my fingertips to his face.

Dare.

The ground solidified. The air stilled. The sounds—all of them—silenced. Nothing was left for me to focus on except him.

Stubble and warm skin pressed to my fingers. I splayed my hands, feeling the muscles of his jaw fire instantly under my touch, but he didn’t pull away—and neither did I. Slowly, with the precision of a surgeon, he drew my fingertips over his face, letting me chart his harsh cheeks and square jawline.

I managed to hold back a sound of surprise when I felt the puckered ridge of a scar running down his left cheek.

What happened? When?Who did this to you?Questions filled my mind.How many times have you been hurt? What other scars do you have?

I searched out the spot where the scar originated, right underneath his left eye, and followed it all the way along his cheek, and then it cut sharply toward his mouth. My pulse picked up, and suddenly the weight of the jacket on my shoulders felt too much. Too warm.

But that was as far as Dare’s guiding hands let me go. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to feel his mouth until he wouldn’t let me.

Instead, he repositioned my hands at the edge of his nose and then lowered his away, allowing me to explore as long as I obeyed his boundary.And I would, because I didn’t want to lose this.

I mapped the slope of his nose up to the ridge of his brows, higher over his forehead.Was he bald? Buzz cut? Did he have long hair? Was it curly? Short?Thick, I realized whenmy fingertips breached his scalp. His hair was thick and soft, collected in unruly waves on his head.

Scarred and unruly.That was who this man was. And it was something that was as equally safe as it was dangerous to me.

I threaded my fingers into his hair as though I were going to pull his head to me—his mouth to mine. His kiss wouldn’t fix this, but somehow I knew it would at least let me forget.

Dare made a low noise—something between a plea and a warning—and I realized just how close our faces were.

My heart thudded wildly, and I quickly returned my hands down to the slash of hair marking his eyebrows and then lower to his eyes. The soft brush of his eyelids as they closed teased my fingertips. Men always had the nicest lashes, and Dare was no exception.

I wondered what color they were but didn’t ask. It was too much. Too…intimate.

With every touch, I created a portrait of him, one I painted with my fingertips on the blank canvas of my mind. Shading in the handsome, rugged contours of his face until I reached the perimeter of his lips—lips that let out the low voice that haunted my dreams.

“Athena,” he rumbled in a warning I thought I could obey, but I couldn’t.

So, I first traced the valley that bracketed his mouth, giving him plenty of time to pull away and stop me himself. But he didn’t.My heart did laps inside my chest, circling this moment again and again and again until I had myself in knots. Air vaulted into my lungs as I slid my hands toward each other, feeling the corners of his mouth and then the fullness of his lips.

My jaw went slack, and brushing over the soft swells made my body feel all the things it shouldn’t.

Dare had lips made to do damage. Full and firm, I imagined their press on my fingers was on my palm. And then my neck. And then my mouth. I shivered, wanting more than to know their shape; I wanted it memorized. I wanted him to be more than a voice inside my head when I slept at night—I wanted to imagine those lips rumbling my name even if I’d never see it.

The shallow rush of his breaths greeted my fingertips when they landed on the seam where his scar met the border of his lip.

Who hurt you?The question was right there on the tip of my tongue—but so was the urge to kiss it. To kiss him. To trace my tongue along the tiny ridge and make it better.

Oh god.What was wrong with me? Was this a new symptom of the blast? A fresh indication of my broken brain—lusting over the man who’d saved my life?

Dare groaned low, the sound pure pain.

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