Page 55 of The Villain

“No, I need to apologize.”

“Apologize?” I gaped, stunned, and blurted out. “For what?”

“For guilting you into touching me.”

I reeled.Was she—she couldn’t be fucking serious.I’d never heard something so…wrong…in my whole goddamn life.

“You wanted to walk away—to be a gentleman because of my condition,” she went on, forcing me to realize she was serious. “And I used that to beg you to touch me?—”

“Absolutely fucking not.”I knocked over a box as I spun herback to the wall, my mouth claiming hers in an all-too-familiar yet downright dangerous way.

Her soft sound of shock was gone by the time my tongue delved between her lips, meeting hers with hungry strokes. She opened underneath me, like a taste of heaven in the midst of my own personal hell. I could take anything—bear anything—except her believing I didn’t want her.

Anything except that.

I licked and tasted every corner of her sweet mouth. For all she’d given me the other night, I still felt the same as I did those past-curfew nights all those years ago: that I’d happily agree to live a life on her kisses alone.

She pressed against me, her soft curves fitting too perfectly along all my hard edges.

“Dare…” Her soft moans were my small mercies. Her little pants, my penance. If only I could pay her in pleasure for the cost of my cruelty. My lies.

Dammit.

I tore my mouth from hers and dragged in a deep breath.“Just because you begged doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”

“Then why are you avoiding me?”

“Because wanting to doesn’t mean I should have—and not because of you,” I added quickly before she went back down that path. “There are things…about me…”I went silent and exhaled my frustration.

She slid her hand up my neck to cup my cheek, her thumb finding purchase on the seam of my scar. “You can trust me.”

I jerked like she’d pulled the pin out of a grenade.Trust her.It wasn’t warning bells that went off but more like an air-raid siren that rang through my skull.

Trust.

I turned my head away—out of her hold. I couldn’t trustanyone. Not anymore. Not after Amira, and especially not Athena. She could promise it now and mean it, but not once she learned the truth.

“We need to keep looking. It has to be here somewhere.” I backed away from her and the temptation, returning to our task. “When I got here the morning of the explosion…you were rushing out. You had a gym bag?—”

“Wait.” She spun in the direction of the hallway but only made it one step before her knee banged into the corner of another box, and she cried out.

“Dammit,” I muttered and took her arm, needing to help her. Hating to have to be close to her. Hating to want to be close to her. “Where do you want to go?”

“The bedroom.”

I moved before she could feel me tense, guiding her through the stacks of boxes and down the hall to the master bedroom. I’d already looked there, but maybe I hadn’t been fully focused on my task because I’d been trying to avoid my past.

“Wait, sorry. I meant my old bedroom,” she said as soon as I angled her to the left, so I immediately course-corrected to the right, and she stopped, forcing me to stop behind her.“How do you know which room it is?”

I stilled as my heart slammed to the front of my chest. “I checked every room the other day.” I brushed off the question easily enough.

Another lie.

I hadn’t gone into her old bedroom. Stupid, I knew, since it could’ve held the answer. But I couldn’t. Maybe I was afraid of what I’d find.Maybe I wanted some justification for needing to be here with her today.

“Oh.” Her cheeks colored.

I moved in front of her to open the door, ignoring thedangerous contact of my body against hers as though it wasn’t as dangerous as sparks to dry kindling.

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