Page 254 of Kissing the Villain

I’d never said the words aloud.

He looked dead to the world a moment before. His eyes popped open, the same blue irises I had stared into hundreds of times. This wasn’t how I was planning to tell him I loved him.

“You better love me,” he said, his voice deep and rough.

“Luca,” I breathed.

“How did you sleep?” Luca looked at me with one eye open. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “The medicine helped me sleep. I only woke up a few times in pain.”

He sat up and hooked his arm around me.

I put my head on his muscular chest. “I meant what I just said. I’m sorry about running away. I wanted to know if my brother was still alive. I never meant for this to happen. I thought I could leave the house and return before you finished your meeting.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me? I would have told you if I knew you would do something stupid.”

“I asked you over dinner. You said you didn’t kill Aiden but refused to give me more. I had to know if he was still alive.”

“You drugged my brother, used insider knowledge to sneak out of the house, and put yourself in danger because you’re impatient.” Luca gripped my chin. “I should punish you for your insubordination.”

I moaned in response.

“You would like that too much, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded.

Luca smirked. “My cock is too much of a reward.”

I brushed my lips against his. “Maybe you should spank me for being a bad girl.”

He shook his head. “You need to take it easy for a few days.” Luca lifted my shirt to inspect my bruises and shook his head. “I told you how much danger you were in before you ran, and you did it anyway.”

“I knew about the possibility of the auction. But I thought you meant your family.”

“You are my family, Drea.” He stroked his fingers through my hair. “What am I going to do with you, woman? I need to know I can trust you with my secrets without using them against me.”

“You can. This is your fault, too. I wouldn’t have looked for answers if you told me the truth about my brother.”

“Some things you can’t know until you swear the oath.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Not yet, anyway. There are rules and rituals in my world.”

I chuckled. “You break the law every day. But the criminal underworld has a code?”

“That’s right.”

“We’re in this together now.” I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth, and he fisted my curls in his hand. “One day, you will be my husband. I will be your wife. You need to trust me with your secrets.”

Luca kissed me once more and rolled his thumb across my bottom lip. “What do you want to know?”

“What happened to Aiden? I remember him jumping off the cliff behind your house. He used a parachute, which must have been your idea because you once told me that was how you tried to run from your father.”

He chuckled at the memory. “Yeah, except your brother fucked up. He didn’t test the parachute.”

“He fell,” I said with certainty. “How did he survive the drop?”

“I saw the fall from my bedroom window. You were on the ground, screaming his name. Your mind reset to before we’d ever met.”

“How is Aiden alive?”

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