Page 29 of Hero & Villain
“Who knew massage was a sport? Will the dragon be there?” I’d only had a vague memory of fierce eyes and wild dark curls as she’d driven towards me down the alley.
“Of course.”
“What will you do?”
“There are a lot of shooting ranges in the desert. Some are quite famous. We aren’t going there.”
“So, shooting guns?”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “There will definitely be shooting along with off-roading over treacherous terrain. You’re Nitro’s cousin, so you shouldn’t be uncomfortable handling a weapon or a Mac truck.”
“Mac truck?”
She smiled innocently. “Someone has to drive the Mac truck.”
“I don’t know if you’re messing with me or in earnest. Either way, I’d rather play Othello. After I sleep for a few days. Unassisted.” I headed to my room and passed out with those elusive notes from the stormy night waiting around the edges of my consciousness.
I woke up to find someone in my room. It was dark, and there wasn’t anything in this room I could use as a weapon. Picture frames and blankets were notoriously nonlethal. The door creaked closed, and the brush of a foot on tile was the only proof that someone had been there, but I’d felt another presence. I knew the feeling of someone in the dark watching me sleep.
I rolled out of bed, landing soundlessly. I moved as quickly and quietly as I could, but they’d hear the door open and then they’d run, unless it was the crazy cowgirl, in which case she’d probably tell me she knocked me out to stop me from screaming. My tangled hair and sore throat were proof that I’d been having loud nightmares.
I should probably talk to her in the morning about not liking anyone in my room while I slept, but she was awake now, and so was I.
I threw the door open and ran towards the shadow at the end of the dark hall. It was hard to tell, but it seemed bigger than Jezebel. The shadow leapt for a wall, kicked off it and launchedup towards the open skylight. It wasn’t Jezebel, and there was no way I’d let an intruder escape. I leapt after him and grabbed his ankle, tugging him hard enough that he missed the edge of the skylight and came down, on top of me.
The breath left me while the heavy body draped over me, night vision goggles over his face.
The light came on, and then Jezebel was there, pointing a revolver at the extremely heavy man. “Don’t move.”
I still couldn’t breathe. His elbow was in my solar plexus. I yanked off his goggles, pulling out some of his dark hair. His eyes weren’t soft, but they were amused, and the grin on Dirk Dagger’s face was the most arrogant, mischievous, disgusting thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I rolled him so I could straddle him and punch the grin off his face, but that would hurt my hands. I stayed like that, glaring down at him with my arm cocked until Jezebel lowered the gun with a sigh.
“Do I want to know why you’re in my house, Dagger?”
“I thought Pinkie was killing you. I’ve never heard so much screaming.”
He’d heard me scream? He must have come in here and seen me in all my incredibly unattractive vulnerability.
I punched his nose, breaking it with a satisfying crunch that I regretted immediately. It felt like I’d popped a blood vessel. My hands were not weapons. I snarled at him as he gazed back at me, eyes brighter than before while dark red blood gushed from his nose.
“So much for you not being a creep. Watching people while they sleep is beyond stalker behavior. Jezebel could shoot you right now for breaking and entering.”
His grin shouldn’t have been attractive with pink-stained teeth, but it really, really was. “Is that what you want? I’ve been shot before. She’d have to kill me, and it’s not after the races,so we both know that she won’t. You’re supposed to break my heart. Your aim is a little high, or maybe you just enjoy making a man bleed.”
“I just wanted to shut you up.”
“I wasn’t talking.”
“Your arrogant grin was saying enough.”
“What was it saying? How much you liked kissing me or how you fell on purpose just so I’d catch you?”
“I’d rather die than have an arrogant meathead with a hero complex rescue me.”
“And that’s why you’re always helpless around me on very high places so you can indulge in flagrant displays of vulgarity?”
I froze and felt cold and hot. No way he remembered me on top of the building. There was no way he realized that the idiotic female who had needed him to save her from fear was the same one now. No way.
