Page 17 of Hero & Villain (Super Serum Billionaires #1)

I didn’t look at him. I just clung to the door and stared out the window, willing my heart and body to stop aching and revolting.

Dirk probably thought I was insane. Maybe I was.

Did I love Clint? Was it loyalty to him that kept me from doing what I wanted with Dirk?

How could I be loyal to someone who betrayed me?

I wasn’t a fool who let men take advantage of me.

When I thought of Clint, I felt horror, shame, anger, but not loyalty. There were a lot of emotions though.

It wasn’t intelligent to try and have a relationship with someone when you were so messed up from the last affair. I knew that much, but nothing with Clint had been real. Nothing with Dirk was supposed to be real either. What was the difference as far as my body was concerned?

It felt real. I’d kissed him in anger at first, but then I was swept away to completely different emotions that weren’t me at all.

I didn’t want comfort and safety, I couldn’t want something like that, couldn’t need it, or I’d be broken the next time I wasn’t careful.

I had to save myself. I had to be in control of this situation, to break him and take back my respect.

I clenched my fists and tried to breathe. I would own this. I would get my revenge no matter what it took. I wasn’t going to get lost in him or my own head.

The next two stops, the sky grew darker and the wind blew harder. It looked like night was falling, but it was only four-thirty. The last cliff was the hardest to climb, with longer straight drops and overall forty-feet up to the top.

“I can do this one on my own,” he said, glancing up at the darkening sky. “I need to get up fast before this rain breaks. It’ll ruin the sensors if they get wet.”

I walked around him, rubbing my hands before I started up the rock.

I’d had a little practice by now. There were straight drops, but not one long descent.

I’d drop and roll and drop and roll a half dozen times until I got to the bottom.

I refused to be completely useless on this miserable job.

No wonder they’d sent me with him, being the stupidest job a human could possibly do.

Still, I did help Dirk move faster, unless I was paralyzed in the middle of a cliff, and I wanted to get this job finished so I could go somewhere to process the kiss, the recoil, the heights, all of it.

The wind buffeted me, whipping my pink hair into my eyes. I ignored it and kept climbing, moving fast until with a pounding heart, I reached the top. I pulled on my gloves even though the air was cold now.

Dirk moved quickly, pulling down the platform and checking the ports without any hesitation.

His hands were so strong, but gentle and precise, the hands of a tech geek who knew how to break bones.

Maybe it was the contrast that was so attractive to me.

Maybe I’d just lost my mind. I didn’t have time to lose my mind.

“This one needs a new breaker. Pinkie, come and hold this piece in place right here while I fuse it together.” He grabbed my hand and placed it inside the unfurled charger.

I held the tiny piece of glass coated wires in place while his forehead brushed mine.

His tiny tool glowed blue and small pale blue sparks swirled between us.

I glanced up at him, studying the way he focused on what he was working on, with so much more intensity than Clint had ever given anything.

If he looked at me like that… He glanced up and I stepped back, flustered from what I saw in those eyes.

Was it regret, apology, or something else?

The piece was already fused. He closed the device and remounted it, working the wrench while I held the base in place.

“You’re a funny girl,” he said.

“You do seem to laugh a lot at my expense.” Was that bitterness or just defeat?

“Sometimes it seems like you want me, other times like you really do hate me.”

“Is this really the best time for this conversation?” I glanced up at the swirling indigo clouds.

“I’m used to working with hard women who know what they want. You have no idea. I’m not sure what to do with you.”

“You shouldn’t do anything with me.”

“No? I thought you wanted me to speak for you, watch your back, pay for my crimes.”

I frowned and shook my head. He wasn’t working as fast in spite of the rising wind and the spattering of raindrops that reminded me of his spit, and our kiss. “I don’t know what to do with you. You’re too real.”

“No, I’m just a mirage, like everything in the desert.”

I looked up at his eyes instead of focusing on his hands, and for a moment I wanted to tell him everything, to ask him to protect me and wrap me in his strong arms forever.

I gasped and stepped away from him. I was definitely losing my mind.

“You can do the rest on your own. I’ll head back now.

” I rushed to the cliff edge, less terrified of the height than I was of that utterly insane impulse to put myself at Dirk’s mercy.

Men didn’t have mercy, and he’d said it himself that he wasn’t a hero. Maybe he was a villain and that’s why I was attracted to him. That made sense. Not really. Nothing made sense. The skies opened up and water poured down, drenching me and leaving the rock slick under my fingers.

I blinked water out of my eyes and struggled to find another handhold. A crack of thunder and lightning lit the world. I was so high, and it was a steep drop down to the next ledge, at least ten feet, maybe twelve.

“Wait up!” Dirk called from my right. “I’ll climb down so I’m under you.”

I scowled and moved faster. He wasn’t my hero. My grip slipped and I fell, scraping my cheek and knee on my way down. I didn’t hit the ground. Instead, I hit Dirk’s chest. Somehow he’d leapt from the side and caught me before grabbing onto a ledge.

I stared into his eyes, water dripping off his nose as I dangled there, both of us suspended by that one muscled arm. “You should stop saying that you aren’t a hero. Only heroes are that stupid, and that lucky,” I gasped.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly, rain dripping off the end of his nose. “Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to grab onto the rock?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty comfortable here.” I grinned and then searched the rock face for hand holds. I found two and expected him to let go of me, but he kept one hand on my waist as we descended slowly through the insane weather.

The strange thing is that as I climbed, a song started playing in my head, a cello piece that I’d never heard before.

I needed to play it. I needed to hear it outside my head, the exultant storm and the treacherous cliff, but alive and awake instead of terrified.

I should have been scared, but with him to my left, shadowing my every move, I felt like nothing in the world could touch me.

He’d caught me. He’d saved me from the fall when it hadn’t seemed possible or likely.

We got to the ground and ran towards the truck.

At least I tried to, but my knee wasn’t holding up my weight, so I ended up hobbling.

He didn’t sweep me up in his arms and carry me like I half expected.

Maybe he’d torn his rotator cuff in that stupid move that had actually worked.

Serve him right, playing hero so idiotically, but hopefully he healed quickly.

When we got to the truck, he opened the door for me.

I snorted. “Such a hero,” but my heart pounded at the sight of those strong hands, scarred, but perfect, and so very capable. They’d saved me. He’d saved me. Again.

He rolled his eyes and pushed me in, slamming the door on me.

He climbed in his side and rolled his shoulder a few times before turning on the truck.

The heater started blowing on me, and I realized how cold I was.

I held my hands out on the hot streams while he reached under the seat and pulled out a metal box.

“Let me see your knee.”

“It’s fine.”

He growled and grabbed my ankle, pulling my leg across his lap. He ripped my jeans, proving just how delicate denim was, not that it hadn’t already been ripped. My knee didn’t look very good since it was bleeding, scraped, and swollen.

He opened the box and took out a packet that he ripped open then took out antibacterial wipes.

I gasped and glared at him. “You had those all along, but you spit on me? You really are an ignoramus.”

He pressed the wipe to my knee and I hissed in pain. He wasn’t being gentle as he irrigated the wound, pouring iodine over it. “You really are adorable when you throw down a slur. It’s how you get guys, isn’t it? It must be. It’s not the pink hair.”

I scowled at him. How dare someone with an obvious pink fetish give me a hard time? “Some guys love pink hair.”

“No, women like pink hair. Men feel like they’re dating cotton candy. Also, do you know what it feels like to run your hands through over-processed hair? There’s nothing better than long, silky hair on a beautiful woman, nothing worse than waking up with straw jabbing you in the face.”

How dare he insult my hair? Just because it was pink didn’t make it crappy. I jabbed his chest. “Like any woman would sleep with you.”

His eyes twinkled. He was intentionally provoking me. “Like any woman wouldn’t sleep with me.”

“Because you’re so boring you put them to sleep or because you’re so clumsy that you knock them unconscious?”

“Because I kiss like this.” He leaned over and brushed his lips over mine.

I froze while his feather-light touch sent ripples of awareness through me. He kept a firm grip on my knee, so I couldn’t really move, and he didn’t press into me, devouring me like he had earlier. It was sweet. Soft. Gentle, like I was something delicate and precious.

He pulled back and continued working on my knee.

I thumped his shoulder with my fist once I got part of my brain back. “What was that for?”

“Heroes always get a kiss when they rescue the princess. I mean, if I’m a hero, you must be the princess.”

I scowled at him. “Right. Princess Pink and her hero Sir Badger. Don’t kiss me again or I’ll put you in traction.”

“I’m already going to be in traction. I don’t know if you know this, but the laws of physics weren’t really with us on that extremely heroic rescue.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He grinned and finished cleaning my knee and bandaging me up like he had all the time in the world with the rain pounding on the windshield.

I’d never felt so safe and cozy, like nothing could hurt me in that little truck cab as long as Dirk was there.

I wanted to make it mine, to make him mine, and keep them both.

But I couldn’t, and the wanting was going to destroy me like I was going to destroy him.