Page 38 of Hero & Villain (Super Serum Billionaires #1)

Chapter Nineteen

VILLAIN

I t was absolutely silent in that room far beneath the surface, dark blue carpet and silvery blue flocked wallpaper surrounding groups of tufted leather chairs.

They looked worn, comfortable, the kind of chair you spent a lifetime wearing in.

Paper newspapers mingled with expensive devices on the tables next to the chairs.

It was like a library without any books.

A bar ran along the back of the room, but it smelled like green tea mixed with scotch. Where were the stripper poles and the bartenders?

There was a dark blue door to the right of the bar. Maybe Dirk was in there, although it was four or five a.m. so maybe he was in bed like a half-sensible person.

I headed for the door, walking around a large dark leather wingback and then froze, staring at Dirk Dagger, in the flesh, face relaxed in sleep as his head rested against one wing, a tablet on his lap, a cup of hot chocolate by his elbow.

Here he was, at my mercy. I could kill him in less than a second.

It would be so easy, and so right. Even if he didn’t know who I was, the way I felt about him made him a risk that I couldn’t take.

I couldn’t care about anyone else that my grandfather could use to control me any more than I could allow Dirk to have the upper hand, to be the one who controlled my strings.

I inhaled deeply and then lunged, but instead of slitting his throat, I slapped the flat of the blade against the side of his neck.

I wasn’t going to kill a sleeping man; it would be too easy.

I straddled his lap, steel against his throat when he opened his eyes, sleep gone with a blink as he realized the situation.

“Give me a reason not to kill you,” I said.

He stared at me for too long before he said, “How could I argue with the goddess of death? I have no objection to dying.”

I scowled at him, sliding the blade up until it met his obnoxiously perfect chiseled jaw. “I have no objection to killing you.” Was that true? Could I kill him when I couldn’t kill Baldy? What else could I do?

He smiled. That conniving, viciously deceptive man actually smiled at me! “I felt from the very beginning that we had a lot in common.”

I bared my teeth and pressed the blade harder against him. “What did you do it for? Was it money, business, revenge? Why did you kiss me on top of that tower?”

He raised an eyebrow. “It couldn’t possibly have been because I wanted to?”

“You aren’t an idiot.”

“Neither are you, but you kissed me. Why did you, Daniela Delavigne, kiss some worthless piece of flesh in such a flagrant display of depravity for the whole world to see? I was your first kiss, wasn’t I?”

“I’d been kissed before. Don’t try to change the subject. Why did you kiss me?”

“You’d been kissed, but you’d never grabbed a man by the front of his shirt and pulled him into you, taking his mouth like you were dying for it.”

I hissed and turned the blade so it almost broke the skin. “Fine. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll just kill you now.”

“Go ahead. Since I’m such a criminal mastermind, setting you up like that, I deserve to die.” His hands slid up my legs over my flannel PJs, his touch electrifying in spite of the thick fabric.

“Stop it! You can’t seduce me now that I know what you are.”

He smiled, dark and dangerous. “Do all you villains sleep in flannel pajamas?”

“They’re black.”

“And the puppy slippers, are they part of your villainy wardrobe as well?”

His hands kept sliding up, over hips and then higher up my sides. He’d try to take the knife. Good. His throat would be bloody before he knew what was happening.

“It isn’t the wardrobe that makes the villain; otherwise, you’d be the comic relief in your pink pants.”

He wasn’t wearing pink right now, no, he was wearing a black suit with a black button-up and pink tie. Just as I’d expected, he was a paragon of perfection in a tux. “You like my pink pants.”

“Shut up. You can’t seduce me.” But maybe he could. Maybe I wasn’t much of a villain after all.

His voice was low, as delicious as Straw’s C string.

“You think that’s what I’m doing? You’re the one on my lap in her sexy lingerie.

It would be unnatural not to have a purely physical reaction.

” He felt so good and looked so good in his suit.

Why did he have to feel so perfect? For a split-second, I lost my edge, and like a proper villain, he took advantage of my weakness.

A little snick was all I needed to hear to realize that he had a knife against my ribs in the exact location that would do the most damage to my heart if he punched up. It would take some force, but he had the muscle and training to do it.

“You’re despicable,” I seethed.

“And you like me almost as much as I like you. I’ve been waiting for you to stab me ever since the year you came to the three hundred for your birthday, when Tom told me how well you use knives.”

“I never stabbed Tom.”

“At the Three-Hundred, you stabbed a man and sent him to the hospital. You don’t remember?”

“There are a lot of men and a lot of hospitals. Some men love hospitals. I personally would never go to one but?—”

He kissed me, cutting me off with soft lips that carried sweetness and chocolate.

He was gentle, soft, sweet, but also insistent.

His kiss spread through me like sunshine and bubble-gum ice-cream.

I held him tight, barely noticing that we were moving, that he was carrying me somewhere. The man could multi-task.

My back came against a wall, anchoring me while he held me, his lips soft then hard, making me want more connection, more of him.

He froze in the middle of that kiss, as suddenly as he’d started.

He slowly pulled away from me, at least my face, but my legs were around his waist, and they weren’t letting go.

Also, my stolen knife was still at his throat, but I’d completely forgotten about that.

It was lucky that I hadn’t slit his throat when I got lost in his sweet kiss.

He gave me a curious frown. “Miss Delavigne, what viscous liquid just dripped on my hand? Come to think of it, your pajamas are rather damp. Has it been raining?”

“Only sparks.” I caught his lips and bit almost hard enough to break the supple, taut skin, but not quite.

He kissed me again, not quite as frantically, but his hands were running over me.

I didn’t hate him touching me; in fact, I almost liked it.

Fine, I loved his hands on me, because it wasn’t as if he was groping particular pieces of me, but like he wanted to rub down all of me until I was a contented puppy.

He broke the grip of my legs, spun me around, and pressed me to the wall, fingers circling my right wrist while he grasped my left arm in his strong hands.

I hissed as that strong hand put so much pressure on my arm, but it was probably a good idea to stop the bleeding.

“Who hurt you?” His voice was low, ice-cold, so dangerous it made me shiver, or maybe that was his warm breath on my ear.

He was holding me against the wall, demonstrating his strength and my weakness. I should probably kick him between the legs, but he was too close, and I liked him that way. “That’s none of your concern.”

He kissed my ear, slow, sweet, tickling kisses until I was hyperventilating and more awake than I’d ever been in my life.

He was so warm, so strong, more essential to me than air.

“Should I use a truth serum on you? Where did you go with Jezebel? Who stabbed you?” He brushed my ear with his nose, sending a shiver through me.

“Shot. It barely grazed me.” A flesh wound didn’t matter. I tried to turn so I could pull him closer, but he held me still, hand still applying pressure to the wound.

“You like me so much,” he murmured.

“I’d like to stab you,” I said, but I was still struggling to turn so that I could kiss him properly, hold him tight, and forget about every other thing.

“Mm.” He kissed my shoulder as he twisted my wrist, using the exact pressure points that made it impossible for me to hold on to the knife.

I dropped it. He caught it and threw it end over end to stab into the wall behind the bar. The thud came right before he spun me around with my right arm pinned behind my back, my injured arm still in his grasp, but it didn’t hurt anymore.

“Daniela,” he murmured, sliding his nose over my jaw.

“James.”

He pulled away with a frown. “James?”

“That’s your name, isn’t it? I should say it’s one of them.”

His eyes narrowed. “You abandoned Prudence at a gas station. Why? Were you followed? Is that when you got shot?”

“It’s like the Spanish Inquisition. No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

He raised a brow while smiling, which was an adorable expression up there with his dimpled cheek. “You’re loopy from lack of blood.”

“I’m not, I’m enraged because I find you attractive. You’re a terrible person from a terrible, hypocritical, judgmental family. My grandfather might kill someone, but he wouldn’t insult them first.”

“My family insulted you?”

The memory of his mother’s sneer, her payoff, made me snarl at him. “Let me go!”

“So you can stab me? I really would love to, but at the moment I have some pressing business. That is, pressing you against this wall is my current business. This is what we call having a moment.” His warm brown eyes dropped to focus on my mouth for a second.

“Your mouth doesn’t advertise itself as wickedly phenomenal, but after one taste, I can’t think, can’t function, can’t focus on my diabolical plans as well as a proper villain should. ”

“Save your lies for someone who believes them. I’ll never listen to another word you say.”

He smiled, eyes glinting. “It’s much more enjoyable to lie to someone who expects it, don’t you think? Otherwise, it just isn’t a challenge. Call Trevor.”

I frowned at him. “Excuse me?”