Page 56 of The Villain's Beast

“I don’t expect you to believe me,” I explained, righting myself, only for him to give me another shove back down onto the couch. “But I did you a service.”

The things my father had threatened the night he found out about myfriendshipwith Gideon North went far beyond a little isolation and play drowning. My father was on the brink of ruining empires over the affair. He had so much dirt on Gideon’s father and his business dealings, he was going to try and take down the North empire, and the boy I loved with it. The things he’d promised to do if I didn’t do it first still haunted me.

“You did me a service,” he repeated.

He mocked.

He didn’t sound like himself, barely looked like himself. Fingers flexed into fists at his sides, body posed like a predator ready to pounce. I climbed back to my feet, and for the first time, found myself face to face with not Gideon North, but The Beast himself.

Chapter 39

Gideon

Ihad my hand around his throat before I even realized it, his back against the wall before I’d taken a single step. I squeezed, the delicate bones and cartilage of Fletcher’s neck like putty in my hands. He sputtered and gasped, blue eyes going wide, but far from scared. And he didn’t fight me.

He did me aservice.

I would wring the breath from his throat and then spit that declaration right back onto his grave.

“I used to wish I was dead,” I said, tightening my fingers around his throat until his face turned red as a strawberry. Spit gathered in the corners of his mouth, he lifted his hands between us. Instead of grabbing for my wrist like I expected, he shoved the heel of his palm forward, connecting hard against the fresh brand in the middle of my chest.

I dropped him back on the floor and fell onto the coffee table, which somehow held my weight. Fletcher bent over at the waist, hands braced against his knees as he sucked in breath after breath after breath.

“That was rude, Gideon.”

I stood from the table. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“I’d rather we just fuck and get it over with,” he said, closing the space between us, fisting my shirt into his hands and crashing our mouths together.

It had been years since I’d been caught off-guard, since I’d underestimated someone. The treatment from my father had long ago ensured I was at least a step ahead of most people in most things. Bellamy had been a surprise, with his daring advances that felt far too bold for someone as soft-spoken as he was. Daren and Luca’s secret relationship, another unexpected turn of events, but not entirely a shock.

This, though?

Fletcher’s mouth against mine, his tongue begging permission to slide past my lips?

I hadn’t seen this one coming.

“I hate you,” I said, grabbing his cheeks and puckering his mouth away from me like a fish on a line.

“I deserve it,” he muttered, yanking his face out of my grip. “I fucking deserve it and you can kill me later if you still want to, but not before you fuck me.”

“Sin.”

He reached under my shirt, fingers teasing their way over my ribs to the center of my chest. He went for the brand again, hooking the edge of his fingernail over a sunken piece of flesh in the shape of a rose petal.

“Do I have to make you angry again? Because I can.”

“I’m always angry at you,” I warned.

He pushed against the petal and twisted his finger, bringing our mouths back together, licking his tongue across my lip in a long and sinfully decadent slide.

“I think everything is going to go wrong,” he said, almost like he was thinking out loud, but he was closer to the truth than I think either of us wanted to admit. “I just want this one thing first.”

“This one thing,” I repeated.

“It’s everything.” Fletcher’s mouth fell open and he breathed heavily against my chin, chest heaving with every inhale. His attention flickered up toward the stairs and then back to me. “Why can they have it, but not us?”

“We could have,” I reminded him. “We did.”