Page 49 of Heart of a Villain

She lashed out, and her palm connected with skin roughened by coarse facial hair.

“Again,” the same voice said.

They grabbed her arm.

She shoved them away, grabbed a pillow, and swung. The person grunted, but a pillow wouldn’t be enough to stop them. As they continued to advance, she realized that a pillow wasn’t enough to stop them.

She punched.

They groaned.

“Again,” they repeated. “Hit me again.”

She kicked, slapped, pounded, thumped, and fumbled around until her fingers landed on something hard.

“Throw it.”

She flung whatever “it” was into the darkness and elbowed, scratched, and bit until her screams turned into shrieks. Battle cries. Roars of unspent fury. The explosion she was denied before.

“Fight me, Sayeda. Make me let you go.”

The person pinned her to the bed, and she prepared to knee them in the groin, but the lights came back on. Then Adrían, love-of-her-life Adrían, was staring down into her face.

“Adrían?”

Between their harsh, alternating breaths, raindrops pelted the windows. The lightning from before, which had been like a chasm leading to another universe in the dark sky, now sparked with less intensity than the flash from her phone’s camera. Thunder howled like a six-week-old puppy.

“You’re okay?” he asked.

His beauty didn’t come solely from what he looked like. Much of it came from how he made her feel, from how he managed to be a safe harbor when she was at her most vulnerable. During the worst moments of her life, he was there when she reached out, when she cried out for him, and when she opened her eyes.

How could she not call this fate?

Some would probably call her a fool to have loved this man for as long as she did. Perhaps she might have even believed them. But he was here. This wasn’t a mirage, a dream, or a journal entry. These were his eyes, his hands, his breaths. If she pressed her ear to his chest, she would hear his heartbeats.

“Adrían is gone, Sayeda.

You’ll never see him again.”

“Mora, is he dead?”

“No, but you won’t ever see him again.”

“I don’t care. I only care that he’s alive.”

Adrían leaned back and pulled her up with him. She clutched his shirt, holding him so close that soreness built in her ribs. Afraid that he would suddenly disappear, that this was solely the work of her lovesick mind, she leaned back to see his face. There was a fresh scratch above his brow, and a shallow wound reddened the part of his shoulder exposed in his gray tank.

“If your body tells you to fight, let me teach you how to listen to it,” he said. “Even if it’s me. Sayeda, it doesn’t matter if you hurt me. Eu nunca vou te machucar em retribuição.”

The words floated through her mind, bending and twisting until they all sounded like the same language:

“Sayeda, it doesn’t matter if you hurt me. I will never hurt you in return.”

She cradled his jaw, letting the warmth of his skin mingle with hers. Thankfully, he and Wren weren’t actually together because, as of that very moment, she knew she would have fought for him down to her last breath.

Given the softness of the moment, she’d anticipated a slow, easy brush of their lips.

But he groaned.

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