Page 50 of Heart of a Villain

She sucked in a breath.

Their lips touched, the pressure going immediately from gentle to rough. His mouth nudged hers open, and she breathed in every heated exhale that left his lungs.

There was no shyness.

Barely a prelude.

One second, her hand was on his face, the other at her side. The next, she was gripping a handful of the thick, dark strands of his hair while her other hand continued to hold onto his jaw, both to control the way he moved his head and to follow his lead.

So much time had passed.

Still, they didn’t kiss like new lovers.

They didn’t kiss like hearts who needed a moment to be reacquainted. Each flick of his tongue took her back to Morocco, to their naked bodies and him inside her, hotter than her blood.

Too soon, he pulled away to brush tender kisses along her forehead. As thick as the bulge was that pressed against her hip, he didn’t go further, but her body begged for him. It was neither intense nor faint, but the tightness overflowing with liquid heat was there, letting her know that when it was time, it would be ready. There would be pleasure.

“Sayeda?” he whispered.

She coaxed his head to kiss his cheek. “Yes?”

“What happened to you?”

“Just fear, Adrían,” she lied.

“From what?”

“Are you worried about what we’re doing? What we might end up doing?”

“Might?”

She kissed his jaw.

“That, among other things,” he clarified. “Talk to me. What do you think will happen if you talk to me?”

She kissed the tip of his chin, the space beneath his bottom lip, and then sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. She sucked until he had no choice but to give in, and she didn’t stop kissing him until she was confident the subject was dropped—for now.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

“Abençoe meus passos e me dê forças para enfrentar os desafios que temos pela frente. Proteja meus companheiros e nos guie com sabedoria e coragem. Que possamos retornar com segurança para aqueles que amamos. Amém.”

Adrían opened his eyes and raised his head to find everyone looking in his direction. Not one of them appeared uncomfortable, at least not obviously so, but Mike and Lee looked as relaxed as if they were floating down a lazy river on inner tubes. In situations like these, conversations fueled by adrenaline would probably be expected. Still, outside of his quiet prayer, there’d been little to no chatter directly related to the next task on Dez’s training list.

“So, what’s the full story with you and Sayeda?” Mike asked. “And the fact that she somehow got mixed up in the same gang you used to run with? That can’t be a coincidence.”

Honestly, he was hoping it was.

He hoped her entire presence in Brazil was by chance and that he’d had nothing to do with her decision to hide out in his home country. After all, Brazil was large and diverse, and it was possible Sayeda was afraid her mother would have easily tracked her down in the United States because of her mother’s connections there.

“I met Sayeda in Morocco a little over ten years ago when I was first ‘recruited’ by Central,” he said. “She was my private chef.”

Dez whistled. “Private chef? Central got real fancy. We got our asses tagged with darts and were shocked to within an inch of our sanity.”

“I still got a dart, but no shocks. But the house was under armed guard. Until I held a knife to Sayeda’s throat, I assumed the guards were there only to stop me from escaping, but they converged on me the moment I touched her. I knew then that she was someone important, but I learned later that she was someone special.”

The group taunted him with a long, drawn-out, exaggerated, and over-the-top “aww,” loud enough to be heard over the pulse of the rotating blades that flanked them on either side.

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