Page 76 of Kissing the Villain

“And we have to do it in the dark?”

“It’s time to get over your fear.” He rubbed circles over my shoulder blade. “How about we start now?”

Marcello started down the ladder, forcing me to conquer my fear. A wave of anxiety surged through my veins, and I wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my shorts.

“You got this, Alex,” Marcello said from below.

I cautiously moved down the ladder, and Marcello scooped me into his arms.

“You did well, princess. See, it’s all in your head. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.”

Why can’t Luca be more like him?

Was Marcello using his charms and sex appeal to trick me? I never knew what to think. The Salvatores always had a plan, ten steps ahead of everyone.

I thought about kissing him, intoxicated by his delicious, manly scent. My heart raced abnormally fast, thumping in my chest like a drum. I clutched his thick bicep to steady myself, still shaky from my nerves and the climb. He must have sensed my desire because he stepped back, his hands falling away from my body.

Marcello wanted me.

But he was loyal to Luca.

He sighed. “Let’s go.”

We walked through a dense passage that dumped us on the beach near Wellington Manor. I could see my grandfather’s estate looming above us from Founders Way.

“What was it like growing up here?”

Marcello twisted the cap off his water bottle. “It was like you’d expect.”

“Give me something, Marcello.”

He pointed at the massive boulder we were approaching. “This is Finnegan’s Rock. When I was in high school, everyone came here to get high and drunk.”

“What about you?”

“Yeah. Even me.” He gave me a sinister look. “I’m not the uptight asshole you think.”

I sipped from my water bottle and smiled. “Never said that.”

He reached over and tugged on a loose curl falling from my hairband. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I know more about your mother than all of you combined.”

“My mom wasn’t like us.”

“Obviously. She was so full of life and carefree.”

“She wasn’t like that all the time,” he said in a hushed tone, his mood shifting as he spoke. “Some months, she would fall into such a deep depression we couldn’t get her out of bed. My father would beg her to get up. He tried everything to help her. Nothing worked. We learned how to ride out the waves of her moods.”

“I guess she was more like me than I thought.”

He bobbed his head. “You have no idea.”

“That’s why you’re so patient with me,” I assumed.

His blue eyes found mine. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

“And that’s why Luca pushes me away.”

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