Page 90 of Kissing the Villain

His dark blue eyes bore into mine, stripping me bare with one look. I attempted to sit up, and Marcello crushed me against his chest, holding me as if he were afraid to let go. Most mornings, I opened my eyes to find him in the armchair by the window or in bed with me.

“Marcello,” I said as I cleared the sleep from my eyes. “Did I have a nightmare?”

He brushed my curls off my forehead. “It’s okay. You’re safe, Alex.”

With Marcello, I always felt safe. I didn’t get the same sense of calm from Luca, which was strange. Marcello rocked me back to sleep in the middle of the night. He cared for me in ways Luca never had.

“I have to leave soon for a meeting,” he told me.

“Okay.” I rubbed my growling stomach. “Can you get my breakfast? I’m starving.”

He removed his cell phone from his pocket and typed a one-handed text message to the kitchen staff. I tapped on his arm, and he let me go so that I could prop myself up on a stack of pillows. My eyes swept over the room, glazed over the clean bedsheets. Heart pounding, I rechecked the white sheets. Not a drop of blood. No knife with a snake wrapped around the silver handle.

What the hell happened last night?

I had a nightmare about The Serpents and The Salvatores. Or was that real? I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers and sighed. I hated losing chunks of time and the memories I struggled to recall.

The bloody knife flashed into my mind. Then, the gash on Luca’s right side as he crumbled to the ground in front of me. How could that have been real? It looked so raw as his blood dripped onto the cement.

Had I imagined everything?

The hot sex with Luca.

The Serpents.

The blood.

The knife.

Biting my nails, I stared into the expanse of the room. “I stabbed Luca,” I mumbled, still in disbelief at my actions. “That was real, right?”

He nodded. “My brother almost died. He lost a lot of blood.”

I covered my face with my hands as tears fell from my eyes. Marcello slid his arm behind my back and hugged me. His fingers tapped my hip in a soothing motion. I liked it when he touched me.

“I could have killed Luca,” I choked out. “What the fuck was I thinking?”

Marcello dragged me closer to him and rested his hand on my thigh. “You weren’t.”

“Luca always says you can’t kill the devil.” I laughed. “Guess he’s right.”

As much as I wanted to hate Luca, I cared about him. He’d made my life miserable for years. But when he lowered his defenses, I saw another side to him. My scarred boy. The devil in all of my dirty fantasies.

I glanced at Marcello. “Did I have sex with Luca last night?”

Another nod.

Of course, he knew. He was probably watching us from the creepy spy shed in the backyard.

“You guys chased me through Beacon Bay,” I said. “That was real, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But the blood…” I shook my head. “How did Luca make it look like I stabbed him? It seemed so real.”

“We had help from a Hollywood makeup artist,” he admitted.

“How about the blood?”

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