Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain, #3)(83)

“I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Her nose scrunched. “They’re just nipples.”

“Sage!”

“What!” she answered. “I was just staring at yours, and I didn’t apologize. Do you want me to apologize?”

If he requested an apology from her for merely staring at his chest, then he would need to be burned in a holy sanctuary for the thoughts he’d been having about hers.

“No,” he rasped. “I don’t want us to talk about nipples at all.”

“Very well. What body parts do you want to speak of?”

“None of them!”

“Ears?” Sage questioned cheekily. “There’s nothing suggestive about ears.”

At this moment in time, every part of her body was suggestive to him. That was the problem.

“I don’t want to discuss your ears or anything else attached to you.” His words oozed condescension.

It was too harsh. It was too quick. The impish expression she had—which, in all honesty, he’d taken morbid delight in—vanished, replaced with a meek unsureness that he really fucking hated.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “for making you uncomfortable. I’ll stop. You’re trying to be professional, and I am ruining it.”

You ruin everything, Trystan.

“Sage,” he started, then stopped when she continued.

“I want you. If that wasn’t obvious—although I’m sure it is obvious and has been obvious, but I realize that you’ve decided to keep us at a distance, and I should be respecting it, and I haven’t been. I’ve been pushing you on purpose, and it’s unkind and disrespectful, so I’m going to stop.”

“Stop?” he repeated, his feeble heart thudding in his ears, the crackle of the fire sounding miles and miles away.

“I’m your apprentice. That is enough. I’m giving up.”

Don’t, his mind pleaded. Please don’t give up on me. My pathetic, tortured soul is in tatters, and unfortunately, it’s yours.

But none of those words came out. In fact, nothing came out. His mouth opened and it closed, and then it opened again, staying there.

“You don’t have to say anything, sir. You’re off the hook.” She laughed at herself, and it was self-deprecating. Gods damn it. “Do you want the couch or the bed?” she asked, turning away to consider the room.

“You,” he whispered.

“What?” Sage’s head spun around, eyes wide.

“You,” he repeated, stalking toward her slowly, giving her every chance to back away, even as his hand buried itself in her damp locks, tugging her head back as she gasped.

“Me?” she asked, the vulnerability in the question cracking what was left of his reserve, his conscience.

“You,” he said one last time before he crushed his lips to hers.

Something in the back of his mind attempted to pull the logic to the forefront once again. Destiny had predicted they’d destroy each other. This was selfish. This was wrong. This was surely the evilest thing he’d ever done.

But he didn’t care.

Trystan Maverine was The Villain.

And it was about time he began acting like it.





Chapter 53


Evie


Evie’s mind had always needed a moment or two to catch up when something substantial occurred. When she met The Villain for the first time, she’d held an unnatural illusion of calm in the face of the kingdom’s greatest foe. But that part of her subconscious, the part that reminded her to panic and scream and cry whenever the situation called for it, had made her flail alone in her room for nearly two hours after she’d signed her employment contract.

Her boss’s mouth on hers would catch up to her, too, the way his tongue glided against her lower lip causing her to make mortifying sounds as she pushed up onto her toes, desperately trying to get closer to him. Her fingers teased through his already messy hair, but this time she’d know that the wild direction of each strand would be because of her.

Heat. She was a breathing blur of startlingly warm light as his hands slid down from her cheeks, caressing gently along each contour of her hips before gripping them and dragging her up against him. She writhed, he groaned, and there was nothing but an intense swarm of emotion as they separated, still inches apart, foreheads together, breathing heavily against each other.

He stared at her, his dark eyes softening before intensifying again. “I want you.”

Evie, for once, did not fill the silence that followed the statement with nonsense. “What does that mean?”

She moved a hand from his shoulder to cup his cheek, feeling bold and finished with timidness. A flash of panic was all she saw before he started to pull back.

Not this time, you coward. She forced him to stay with her, to stay in this moment.

Trystan’s warm breath was shaky between them. “I want everything that I shouldn’t, and it’s selfish. Sage, the destiny monster—”

Her hands closed over his lips. “I know. It told you of some horrific future in which you do something terrible to me because you always have. Because that’s the life you believe you’re meant to lead, and if you continue to live in that doubt, that’s the only life you’re ever going to lead.”