Page 91 of The Villain We Tempt

“Dirty little secrets…”

Lochlan’s gaze slides over to the girl sitting two seats away from me.

“Secret agendas…”

This time, he’s looking at Andrew Kim, near the back of the room, and the nervous pulse inside me returns to normal.

“You’re going to pair up. The purpose of this assignment is to allow those masks that we all wear to come down, just a little, and to let your partner see the real you.”

My chest tightens.

Fat fucking chance…

“I understand that this might feel awkward,” Lochlan continues with an easy shrug, “but focus on the process. You’re not going to be revealing your dark dirty secrets to each other just like that. You’ll have to tease and coax it out of your partner, use the right language to disarm them and put them at ease enough to let that inner Shadow out from behind the Persona.”

I glance nervously around the room and then let my gaze land on Bella. She gives me a skeptical, confused look and shrugs.

“I’ll be pairing you up now. We’ll take the remainder of this period for you to get to know your partner on a surface level. Please make sure you have their contact information before you leave today. You need to have at least two interactions with this partner, and make notes of these interactions, before class next week.”

I blow air through my lips.

Yes, “baring my true self” to a classmate might sound like a terrifying prospect. I'm sure it would be, if I had any plans whatsoever toactuallybare my “true self”.

Spoiler alert: I don’t.

At this point, I’m a master of hiding those parts of me. I mean, if I can keep my Villainess life hidden from Papa?

I’ll befinewhen it comes to sophomore Psychology majors.

Lochlan begins to pair up the class. Each matchup seems to be the last one anybody involved wants, and Lochlan is clearly amused at the rounds of groans that follow each two names.

“Bella Drakos…” Lochlan’s lips curl at the corners as he looks right at his cousin. “You’ll be with Trevor Cohen.”

Bella shoots him a murderous glare, which only makes him grin a little wider as he exhales and turns his gaze to me.

“And since there’s an odd number of students in the class…”

Fuck, no.

Fuck fuck fuckity FUCK?—

“You’ll be withme, Galina.”

Shit fuck.

Lochlan tells us to rearrange our seats so we can spend the rest of the class one-on-one with our new partners. Bella gives me a rueful look and a heavy sigh as she trudges over to a scowling Trevor.

A chair scrapes across the floor. I wince at the sound and look up to see Lochlan dragging the heavy wooden chair from behind Professor McGrath’s desk over to me. He turns it around and sits astride it backward, facing me. He plants his elbows on the small desk between us, and grins smugly as he levels his gaze right at mine.

“Well then,Ms. Nikitin,” he murmurs over the humming din of everyone's conversation. “Time to tell me all your dirty little secrets.”

14

LOCHLAN

I’m not a sadist,I swear. Really.

Achilles maybe has a little bit of that in him. Drago, definitely. But it’s not sadism that has me spending the rest of class watching in delight as Galina wriggles like a worm on a hook.