Page 4 of The Villain

This time, he punched me—right in the gut, the same place I’d been struck in my motel room—and I doubled over, gasping as I fought to inhale through the pain. My eyes leaked involuntarily, and my body trembled in shock. When I could finally breathe, I peered back up at him through blurry vision.

“Right,” I rasped. “Not supposed to talk.”

Through the haze, I caught a massive lion head tattoo on his throat, its jaws gaping mid-roar over his Adam’s apple. The ink should have looked stupid, poser-ish, but it worked on him. I wholeheartedly believed he was the king of his pride.

His lip curled slightly, the first real emotion he’d shown since walking into this room. “You killed my father, so I’m going to kill you.”

His father? Well, fuck. That wasn’t good. No wonder he’d gone through all the trouble of tracking me down in New Jersey. I didn’t know this guy, or his dad, but I’d been responsible for a lot of lost lives. And even if I wasn’t to blame for his father’s death, there were probably a dozen other sons who wanted me dead for theirs. He could be a stand-in for any of them.

“His name was Patrick O’Shea,” he clarified. “He ran guns for you.”

Ah, yes. Old Man O’Shea. He’d been a large man despite his age, maybe in his sixties or seventies. Smart. Solid. Brutal. Had a mean glint in his blue eyes that had always made me feel on edge. But Patrick had never commanded a room with the kind of power his son did.

“He thought that because you’re both Irish, he had your loyalty. And I told him he was too old school. I told him the Detroit Devil has no loyalty. I was right. He was wrong. Now he’s dead.”

I bit the inside of my cheek until I drew blood. My loyalty was earned, not owed. And it certainly wasn’t based on some connection to the old country. My piece-of-shit father was three generations removed from the immigrants in our family who’d come to America. I wasn’t even sure why he’d given me this stupid name.

What was I supposed to say to this guy?Sorry?Did it even matter now? The old man was already dead, and his son was going to avenge him.

Maybe he didn’t like my lack of reaction. Suddenly, a big hand wrapped around my neck and shoved the back of my head against the wall. His face loomed over me, still eerily controlled, his expression nearly placid despite his hard tone. “Do you not believe me?”

I swallowed, and his fingers eased just a fraction. A slight nod let me know I was finally allowed to answer. I licked my lips, andhis gaze dipped there for just a moment before returning to my eyes. My cock, which had softened after that punch to the gut, gave another kick in my jeans. Because I was fucked up. “No, I believe you.”

His gaze dropped to my crotch, then slid back up to my face. His eyes shifted, and his study of me turned a little too real. Too personal. Too all-knowing. I squirmed under his grip and ground my molars, but all that did was tighten his hand on my throat. And of course it only made my stupid dick harder, blood rushing south, my panic only making it worse.No, no, no…This can’t be happening.Why now, when nothing had made me more than half-hard since I’d woken up in that hospital bed? Embarrassment flushed through my body like a heat wave, and my skin burned.

A breath left him in a rush. “Fuck,” he whispered. Hand still around my neck, he drew my head away from the wall and leaned my body toward him. Fingers dug into my pulse point, and his thumb jammed into the underside of my chin. His head tilted, and his voice pitched even lower, the tones curling around my shaft.

“The devil likes a hand around his throat?”

My heart hammered against my ribcage as my balls tightened. His lips were close, so close… And those unsettling blue eyes filled my vision. My brain fired signals in all directions like wayward missiles: danger, attraction, fear, arousal, shame. I wanted him gone so I could get my head on straight and react appropriately. I wanted him to never leave, because being the object of his attention was the most alive I’d felt in ten years.

His lips parted for a moment, and then he blinked, pupils narrowing to small points as he shoved me away. I slammed into the cot on my side, head bouncing off the thin mattress. He rose from his chair with such force that it clanged to the ground, and he turned to reach for the door.

No. No fucking way…

Fuck him. How dare he make me feel like this and then abandon me?

How could I get him to stay? What could I use against him?

Of course.Patrick.His father.

“He begged!” I bit out, using my core to sit up despite the bruises on my torso protesting. I was the Detroit Devil now, taking shots I knew would land. I wanted him to hurt like I hurt. So I hurled anything I could think of, even if it was a lie. “He begged for his life! He cried, and he pissed himself as he?—”

The door slammed shut.

And he was gone.

THREE

Cian

I strode out of the shed as the door slammed shut behind me, and the lock automatically engaged. The soundproofing had worked. Devlin’s voice was nothing but a muffled buzz now.

I didn’t really care what he said about my father, true or not. He’d been trying to get a rise out of me, and it hadn’t worked. At least not that kind of rise. I couldn’t say the same about my dick.

I ignored my most trusted friend, Rhys Callahan, standing guard outside the shed, and stalked to the back of our property. A bird cawed overhead as I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, and I picked my way through the small, wooded area until the creek came into view. It babbled along happily, as if the ten minutes I’d just spent in Devlin Walsh’s presence hadn’t shifted my world’s axis.

I’d only seen a few grainy photographs of the Detroit Devil before today, and that hadn’t been enough to get a read on what he looked like. I’d expected some ugly motherfucker with a craggy face and soft body. A hideous man, who made up for his shortcomings by being a murderous fuck.