Free Villain by Red Garnier

creep?” Kevin asked.
    “Yes, Stella, who am I?” Gabriel repeated. “More importantly, what am I to you?” Gabriel seemed as eager to know the answer as Kevin, his jaw harsh with determination. What on earth did Gabriel expect her to say? She’d barely been able to admit to her lust in the darkness; now he wanted her to do so in public? He really was a villain!
    “He’s nobody you know, Kevin,” she said.
    “Oh, I’ll bet he knows me,” Gabriel told her. “I’ll bet he knows a whole lot about me.”
    Stella stared at Gabriel, her brow marred in a scowl. “What are you doing?”
    His voice dropped, the tone a silky whisper as his eyes fell to her mouth. “I want to know what it is I am to you. I want to hear it from your lips.”
    She glared at him. As if he didn’t know!
    You’re the man I offered my body to .
    Gabriel was silent for a moment, as if that wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “Is that all?”
    Stella would not spill her guts this easily to him. Not now, and certainly not with Kevin here. She would not even think it or else he’d see right through her. Instead she kept her mind busy, concentrating on the present. “Is that what you’re here for, Gabriel, to collect?” she asked.
    “When I come to collect, Stella, you will have no doubt about it.”
    Shifting from looking at one to the other, Kevin demanded, “What the hell is going on here?”
    “You stay out of this,” Gabriel spat.
    “Now wait a damn minute here—” Kevin began, but then his glare vanished, and his face began to pale. “It’s you! You’re that pathetic, crazed lunatic… You’re him!”
    Gabriel grunted. “Please. Call me Villain. Everybody else does.”
    “You’re the asshole who cursed this town and dragged it with you to your personal, stinking hell!”
    “Kevin, stop!” Stella told him.
    Kevin was beyond listening, beyond reasoning, his warm eyes now reddened and angry and wild. “You’re the bastard who killed my uncle! You’re the fucking loser who’s been haunting this town ever since that silly girl killed herself over you!”
    “Kevin!”
    It was too late, for Gabriel grabbed Kevin by the collar and slammed him back against a tree trunk, his teeth bared. “You can call me anything you want, and I don’t give a fucking shit, but don’t ever speak of her again, or I swear I’ll think nothing of killing you, too.”
    Stella rushed forward. “Gabriel, please,” she said, pressing a shaky hand to his arm, his bicep bulged and tight with tension under her palm. “Just let him go. He’s been fed stories all his life, and he knows no better than to believe them.”
    Gabriel was panting, his nostrils twitching.
    Slowly, his dark, glimmering eyes moved from a panting, sweaty Kevin, to settle on her. “I need to talk to you.”
    She could have melted right then, in a warm, liquid pool of all that was mushy.
    “I can’t now,” she said, glancing past her shoulder, worrying what would happen if anyone passed by and word spread out that the Villain was out harassing the townsfolk. “I’ll try to come by tonight.”
    “That’s not good enough.”
    “Stella, don’t listen to him,” Kevin told her. “He’s a murderer, a killer. He’ll kill you, too!”
    Gabriel pulled Kevin forward then slammed him back again, his knuckles white from the tight grip he held on Kevin’s collar. “If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”
    “Gabriel, go now,” Stella insisted. “I’ll be by as soon as I can.”
    He looked troubled, desperate. “No. I need to see you. Now.”
    “I—” She colored everywhere. “I need to see you, too, but I can’t now.”
    “Son of a bitch, you killed my uncle!”
    Gabriel turned, eyes narrowed into slits, his face inching so close to Kevin’s it made him cringe. “Yes! It’s me. I did all those things and then some. How about adding one more sin to that long list of mine, hmm?”
    “You didn’t really kill his uncle, did you?”
    Gabriel turned