Page 39 of The Ripper

“You even dared to show your breasts, to me and whoever might have passed by at that moment, so what’s this about?”

His grip loosened, but he didn’t move his hand away as his body was still very much glued to mine. I lost myself in his eyes for a brief moment, in the storms raging beneath his surface, but I managed to shift my gaze to the side, then swallowed audibly.

“Nothing,” I lied again, not caring if he could tell or not.

Why was it so easy to give in to him? Why wasn’t I running for the hills? Why was I allowing him to touch me and why was I fucking enjoying it?

Maybe because there was a certain dominance to his actions, a confidence to every move he made, as though he knew exactly what he could provoke inside me.

I knew he could have killed me with his bare hands without much effort, even if I fought him, but he didn’t want to. His touch was a contradiction to his profession, because while it was rough, it was also coated in a subtle gentleness that made my brain spin. Also, because he was the man I had been dreaming of, fantasized about, and craved like a starving beast for the last nine fucking years. The fact that he was a murderer couldn’t top that.

I wanted him either way.

“Are you lying to me?” he asked as his tone softened.

“No,” another lie. “Yes,” the truth. “I don’t know.”

I shook my head and put my palms on his chest to push him away, but then I felt his heartbeat hammering against it, and I couldn’t. Maybe it was the thrill of the unknown, maybe it was the alcohol I drank, but I was the bystander who couldn’t look away from the car crash, so instead of letting go of him, I fisted his T-shirt, my body shivering against his.

A sharp intake of breath filled his lungs as his calloused hands cupped my face, raising my head to look at him, his eyes piercing me with the intensity of a thousand blades.

Such beautiful eyes, so bright, so at odds with all the black surrounding him, so intense they made me wet my lips and whimper.

“You didn’t ask me to stay,” I whispered, my feet shaking when the truth fell out of my mouth.

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it just as fast. He seemed to carefully think about what he was going to say next, and I wanted to slap myself for being curious. It almost hurt to read all the emotions that crossed his features as he processed my words.

Confusion, happiness, anger, they were all mashed together, so much so that you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other one began.

“You’re going to be the death of me, woman,” was all he said before lifting me up and wrapping my legs around his waist so that I was now at eye level with him.

His palms felt warm against my bare thighs as he carried me to the couch in the living room, where he sat down with me on his lap. I tried to get up, but he didn’t allow me to move away, as one of his arms wrapped tightly around my back and the other rested casually on my thigh, his fingers digging into my skin.

It felt so wrong to enjoy his touch, but so good.

“What… what are you doing?”

“I’m talking some sense into you, now shut up and listen,” he almost groaned, but I blamed it on the pain in his shoulder. “I don’t want to take you home,” he began.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t want that either, that I wanted to stay, and talk, and figure things out, but the look he gave me stopped any sound.

“If it was up to me, I would keep you here forever. I would love nothing more than to take you back to my bedroom and do all the things I kept wishing I could do to you. Fuck, Snezhinka, the things I want to do to you, even the devil would blush.”

He paused as the hand on my thigh crept up, grabbing my ass tightly, possessively, then he pushed me down on his erection, making me feel everything I was provoking, and that elicited a strangled moan out of me.

“But I can’t,” he sighed. “I can’t, because this, you and me, will only happen when and if you accept me completely. I don’t care how much it fucking hurts me, I have to let you go. I have to allow you to choose me the same way I chose you. The way my body, my fucked-up brain and my heart chose you.”

He pressed his forehead to mine and breathed heavily, his lips inches away from mine.

So close.

Kiss me.

If I tilted my head a little further, our lips would have touched.

I didn’t move, and neither did he.

He sighed deeply, his warm breath brushing over my mouth, then he slowly got up and set me back down on my feet before his hands stopped touching me altogether.

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