Page 71 of The Ripper

~No, she won’t!

~ What if she tries to run away?

~ She wouldn’t. No.

Arella wouldn’t leave me. She wasn’t that weak. She was strong. She could accept that I was part of that Russian mafia.

~ But what if she can’t?

I smacked the side of my head with the bridge of my palm as my heart galloped in my chest, fear clawing at my body from the inside out. Was I even capable of letting her go? No, I wasn’t. The thought of chaining her to my bed sounded more and more appealing as scenarios of her running away from me spun through my mind.

I’d had too much of her to let her go now. It was too late. She was mine.

I couldn’t look at her, though. I couldn’t watch how fear and disappointment would undoubtedly wrinkle her features. I couldn’t watch her slip through my fingers when I’d barely had her for a whole fucking day.

“Nakhuy moyu zhizn’[8],” I whispered under my breath and took another shot, then turned around with the bottle in my hand, ready to throw it against the wall and smash it.

“Grimm,” she called my name, stopping my hand in midair.

I turned to her and allowed my eyes to wander over her face, searching for the same disgust I saw when I showed her what Justin did to his ex, but it wasn’t there. All I could see on her expression was fucking compassion, not a drop of fear, disappointment, or anything in between.

She confidently stepped closer to me, pried the bottle out of my fingers and set it on the counter, then intertwined her fingers with mine.

The hands that had so much blood on them that no amount of holy water could ever cleanse them, the hands that took so many lives, the hands that relished in the slow disappearance of a heartbeat, the hands of a fucking ripper. And she touched those hands with her clean ones. With the hands that saved countless lives, with the hands that healed and caressed and soothed, with the hands that helped everyone, the hands of a fucking saint.

I brought them to my mouth and kissed them again and again, countless times, ready to fall to my knees and beg her not to leave me. But Arella only looked at me with the gentlest of eyes, much too kind for the monster standing in front of her.

“Mne vse ravno, moya lyubov’[9],” I froze on the spot with my lips pressed to her knuckles, “Ya… ya khochu tebya.[10]”

I didn’t know how to react anymore.

~ What the fuck is happening right now? Since when does she speak Russian?

I took her face in my palms and stroked her cheeks with my fingertips, staring at her with shock and admiration. She didn’t care. She called me “my love”. She said she wanted me.

How could I not know she spoke Russian? How could I not figure out that she understood everything I said to her?

“You never told me you spoke Russian,” I whispered so close to her lips.

“You never asked,” she gave me a smile and shrugged.

I was instantly hard. I didn’t know if it was the fact that she spoke Russian, or the fact that she was still there, but my heart clenched painfully.

“Since when?” I asked as I slowly spun us around and pushed her against the wall.

“I started learning it after you called me Snezhinka on the plane. I was curious about what it meant, but then I liked the way it sounded, so I took a few classes,” she explained as I brushed my fingertips over the length of her neck.

I couldn’t control myself any longer. I pressed myself against her and crushed my lips to hers. Any form of gentleness was gone from that kiss as I forced her mouth open and intertwined my tongue with hers.

Fuck, it had been too long.

Too long since I kissed her last.

Too long since I tasted her.

Too fucking long.

Our teeth clashed as I hurried to undo her jeans and slide them down her legs.

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