Page 94 of The Ripper

“Ever since I became Arella Santino, I swore I’d never say that cursed name again, and I won’t.”

“I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from, Arella,” I mocked her alias, the name of an angel, which now tasted like acid on my tongue.

“I didn’t ask for your protection, I didn’t ask for any of this,” she waved her hands in the air.

More tears.

~ Are they even real?

“Well, tough fucking luck, we’re both smack in the middle of this shit storm, and ex-fucking-cuse me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you fucking say that communication is important if we want this to work?”

“I didn’t count on my past coming back to bite me in the ass when I said that,” she countered. “I didn’t count on the one person I can’t talk about coming to look for me right when I am happy again.”

I could have sworn a vein popped in my brain, because hearing her voice sounding so broken softened me all the way down to my toes, and somehow, the agony she carried in her tone diluted my anger in an instant. Seeing her like that tore me apart and scattered me, and I preferred to die a death by a thousand cuts than hear her voice so tormented.

“Who is that person, baby?” I grabbed her arms and pulled her to my chest. “Please, tell me,” I whispered, returning to the tone she knew, the tone that somehow only came out for her.

She began to sob, clutching at my T-shirt.

“I can’t,” she shook her head, then pulled out of my hold and headed for the elevator.

I frowned and paused in place for a second. “Where the fuck do you think you going?”

“To take a walk, I need to clear my head…”

I bit my fist and stormed towards her.

“If you think I’m going to let you go out there alone when someone is following you, you’re sorely mistaken,” I said as I grabbed her by the arm before she could push the button to call the elevator.

“Are you holding me hostage now?”

“If protecting you is synonymous with holding you hostage, then yes, I’ll tie you to the fucking bed if I have to.”

“Let go of my arm, Grimm,” she looked up at me.

The cold look she’d had on when she pointed the gun at me was back, so was the tone of her voice. Fucking freezing cold. The woman in front of me was nothing like the angelic version I had come to know. She wasn’t the woman I thought could never be ice. The woman in front of me was a fucking menace, and I felt myself getting hard at the sight of her, suddenly itching to test a theory.

I pointed to her wrists, where the words I told her were etched into her skin.

“That’s a reminder, huh? A fucking reminder not to allow that side of you to win?” I shook my head.

Her eyes bore into mine, almost detached, but I could still see her. I could still see the real her, not this icy version she kept buried.

“Let me go, Grimm,” she repeated.

“Or what?” I asked, tightening my grip on her.

I barely had time to blink before she lifted the arm I was holding, pulling mine up with it, and spun around, touching her back to mine for a second before kicking the back of my knee, causing me to fall backwards, giving her enough momentum to haul me over her shoulder and lay me on the fucking floor.

Me, a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man, hauled over and knocked down by a woman at least fifty pounds lighter.

~ Why is she so strong? And why does she know that move?

Groaning in pain, I jumped back up and hissed as I felt one of the stitches pull at my skin when my muscles tensed.

“You want to fight, baby?” I grinned and stalked towards her. “Show me what you got,” I urged her to come closer. “Come on, fight me.”

I had no intention of fighting back, but seeing her so angry turned me on so much that I wanted more of that anger boiling inside her. I wanted it poured out on me, as hot and acidic as I was seeing it.

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