Page 51 of His Favorite Color is Blood
Grim walked up to Misha, grabbing him, not too gently, by the jaw. “No. You, my pretty birdie, are my property.”
Misha’s breath hitched, and all of a sudden, he didn’t know if his cage was still open or not, yet he knew he was too afraid to check the lock. He ran his thumb over Grim’s lips. “I’ll be waiting.”
The mask’s insect-like eyes betrayed nothing, but Grim opened his mouth and gently bit on the finger. “Sweet dreams, baby,” he said and walked out of the room, leaving Misha confused.
Despite all of Grim’s dark insides revealed, Misha still worried more about Grim getting back safely than about the fate of the poor fucker who would end up under Grim’s knife. After all, this was bound to be someone who was involved in criminal activity one way or another. And Grim was the best at what he did. The respect he was treated with spoke volumes about his skill.
And yet, as Misha lay in bed and continued watching theWife Warsmarathon, he kept missing details as his thoughts trailed to Grim, who left without a single person for backup. Not even a sniper to cover him. To Grim, who claimed to have loved before yet wouldn’t say whom. If he really was a psychopath, maybe he just knew that telling Misha about being capable of love would make him more likeable? Maybe he was playing with Misha’s feelings, all to get the kind of sex he craved with a willing amputee, who would stay with him for as long as he wanted.
Misha once had Gary order him a book about psychopaths, simply because he thought it could potentially help him deal with all the shit he needed to live with, and if the book was right, Grim’s intelligence could make it easy for him to outwit Misha. Thirsty for affection as he was, Misha would be easy prey for a psychopath, one that would crawl into a web of lies and never break free again.
No amount of adoration could be the same as being loved. No amount of great sex could be the same as real feelings of care and affection. Misha would always feel the undercurrent of fear that Grim could leave him at the drop of a hat if he got bored. No promise was truly unbreakable.
A knock on the door pulled him out of his dark thoughts, and he quickly switched off the sound of the TV, watching the door as if it were holding backa pack of bloodthirsty wolves. He reminded himself of what Grim said, and in the end, asked the stranger to come in.
The man with the mohawk and the scar underneath his eye peeked inside, chewing gum loudly enough for Misha to hear from the bed. “Is Logan still in the clubhouse?”
Misha stared, his brain unable to compute what he realized his heart already knew. “N-no. He’s gone.”
And just like that, he knew who Grim had been in love with, and he knew from the tender way Grim had talked about Coy, their love had been true. Grim wasn’t some complete psycho trying to toy with Misha for his sick pleasure. There was something broken in Grim too, but a broken heart was still a heart.
Chapter 18
Grim
Grim walked into theclub on soft legs. He’d already talked to Spike about the hit, so he was free to nurse the bruises on his ribs and roll into bed alongside Misha. The job took longer than he had expected. It got messy, and he ended up engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Three average goons couldn’t take him down so easily, and there was blood on Grim’s clothes to prove it, but the evening had been draining. With the knowledge that Misha was waiting for him back at the clubhouse, all the stakes were suddenly higher, an aftereffect of this budding relationship Grim hadn’t been taking into account.
It hit him when he had someone on top of him, a barrel swinging over his head and shooting into the ground as he pushed it away with all the strength he had. He didn’t like to hurt, he never wanted to die, but all of a sudden, there was someone who actually depended on his presence. It wouldn’t have been fair to Misha to offer him protection and then disappear, leaving him stranded. But that was the reality Grim needed to face now. Misha had no documents, they were in no way related, and if anything happened to Grim, Misha would suffer much more than emotional loss.
Grim was exhausted as he opened the door to the guest bedroom and stepped into the darkness that was dispersed only by the faint glow of a streetlight nearby. He shed his gloves, put down the gun he hadn’t used during the hit, and gave himself a moment to savor its cool touch as he watched the small figure curled up on the bed. His responsibility. For once, the dark force inside Grim battled with something else altogether.
Misha stirred on the bed and pushed the blanket off his shoulders, raising his head to look at Grim.
“You’re back. Are you okay?” he whispered as if he were afraid that one tone louder would break the night.
Grim swallowed hard, watching him through the netting over his eyes, and it didn’t feel right. This narrow, darkened view was how he saw his victims just before delivering the lethal strike. For once, he wasn’t sure what to say. He would be fine eventually, but confusion felt like a gash in what he was. He’d always lusted after men like Misha. He still lusted after Misha, but now that he knew the smell of his skin and the way Misha’s voice changed when he was happy, keeping him that way stopped being the means to an end somewhere along the way.
“I’ll live,” he said in the end, stepping closer to the bed.
“Come to me?” Misha said and crawled to the edge of the bed, slipping from underneath the blanket. His big brown eyes glistened in the faint light with intensity that carried a meaning Grim couldn’t decipher. It made his skin crawl, but he wasn’t sure if it was shivers of pleasure or anxiety trailing down his spine.
He pulled off his shoes and grabbed the underside of his mask as he stepped closer, eager to be back at Misha’s side.
“Don’t.” Misha reached for his arm. “I want you the way you are.”
Grim’s fingers stilled, and he looked at Misha for a few seconds, tasting the air that had the tang of electricity. Wasthishim though? There were so many facets to who Grim was, and he tended to keep them separated. The Grim he was on most days, charming, always with a smile for Misha, was not all that was to him. Yet Grim the killer wasn’t all of him either. The mask that represented the dark side of him was bound to the shadows. He was fragmented and uncertain if Misha even understood that much.
He stood by the bed. “You’re not asleep. Were you worried?”
Misha entwined their fingers, and the contrast between Grim’s hot skin and Misha’s cold hand was yet another trigger for Grim’s senses, calling out for him to curl up around Misha and make him warm.
“Of course, I was. I was worried that if something happened to you, the last thing you’d remember of me would be a sour face.”
Grim pulled Misha’s hands up and kissed each knuckle, briefly watching the stump where it was curled up in the sheet. “I’m back. I’ve always come back.”
Misha exhaled, and the messy waves that hung around his face made him look even younger than he was. “Grim? When you look at me, do youseeme? When we have sex, is it aboutme, or is it about my amputations?” Misha didn’t even blink, and Grim wasn’t sure where the dense atmosphere came from, but it was there, refusing to let him breathe.
He didn’t know what Misha wanted to achieve by asking that question. Especially that now they had been mentioned, Grim’s attention inevitably became more aware of Misha’s lovely, unique legs. “I think that I see more of you every day,” he said in the end. When he first met Misha, he didn’t care much about who he was as long as Misha’s disposition remained pleasant, but that wasn’t the case anymore. “Especially the annoying part of you,” he said with a smirk.
