CHAPTER 18
TANGLED IN SIN
GRIMM
I was gone.
Done for.
Undone, and spilling at the seams.
It wasn’t just the fact that I could finally feel her lips again after a whole day of craving the high they offered, but also the fact that she initiated it. And it wasn’t a tentative kiss, or a gentle kiss, or even a hungry kiss.
It was a demolishing kiss, a violent one, meant to break and agonize, and I returned it in the same tumultuous manner as I pressed her back against the wall and slammed my body into hers.
She winced at the impact and in response took my bottom lip between her teeth, biting down on it. I relished this new side of her, the ferocity of her actions and the raw passion of her movements. Blood spurted out the inside of my lip and dripped down our chins, and she didn’t seem to mind the metallic taste mingling with ours as a moan that sounded almost primal escaped her throat.
It vibrated in my mouth, and I inhaled her sounds as if they were air and I was deprived of oxygen.
You want it rough, baby? I can do rough.
I clutched her hips and squeezed her flesh in my palms as her arms slid down my back and tugged at my T-shirt, then stepped back for a moment and allowed her to take it off. Once I was free of it, I grabbed the neckline of her blouse and tore it down her chest.
She gasped as the rip echoed in the room and the fabric now hung in shreds on her shoulders, revealing her cotton bra and all the plumb, pale skin I was about to stain with bites, touches, and orgasms.
Arella looked at me with fervent fascination as she licked her lips, and I quietly waited for the push back, the uncertainty, but it didn’t come as she raked her short fingernails down my chest and abdomen, then our lips collided.
The whole moment brimmed with arousal and depravity, and there was nothing to stop me from devouring her through and through. I wanted her to writhe beneath me, to sweat, pant, moan and scream until the only thing left in her mind was me.
Without another thought, I pulled the ripped blouse off her shoulders and opened her bra, throwing it somewhere behind us, then took her breasts in my hands, their softness getting me drunk and turning me into greed personified.
“You’re driving me insane,” I groaned, and there was no room left for gentleness.
“I’d take your insanity over anything, any day,” she whispered as she pushed against me.
Every time she dug her nails into my skin, my fingers pinched her taut nipples. Every time she bit down on my already abused lip, drawing more blood out of it, I kneaded her breasts even harder.
We were aggressive, overwhelmed by the fight before and the lust that exploded out of us afterwards.
When I lifted her up, she wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, clinging to me as if I was life itself as I stumbled to the bedroom. Her mouth fell to my neck, and she gave me no warning before sinking her teeth into my flesh. She kissed, bit, sucked and marked me as hers, and I savored each second.
Even if I was already hers.
I had been hers since the first time I laid eyes on her, and though she didn’t know it back then, she had also been mine.
Her back touched the mattress and her breasts bounced with the movement. Those beautiful eyes fluttered open as she sat up and reached for my belt, and I watched with morbid fascination as she urgently unbuckled it. That eagerness in her actions, the way she pushed down my pants as if she wanted to rip them off me, it drove me crazy with need.
“I’m not stopping tonight,” I said as I gripped her face between my fingers.
“I don’t want you to,” she answered as she gripped me at the base and stroked me a few times, then bent down and greedily licked up my length.
When she opened her mouth, I allowed her lips to wrap around my cock once, then fisted her hair at the base of her skull and pulled her head back, reveling in that hiss she let out as I pushed her back on the bed. I took off her jeans along with her lingerie in one move, then allowed my eyes to travel over her skin as I grabbed her ankles and yanked her closer to the edge of the bed. She gasped and clawed at the sheets when I took her clit into my mouth, the taste of her flooding my senses, filling me with euphoria.
I was high on her, on her scent, on the sounds she made, on the way she ran her fingers through my hair and pushed my face deeper between her legs.
Her back arched off the bed as she threw her head back, her mouth opening with each intake of breath, a pool of red spurring just above her ribcage as she slithered closer and closer to that edge I wanted to throw her off of. I slid a finger inside her and hissed as I felt the warmth envelop me, and when I added a second finger, her nails dug into my scalp and her hips lifted off the mattress.
“That’s it,” I encouraged her as I incessantly pumped my fingers into her. “Come on my face,” I pleaded before burying my mouth between her legs again.
As an answer to my prayer, her thighs shivered around my head and her entire body tensed for a second before spasming, a loud cry falling off her lips as her hips jerked against my face. I thought she was going to suffocate me with how hard she was squeezing my head, and a satisfied groan left my throat as I lazily swallowed every drop, savoring the vibrations until they subsided.
Her muscles relaxed and her feet fell off my shoulders, hanging limp over the edge of the bed.
I allowed her a minute to catch her breath as I gently laid on top of her, peppering kisses along her jaw and down her neck. I pushed her hair out of her face and held myself up as I took a minute to look at her.
“You are so beautiful,” I whispered as she opened her eyes. “How are you even real?”
“How are you real?” she whispered back, moving her fingers up my arms.
That ardent hunger had disappeared. The rage in her had died down, and her eyes regained the warmth I was used to, melting away the ice.
The secrets she kept no longer seemed to matter, as we were temporarily locked in a quiet moment in time where the danger that kept creeping closer and closer no longer existed, and fear clawed at my heart as I reached the conclusion that my life would have been empty without her, as it had been before her.
“You make me real,
Snezhinka
,” I admitted wholeheartedly. “What you see right now, nobody saw before you, and nobody will ever again. This me? You’re the one who makes this me possible.”
A gentle smile curled her lips as I guided her leg over my hip and positioned myself between her legs, hissing when I felt her lifting her hips and pressing her mound against my painfully erect cock.
“Be mine,” I whispered over her neck as I rubbed against her, coating my erection in her wetness, fighting the animalistic urge that raged through me.
She cupped my face between her palms, those beautiful eyes spearing into my very soul as she offered me a smile, blinking as her thumbs brushed my cheeks.
“I already am, Grimm.”
It took no more than a slight nod of her head and a spark of arousal in her eyes for me to sink inside her with one swift thrust.
I drank in every crease in her face, every grit of her teeth as she struggled to hold my gaze and not close her eyes. Maybe she didn’t know it, but I was memorizing every fraction of the moment she became completely mine.
Body and soul, in life and in death, up in heaven or down in the hottest corner of hell, Arella was mine.
Her hips writhed beneath me, her nails scratched my back, and tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. The stitches in my shoulder ripped open from the strain of my muscles and a drop of blood fell on her chest. My nostrils flared as I pulled almost all the way out, then sank back in, more blood dripping down on her.
The sight brought out the ravenous beast inside me, and I glanced down between us, gritting my teeth when I saw the smeared blood on my cock, lighter than the thick fluid flowing out of my wound, and I lost my mind completely, pausing mid thrust with the air stuck in my throat.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered as the tears fell out and she lifted her hips to meet me.
I pressed my forehead against hers, swallowing audibly, almost as if I was trying to soak up her energy and regain some composure. “I’ll hurt you if I move now,” I whispered back, closing my eyes, desperately trying to reduce my heartbeat.
But I couldn’t.
I was an ocean of emotions I had never felt before, and I had no idea how to contain and control them. They were spilling out of me along with the blood from my shoulder, overwhelming me.
She tilted her head so that her mouth hovered below mine and her breath brushed against my lips. “Then hurt me.”
I shook my head frantically, preparing to pull out completely to regain my sanity, so I could go back to a less primitive version of myself.
She had other plans.
Arella grabbed my shoulders with incredible force, her nails pressing into my open wound. She was strong, and I was unprepared for what followed, because she flipped us over with ease and sank down on me, a scream ripping out of her throat as she gave herself a moment to adjust.
My eyes flared madness when she cried out, watching as she tentatively began to move her hips while resting her palms on my abdomen to support herself. I was entranced as her breasts bounced with each slow movement, and I took in every crease on her face as she moaned, savoring the feel of her pussy squeezing me in, mesmerized by the sight of my blood straining her porcelain skin.
My mind was caught in a vortex of sensations I never experienced before the blonde tornado on top of me, because sex never felt like this. This was something else entirely, so different from any other experience that it turned my head to fucking dust.
This was tainted innocence, an angel succumbing to its primal instincts, a slope to unmistakable sin, ice melting into fire, an open-armed invitation to take from her, and take I did.
My hands gripped her hips to hold her still, and I slammed into her, grunting as her scream echoed in the room. All that could be heard now was the depraved melody of my moans, her whimpers, and the sound of skin slapping against skin. And with each whimper that fell off her lips, I found myself free falling without a parachute.
I knew my world was a mess at the moment, and that Arella was the only pillar holding up the madness. Without her, I would become a shell, merely a soulless vessel created to destroy, because what else could happen to a monster without his heart?
I hit rock bottom when I felt her orgasm ripple through her body. She pressed her chest against mine, clinging to me as her spasms vibrated against my skin, and I came inside her, tightly wrapping my arms around her waist as if I wanted to have her sewn to me.
She was safe in my embrace, for that was her place.
That’s where she belonged.
“That was…” she began, searching for her words.
“Transcendental,” I finished her sentence as I turned us to our sides, still facing each other, and I pulled out of her.
She flinched at the sudden emptiness, and I kissed her forehead and held her against me until our breathing slowed.
“I need to stitch you up again,” she whispered as her eyes rested on my shoulder.
“Later.” I shook my head. “Now I only want to hold you,” I continued, tracing circles over her back. “How do you feel?”
“Sore,” she wrinkled her nose and rubbed her thighs together. “And a little dirty,” she giggled.
“I’d be worried if you weren’t sore, not to mention my ego couldn’t take the punch,” I laughed as I got out of bed, then picked her up and carried her to the bathroom.
After seating her on the counter, I ran the water in the tub and threw in a lemon-scented bath bomb.
I bought dozens of those things after I kissed her for the first time.
~ Shit, man, who the fuck are you? Lemon-scented bath bombs? Are you hearing yourself?
~ I’m hearing you and I wish I didn’t.
The voice taunted me, so I turned around, and one look at her was enough to reduce it to silence. A sigh of relief escaped me as I took the steps that separated us and propped my arms on the counter on either side of her. There were no words to describe what the sight of my blood on her was doing to my brain.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” I whispered.
“You keep saying that,” she answered, as she reached her arm up and brushed her fingers over one of the tattoos on my chest, that of a dove with broken wings.
“It’s the truth.”
I smiled, and as I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror behind her, I was shocked by it, and by the fact that it didn’t feel odd, nor did the absence of the scowl. For the first time, the curl of my lips didn’t look out of place.
This
.
This was what true happiness looked and felt like.
“Do your tattoos have a meaning?” she asked, ripping me out of the trance.
“Some do,” I answered, my eyebrows drawing together as she traced the outline of the dove with her fingertip.
“Does this bird have one?”
“Yes, I had it made for my mother,” I said as I slowly pushed her hair back.
“Is she…”
“She’s alive,
Snezhinka
,” I sighed. “She’s just not part of my life, never has been.”
“Oh,” she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Why does it have broken wings?”
“That’s how I saw her after finding out her story.” I shrugged.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I breathed in and let my head fall down, staring at her legs dangling off the counter for a moment as I thought about it.
“There’s not much to say,” I began, shaking my head. “I was an accident that my father didn’t allow her to get rid of. From what he told me, she was just a student who wanted to have a fun night with her friends when they met. They had a one-night stand, but my father had ulterior motives at the time. He needed an heir, and he obsessively kept track of all his conquests after he slept with them,” I paused for a moment and looked at her.
“Obsession runs in the family then,” she chuckled.
“Might be, yeah.” I licked my lips, trying to continue.
“Still, it wasn’t up to him, not entirely at least,” she sighed.
“It wasn’t at all, no matter what he wanted,” I agreed with her. “He handled the situation much too brutally, especially since she had no ties to our life.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was following her when he saw her going inside an abortion clinic, and he went mad. She didn’t even have a chance to fill out the form before my father stormed in with his guards,” I sighed. “I know you’ve met him, and although he let some of his monsters go after he met Klaus’ mother, he was a different man then, ruthless, merciless, a devil in the truest sense of the word, one who had something to prove. They killed everyone who worked in that clinic and he…” I paused.
Shit. Was I really going to tell her that story after the moment we shared?
~ Might as well if you couldn’t lie about the tattoo.
“He what?”
“He skinned the doctor that was supposed to perform the procedure alive, right in front of her.”
She flinched, then tightened her arms around me.
“He traumatized her,” she affirmed.
“Yes, and she agreed to keep the baby on the condition that I would be taken away immediately after birth and that she would never have to see me or him ever again.”
“Oh, God,” she flinched. “I mean, I understand her reasons, but you were not to blame for your father’s sins,” she looked at me as I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair.
“Don’t we all answer for our parents’ sins in one way or another?”
She seemed to weigh my words and swallowed, her eyes dropping to the floor for a second, but before I could ask what the hesitation was about, she looked back up.
“No. His actions don’t define you. Tell me you’re not blaming yourself for what happened to her.”
“I don’t, but sometimes I wonder how my life would have been had she been in it. I envied Klaus when we were little for the fact that he had a mother, and while Amaliya treated me like her own child, I hated that his mother loved him and mine didn’t even want to look at me before she gave me away.”
She seemed to think deeply about something before she jumped off the counter and hugged me, gluing her naked body to mine.
“You know, in a way, my mother was the woman who brought you into my life,” I snorted, wrapping my arms around her.
“What do you mean?”
“Willow is my half-sister,” I admitted. “I was looking out for her when I first noticed you, so I don’t regret that the woman who gave birth to me never loved me, because it brought me to you.”
She shook her head, a light smile brightening her face as she looked up at me.
“You don’t need her love, Grimm,” she whispered as she held me captive in the depths of her green eyes. “Because you have mine, and if I am being honest with myself, I think you had it from the moment I saw you at the airport nine years ago, because I searched for you in every man I ever dated, hoping I could feel the same thing for someone else because I couldn’t get to you. It happened again on the plane, when you sent the same shock of electricity through my body as the guy in the Grim Reaper costume did. I think I loved you then, I know I love you now, and I promise to love you for all the years you didn’t know what love felt like.”
~ She loves us.
~ She loves me.
~ Same shit, genius. I am you.
My heart leapt in my chest, and the air got stuck in my lungs, not wanting to come out. Those three little words, spoken by the only person I ever wanted to hear them from, melted me to my core.
I was awestruck.
I cupped her face in my palms and struggled to find the right words to form a coherent sentence, because her declaration turned me to dust.
“I burn for you,” I whispered over her lips.
If there was a God up there, I sure as fuck hoped he would keep those hunting her out of my path, because I was going to unleash hell upon all of them.