I wince. “Stop. We went over this. Killing innocent people is wrong.”
His eye twitches.
I carefully put the rabbit down, then walk over to him and grab his shoulders, pulling him into a hug. I burst out laughing. I know he’s been struggling these last few months. His father still won’t speak to him since that day, and it’s heartbreaking to witness. So if buying another rabbit will cheer him up, I’ll let him have it, and we’ll even keep the name Bullet, no matter how ridiculous it is.
“Listen, it’s fine, and Bullet is actually a very nice name,” I say, trying to sound reassuring and totally lying.
He hums and wraps his arms around me, resting his head on top of my hair. I feel him breathing in my scent, and I can’t help but smile.
I look into his brown eyes. “Come shower with me?”
When he grunts, I grab his hand, lacing our fingers together as we walk into the house.
I slide the door open, and we head toward the bathroom, and as soon as we enter the small space, he’s on me.
He slides his hands down my back, firm and sure, grips lower, then lifts me. I wrap my legs around his waist and hook my arms around his neck, dragging him closer, greedy for the way he tastes.
He moves his mouth down, kissing and licking along my jaw, then my neck. His teeth sink in hard. He sucks at the skin, leaving a mark.
My body jerks as my cock reacts fast, already straining against my pants.
He pulls back and looks down at me with that soft expression. “We take this to the shower. Then I have a surprise for you.”
I don’t think I can handle more surprises today, but I know he means well.
“What’s the surprise?”
“Wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you,zaychik.”
I have a feeling it involves the Empire State Building and a ring.
He’s horrible at hiding things. I found the ring box when I went into the garage looking for something and discovered it stashed where he keeps his weapons, along with a paper that had a date and “Empire State Building private sightseeing” written on it.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the only reason I was rambling about never seeing the view that night at the clinic was because he was pointing a gun at me.
I was in full panic mode and babbling about anything that came to mind. The real reason I’ve never been up there is because I’m terrified of heights but explaining that now feels like it would ruin whatever elaborate plan he’s put together.
I also stumbled across his … collection, for lack of a better term.
Alexei’s a goddamn kleptomaniac, and apparently, I’ve been his primary target since we met. Mystery solved on why my stuff kept vanishing.
The box was tucked under his workbench in the garage like a twisted time capsule. My favorite coffee mug with the chip on the handle, still stained with dried rings crusted inside. My old pillowcase that I thought the laundromat ate. My grocery list, handwritten on a ripped piece of paper. A few T-shirts and socks. Even my boxers and my freaking hairbrush, for fuck’s sake.
The weirdest part was that he’d kept them exactly how I left them. Coffee stains and all. Like he wanted to preserve pieces of me in their natural state.
I stared at it for a solid minute, trying to process that this terrifying man had been collecting pieces of me like some kind of obsessive crow. Never mentioned it. Never will. It’s going straight into the vault of things we pretend doesn’t exist, rightnext to the delusion that he has a normal office job and isn’t from one of the oldest mafia dynasties.
“Okay,” I finally say softly and then pull him down for another kiss.
As his lips meet mine, I can’t help but think about how drastically my life has changed since he came into it.
I was surviving paycheck to paycheck, living in fear of David showing up at my door, drowning in debt, and counting down the days until he would finally kill me. Now I’m standing in a bathroom that’s bigger than my old apartment, kissing a man who is without a doubt the love of my life.
There are two rabbits in our backyard, one of whom is probably pregnant because Alexei can’t tell the difference between male and female rabbits.
I have a job I actually love, working with animals that challenge me instead of just patching up the same cats and dogs every day.
The debt is gone, David is gone, and for the first time in my life, I feel happy and complete.
The End
