Beautiful Revenge (A Good Wife #1) - Sienna Blake Page 0,73
new ending. You should read how…how it should end. How…I want it to end.”
This is a new ending. I don’t need the papers to tell me. I can see it right in her eyes. I can see all the love and forgiveness right there. It has always been there, I had just been too blind to see. I would not be blind anymore.
I set the papers aside. Alena lets out a small cry of displeasure until I take her hands, cutting her off.
“I love you, Alena,” I confess. “I’ll never stop loving you. I’d given up all hope that you would ever love me back. But by the grace of God, you’re here. You’re here, which means there’s a chance that…” I swallow the knot of emotion in my throat. “Do you think…? Could you see it in your heart to one day, maybe…forgive me?”
She laughs even as her eyes rim with tears. “You silly, silly man.” She flings her arms around my neck and presses her lips to mine.
I stagger under her weight for a second before I right myself and fold my arms around her, crushing her to me. Her lips are the sweetest things in the world. Like cherries. Sweeter than cherries. The moans she makes when my tongue licks against hers, I could live on them alone. Her heart, beating against mine, is the only song I will ever need to hear.
“I love you, Dimitri,” she murmurs against my mouth.
I feel like flying. I feel like I’m falling. I feel like running through the streets screaming, She loves me!
“You love me? You forgive me?” I ask, unable to believe my ears. “Even after all that I did.”
“Of course.” She smiles against my mouth. I can’t help but smile too. She is the only sunshine I need. “After all, that’s what love is.”
This time, when I remove her clothes one by one, I do it slowly, reverently, with humble, shaking fingers. This time, when I lay her down on the mattress, I do it to worship her. To show her with my body all the things I feel that no words exist to say. Not in Russian. Not in English.
And when I sink into her beautiful body, her open, vulnerable body, I know…
I am home.
70
____________
Alena
Six months later…
“Honestly, Dimi,” I say, as my world remains in darkness behind a silky blindfold. “I don’t know what all this secrecy is about.”
His hands are on my shoulders leading me…somewhere. It all started about six hours ago when we drove up to a private airfield and he walked me onto a plane—his, apparently. He blindfolded me for the duration of the flight, which honestly wasn’t that bad because, well, it was the only thing I was wearing for most of it.
After he dressed me and we landed, he led me into a car. We drove here, wherever here was. All the while, he refused to tell me where we were and where we were going.
“We’re almost there,” he says in my ear.
I sigh, letting myself take comfort in his warmth. Wherever we are, it’s a tad colder than England in autumn.
“Stay here.” I lose his warmth.
I hear him unlock a door and then the slight creak as it swings open. His fingers thread through mine and he pulls me forward, my steps sure despite my lack of vision because I know he won’t let me fall. The place we’ve just stepped into is wonderfully warm. I let out a small sigh.
“Are you ready?” his voice moves around me until he’s behind me. I feel his hands on my hair.
Finally.
He pulls that blindfold off. I blink as my eyes adjust to the light. The room comes into view, a cosy studio apartment that’s been done up; I can still smell the fresh paint. It takes me a second to recognise it.
Oh my God.
I glance out the window to confirm it and see the familiar street below. We’re standing in our old apartment. In St Petersburg. He’s redone it to look exactly like what we always dreamed it would be—the large fireplace, the desk, the bookcases, the walls painted my favourite shade of yellow.
My hands fly to my mouth. “Dimi, what did you do?”
He chuckles into my ear, his arms sliding around my waist. “You like it?”
“You bought this apartment?”
“I bought the whole building,” he admits. “It’s the first thing I did when I got enough money together.”
My mouth drops open. “Most men collect baseball cards. You, you collect buildings.”