Escaped My Ex, Got Snatched by His Rival - Chapter 438

Chapter 438: Starting
“What?” Ari raised her head in shock.

“You didn’t know?” Nicolai questioned back in surprise. “I thought that the three of them might have already warned you —given how close they have been with you these days,” he added bitterly.

Ari smiled at his bitter tone, but then she lowered her head and twiddled with her thumbs, “It is not like that. They treat me like how Aaron does… it’s like they take me as their sister or something.”

“Well since they can’t have a normal one,” Nicolai shrugged as he sat down on the coffee table. He flipped open the lid of the first aid box before tipping Ari’s chin up. “I hope you slapped her right back. It would be a real shame if I had to slap her on your account.”

“I thought you don’t hit women,” remarked Ari just as Nicolai took out a bottle of iodine and started dabbing it on the cotton ball.

Nicolai raised his head upon hearing her words and grinned at her. “I don’t,” he reached forward before saying, “But what kind of man would I be, if I can’t even fight the battles for my woman? Brace your teeth, this will sting,” he added when he was about to wipe her wound.

Without getting a chance to retort to Nicolai, she gritted her teeth, but even so, she winced lightly when the iodine stung her wound.

“It’s alright,” he told her with a soft voice. “Be glad that you were bitten by a bitch that walks on two legs—if it was the four legs one, then you would have to get a syringe as well.”

“I don’t think the ones that walk on four legs are unreasonable,” Ari muttered under her breath, and Nicolai grinned lightly.

He applied a cooling ointment on the cut before saying, “Keep that woman away from you, she might not look like it, but she can really tear someone’s skin off with those nails of hers.”

“I will,” Ari agreed at once as she did not have reason to get close to someone like Penelope. She then glanced at the light redness of his cheek before clearing her throat, “Are you feeling alright, though? I am sorry … I shouldn’t have hit you.”

She felt embarrassed and guilty for slapping him in the face earlier. Ari had no idea what happened to her—no, she knew exactly what took over her, and it scared her greatly.

The last time she had lost control, she had beaten Samuel black and blue… what if she had done the same to Nicolai?

“It’s not a big deal,” Nicolai shrugged off as he raised one of his shoulders. With his hands nursing his swollen cheek, he stated, “It didn’t even hurt that bad.”

“How is this not a big deal?” Ari asked with a scandalized voice. “It’s a big deal, I slapped you and …and…”

“And you screamed, yelled and threw things?” Nicolai licked his front teeth with the tip of his tongue. “Well, strictly speaking…you are talking to someone whose initial reaction upon getting angry is killing anyone who pisses him off, I don’t know what you are ashamed of?”

However, when that didn’t convince Ari, Nicolai sighed. He took her hands in his and said to her, “Look, I don’t know who fed the ‘You need to keep calm when your heart is telling you to tear the world apart,’ nonsense to you. But everyone has their ways to deal with emotions.”

“One could be as fucked up as me, or they might be like you —suppressing until they explode. Or …there is another way, like getting rid of the anger you are feeling by taking it out at once.”

“Anyway, what I am saying is that everyone has their own way of dealing with their anger,” Nicolai told her bracingly as he could sense and had long noticed that Ari had a hard time accepting her emotions as if they didn’t matter.

Like they were not valid.

And no matter how many times he told her that she needed to accept them as they were, she couldn’t do it. Having been shunned by her family for years until she learned how to control every bit of emotion of her—it wouldn’t come as easy as it did to him.

He understood it.

However, for him — who had never cared about anyone, it was just as hard as it was for Ari to accept her emotions.

Ari parted her lips but didn’t say anything after thinking for a long time. She shook her head before repeating, “I am still sorry, though. I had no right to hit you like that, and yet I did.”

“Hey,” Nicolai got to his knees and dropped his head such that he could look at Ari’s face. “Don’t tell me that you are crying. If you are …just tell me, I will record it. Need to frame the video of Miss Stoic Face, Harlow’s crying face in a digital photo frame and mount it on my wall.”

“I missed the jealous moment. Can’t miss this too,” he teased and Ari rolled her eyes as she pushed him lightly, “Shut up, Nicolai.”

“As you command, princess,” he said, and this time around he leaned forward and pressed his lips onto hers. At first, it was just light teasing, but when Ari pinched him on the waist, Nicolai grinned against her lips.

He licked the seams of her lips before breaching her mouth with a rumbling grin.

Ari clutched his shirt, letting out two puffs of shuddering and whimpering breaths. Both of them were swallowed by Nicolai, who deepened the kiss.

And as he kissed Ari, he realized that no matter how many times he kissed this woman, for some reason the way she made his skin spark was as if he were kissing her for the first time.

Which was something he did not even like kissing until he met her.

Her taste exploded in his mouth and Nicolai sucked her deep until her scent was burning inside his lungs and her taste was coating every corner and nook of his mouth.