The Beast by Jaden Wilkes Page A

the room to continue his exploration of her body, so he grabbed his knife and cut her hands free.
    She reacted immediately. “This is madness, I have nothing to tell you,” she screamed and started to fight him. “Just let me go. Please!” She surprised him with her strength and pushed up against him. She almost made it off the platform before he pushed her back and slapped her face. She jerked her head away from him and started screaming through her sobs. “Let me go! Let me go!” she was crying repeatedly, her voice sharply hitting his ears and escalating his own anxiety.
    “Stop this!” he demanded but she only fought harder. She grabbed his forearms and dug her nails in, kicked at him and screamed repeatedly as she fought. Tears were streaming from under the blindfold and her face was contorted with her panicked attempt to get away.
    Dimitri knew she would not get away, she could not. But if she managed to escape she would run right to the authorities and his plan to escape would be cut short. He could not let her go, especially not now with the concierge so far away. It would be a matter of hours before the RCMP showed up at his door with a search warrant. He could not allow this to happen.
    It suddenly occurred to him that this had to end. He was on the run and she, although not an assassin, had no place in his world. He didn’t have the time to fuck around with somebody as alluring and unsettling as this. He wanted to quiet her, to stop her struggling against him, to end this fight.
    His hand found her delicate throat and he wrapped his fingers around it, applied pressure and watched her struggle against him. He felt detached, as he often did when he was going to kill somebody. This was the right thing to do, after his flights of fancy earlier, after finding himself sympathizing her plight and uncertain of the action he would take.
    He wanted to take her blindfold off, but that requi red two hands and he was fighting to hold her down as it was. She reached for his face and tried to dig her nails in, kicked at him and wiggled wildly against his grip. She realized this was a fight for her life, and she didn’t want to lose. She opened her mouth and made a strangled sound, a dry gasp and nothing more. Dimitri squeezed harder and pressed down with his other hand on her chest. She still fought, but he could feel her pulse growing weaker under his fingers. Her kicks became weaker and her mouth stayed open in a desperate attempt to suck in any available air.
    He watched her, under the weight of his hands, and knew death was coming in a few short minutes. At that moment he was grateful for the blindfold, he didn’t think he could stand the weight of her accusing stare, or see her beautiful face contorted by broken blood vessels or bulging eyes.
    Her heart still pounded furiously under his hand. It was protesting his decision to end her life with the mad dash of a fearful rabbit in a cage. He watched as her body started to go limp and she slipped out of consciousness. Her pulse slowed and her face went lax. Her heart still beat; pounding under his hand he thought for a moment he could hear it hitting her ribs as it begged him to stop.
    With no warning, a vivid memory surfaced and his humanity caught up to him at last.
    As a child he had tamed a wild rabbit by sneaking it morsels of food throughout the long Russian winter. By spring it would come up to him when he left their tenement and he would hold it on his lap and stroke its soft fur. Its little heart would beat wildly but it allowed him to hold it, to care for it, because it had no other choice and knew no other way.
    One bright sunny day his father had caught him with the rabbit, torn it from his grasp and broken his neck. Dimitri had sobbed over the death of his pet, sobbed until his father laid the boots into him and kicked him into unconsciousness.
    When he awoke, there was a thick stew of rabbit meat for dinner and a pelt drying in the bathroom. Dimitri had