Page 56 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
I face her again.
Kiera stands in the same place, towel still in her hand. It’s smudged with juice. Mango, probably. Her face is unreadable, but her lashes are damp. She’s holding it in with everything she has. Her chin lifts a fraction when I step closer.
She’s not afraid of Darya, or of me. That, more than anything, twists something low in my chest. Not in a way I understand.
She shifts like she’s going to speak, then doesn’t.
Good. I’m not sure I want to hear whatever it is she thinks she needs to say. Not tonight. Not now.
The hallway holds its breath between us, and I know—I should walk away.
The hallway is quiet now—quiet in that heavy, post-storm way. Every shadow stretched long. Every breath feels like it echoes. I watch her. Closely. More than I should.
She doesn’t cry, but her eyes are glassy, holding everything back with a kind of trembling pride that cuts deeper than if she’d fallen to pieces. That hollowness—the way she stands like she’s still ready to fight, but the blade’s buried somewhere too deep to reach—makes something twist in my chest. Sharp. Unfamiliar.
Her voice is soft when she speaks. “She’ll never accept me.”
She doesn’t look up. Her head is tilted down, gaze fixed on some invisible point between us. The towel in her hand is clutched tight, stained bright with juice that already looks like blood in the low light.
“She doesn’t even have to try. I walk into a room, and she already knows I don’t belong here.”
Her voice cracks at the end. Barely. But I hear it.
She tries to fix it. Straightens her back, squares her shoulders—like that’ll put the pieces back in place.
I take a step forward. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move away. Her breath comes slower now, more measured. Waiting. Anticipating.
I tilt her chin up with two fingers.
Her skin is warm. Her lashes wet. Her lips pressed tight like she’s sealing every word she wants to scream behind them. The hallway light casts a faint glow across her cheekbones, catching the faint shimmer of tears she refuses to let fall.
I should leave her alone. My voice drops, quiet enough that only she can hear it. “I only like when you cry in my bed.”
Her breath catches.
It’s a sound I know now, too well. The soft inhale, the quick skip of her pulse, the flicker in her eyes that jumps from fury to heat and back again. Her gaze flicks to my mouth—brief, reflexive—and then returns to my face, sharp with tension, but softer at the edges.
I brush a thumb beneath one eye. Catch the dampness there before it can trail down.
Then her lip.
Her lower lip, where her mouth is set in that stubborn line that always makes me want to ruin her composure.
My hand still cupping her face. My thumb still pressed gently against her lip. The air between us thick with a heat that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the dangerous way this is changing.
I feel it like a shift underfoot. This was never supposed to be soft.
Yet—here we are.
A girl standing with her fists unclenched and her heart wide open in all the wrong ways. A man who knows better and still doesn’t look away.
Her eyes are wide, unblinking, trying to read me. Maybe searching for some version of kindness. Or truth. Or anything she can hold on to that isn’t made of knives.
I walk away, before I press my mouth to hers. Before I say something I’ll regret—something real. That look in her eyes haunts me even after I turn my back. Not afraid. Not fragile. Just wounded, proud, holding herself together with bare hands and refusing to let it show. A girl who doesn’t know she’s breaking because she’s too busy pretending she isn’t.
I climb the stairs two at a time. The weight in my chest follows me, heavier than the day, louder than the silence waiting at the top. I don’t go to the study. Don’t sit at my desk or open another file.
I go straight to my room.
