Page 32 of Bratva Daddy
She ground against me, and I groaned into her mouth at the friction. The silk nightgown was nothing between us, and I could feel her heat through my suit pants. One hand slid down to her ass, still warm from the spanking, and she gasped when I squeezed.
This was everything I'd fantasized about since I first saw her on Fifth Avenue. Clara in my lap, kissing me like she needed me to breathe, grinding against my cock like she was trying to take me through our clothes. My control shattered completely, and I kissed her harder, deeper, claiming her mouth the way I wanted to claim all of her.
Her hands went to my shirt, fumbling with buttons, and that's what snapped me back to reality. What the fuck was I doing? She was leverage, Viktor Petrov's daughter, a business transaction that had gotten complicated. I couldn't fuck her. Couldn't cross that line no matter how much we both wanted it.
I grabbed her wrists, probably too hard, and practically dumped her off my lap as I stood. She landed on the couch looking dazed and hurt, lips swollen from my kiss, nightgown askew.
"That was a mistake," I said coldly, not looking at her flushed face, her swollen lips, the way her chest heaved with need. "It won't happen again. Go to your room."
"Alexei—" she started, reaching for me.
"Now." The command came out harsh enough to make her flinch.
She stood on shaky legs, tears pricking at her eyes—not from the spanking but from my rejection. The sight of it madesomething in my chest twist painfully, but I couldn't relent. Couldn't admit that kissing her had felt like coming home, that having her in my lap had felt right in a way nothing had in years.
"I hate you," she whispered.
"Four lies," I replied.
She walked away with as much dignity as someone could manage after coming apart across my lap, leaving me standing there with a painful erection and the taste of her still on my lips. The ghost of her presence lingered—vanilla perfume, the heat of her body, the echo of "Daddy" cried out in pleasure.
I walked to my office on unsteady legs, locking the door behind me with hands that shook slightly. Through the security monitor, I watched her collapse on her bed, shoulders shaking with what might have been tears or might have been something else.
I'd crossed a line. Spanking her was one thing—that was consequence, discipline, structure. But kissing her? Letting her grind against me? Tasting her desperation and answering with my own? That was something else entirely. Something that couldn't happen again.
My cock throbbed, demanding attention, but I ignored it. Poured vodka instead, let it burn away the taste of her, the memory of her weight across my lap, the sound of her coming apart under my hand.
Tomorrow I'd be colder. More distant. Professional.
Chapter 7
Alexei
Thismorning,everythingfeltdifferent.
Clara sat curled in the corner of my leather sofa, knees drawn up, that massive Russian novel open in her lap—Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita. Her eyes tracked the same line over and over, never turning the page, while she watched me pace by the windows through her lashes. The morning light caught her profile when she tilted her head, throwing shadows that made her look older, sadder, more beautiful than any twenty-three-year-old had a right to be.
I'd been walking the same path for twenty minutes—window to bookshelf, bookshelf to window—trying to find words that would rebuild the wall I'd demolished yesterday when I'd pulled her over my lap, when I'd let her call me Daddy, when I'd kissed her like a drowning man finding air. My suit felt too tight despite being perfectly tailored, my skin too hot despite the climate control keeping the penthouse at exactly seventy-two degrees.
The ghost of her mouth haunted me. Vanilla and desperation, the way she'd ground against me, the soft sounds she'd made when my hand had connected with her ass through that silk nightgown. I'd jerked off twice in my office afterward, coming to the memory of her crying out "Daddy" as she shattered across my lap, and still woke up hard enough to hurt.
I turned from the window, catching her watching me openly now, those hazel eyes dark with something I didn't want to identify. Time to be the pakhan, not the man who'd almost fucked his captive on his couch.
"Yesterday was inappropriate," I said, voice formal enough for a board meeting. Each word measured, controlled, empty of the heat that threatened to consume me. "I crossed a professional boundary. It won't happen again."
She closed the book slowly, marking her place with a finger like she might actually return to it.
Professional.
The word hung between us like a bad joke. Nothing about kidnapping a woman and making her follow twenty-three rules was professional, but I needed the fiction. Needed distance between us before I did something irreversible.
"You kissed me back," she said quietly, setting the book on the coffee table with deliberate care. "Rather enthusiastically."
The memory of it—her tongue seeking mine, her hands fumbling with my shirt buttons, the needy sounds she'd made—sent blood rushing south. I clenched my jaw hard enough to crack teeth.
"A moment of weakness." The lie tasted like ash. "You're under my protection, which means you're off-limits."
Something flickered across her face—hurt maybe, or disappointment. She pulled her knees tighter to her chest, making herself smaller in the corner of my couch, and I hated that I'd put that look there.
