Page 24 of BRATVA'S Avenging Bride
I should laugh. Should push him away and remind him that men say things like this when they're still riding the high, still drunk on sex and possession. But the way he's looking at me like I've rewritten something fundamental in him, stops the words in my throat.
The rain has slowed to a mist now, cool against my overheated skin. I'm still trembling, still wrapped around him, and I realize with startling clarity that I don't want to move. Don't want to break whatever spell we've cast up here under the storm.
"Then tell me," I whisper. "Tell me what I've done."
He lifts his head, those dark eyes finding mine. There's vulnerability there, raw and unguarded, and it terrifies me more than his control ever could.
"You made me want something." His thumb traces my lower lip, gentle despite the bruising kiss we just shared. "Not power. Not territory. Not revenge. Just... you. Alive. Choosing me every morning you wake up in my bed."
My breath catches. "That's—"
"Insane. I know. You keep telling me." He shifts, pulling out of me slowly, and I feel the loss immediately. He reaches for his discarded shirt, using it to clean us both with a tenderness thatmakes my chest ache. "But I stopped caring about sanity the moment I saw you walk out of those flames."
He helps me sit up, wrapping his jacket back around my shoulders before gathering my scattered clothes. The domestic intimacy of it, of this feared Bratva heir picking up my jeans and handing me my blouse, feels more dangerous than anything we just did.
I dress in silence, hyperaware of him doing the same beside me. The city sprawls below us, oblivious to the fact that I just had sex with a man I was supposed to fear. A man who should be my enemy.
Except he doesn't feel like an enemy anymore.
He feels like the first choice I've made in my whole life that's entirely mine.
"We should go inside," he says, though his tone suggests he's as reluctant as I am to break this moment. "You're shivering."
I am. But it's not from cold.
He takes my hand and leads me back to the elevator. The ride down is quiet, charged, both of us too aware of what just shifted between us.
When we step back into the penthouse, the familiar space feels different. Less like a cage. More like a safe place to justbe.
"I need to shower," I say, because I need space to think, to process what the hell just happened to me up there.
"Katherine." He catches my wrist gently, turning me to face him. "If you're regretting—"
"I'm not." The words come out fierce, certain. "I'm just... trying to figure out what this means."
His mouth curves into something almost soft. "It means you're staying. Not because I'm making you. Because you want to."
"For how long?"
"I’m hoping forever,zhar-ptitsa." He releases my wrist, steps back. "Take your shower. And then..." He pauses, something flickering in his eyes. "Then we talk about what happens next."
I nod, not trusting my voice, and head to my room.
The shower is scalding, exactly what I need. I stand under the spray and let it wash away the rain, the sweat, the lingering scent of him on my skin. But it can't wash away the memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he looked at me like I was holy and breakable and fierce all at once. I press my fingers against my aching center. The place where he just was. Nothing has ever felt as right as having him inside me did.
I thought Boris's club was my cage. Then I thought this penthouse was just another version of the same trap.
But maybe I've had it wrong the whole time.
Maybe the real cage was believing I'd never deserve to be chosen. Never deserve to want something or someone, without fear poisoning it.
When I emerge, dressed in clean clothes, my hair damp and loose around my shoulders, I find Matvey in the kitchen. He's made tea and there's food laid out; bread, cheese, fruit. Simple things that feel monumental.
"Sit," he says, and I do.
He sits across from me, and for a moment we just look at each other. Two broken people who somehow found each other in the wreckage.
"I need to know something," I say finally. "What happens when the week is up? When I've proven you're not like them. Or proven you are?"
