Page 23 of BRATVA'S Avenging Bride
I expect shame to follow, but it doesn’t. Only warmth, flooding through me where the cold used to live. For the first time since the fire, I feel alive. Not because I survived, but because I chose to live.
When his lips find mine again, his kiss is slow and soft. I hold him there, still inside me, my fingers tracing the tattoos on his back, feeling his heart thunder against mine.
We're both shaking, damp with rain and sweat, and as the high fades, reality creeps in, but it's not the panic I expect. It's warmth. Safety. Him. He lifts his head, eyes searching mine, and smiles that slow, dangerous smile.
"Still think this is a mistake?" he asks, voice husky.
I laugh, breathless and free for the first time in years.
"Shut up,” I say and he jerks inside me causing me to moan as a spark of pleasure reignites.
Matvey
Her body clenches around me when she laughs and my cock spasms hard. Desperate to go again.
She is warm and slick, pulling me deeper while we both catch our breath. I jerk inside her again without meaning to, feeling that desperate need come to life as her moan vibrates against my chest, low and needy.
God, that sound. It's raw, unfiltered, the kind of thing that strips away all the layers I've built over the years the Bratva life, the endless meetings, the blood on my hands. With her, it's just this. Just us. And I can't stop. I don't want to.
I shift my hips, thrusting slow and shallow, testing if she's ready, if she wants more. Her eyes widen, dark and stormy like the sky above us, but she doesn't push me away. Instead, her nails dig into my ass, urging me on, and that's all the permission I need.
I've been obsessed since I saw her walk out of that fire, a phoenix from the ashes. But now? Now it's consuming me. Every gasp she makes, every tremble of her thighs around my waist, it's like fuel to the flame.
I lean down, capturing her mouth again, tasting the rain and her sweetness mixed together. My hands roam her body, memorizing the curve of her hips, the way her skin flushes undermy touch. She's mine. Not because I claimed her, but because she chose this, chose me, and that thought drives me wild.
I pick up the pace, driving into her with a rhythm that's desperate, almost punishing, like I need to bury myself so deep she'll never forget. The lounger rocks beneath us, the rain pounds harder, but the world fades. There's only her heat wrapped around me, her moans filling my ears, her body arching to meet mine.
Years of numbness, of going through motions in a life built on violence and control, and suddenly this is the only thing that feels real. Chasing her pleasure, feeling her shatter around me again, it's like coming alive.
I growl against her neck, biting down just enough to mark her, and she cries out, her walls fluttering as another wave hits her. I follow right after, spilling into her with a grunt as my balls tighten almost painfully, my vision blurring from the intensity.
The sound she makes when I come undone inside her… it ruins me.
I’ve fucked before. Too many times to count. I’ve chased release like it was something owed, a transaction, a distraction, a way to remind myself I was still alive. But this…This is something else entirely.
She’s still trembling beneath me, eyes half-lidded, lips parted, drops of rain clinging to her skin like a second sheen of sweat. Every breath she takes punches through my ribs. Every heartbeat under my palm syncs with mine until I can’t tell where she ends and I begin.
And suddenly I know. She isn’t a challenge. She isn’t a phase. She isn’t even temptation.
She’s everything I never thought I’d need.
The reason. The correction to everything I’ve become. I thought I could keep her here until the fire cooled, until my curiosity burned out and I could send her away without a second thought. But there is no cooling this. No putting it out.
I’ve tasted her, and now there’s no universe where I ever let her go.
Not because she’s mine, but because without her, I’m nothing. All violence, no life.
She’s the first thing in my life that makes me want to build instead of destroy. And that terrifies me more than any gun or enemy ever could.
I press my mouth to her temple, my voice a whisper against her skin.
“You have no idea what you’ve done to me,zhar-ptitsa.”
Katherine
His words settle into my bones like embers finding kindling.
You have no idea what you've done to me.
