Page 64 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
The storm outside batters the windows, thunder rolling through the house. But all I can hear is the wet sound of his fingers thrusting into me, the ragged cadence of my breath, the dark satisfaction in his low growls when I clench around him.
I rock against his hand, shameless now, chasing release. My thighs quiver, my grip in his hair desperate. His thumb finds me, pressing, circling, and the world snaps white-hot. Pleasure tears through me, violent and shattering. My cry fills the library, raw and unrestrained, as I fall apart on his hand.
He doesn’t stop. He slows, gentles, but keeps me riding the aftershocks until I collapse against the desk, shaking. His fingers slide free, glistening, and he brings them to my mouth. The command is unspoken, but I obey, tasting myself on his skin, my lips closing around him. His eyes darken, something feral breaking through his control.
Then he’s moving; shoving papers and books to the floor, pushing me back flat on the desk. My skirt rucks high around my hips, panties already ruined. He tears at his belt, his trousers, freeing himself, and the sight makes my mouth go dry. He’s thick, heavy, the tip flushed and slick. My body clenches in anticipation, already desperate to take him.
He positions himself, the blunt head pressing against me. My breath catches. His gaze locks with mine, a final warning—or a claim. Then he thrusts.
The stretch is brutal, exquisite, burning in the best way. My cry echoes off the shelves, and his answering groan rumbles from deep in his chest. He sinks deeper, inch by inch, until he’s fully inside me, filling me to the hilt. My body yields, trembling, clenching around him.
For a heartbeat we’re still, panting, staring at each other like enemies who’ve stumbled into something too dangerous to name. Then he moves.
Each thrust drives me against the desk, wood creaking, books toppling in cascades. He sets a rhythm, hard and relentless, every stroke deeper, rougher, shaking me apart. My legs lock around his waist, anchoring him to me, dragging him closer, matching him thrust for thrust.
The fire between us ignites brighter, burning through every doubt, every secret. His name tears from my throat, hoarse and unwilling, and he answers with mine, groaned like a curse, like a vow.
The desk rattles, the storm howls, and we move together in a rhythm that feels like ruin and salvation all at once. I don’t know if this is love, if it’s hate, if it’s something monstrous in between. I only know I can’t stop.
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Dimitri
The silence in the private wing has changed.
It used to be cold. Functional. Four walls designed to keep out the world and every weakness it might press into me. I built this wing to be untouchable, a sanctuary for the parts of my life I couldn’t risk losing, which until now had been nothing. I filled it with nothing but order: polished wood, locked drawers, rooms never disturbed. A man doesn’t miss what he never allows himself to have.
The faint echo of a child’s laughter drifts down the hall, unsteady and bright, warming spaces that had never known joy. I hear the creak of Annie’s steps when she paces at night, her bare feet whispering across marble as though her restlessness can’t be quieted by walls or guards.
Sometimes, when she walks into a room, I notice the change in my own breathing—subtle, heavier, betraying me before I can wrestle it back into discipline.
I see everything. The way her son curls closer to me without hesitation when I lift him into my arms, no fear in his wide eyes, only instinctive trust. The way Annie watches, cautious but softer now, not with the suspicion that used to cut from her gaze like a knife. She hasn’t forgiven me, not completely. She hasn’t pulled away either. In my world, that feels like grace.
Days bleed into nights, and the estate hums with war outside these walls. My men dismantle factions piece by piece, blood washing streets in the name of order.
Yet inside this wing, time bends. It doesn’t march in cadence with violence and retaliation—it lingers, hushed, as though this place belongs to something else entirely.
One evening, the storm rattles faint against the windows, and I find her in the library.
She’s curled in the oversized chair, wrapped in a blanket, a paperback spread open in her lap. Her hair spills loose over her shoulders, half hiding the crease of concentration in her brow. She doesn’t notice me at first, or maybe she does and chooses not to look up.
Either way, I stand in the doorway longer than I should, watching her. A woman who was once my prisoner, who fought me with every breath, sitting like she belongs in this wing more than I ever did.
When I step inside, the boards shift beneath my weight. Her head lifts, but there’s no tension in her shoulders, no sharpness braced on her tongue. Only quiet.
I lower myself onto the chair beside hers. The leather sighs under my weight. She doesn’t move away. The silence stretches between us—not the silence of suspicion, but of something else. Something harder to name.
After a long moment, I reach for her hand. My fingers close over hers, expecting resistance, ready for the familiar sting of rejection. Instead, she lets me take it.
Her hand is small against mine, cool, trembling faintly before settling into stillness. The simplicity of it cuts deeper than any blade. I’ve taken bodies, territories, fortunes. None of it rooted in me the way this single gesture does.
We sit like that, unmoving, as minutes lengthen into something quieter, heavier. The storm outside fades into background noise, irrelevant. The library breathes only with us.
When she finally speaks, her voice is so low I almost think I’ve imagined it. “I don’t know what this is… but it doesn’t scare me anymore.”
Her words slice through me. For months she’s been fire and fury, hatred sharpened into armor. For months I’ve braced against her defiance, convinced it was the only way she knew how to survive me. Now she sits here, hand in mine, whispering the one thing I never expected to hear.
I hold her gaze, and for once I let the truth rise unshielded to my lips.
“It should.”
