Page 21 of Forced Pregnant Prisoner of the Bratva
Her voice slices through the quiet, low and mocking. “What now, Boss? Planning to lecture me about posture, or should I kneel so we can get it over with?”
Sarcasm drips off every word, reckless and brittle. Her tone is meant to sting, to needle at the edges of my control, and though her mouth twists with disdain, her eyes burn hotter. Testing, always testing.
She thinks she can hide fear beneath fire. She doesn’t realize both fuel the same flame.
I move toward her. Not quick, never quick. Slow, each step echoing like a countdown. She straightens in the chair, chin lifting higher even as her shoulders tighten. The air between us knots tighter with every stride, thick with something more dangerous than threats.
“Careful,” I say, voice low, measured. My hand brushes the back of her chair as I circle behind her. “Mockery cuts both ways.”
She tilts her head, eyes tracking me as I move, her laugh brittle. “So does control. You keep pretending I’m chained, but you wouldn’t have me here if you could do this without me.”
Barbed words, carelessly sharp, but underneath them is truth and she knows it.
I stop behind her, close enough that the heat of me seeps into her skin. I can hear her breath hitch, the rhythm uneven, even as she refuses to look away.
Predator and prey, circling each other in a dance neither will name. Her defiance flickers like firelight, daring me to snuff it out, daring me to prove her wrong.
All the while, the silence between us hums with something darker than hate. Something neither of us admits, but both of us feel.
She looks at Miron sometimes. Not often, not long. Just enough. He leans over, mutters something in his dry way—some knife-edged observation meant to cut through her frustration—and her mouth softens. Her lips curve, faint but visible. A smile, small and fleeting, but real.
It catches in me like a hook.
I feel it low, sharp, rawer than anger. An unfamiliar burn coils in my chest, gnawing at the edges of reason. I tell myself it is nothing. Just control slipping from my grasp, the chain in my hand tugging too loose. I tell myself I should tighten my hold, remind her where her place is, who owns her.
The thought of her smiling for anyone else—especially Miron—settles like poison in my veins.
My gaze lingers longer than I intend. Jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, every muscle in me coiled tight. I don’t move, don’t speak, but inside the silence grows heavier. She is supposed to be mine in name, mine in law, mine in every way that matters.
Still, she dares to let him draw out what I cannot.
The burn deepens.
I realize, with something close to fury, that I am not only watching her work. I am watchingher.
Her words lash first, sharp and fast, filling the silence. “You’re cruel,” she spits, her voice raw with fury. “Heartless. You rule through fear, and you think that’s strength? You’re unfit to command loyalty, you only command obedience.”
The silence of the office shivers with the weight of it.
I let it hang then let my mouth curve into a smirk sharp enough to wound. “And yet here you sit. Not broken. Not silent. Still spitting fire while chained to my name.” I lean forward slightly, my shadow cutting across her. “You call me cruel, but cruelty is why you’re alive. Without me, you’d already be bones scattered for rats to gnaw.”
Her eyes blaze, lips curling. “No. I’m alive because I refuse to die for you.”
The air between us ignites.
“Stubborn,” I counter, voice low. “Naïve. Desperate to believe you can survive without bending.”
“You,” she fires back, leaning forward, her hands braced on the desk, “are terrified of someone who won’t bow. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re watching.”
Her mouth trembles with rage, her body strung taut like a bow ready to snap. And the ache hits me then, low and fierce, coiling through my gut. The heat of her fury stirs me in waysno quiet, compliant woman ever has. They wilt, they break, they kneel because I demand it. She resists. She burns.
I want it.
I notice everything: how her pulse beats fast at her throat, visible against skin still marked faintly by my hand. How her lips curve when she smirks, biting off her own fear with mockery. How her eyes blaze with fire even when shadows of terror flicker behind them.
She makes me want more than silence. She makes me want that fire, turned toward me, consuming me. Devoted not because I forced her body, but because I bent her spirit until the flame burned only for me.
The temptation is a storm crashing inside me. To end the duel not with words but with my hands. To silence her mockery by claiming her mouth. To make her kneel in truth instead of taunt, to hear her defiance twist into something else entirely.
