Page 108 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)

The tremor in her words shows how hard all of this is to say. How much effort it’s costing her.

I twist her around to face me. “You’re scared of losing me?”

She hesitates for a second, but it’s self-consciousness that’s got her tongue. She nods after a moment.

“What happened to hating my guts?”

She smiles, but there’s more sadness in it than humor. “Sometimes, love and hate aren’t so far apart.”

Immediately after, her cheeks flush with color and all I can think is…

I need to kiss this woman.

But I don’t want her to think I’m taking advantage of her vulnerability. Nor do I want her recoiling from me. So I suppress every instinct in my body, wondering if maybe that’s the opposite of what she needs from me.

“Elyssa?”

“Hm?”

“I know it’s hard. But you need to get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the plan. I swear.”

Another lone tear trickles down her cheek. “My baby has been taken by a human trafficking ring, Phoenix,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll sleep until he’s in my arms again.”

“What can I do to put your mind at ease?” I press. “Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you.”

She stares at me for a long time before I realize she’s trembling all over. I grab her face in both my hands and force her to meet my eyes.

“Listen. Don’t you fucking give up yet. Do you hear me?”

She nods—or attempts to, anyway—but it falls short of true belief. She needs to turn her mind off. There’s only one sure fire way I know to achieve that. The same thing that brought our worlds crashing together in the first place.

So I give into my desires and grab her without warning. Two hands on her hips, hoisting her up and setting her on the windowsill.

I catch her gasp in my tongue and swallow it like fine wine. For a second, I think she might haul back and slap me.

But she doesn’t. Instead, the tension in her body gives rise to a new kind of heat. The kind of fire that demands an equal response.

Dust mushrooms around us as I step forward and press her to the crumbling stone. My hands tug at her flimsy white dress. It’s suddenly offensive to me. Like, how dare this fabric stand between us?

I want her naked and trembling.

I want her completely at my mercy.

I want to reduce her down to an animal, so I can silence the never-ending cacophony in her head.

She won’t be able to think about anything else.

One moment of peace. That’s the promise I can give.

I tear the dress off her with fistfuls of fabric in each hand. Her panties give up the same way, with barely a fight.

I pull back to drink in the sight of her. Pale, surrounded by torn cloth, naked and beautiful like starlight and so desperate for me to touch her that it looks like she’s burning up from the inside out.

Her eyes, though, are still wild. Still tormented.

Still too much thinking.

I jam two of my fingers into her mouth, forcing them deep before pulling them out again. I repeat the process until they’re slick with her saliva. She gasps but complies each time. Then I reach down and coax my fingers into her.

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