Page 85 of Bratva Sacrifice

This isn’t fair.” My hands are bound to the bed frame with silk scarves Alexei scavenged from my closet. “I was good!”

“Good is relative, koshechka. You still look like you want to gouge my eyes out.”

“I do want to gouge your eyes out! I’m not so fuck-drunk that I’ve forgotten that!”

He laughs against my throat; a ticklish burst of warm breath shivers over my skin. “Fuck-drunk? Christ, Katya.” His fingers brush my tousled hair away from my face, an action I can’t perform myself with my hands bound. “I have missed kissing you,” he says, and his thumb rubs across my lower lip. “You even think to bite me, and I will heat your ass for it.”

Alexei’s definition of gentle is fucked up. Really fucked up. But he layers his lips over mine, his tongue swiping at the seam of my lips, and…I don’t bite him. Maybe because I’m an idiot.

“My good girl,” he murmurs, and his palm cups my breast, kneading—gently. God, it feels so good. I didn’t think I would miss being pawed and manhandled so much. But he always knows exactly how to touch me, exactly what I want—even when I don’t know. He takes my mouth with slow, deep strokes of his tongue, and I know this is exactly how he’ll take the rest of me.

The heat of his body burns over me. His fingers drift down my thigh, maneuvering my leg over his hip, and then he’s sliding so deep inside me that I gasp into our kiss. There’s a little pinch, a tug. I’m still sore and swollen from earlier, but I push past the ache and lift my hips to take more.

He gives an abbreviated groan into my mouth. “My God, koshechka. There is nothing like you.”

I murmur, “Alyosha.”

He freezes. “Sashulya,” he corrects irritably. With an aggravated grunt, he retreats, withdrawing—from the kiss, from my body. He flops onto his back with a sigh. “Alexei is dead, koshechka. You do not call me this name anymore.” There’s a severity in the words I don’t understand. Maybe I am fuck-drunk.

“You’re angry?” With me? I’m incredulous.

“Da, I am angry,” he says, and his fingers begin picking the knots from the scarves binding my wrists. “You never fucking listen. And now we must talk before I can fuck you properly, so you can understand why you must never call me this name.”

Despite the strain in his jaw, he massages my wrists with careful fingers. They’re not even sore. I’m sore other places, though. My knees squeeze together just a little, and he notices—of course he does.

“Come,” he says, and he does that manly chest-thump I’ve gotten so accustomed to. “You are sore. We will have this conversation in the bath.”

I don’t know why I feel so nervous, but my body is full of barely-restrained energy. More than I’ve had in months, like my whole body is coming alive again, awakening from a long, long hibernation. My head swims as I push myself up. Definitely fuck-drunk.

I hear the taps turning, the spray of water beginning to fill the tub. I see Alexei—Sashulya—doing something on his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Turning off cameras.” It’s an absent response, and my spine stiffens.

“You put cameras in my house?”

He gives me a blank, unapologetic stare.

Of course he put cameras in my house. Of course the ruthless, morally-corrupt bratva boss put cameras in my house.

His hand clenches around his phone for a moment. He tosses it aside, and it clatters onto the nightstand. “You think I could let you go so easily? You think I would not want to know that you were safe, that you were happy?” A tendon in his throat is taut with strain. “But you weren’t. You made me break my promise to you.”

My breath catches in my throat. The last one, he means—that I would never see him again.

He didn’t promise he would never see me.

I feel myself soften—just a little. All this time, he’s been watching me?

I was never alone. Not really.

I swipe my hand across my burning eyes. “You moved,” I say, accusingly. “You had my visa denied!” My words sound strangled in my throat, choked with the tears that want to come.

“You wanted your freedom,” he snarls back. “I gave it to you! I created for you the life you said you wanted. I hoped that it would help you heal when I could not.” A rough curse sears the air. “You do not gain your freedom and then dangle yourself like bait in front of a man like me. Do you think this was easy for me? Do you think I did not wonder every day when you would bring home another man—a better man—and fuck him in this bed I bought for you?”

There’s a terrible lump in my throat. Like my body is trying to purge itself of the lingering resentment. “You didn’t even bother to say goodbye!”

He sighs, scrubbing his face with one hand. “You did not want that from me,” he says impatiently. And then, in a low voice, he admits, “I could not say those words to you. It was difficult enough to let you go. To watch you walk away from me would have been impossible.”