Page 37 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

Eventually, I sit back and rub my arm muscles to ease the trembling. I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours, and time has no meaning in here even though I sense the darkness outside has thickened while I’ve been trapped.

I close my eyes briefly, and that’s when I hear it: the lock being shunted across outside.

Grabbing a dagger and my gun, I cross to the back of the container and wait for the door to open. I’ll take at least one of them down before they get me. Two if I use the element of surprise to my advantage.

The seconds tick by slowly, reverberating inside my skull, each click making my brain throb. Adrenaline pumps through my veins as I wait for the door to open and the Russian bastards to barge in with their weapons raised.

But nothing happens.

My heart thuds like rocks being dropped from a great height.

What are they waiting for? Me to make the first move so that they can shoot me down in cold blood?

Whichever Bratva family these men work for, they are nothing like Leonid and Andrej. They are cowards to trap me in here in the first place and then to keep their distance when they’re ready to set me free.

I tiptoe to the door and wait behind it, counting to ten in my head.

Then I stand back and kick it open with my foot, so violently it bounces off the external wall. I stand in the opening, my finger on the trigger of my gun, and scan the darkness immediately surrounding my cell.

No one is there.

I step outside and squint into the night, expecting a gunshot to ring out at any moment. When it doesn’t, I study the area separating me from the road out of here, choosing the route that will offer me the most camouflage.

And then I run.

10

FINN

I’m not surprised to find Tamara gone when I wake up the next morning. She’s a free spirit, one that can’t be contained, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for clipping her wings when I could watch her soar like the beautiful butterfly that she is.

Aiden sends me on a job with Connor that keeps us out of the city all day. I can still smell her on me after I shower. I can taste her, despite the coffee and the breakfast rolls smothered in mustard that Connor insists on picking up for the journey. I can feel her body pressed up against mine, feel her nipple bar on my tongue, and when I close my eyes briefly, I can see her strapped to my bed, her pussy demanding to be devoured.

“Earth to Finn.” My brother gives me the side-eye when we’re driving back to the city at the end of the day. “Whatever she did to you last night, I think I need some.”

I smile. “Nope. Not going into details.”

Connor exhales slowly. “You always were the selfish brother. I’d share with you.”

“You’d overshare, you mean.”

“That’s what brothers are for, right?” He stares at my profile until I look at him. “I can afford to buy my own clothes now, so maybe you could⁠—”

“Nope. Not happening.”

The thought of doing that to Tamara, of even telling my brother about the amazing sex we have, messes with my head.

I’m already in so deep that I’ve found myself projecting her onto every woman we’ve passed in the street today. I keep checking my phone for a message notification even though I haven’t given her my number, and I’ve been praying for the Ivanovs to do the right thing and back out of the trafficking operation, so that we don’t have to intervene.

“How deep are you exactly?” he asks as if he read my mind. “And I’m not talking inches here.”

I grin at him. “Deep enough to give this up.” I flinch as I say the words out loud.

“Just give me a heads-up, will ya, so that I can prepare my best-man speech.”

She doesn’t come to my apartment that night. I shower, get food in to make dinner for the two of us, a bottle of wine, and candles. She’s the one holding the reins because she knows where to find me, and I tell myself that she isn’t here because she’s working. It has nothing at all to do with getting what she wants and then moving on.

Nothing what-so-fucking-ever to do with that.