Page 30 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

“No!”

“There’s something off about you,” Viktor breathes, lowering his brow as he steps even closer so I can feel the heat from his chest, the threat in his posture. “I’ve seen this play out before—my cousins are all huge fans of kidnapping women to be their brides—and not a single one went willingly. Played along with the ruse. They were all hysterical, falling apart. Even Penelope, who is now the queen of the mafia.”

“I—”

“You may have everyone else fooled, but not me,” Viktor continues, cutting me off again, and I realize I’ve finally had enough. I bring my hands up, pushing against his chest to make him back up.

“If I was some sort of plant, waiting to get kidnapped by your brother so I could report back to the Allards, don’t you think I would be acting like the rest of them? If I didn’t want anyone to be suspicious of me, I’d be crying and screaming and throwing a fit.”

I step closer to Viktor, looking up at him with menace in my eyes.

“But I’m not like the rest of them,” I breathe. “The second I saw your brother in that office building, standing in the dark, I thought: finally. Finally, something interesting is happening to me. I let him kidnap me because I was so fucking bored with the life I was living. My father raised me to be ready for the worst, to survive the fucking apocalypse—and then I was sitting in an office building every day? Filing paperwork? I came with your brother because being kidnapped by him felt like coming home.”

“That is…fucked,” Viktor says, wrinkling his brow in disgust.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I mutter, just as Anya comes jogging up the steps, Anton right behind her with a bowl of soup. Her eyes dart between us, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Lots of tension in this hallway,” she comments, her eyes darting to Boris’s door. “Is it the sexual kind?”

“Disgusting!” Viktor says while I say, “Fuck no.”

“Okay, good,” Anya breathes, stepping between the two of us and reaching to open the door for Anton. When she looks back at Viktor, it’s with a heavy gaze that gives her words more meaning. “Because even with a stab wound, Boris would kick your ass for that.”

Chapter 13 - Boris

I have been shot, sliced, and even once nearly crushed in a junkyard, and nothing amounts to the pain in my side at this moment. And still, even the pain in my side is nothing compared to the pain of watching Fiona bend over me, her tits in my face, and there being nothing I can do about it.

She still believes Olive is innocent. I still think there’s no way we can know the truth about that. I can’t, in good conscience, take her with the knowledge that I may need to harm her friend in the future. It’s painful, but if I have to choose between Fiona and the Family, I have to choose the family. It’s my duty as leader.

“Lift your arm,” she says, and I grunt, doing my best to lift it, even as the pain ripples down my side, searing along my ribs. The second I see the motherfucker who stabbed me, I’m ending his miserable life. Actually, on second thought, I may spend some time torturing him first, get him to feel the pain I’m feeling. The pain he intended to inflict on Fiona.

Every time I think about it, the moment of realizing she was in danger, I try to think about my thought process. Logically, I should have let her take the knife. It was meant for her, for one thing, and for another, if I died from the stab wound, the Family would have been left in disarray. My siblings would be grieving.

According to Fiona, she has nobody to miss her.

Except me.

And that’s the thing that I can’t avoid about this situation—I care a lot more about Fiona than I would like to. It’s part of the reason why I haven’t been spending a lot of time on the Olive initiative—hurting her so I can hurt James Allard When I put it off, I put off the moment Fiona no longer wants anything to do with me.

“Hold still,” Fiona murmurs as she unravels the bandages around my wound. It’s one of the worst pains I’ve ever felt in my life, and I have to breathe through it as she pulls out the packing and replaces it with fresh gauze. “Almost done,” she says, grinning up at me, “you’re being such a brave little boy.”

I press my lips together, refusing to give her the smile she’s looking for. She’s been caring for me all week—changing my bandages according to Anton’s instructions, bringing me meals to help me “regain my strength,” and even reading to me. When I said I wanted to get back to work, she brought my ledgers and accounts to the bedroom, laying them out in front of me and saying I could do them from bed.

All I wanted was to get away from her. With her constantly hovering over me, I have had nothing but time to examine her body, seeing how her ass curves in her little booty shorts, how her midriff is exposed when she opens the curtains in the morning, how her fingers turn the pages of her book so delicately.

I want those fingers on my body. And I wake up every night, covered in sweat, the wound in my side screaming in pain because I’ve been dreaming of Fiona—of her riding me, under me, over the side of the bed.

It’s all-consuming. If I thought it was bad to see her done up in her little dress at the club, it’s even worse now that she’s lounging around in shorts and a camisole daily, her shoulders, legs, and back on display. It’s so much skin. Skin that I want to touch, kiss, and memorize every inch of.

This isn’t normal lust. I’m aware of that, I think as I picture kneeling before her in the shower, the water dripping down her body, her thighs opening for me, the way her body would writhe around me, how much pleasure I could give her.

I picture her standing above me, holding that knife to my throat, and my cock is immediately hard.

But I can’t get Fiona to leave me alone, even for two minutes, so I can try to take care of the problem myself. Yesterday, when it was becoming more than I could stand, I’d said, through gritted teeth, “I’m craving some of that watermelon stuff Anton made. Think you could grab me some?”

“Oh,” Fiona had said, smiling when there was a knock at the door. “I was actually craving some too—so I already asked Ivan to bring some.”

I’d groaned internally for five whole minutes, which led to Fiona feeding me the sorbet, taking turns giving herself bites, then scooping it out and spooning it into my mouth. At one point, she dropped a dollop of it onto her breasts, and it felt like my soul left my body as I watched it melt, dripping down her cleavage. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to lap it up, trail my tongue from the swell of her breasts and down to her navel, touching—

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