Page 49 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

Tonight, she broke.

I hate that I watched her unravel like that. That her voice cracked. That her breath hitched and sheclung to me.

I should feel victorious. Instead, I feel… off.

I return to the bed slowly, lowering myself to sit beside her once more. She shifts slightly, breath hitching again—but not out of fear. It’s almost like she’s trying to match the music, to steady herself.

My hands rest on my knees. I don’t touch her. Don’t say a word.

She’s close enough that her presence hums in the air between us. Close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from her through the blanket.

The music lingers, a low lull that fills the space between thunderclaps.

Why her?

Why does it matter if she breaks? Why does ithurtto see it?

She’s just a tool. That’s what I told myself. From the beginning. A means to an end. A body to stitch Yuri back together. A mouth to extract answers. An expendable piece in a long, bloodstained game.

But no one else ever looked at me the way she does.

No one else ever made my chest feel like this. Tight. Strained. Like something’s alive in there, something dangerous and unfinished.

It makes no sense.

She flinches again as the thunder rolls faintly overhead. But her eyes stay closed, her lips parting on a slow exhale as she presses further into the mattress.

She’s not asleep, but she’s trying.

The silence hangs thick—stretched taut between our breaths.

Her lips are parted, flushed, her chest rising in quick, shallow pulls beneath the blanket. I can feel her pulse in the air between us, a mirror of my own—erratic, heated, dangerous. The fire from the fireplace throws flickering light across her cheekbones, and I want to burn in it. I’ve wanted many things in my life—money, vengeance, power—but this? This slow, reluctant surrender unfurling between her ribs?

This is something else entirely.

“Elise,” I say again, but this time her name is a warning. For both of us.

She doesn’t pull away, she leans in.

Our foreheads nearly touch. Her eyes search mine—fear and hunger, defiance and vulnerability, all colliding in that storm behind her lashes. It should make me stop. It should be enough to draw a line.

She lifts her face to mine, and I fall.

The first brush of her lips is featherlight, trembling and hesitant. But I catch it. Deepen it. My hand slides to the back of her neck, holding her still, and when she gasps against my mouth, it nearly undoes me. She’s warm and soft and clumsy, andfuck, she tastes like something sweet I wasn’t meant to have.

A sound escapes her throat when I part her lips with mine, when my thumb brushes down her jaw, and then I’m not thinking at all—I’m just acting, moving, pressing her back into the mattress as I cover her with my body. Her legs shift, one knee brushing my hip, and she lets me guide her beneath me like she’s meant to be there.

Her hands are in my shirt again, but this time not from fear.

Need. Desperation. Trust.

My mouth trails down her throat, savoring the way she arches beneath me. She breathes my name.

Then—“Wait.”

I freeze.

My head lifts. Her face is flushed, her eyes wide, panic ghosting across her expression. “Kolya—I can’t. I mean… I’ve never—”

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