Page 26 of The Bratva King's Auctioned Bride

And I was stark naked.

“I heard your invitation,” he said. “I was enjoying the show.”

There were the sparks I was afraid of setting off with my inability to keep my mouth shut. I’d done about ten laps to lose my bad mood, but that fragile calm was snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. Once again, I was thoroughly pissed off, the rage stoked by Arkadi’s appreciative smile as he kept his eyes trained on my every move.

Well, there wasn’t much I could do unless I wanted to climb out and parade to where I’d left his jacket, buck naked. Vibrating with fury, I swam a few more laps, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. There was no hope he was leaving until I eithergot out or got into it with him, and neither option seemed very savory to me.

But I was exhausted and couldn’t keep swimming forever. Paddling over to where he sat, I splashed his legs. “You got what you wanted,” I admitted, my voice low and broken as I stared up at him, fighting tears. “I’m beaten down.”

His brows shot together in a scowl, and to my shock, he jumped in at my side in a second. He gripped my shoulders, his jaw set and eyes like black ice as he glared at me. The silence stretched out between us as I began to shiver.

“That isn’t what I want,” he finally growled.

I froze. Had I gone too far? Worse, I feared I might go too far again if that look of his softened the slightest bit. Nothing changed as he continued to stare at me like some sort of specimen he’d never seen before. After another long moment, his grip on me loosened. He shoved away, pulling himself out of the pool to leave me trembling in the water.

The door I’d come out of slammed and then slammed again. He was coming back and moving with purpose. There was nowhere for me to go, even if I could get out of the pool before he made it back. I braced myself for a fight I could never win, real fear rising to strangle me as he got closer.

But all he did was drop a robe and a towel at the side of the pool before storming off again. The next time the door slammed, it was with a finality that had me almost slumping under the water. I paddled over to the ladder, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Hauling myself out on shaking legs, I dragged the robe around me and collapsed in a heap.

Who was this man who thought he owned me? I couldn’t figure him out at all.

What he was doing was a kind of torture I couldn’t wrap my head around, but it was definitely torture.

Chapter 19 - Arkadi

Over the next few days, I kept my distance from Mila, using all my available willpower. I was dancing on a razor’s edge to keep my bride a secret from her loved ones. It wasn’t too difficult to trick Nat into believing Mila was enjoying Rome so much she had decided to stay a while, as long as I managed to follow along with the messages she sent.

Keeping things as simple as possible and not committing to anything she mentioned that I couldn’t figure out from previous messages was working so far, but the ruse wouldn’t last forever. Eventually, it would start to seem odd that Mila wasn’t returning to Milan, or Nat might decide she’d head down to Rome and join in all the fun Mila was supposedly having.

Her brothers and their wives were all inundating her with messages, too, and so far, I’d been able to put them off with claims of being incredibly busy. It was morbidly hysterical when her brother Aleks—the man I would have been pleased to see hanging by his toes—had ended his last message with ‘Love you,’ and I’d had to answer it back. After only a few days, I learned quite a bit about Mila’s family dynamic. Whatever my feelings for the Fokins were, they cared deeply about each other.

That was something I knew very little about. When my parents divorced, I was only twelve, and my brother was a couple of years younger. Our harsh and demanding father and my free-spirited, wayward mother might have loved each other passionately at one time, but they were too different. She hated the Bratva, but not the fact that we followed our own laws. She was perfectly fine with crime.

She hated the rules, the hierarchy, the fact that no one crossed my father, not even her. Especially not her. She left,taking half his fortune and Kolya with her. Even with my father’s ruthless methods of child-rearing, I never envied Kolya’s overly indulgent upbringing. The few vacations I was forced to spend with them were insufferable, and we became estranged over the years.

When she had a health scare a few years back, Mama wanted to make amends and had moved to LA to spend time with me. It was a tumultuous time, and I was constantly cleaning up her messes to keep her out of trouble. As soon as her health cleared up, she was gone again, chasing after a shallow life I cared nothing about.

Learning about a somewhat stable and loving family through Mila’s texts was eye-opening and made me feel small stabs of something I didn’t quite understand. I finally told them Mila was about to start an ambitious new project and wouldn’t have time for much chit-chat, only sending them the briefest possible updates so they wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong.

Having unexpected feelings for Mila was one thing; having them about her family was quite another. It was time to go back to the original plan, which had only been to grab the youngest Fokin sibling and hold her for ransom. The payout is the complete annihilation of her brothers and the return of what they stole from me.

Uncle Eldar had thrown a monkey wrench into that plan, and I’d sent him packing back to Moscow in disgrace. He was not too happy about it, used to being in charge while I ran things from LA. The old man truly didn’t understand that he’d gone way too far.

It was because of him and the selection of men who’d been part of the bidding war for Mila that I had been forced to marry her. There was still no telling if those men had finallygiven up the idea of purchasing my innocent bride, but they were plenty upset about losing at the time.

Had I honestly been forced to marry her, though? It wouldn’t have been difficult to send the message that she was mine in some other way. A way that was less pleasant for me and a lot more painful for them. And I still called the priest in the middle of the night, because Mila had to be mine, and everyone had to know it.

Everyone except her brothers. While I should have been quick to rub their noses in my victory, now that was the last thing I wanted to do. The fact that my archenemies were now my brothers-in-law would have made me laugh if this suddenly wasn’t so serious to me. The original plan was out the window, and nothing was simple anymore. Not if I intended to keep Mila.

Which I did.

My woman was intoxicating, infuriating, enticing, and most confusing of all, I actually enjoyed our conversation that evening after the meeting. That was the last time she’d spoken to me, and I craved more. Almost as much as I craved her body. Once wasn’t enough, but seeing her come close to crumbling in the pool made me swear she’d be making the next move.

The sight of her lush body slicing through the crystal water had me almost bursting from wanting her. The sound of her voice cracking and the tears that shimmered on her lashes had nearly knocked me flat. That wasn’t going to happen again.

However, I was tired of the silence between us. I could see that she was bored and lonely, too. As soon as I finished my work, I slapped my laptop shut and went to our room. She’d been ordered to sleep beside me, and she was being dutiful, if clinging to the opposite side of the bed to maintain maximum distance could be counted.

In order to fulfill my promise that I wouldn’t let the quarry get run into the ground, I had been printing out her emails and contracts and letting her do as much as possible without gaining access to a phone.

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