Page 52 of Forced Plus-Size Bride of the Bratva

My breath catches. Not from fear. Not entirely. There’s something heavier than fear, settled low in my stomach like heat or guilt, I’m not sure which. I could turn back. I should. But I don’t move. The betrayal isn’t in what I’m about to do. It’s in knowing I won’t stop it.

I press my hand to the door and push.

The room inside is dim, lit only by a single lamp on the dresser. It smells like leather and expensive cologne. Everything in here is controlled—dark wood, clean lines, not a thing out of place. Just like him.

I don’t sit. Don’t touch anything.

Instead, I walk to the window and stare out. The glass is cool against my fingertips. Outside, the night stretches long and endless, the shadows below reaching across the floor like they want to pull me in.

The door creaks open behind me.

I stiffen, fingertips pressing harder against the windowpane, but I don’t turn. I hear him before I see him—measured steps on hardwood, deliberate and slow, like a man who knows exactly how much space he commands. Each footfall seems to pull the walls tighter, the room shrinking with every inch he claims without effort.

He doesn’t speak.

The silence is heavier than his presence. I focus on the dark beyond the glass, on the faint shimmer of distant streetlights blurred by the fog rolling off the river. Anything to avoid the knowledge that he is watching me, studying every line of my body with those cold, calculating eyes.

My spine locks straight. I refuse to move. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

Seconds pass. They stretch long and thin, until finally, his voice breaks the stillness.

“Changed your mind?”

The amusement curling around the words makes my stomach knot. My hands ball into fists at my sides, nails biting into the tender skin of my palms, but I keep my voice steady.

“You said you wouldn’t kill him.”

I hear the shift of his weight, the soft pull of leather as he crosses the room. I don’t need to look. I can feel the grin he wears, the slow, knowing smile that tilts the edge of his mouth when he believes he has already won.

“I won’t,” he says easily.

There is no promise there. No comfort. Just a statement, casual and absolute, like everything else about him.

A breath catches at the back of my throat when he steps closer. The heat of him hits first, radiating off his body in waves that prick against my exposed skin. He stands just behind me, close enough that I can feel the slight disturbance of the air between us, but he doesn’t touch. Not yet. He doesn’t have to.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Try to build a wall inside myself, some last defense that hasn’t already been stripped away.

Then his fingers brush my bare arm.

The touch is featherlight, barely there, but it sparks something electric beneath my skin. My body betrays me before I can think—shuddering once, a small, involuntary tremor that rushes up my spine and leaves me feeling naked even under the thin fabric of the robe.

I hate that he notices.

I hate the smile I hear in his voice when he murmurs against my ear, low and warm, “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

The words coil around my ribs, tightening until I can hardly breathe. Pretend. As if he sees through every layer I’ve tried to armor myself with. As if he knows that deep inside the fear, buried under the desperation, there is something else. Something darker. Something shameful.

I keep my eyes on the window. On the reflection of myself in the glass—small, fragile, already caught.

He moves without warning.

His hands settle on my shoulders, firm and sure, and then he turns me to face him. The robe shifts against my skin, the knot slipping slightly under the movement. I don’t resist. I should. Every muscle should lock in protest, but they don’t. I just let him move me like a piece on a board he already owns.

Andrei stares down at me, his face so close I can see the faint trace of stubble along his jaw, the scar slicing clean beneath it. His eyes are dark, bottomless, searching mine with a focus that strips away any illusion I have left. There’s no gentleness in him, but there’s no cruelty either.

Only raw, unrelenting intent.

One calloused hand lifts to my cheek. His thumb brushes the skin there—slow, deliberate—before tracing down to the corner of my mouth. I flinch at the contact, a small jerk of myhead he probably feels rather than sees. Not because I’m afraid. Because I want to lean into it. Because part of me, the part that still remembers what it means to be touched and wanted, aches to close the distance he hasn’t even allowed yet.

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