Page 19 of The Bratva's Arranged Virgin Bride
Chapter 11 - Kolya
The marriage was now legal; the possible trouble Aleks could have caused me had passed. There would be no army at my doorstep any time soon, but things were still tenuous. I didn’t believe Nat’s words for a second. She might have tried to convince me she was madly, wildly in love with me, but she never would have blurted it out to her father. At that point, I wondered if the whole thing was a ruse, and she’d been the chosen one to spy on me all along.
If they wanted me off kilter, I was. While I knew I couldn’t trust Nat, not when it was so clear she was still nursing a grudge for running out on her in Milan, there was no denying I wanted her. That had never stopped.
For now, the only way I kept the upper hand was by having the Fokins believe I was in league with my brother, and we might possibly be working against them. If they went so far as to ask Arkadi, it was likely they wouldn’t believe him when he told the truth that we weren’t. Not yet, anyway.
For the moment, I was safe and could enjoy my pretty bride. And I was definitely enjoying rattling her. The feel of her body was almost more than I could handle, and it was safer in small doses. I had taken her for granted. Even though she gleefully took part in my art scheme in Milan, she was still so innocent and sweet.
Or so I thought. I never took her for someone who did her own scheming, but she definitely had a reason for taking her cousin’s place at the altar this morning.
And it wasn’t because she couldn’t bear to let another woman have me. As much as I would have liked to believe it, it was only my ego making me believe she still had feelings for me.Feelings other than hatred. It was looking far more likely that the entire Fokin clan was behind the switch-up.
But it was hard to concentrate on any of that when her soft body was so close to mine, and she looked up at me with a question in her deep blue eyes. My hand rested on the mound of her pert ass, and her lips were hovering slightly apart, ready and waiting for my kiss. Did she want me as much as I was craving her? Had been craving her, no matter how I tried to erase her from my thoughts?
When I asked her what we should do next, her blue eyes darkened to the color of the ocean during a storm. Her body began to tremble. But with desire or fear?
Either way, I shoved her aside, using every ounce of my self-control to move away from her to the closet. When I emerged and began setting up the chessboard, I grinned at her clear surprise. And disappointment.
She scowled at me as I put the finely carved pieces on the board. With her hands planted firmly on her hips, she stared at me until I pulled out the chair on one side of the table.
“Shall we play?” I asked, my voice a purr of invitation, all while thinking of what I would much rather be playing at.
“You know you’ll win,” she growled. “I already told you I’m not good at it.”
“Yes, I always win,” I told her. It was better that she understood that now, and didn’t forget it if she was determined to continue on in whatever game she was up to.
With a huff, she slid onto the chair on the white side and made a bold first move before I was even seated. No sooner had I moved my first pawn onto the playing field, she was parrying. We played in silence for several minutes, the pieces moving thisway and that across the board, each of us capturing and evading. She might not have enjoyed the game, but she wasn’t as bad at it as she made out. I might have been going a little easy on her, too.
“Have you finished your studies in Milan?” I asked.
She made a noncommittal noise. “You really don’t know? I find that hard to believe.”
She must have remembered how I gathered as much information on our marks as possible, so she’d know how to best make her sales pitches.
“It’s called making conversation, young lady.”
She bristled, twin circles of red forming on her cheeks as she fought to stay composed. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
My laughter only made her scowl harder and blush more. “Why? Don’t like it, or like it too much?”
I’d hit a nerve, just like before, and a very interesting one. She pressed her lush lips together, not meeting my eyes.
“Very well,old man. Yes, I finished my studies.”
I put my knight down and placed my hand over my heart. “Ouch,” I said, then made my next move, tricking her as to what I was going to do.
She rallied admirably and saved her own knight from certain capture on her next turn.
“And when did you return to LA?” I asked.
She hissed out a long breath, flatly refusing to answer. Of course, I already knew. It was about a week or so after she'd found out I’d cleaned her out, leaving her with nothing. That was the first and only time I’d ever had a crisis of conscience about moving on from a scam, and I expected it to fade. It neverdid, but I could hardly apologize for it now. She would have overturned the game board and stabbed her queen into my eye.
Every question I asked from then on was either ignored or given the shortest possible answer. I wasn’t going to learn anything important, but I was still oddly enjoying myself, dragging the game out just to be able to watch her pretty face as she decided her moves.
I had underestimated her, back in Milan, and now. The wheels were turning in her sharp mind as we sat and played, and I doubted it was about the chess game. It was important I didn’t let her youth and beauty and what I thought I knew about her enchant me too much. I wanted her so fucking much I could hardly sit still. It was the same feeling as when I first ran out on her. I could tell myself it was because I was on the verge of being found out since I had let the scam go on too long, but it wasn’t any fear of being caught by my victims that had me fleeing one of my favorite cities.
It was a fear of being caught up by Nat in a way I could never disentangle myself from. The woman was dangerous to me, had been from the start. I had thought living on the edge and tangling with a Bratva princess would be fun, and oh, it was. Until the edge started to crumble, and I was much too close to falling.
