Page 67 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
“Maybe.”
Darya stares at me for a long moment. Her face softens—not with pity, but with something close to disappointment.
“She’s not what you want her to be, Maxim, and you’re not who she thinks you are.”
She turns, walking back toward the door. Her parting words are low, nearly swallowed by the dark.
“You’ll figure it out, but not before it costs you.”
She leaves, and I sit alone again, the weight of the silence now heavier than before.
Chapter Twenty-One - Kiera
I wake wrapped in too much warmth, too much cotton.
The sheets smell like his skin. His cologne. His sweat. My own. The room still holds the heat of what we did, like it hasn’t finished settling, like it’s waiting for a repeat. My body aches in places I forgot could ache. My thighs, my ribs, the soft underside of my breasts where his stubble scraped as he kissed his way down. I press my face into the pillow and groan, low and muffled, trying to bury myself in it.
I shouldn’t feel like this.
I shouldn’t want to.
The cotton smells like him, and it makes my chest tighten. My skin still hums with the memory of his hands, his mouth, the filthy things he whispered between gasps like prayers. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be a release, a game, a way to keep him close while I unraveled everything behind his back.
Last night felt like more. Too much. Too good.
Too intimate.
I shift onto my side, wincing at the sore pull in my hips. My legs slide together and I swear I can still feel him. Inside me. Around me. The way he looked at me after. Like I belonged there. Like I chose it. Like he believed it.
The worst part is—some part of me did.
My fingers clench in the sheets, knuckles tight against the fabric. I hate that he’s getting to me. Hate the way he’s wormed into the cracks of my resolve, not by force, but with care. With patience. With low murmurs and soft touches that feel like they shouldn’t come from a man like him.
He’s supposed to be a monster in this story. My father’s killer. The Bratva’s hammer. The one man I’m meant to destroy, not fall into. Not crave. And definitely not lie in bed thinking about while my body aches in all the places he touched.
I turn again, dragging the blanket higher, curling into myself like I can hide from it. From him. From me.
Guilt knots in my chest, sticky and choking. Desire wraps around it like barbed wire. I feel like I’ve failed already, and I haven’t even struck yet.
I should get up. Should shower. Should put distance between us before he sees what I’ve let slip through the cracks.
My pulse still stutters when I remember how he touched me like I was something to be worshipped. How he said my name like it meant something. How, for one goddamn night, I didn’t feel like a weapon.
I don’t know what to do with that.
***
The road winds higher than I expect, curling through hills that shimmer under the late afternoon sun. I don’t ask where we’re going—don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I’m curious—but when the iron gate gives way to a long gravel drive flanked by rows of green-gold vines, I can’t help the way my brow lifts in quiet surprise.
“A vineyard?” I say as he pulls the car to a smooth stop beneath a rust-streaked pergola.
Maxim doesn’t look at me as he shuts off the engine. “I own it.”
I glance at him, searching for irony, but his face is flat. “You don’t strike me as the wine-and-cheese type.”
“I’m not,” he says. “Not anymore.”
It should be a joke. It isn’t.
