Page 88 of Forced Virgin Bride of the Bratva
“You betrayed me.”
“I know.”
“I nearly killed you.”
“I know.”
His eyes burn into mine. “Why would you come back here? You think this is some fucking fairy tale where I forget everything you did?”
“No,” I say. “I think it might be where I die.”
His breath catches. It’s a tiny sound. The kind you could miss if you weren’t holding your breath too.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” I say. “I don’t even expect you to want me anymore, but if I have to die—if this ends like I always knew it would—then let it be here. Let it be with you.”
He walks toward me again, slower this time. Steps measured. The anger isn’t gone, but something else threads through it now. Curiosity. Pain.
Hope.
“I could snap your neck,” he says, hands twitching at his sides. “Right now. You know that.”
I nod.
He reaches for me—grabs my chin, tilts it up. His touch is rough but not cruel. “You’d let me?”
I nod again. “Yes.”
The moment stretches. His grip loosens. Then his thumb brushes my cheek, smearing a tear across skin that feels too raw to be real.
“Why?” he whispers. “Why me?”
“Because I never had a choice,” I say.
He stares at me like I’m the answer to a question he never wanted to ask.
I close my eyes and let my body fall forward into him, chest to chest, cheek to his shoulder. Maybe I deserve this—his anger, his fury, the bruises already blooming from what came before. Maybe this is justice for everything I’ve done, every lie I’ve spun with a smile. I don’t beg for mercy. I don’t ask for softness.
Instead of pain, he kisses me. Rough. Desperate. Consuming.
It steals the air from my lungs.
His mouth claims mine like he’s starving for it, and I let him. I open to him without hesitation, my fingers clawing at his bare back, anchoring myself to the man I came here to die for. There’s nothing gentle about the way he holds me, the way his tongue pushes past my lips, the way his hand knots in my hair like he’s afraid I’ll vanish again if he lets go.
My knees buckle.
He catches me without thought, pressing me against the wall so hard I gasp into his mouth, but even that doesn’t break the kiss. We’re past that now. Past fear, past words. He devours me like I’m oxygen and he’s been choking without me. Like he’s waited too long and can’t hold back anymore.
When he pulls back, his eyes are wild.
“You’re never leaving me again.”
The words scrape from his throat, raw and violent and broken. He says it like a curse, like a vow carved into stone.
My voice trembles when I answer. “I will never.”
It’s all I can manage. All that’s left in me, and it’s the truth.
His hands stay on me. One wrapped tight around my waist, the other cupping the back of my neck. He could snap me in two and I would still lean in. I’m trembling now, but not from fear. From the storm still rising between us. From the way he’s looking at me.
