Page 12 of Chased & Bred by the BRATVA
She blinks, the color draining from her face just enough to make my jaw tighten.
“They won’t touch anyone else,” I tell her. “They’ll be found. They’ll be dealt with.”
She doesn’t speak for a second. Then she walks toward me, slow and deliberate. “You believe me? About what happened?”
I step into her space, close enough to feel the heat of her body through the sweater. “I never doubted you.”
Her lashes lower, and she exhales. “Most people would’ve said I was asking for it. Drinking too much, wearing hardly any clothes.”
“Most people are stupid. How much you drink and what you wear doesn’t mean you have less rights as a human.”
She looks up at me again, searching my face. “Why do you care so much?”
“Because I saw you.” I lift my hand, brushing a thumb along her jaw. “Because you didn’t scream when you saw me. Because you ran like hell and let me catch you. Because you let me fuck you into the forest floor and still had the nerve to meet my eyes.”
She sucks in a breath.
“You didn’t break beneath me,” I murmur. “You bloomed.”
Her lips part, and I lean in before she can say anything. My mouth brushes hers, soft this time, lingering. She tastes like coffee and breathless tension. She kisses me back like she’s falling and hasn’t decided whether she wants to be caught.
I pull away and press my forehead to hers.
“You’re not just some woman who stumbled into the wrong woods,” I whisper. “You’re mine now. You understand that?”
She nods. Barely. But it’s there.
“And I protect what’s mine.”
Her hands curl into my shirt. She leans her weight into me like she wants to be held up. I wrap my arms around her and lift her clean off the ground, carrying her back toward the bed like she weighs nothing.
She doesn’t protest. Doesn’t squirm.
She rests her head on my shoulder, like she belongs there.
And inside myself, I know she does.
Rachel
I don’t know what I expected when he walked back through that door.
Maybe I thought the spell would break. That whatever wild heat existed between us last night would cool in the daylight. That I’d see him more clearly and come to my senses.
But no.
He came in, spoke with that voice like gravel and smoke, and the world tilted again. I let him lift me. Let him carry me. Let my head rest against his shoulder like it belonged there.
And now I’m back in his bed.
Not because he forced me. Not because I don’t know what else to do.
But because I want this.
I wanthim.
His eyes are on me and the air changes again, thick with unspoken need.
I sit up on the bed, tugging the sweater tighter around my body, though I know it’s useless. He’s already seen everything. Touched everything. Claimed me in ways I’m still trying to understand.
