Page 24 of Chased & Bred by the BRATVA
His hand slides around my throat. “I think you know.”
Nikolai
My hand is at her throat, not squeezing, just holding. Her pulse flutters beneath my palm like a live wire, and I can feel the heat of her body against mine, pressed between the bark of the tree and the brutal line of my chest.
She’s not struggling. Not pleading.
She’s panting, smiling, flushed with victory even though I won.
And fuck, I love her for that.
“I think you know,” I say, and then I tilt her chin up and kiss her again. Slower this time. Less hunger, more promise. Her lips are soft and warm and parted for me like she was made to be kissed by a monster.
The kind of monster who tears men apart in basements and then chases his woman through the woods to fuck her against a tree.
She wraps her arms around my neck, tugging at my hair, moaning into my mouth like I’m the only thing tethering her to the earth. And maybe I am. Maybe she’s floating. Maybe we both are. Carried on adrenaline and the violence of justice and whatever the hell this is blooming between us.
“I need you,” she whispers.
Those three words shatter what’s left of my restraint.
I tear down her leggings and lift her with a growl, her legs wrapping around my waist by instinct. The bark scrapes against her ass, but she doesn’t flinch. She just watches me with those wide eyes, trusting me with everything, even the pain.
Especially the pleasure.
I push her shirt up, baring her breasts to the moonlight, and take one in my mouth, sucking hard enough to make her gasp. Her fingers dig into my shoulders. I kiss down her chest, her stomach, then lift her again and press my forehead to hers.
“You ready?” I ask, voice like gravel.
She nods. “Yes.”
She shivers, not from cold, but from anticipation. Her hands fumble at my waistband, and I help her, freeing myself with a sharp exhale.
I line myself up and slide into her in one long, punishing thrust.
She cries out, her back arching, and I swallow the sound with my mouth. She’s so tight, so impossibly warm, like her body was waiting for me all along.
“Fuck, little rabbit,” I groan, thrusting again. “You’re perfect.”
She claws at my back, gasping my name as I slam into her over and over, the rough bark digging into my knuckles where I hold her steady.
The forest is silent except for our breathing, the slick slap of skin on skin, the whispered promises tangled between us.
“You’re mine,” I growl. “Out here, in there, in every fucking way that counts.”
She clenches around me, her body shaking, her moans turning desperate. “I’m yours, Nikolai. I’ve always been yours.”
The words ignite something feral inside me.
I fuck her harder, deeper, chasing the edge with her, dragging her toward the brink. When she comes, it’s with a scream muffled against my shoulder, her entire body locking around me. I follow with a roar, pumping into her, claiming her in every way a man can, making sure not a single drop is wasted.
When it’s over, we stay like that, panting, tangled, trembling against the tree in the middle of the woods.
Her legs are still around me. Her arms, too.
And I don’t want to let her go.
“I’ll always catch you,” I tell her, because it’s tre truth.
