Page 5 of The Bratva's Hunted Bride
“No,” I reply, too quickly, reaching for his arm to stop him before he moves. My fingertips brush the bare skin of his muscled forearm. Craving shoots through me like lightning. I want those arms on either side of my head as he plows into me.
He’s watching me so intensely, like he wants to memorize everything about me, like I’m a book he can’t wait to read. The tension between us is palpable, like every eye in the room should be on us, but it’s just me and him in this dark corner.
“Good,” he replies, that single word rolling off his tongue as he touches my hand.
It’s barely anything, a brush of contact in a darkened room that shouldn’t send another honey-slick pulse of heat between my thighs. But it does. And from the way his slate-colored eyes keep dropping from mine to linger on my lips, I know the feeling is mutual.
No way am I hooking up with a stranger.No matter how impossibly hot he is. This man has “bad idea” written all over him, but my body doesn’t care to read the warning signs.
Before animal instinct can completely take over, I need to get out of here. I need to put some space between us.
“I—I need the restroom. Excuse me.” I duck past him and flee to the bathroom, pressing my palms to my cheeks to cool them.
There’s no line, and I push my way through the swinging door, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink. I run cold water and splash some on my cheeks, willing the obvious blush to die down. By the time I get back out there, maybe he’ll have moved on. Found another woman. I can’t imagine anyone saying no to him.
After a few minutes, the blush on my cheeks has faded, and I smooth my hair before stepping out into the hallway. He’s there. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, looking like something out of my fantasies. Fuck it.
I go straight to him and he opens his arms to me, like he never had any doubt this was going to happen. He grabs my waist and spins me against the wall, pinning me in place before kissing me. It’s messy and desperate, teeth on lips and tongues battling for dominance. And it’s still not enough.
“Take me home.” I practically moan it when his lips find the shell of my ear. “Now.”
He grabs my hand and leads me out a back door I hadn’t known existed, where his car is already waiting. Presumptuous. I’d be annoyed if I weren’t so turned on. The drive forces space between us, and a silence fraught with barely contained urges. I send off a quick text to Sarah, letting her know I’ve taken off so she doesn’t freak.
I sit on my hands to keep from reaching across the seat to him, and the drive seems to take forever, but I’m sure it’s only minutes before we’re stopping in front of an apartment building. Without a word, I follow him up, my pulse quickening with every step we take.
The door to his apartment shuts behind us, and it’s like not a second has passed since we were in that hallway. His hands are on me, sliding beneath my dress, and I’m tugging off his shirtwith shaking fingers. I’ve never wanted like this. Never needed so badly that I can’t think straight.
I don’t want to have control or restraint. I want to surrender to his fingers and his kiss and his hungry gaze. He strips me bare, right there in his entryway, and I don’t care that the wall is hard and cold against my back. Don’t care about anything other than his next touch between my thighs. We don’t make it to the bedroom.
I’m an early riser, and I wake before him. Last night, I’d taken no notice of the place we’d arrived at, but now I can see it’s rather nice, and the sports car we’d ridden in last night spoke of wealth. Curious about the man I went home with, I lift the covers carefully and sneak out of bed, glancing back to make sure he’s still sleeping.
My body is deliciously sore, and I savor the ache between my legs. One round hadn’t been enough for either of us. I pad softly over to his jeans, still piled on the floor where he’d kicked them off last night, and rifle through his pockets. You can take the girl out of the crime family, and all that.
They’re empty apart from his wallet, leather, expensive, and I flip it open. His license sits in the clear plastic pocket, and I read his name once, twice, before the words sink in. Timofey Abashin. Abashin. One of the other Bratva families scrabbling for power in Miami and, if I’m not mistaken, one of my family’s rivals.
Hastily, I snap the wallet shut and tuck it back into his pockets before tiptoeing out of the room. My clothes are still strewn about the entryway. Thanks to my brothers’ reluctance to involve me in anything criminal, I know very little about my family’s Bratva ties, but I’ve heard the name Abashin bandied about like a curse word.
One night on my own, I muse as I pull on my rumpled clothes with one eye on the bedroom door, and I sleep with the enemy. Great job. The upside is, Timofey has no idea who I am—all I gave him was my first name. Once I leave this apartment, I’ll never see him again, and no one will ever have to know.
Chapter 3 - Timofey
She’s a ghost. The woman of my dreams, the one I can’t get out of my head since I laid eyes on her, has vanished. In a city like Miami, it’s not a difficult thing to do, and I feel like an idiot for not learning more about her when I had the chance. Granted, I had more pressing matters on my mind at the time, and I wasn’t expecting her to sneak off before I woke up, but now it feels like the biggest fuck-up of my life.
And I can’t just drop everything to focus on tracking her down, not when I’m acting as the head of the family at the moment. I pride myself on being the responsible one, but this incident reveals an ugly truth I thought I’d buried. A side of me I thought I’d grown out of. An obsession.
That’s what this is. Talia is all I think of, all Icanthink of, and it’s driving me to distraction. There are so many things I should be doing, and none of them involve turning this city upside down to find her.Get your shit together.
Except it’s not that simple. The first time I’d felt this way, I was twelve years old. There had been a girl in my class whom I’d felt drawn to, almost compulsively. I started to follow her home. To watch her through the windows. It had escalated until my parents had caught on when I’d stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and shoved me into therapy.
Years of therapy had quelled the worst of it, had kept those tendencies from becoming criminal, and I’d channeled my obsessive nature into more productive avenues like the gym and the family. I thought I’d had it handled. Cured. Until Talia.
I force another glug of coffee down my throat and wince when I set the cup down too hard. The combination of caffeineand perhaps two hours of sleep has me feeling jittery. My right eyelid twitches.
“Dude, you look like shit.” Valery refills my coffee and slides into the seat across from me. Always tactful, my sister.
“Tell me how you really feel,” I grumble, dropping my head into my hands.
Oleg, sitting next to her, looks up from his laptop. “She’s right. Are you coming down with something?”
