Page 9 of The Bratva's Hunted Bride
Despite his size, he’s fast. I try to bring my surfboard up like a weapon, intending to bludgeon him and take off, but he knocks it aside with one swipe, and the pull of it throws me off balance. As I stumble, he steps in. With one hand, he muffles my scream and with the other, grabs me around the waist. I drop the surfboard, sparing a single mournful thought for the damage it’ll take hitting the ground, and scrabble at his forearm.
It’s like trying to fight a tree. He’s solid, and my nails are cut short, too short to do more than scrape ineffectually against his skin. I bite down on his fingers that are clamped over my mouth, and he swears but doesn’t remove them.
“Quiet now,” he says, sounding calm and not even a little out of breath, even as I’m kicking and fighting as hard as I can.
I scream again because it’s all I can do, but the sound is so quiet beneath his hand that I know no one can hear me. My only hope is that someone is watching from the window or pulling into the parking lot. But no one comes to my rescue. He moves behind me and picks me up, his whole arm coming around to cover my face, and now I can’t breathe. He’s blocking my nose and my mouth, and the sensation of being smothered sends my fear rocketing to another level.
What does he want with me? He’s going to kill me. I know it. I know it deep in my bones, and the part of my brain that’s all instinct lashes out. Flailing backward, I throw my bodyweight against him and kick at his shins. My heel connects solidly with flesh. He grunts but doesn’t set me down, and I start to feel lightheaded from the lack of airflow.
Never go to a second location.That tidbit of self-defense advice fuels another wild attempt at breaking free, but it’s futile. Timofey gets the back door of his car open and pushes me inside. I land face down across the backseat. He follows me in. I’m reeling, sucking in air to make up for the lack, when he grabs hold of my hands and pulls them behind my back. The hard plastic of what must be a zip tie tightens around my wrists, binding them together, and then the weight of him is gone from behind me.
When he opens the car door to move to the front seat, I get off one terrified scream, so loud and hoarse my throat aches.
“Don’t make me gag you,” he warns, slamming the front door closed. He guns it, peeling out of the parking lot, and my last hope for rescue vanishes.
I twist onto my side so I can keep an eye on him. He slows when we hit the main road, blending us seamlessly with the other traffic. There goes my hope that he’ll get pulled over.
“Are you going to kill me?” I ask, hating how scared I sound. He doesn’t answer.
That seems like the kind of thing an Abashin would do. Kidnap the most vulnerable member of a rival family and murder them. I think of my cellphone sitting on the counter at home. If I hadn’t been more concerned with freedom than safety, it’d be in my pocket right now, and my brothers couldtrack me to wherever Timofey is taking me. Instead, it’ll be hours before they even realize I’m missing.
Hours alone with Timofey, if he lets me live that long.
Chapter 5 - Timofey
She’s strong. I knew she would be, and I’m oddly proud of how hard she fights, even if it does leave me with a bruised shin. Still, I wish she hadn’t fought me. If she had just come with me the first time, none of this would have needed to happen. As it is, I don’t know how I’m going to get her to trust me, but at least now we have the time to figure it out.
I glance at her in the rearview. She’s got her eyes squeezed shut. Instead of heading to my apartment, where shared walls could quickly become a liability, I drive to my house. It’s bigger, more secure, and the neighbors are just distant enough that I doubt they’d hear her screams.
But I’m hoping there won’t be many of those. Once she understands that I’m not going to hurt her, I’m sure she’ll see reason.
We wind our way out of the clustered neighborhoods. The houses grow larger and more spread out, with taller fences and longer driveways. Two stone pillars mark the end of my drive, and I slow the car to turn in, punching in the code that slides back the huge iron gate blocking the entrance.
Talia starts to squirm like she’s trying to sit up. “Where are you taking me? What is this place?”
Panic threads through her voice, but she stays dry-eyed. She’s not as soft as she seems on first glance. “Home,” I tell her, easing the car down the drive. White gravel crunches beneath the tires.
The garage door slides open as we approach, and I pull in, letting it shut completely behind us before I turn off the car. I’m not taking any chances. She twists to face me when I openthe back door of the car, and her mouth opens like she’s going to scream.
“Don’t,” I warn her, reaching into my back pocket to pull out a strip of cloth. “Or I’ll gag you. And I don’t want to have to do that.”
Her mouth snaps shut, and her eyes narrow, glaring mutinously at me. “Let me go right now, and I won’t tell my family that you did this.”
The Popov family. I know what Matvey would say about this after he’d worked so hard to get us an alliance with the Milovs—that I’m making us a new enemy. A new front we’ll have to fight on when we’re still scrabbling to get back to level. That I’ll turn a rivalry with the Popov family, one fought discreetly with land and money, into an all-out war.
But when I look at Talia, I don’t see family dynamics and Bratva power struggles—I see a woman that I crave. A woman I can’t let go of. Since the moment I first saw her, she’s consumed me.
“I can’t do that.” I reach for her, but she scoots away, squirming until her back is pressed against the far door.
“Can’t?” she challenges, breathing hard. “Or won’t?”
If she knew how I burned for her, how my mind tore itself to shreds in her absence, she wouldn’t ask such things. “Can’t. Come here. I don’t want to have to drag you out of this car. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She laughs a cold, sharp laugh, her face turning incredulous. “Seriously? You kidnapped me out of my apartment parking lot and threw me into the backseat of a car, zip-tied my hands, and now you’re going to hold me hostage at yourhouse?But right, you don’t want to hurt me. You’re unbelievable.”
Talia makes no move to scoot back in my direction.Good, I think, my blood practically humming with pleasure,I like the hunt.There’d be no pleasure in this if she were a weeping, pathetic thing that went along with my every word. In a perfect world, she’d throw herself willingly into my arms and profess her eternal love, her desire to never leave my side, but this? Feisty, daring Talia? It’s a close second.
I step back and hold my hands up. “I’ve only done what I had to in order to get you here. What are your options? Sit here in the car forever? Scream your head off and hope someone hears you? Or just wait for your brothers to show up and save you?”
