Page 16 of Bred By the Masked BRATVA
When I open them again, he’s watching me, patient, unreadable, as if he knows the battle I’m fighting.
And the worst part is the tiny, traitorous voice whispering at the back of my mind:maybe you already chose.
All I can really hear is the blood rushing in my ears, the ragged scrape of our breaths. My body is limp against the sheets, still aching from the way he filled me, still trembling with aftershocks I don’t want to admit to.
I force my fingers to unclench from his, to push against his chest just enough to create space between us and straighten my mask. “If you want me to understand your world,” I rasp, “then start talking. You promised me the story of a lifetime. Prove it.”
His gaze sharpens through the mask, dark and unreadable. For a long moment he just looks at me, like he’s weighing how much truth I can handle. Then, finally, he sits back, dragging a hand down my thigh as he withdraws. The gesture is casual, possessive, and it makes me shiver all over again.
“I will,” he says. “But only when you understand the cost.”
My throat tightens. “The cost is being here. With you.”
“The cost,” he corrects, “is never leaving.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer. My heart stutters. Never leaving.
I want to laugh, argue, remind him that I’m not a possession, that I have a life and a career outside this room. But the protest dies on my tongue, because deep down I know he means it. He isn’t bluffing.
I draw in a shaky breath. “You think sex is enough to make me yours?”
He leans closer, his mouth grazing the shell of my ear. “Sex?” His voice is low, dangerous. “This isn’t sex. This is the start of a blood contract. You carry me now. And soon, you’ll carry my heir.”
Heat shoots through me, unwanted and overwhelming. I clench my thighs together as if that could stop the rush of sensation. My mind screams at me to fight back, to push away, but my body arches instead, desperate traitor that it is.
I want to snap at him, to demand names and facts and evidence like the reporter I’m supposed to be. But what comes out is a whisper, raw and aching: “And what if I don’t want that?”
His hand slides up my throat, tilting my chin until I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “Then you wouldn’t have walked in here.”
The conviction in his voice makes my stomach drop.
Because the truth is, he’s right.
I could have walked away, but I didn’t.
And now, I know I never can.
Ivor
She’s mine.
The thought beats steady through my skull, a drum I’ll never stop hearing. She’s lying beneath me, mask tilted, lips swollen from my kiss, body still trembling from what I’ve done to her. A woman who walked into the lion’s den thinking she was hunting, and now look at her. Gutted open by her own want.
I watch her chest rise and fall, watch her struggle to pretend she’s still the one writing the story. She isn’t. She never was. I decide how this ends.
And it ends with her bound to me.
My wife. The mother of my children. Though I don’t have her name yet, I’ll rip it from her lips soon enough. She will be round with my heir while my cousins choke on their envy. My father will see I didn’t choose soft, obedient prey. I chose sharp. I chose the woman brave enough to walk into a masquerade and look the Bratva in the eye. And I’ll break her, bind her, make her mine until she can’t remember life before me.
I lower my mouth to her ear, let my voice curl around her like smoke. “You feel it, don’t you? No escape. Not really. Not for you.”
Her eyes flash, some spark of rebellion still clinging, but her body betrays her, thighs still parted for me, her pulse still wild under my hand.
“You think you came here for a story,” I murmur, brushing my lips over her jaw, “but the truth is simpler. You came here for me. You just didn’t know it yet.”
She exhales sharply, a sound that tastes like surrender.
I smile, slow, smug. She’s beginning to see it. Beginning to understand that this isn’t some game she can walk away from when the ink runs dry.
