Page 8 of Bred By the Masked BRATVA
I keep my head angled just so, letting my eyes flick without moving them. Hallway. Heavy doors spaced far apart. Sconces shaped like torch flames. The faint smell of cigar smoke and expensive polish.
“You have a reputation,” I say, to fill the space and keep myself thinking.
“Do I?” he says, amused.
“They say the son of…” I pause. Deliberately. “…of a very powerful man is here tonight. Looking for a wife.”
His fingers press fractionally harder into my back. “And you think that’s me?”
“I think you don’t look like a man who has to look for anything.”
He chuckles. “You’re bold, little dove. Most women would be silent right now.”
“I’m not most women.”
“No,” he says, and there’s something almost like satisfaction in his tone. “You’re not.”
We reach a door at the end of the hall. He opens it with a twist of his ring, like it’s his own private keycard. Inside, the air is warm and still, a private suite with dark velvet drapes and a balcony beyond. The sound of the orchestra becomes a distant murmur.
I step in before he can guide me. If he wants me here, I’m going to look like it’s my choice.
“This is where you bring all your women?” I ask, taking in the armchairs, the little bar, the single crystal decanter half full of amber liquid.
“No,” he says simply. “This is where I bring the ones who matter.”
The door clicks shut behind us.
For the first time all night, a tremor of unease slides down my spine. Not because he’s close, even though he is, but because I realize how deep I’m in now. There’s no crowd, no noise, no safety net. Just him, me, and the story I thought I wanted.
He crosses to the bar and pours two fingers of liquor into a glass. He sets it in front of me without a word. I don’t touch it.
I shake my head. I already made my point about my instincts earlier.
“You’ll need them,” he says, knowing my meaning.
He sets his own glass down and comes closer until he’s just inside my personal space, near enough that I can feel the heat of him. “You’ve been watching,” he says softly. “Taking notes in your head. Deciding what to write later.”
The breath catches in my throat before I can stop it. “What makes you think I’m writing anything?”
He tilts his head. “Because I’ve seen that look before. In men. In killers. In my own reflection. That’s not curiosity, little dove. That’s hunger.”
I keep my chin high. “And what if it is?”
“Then you’d better hope you’re hungrier than me,” he says.
Ivor
“Why me?” she asks suddenly. “There are a hundred women downstairs who would have already given you what you want.”
“Because I don’t want what they’re offering.” I step closer, until her back kisses the sideboard. My palm braces the wood beside her hip. I keep it there, not touching her, letting the possibility do the work. “I want a woman who looks at a room full of masks and thinks,I belong here enough to burn it down.”
Her breath slips, a single quiet sound she tries to swallow. She hates that I heard it. She hates even more that it’s true.
“And what do you offer in return?” she asks. “For my… truth.”
“Protection,” I say. “Power, if you want it. A life where you don’t have to ask permission to be who you are. And the certainty that if anyone lays a hand on you, I remove the hand.”
It’s not poetry. It’s contract.
