Page 33 of Bratva Bride
My heart hammered. Four counts wouldn't come. Three wouldn't come. Just rapid-fire beats that said run run run even though there was nowhere to go.
"We should—" I started. Stopped. Tried again. "The marriage isn't real until we—"
I couldn't finish. Couldn't say consummation or sex or any of the clinical words that described what happened next. My hands were shaking. I clasped them together to hide it.
"My father will know somehow if we don't," I continued, forcing the words out. "He'll think I'm defective. He'll—"
He'll kill me. Slowly. Days, maybe. Until I understand exactly how much I've cost him.
"No," Ivan said.
Just that. Simple. Absolute. The same way he'd said it before, in this same space, when I'd begged him to get it over with quickly.
"Anya, no." He moved slightly closer but stopped several feet away. "I told you. We wait until you want to. If you ever want to."
"But the treaty—"
"Fuck the treaty." More force this time. His jaw clenched. "I can see you're a good person. I care about you too much to—"
He stopped abruptly. The sentence hung unfinished in the air between us.
Care about me? Ivan Volkov, the Ice King who felt nothing, cared about me?
"I'm attracted to you," he said quietly. Like he was confessing something dangerous. "Very attracted. But I know you're not interested in me that way, and I would never—"
He stopped again. This time deliberately. Drawing a line he wouldn't cross.
Attracted to me.
The words didn't make sense. I'd spent the day being assessed like merchandise. Being calculated like an investment. Being looked at as asset or liability or tool. No one had looked at me like I was someone they wanted.
But Ivan was saying he wanted me. Was saying it and then immediately promising he wouldn't act on it because he knew I didn't want him back.
My stomach did something complicated. I felt heat that had nothing to do with fear. Awareness of his body across the space—tall, controlled, carefully maintaining distance when maybe part of me didn't want distance anymore.
I opened my mouth to say—what? That I was attracted too? That I didn't know what I felt? That every time he looked at me something in my chest twisted?
No words came.
I just stood there in my wedding dress, with my heart hammering and my mind racing and something unnamed unfurling in my chest that might have been want or might have been terror or might have been both things tangled together.
Ivan took my silence as confirmation. I saw it in the way his shoulders shifted. The way his expression closed off slightly.
"Goodnight, Anya," he said softly. Already moving toward his bedroom. Away from me. Away from the possibility of this conversation going somewhere neither of us was ready for. "Sleep well. You're safe here. Always."
His door closed with a soft click.
Chapter 7
Ivan
Theceilingfanclickedwith each rotation. I’d given up counting hours ago, just like I’d given up on sleep. Four a.m. had bled into five, then six, and now pale morning light leaked through my bedroom windows, turning everything gray and accusatory. My jaw ached from clenching. My mind wouldn't stop replaying that moment—Anya standing in her wedding dress, hands clasped to hide their shaking, while I confessed attraction she clearly didn't return.
I'm attracted to you. Very attracted.
Her silence had been answer enough. The way she'd just stood there, frozen, probably terrified I was about to become exactly the monster she'd expected. Another man with power over her body. Another cage with prettier bars.
I'd thought I was saving her. That was the sick joke of it. Viktor Morozov had delivered his daughter like a package, and I'd accepted delivery thinking I could protect her, give her autonomy, show her that marriage didn't have to meanownership. Instead, I'd trapped her in a penthouse with a man who wanted her while she counted down the days until her father's threats became reality.
