Page 10 of A Baby for the BRATVA Boss
And somehow, that makes everything worse.
I sink back onto the floor, and try to slow my breathing. My body doesn’t understand the difference between danger and desire. It wants both. Maybe it’s the same thing when it comes to him.
He called meangelu.His angel. But I don’t feel like an angel right now. I feel dirty. Alive. Thirsty for something I’ve never had and shouldn’t want.
I want to be angry at him. I want to hate him. But when I close my eyes, I see the way his hands trembled when he told me to go. I see the muscle in his jaw tightening like it took everything in him not to cross the line.
No one’s ever wanted me like that. Not enough to lose control. Not enough to fight himself over me.
The thought alone makes my stomach twist. Heat lingers between my legs, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to chase the feeling away. It doesn’t help. It only sharpens it.
“Stop,” I whisper to myself, pressing my palms over my face. “Just stop.”
I wish I could cry, but nothing comes. My body hums with something else entirely. A need I don’t understand, a tension that doesn’t belong in a locked room. I picture him standing in front of me, a man made of heat and ruin and restraint.
What does it mean that I’m not scared enough of him?
The thought won’t leave me. It circles like smoke refusing to clear.
The floor creaks outside my door. Heavy steps. Slow. Measured.
“Angelu,” he says quietly. “It’s okay to come out now.”
I don’t answer.
His voice is calm again. Controlled. “I won’t touch you. Not unless you ask me to.”
My heart stutters. He waits, then the floorboards shift as he turns away.
I stay where I am, listening until the sound of his footstep’s fades.
My pulse refuses to settle. My skin still remembers him. My mind can’t decide whether I should be more afraid of what he might do, or what I’m beginning to want him to do.
Yury
I shouldn’t have gone to her door.
The moment I heard the small sound she made as she turned the key, something inside me cracked open. I’d spent my life mastering silence, learning how to hold power without losing it. But one sound from her and I was gone.
Now the house feels too still. Too aware. Every creak of the floorboards echoes what I did. What I almost did.
The fire has burned low in the hearth, throwing uneven light across the room. I pour a drink I don’t need, the amber catching in the glass like flame. It doesn’t burn enough. Nothing ever does.
She’s above me now, in that small guest room, trembling or furious or both. I can still smell her on my skin: snow, cocoa, and the faintest trace of fear. It shouldn’t smell good. It shouldn’t make me want to go back up there.
I grip the glass tighter until it cracks. A thin line of whiskey bleeds down my fingers, stinging where it meets the skin. Good. Pain keeps me clean.
I tell myself she’s safe behind that locked door. That I told her to lock it for her own good. That what happened tonight won’t happen again.
Lies.
Every breath I take is a reminder of what I’m denying. The sound of her soft voice. The feel of her mouth parted against mine. The way her body leaned into me like she didn’t even know she’d done it.
I drag my hand down my face and force the air back into my lungs. I’ve built empires on control. I will not let one woman ruin it. Ruin me.
Tomorrow, I’ll make it clear. Boundaries. Structure. Rules she can live by. I’ll give her a routine, a sense of safety, something to hold on to while I figure out how to stop wanting her.
But even as I plan the words, I already know the truth: I don’t want to stop. I just want to manage the wanting.
