Page 8 of A Baby for the BRATVA Boss
“You said I could have anything,” I say.
“I did.”
“Even if what I want doesn’t make sense?”
“Especially then.”
I take a breath, not sure if I’m brave or foolish. “I think I just want to feel something good again. Something real.”
His hands are on me before I finish the sentence. Slow, deliberate strokes over my arms, my shoulders. His breath ghosts across my hair at the crown of my head.
“You only have to ask,angelu.”
I turn to face him, his gaze dropping to my mouth, and the world narrows to that one point of gravity between us.
“Yury,” I whisper.
He reaches up, brushing his thumb along my lower lip. “Say it again.”
“Yury.”
It sounds different the second time, softer, like a confession.
His hand cups my jaw, tilting my face up. “You’re not cold anymore.”
“No.”
“Good.”
He kisses me before I can think to stop him.
It’s not gentle, but not cruel either. It’s something in between. A claiming, a question, a warning. My fingers clutch the front of his shirt before I realise what I’m doing, and he groans against my mouth, deep and low. The sound goes straight through me.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “Are you still afraid?”
I nod and lick my lips, missing the taste of him and trying to press away the tingling feeling he left behind because it’s confusing and wonderful all at once.
His mouth covers mine again, not waiting for me to open to him. He pushes his tongue against the seam of my lips until it slides against mine. His hands hold either side of my face, angling me up so he can go deeper, take more.
Anxiety about what we’re doing, where this will lead, my obvious inexperience, begins to melt away as he expertly coaxes a whimper from me.
When he ends the kiss, drawing out the last stroke of his lips against mine, I can’t open my eyes immediately.
“Why do I feel like you’ve never done this before?” he asks when my eyes flutter open. He is looking at me with such intensity that I feel every inch of me blush. He blinks, momentarily startled. “Because you haven’t.”
Yury drops his hands from my face and steps back. His arousal is obvious now, tenting his pants. He never takes his dark gray eyes from my face, but his own is expressionless.
“Did I do something wrong?” I ask, and instantly wonder why. Why do I care so much about pleasing him? About seeing how far that kiss could go? He is supposed to be my captor. A man who would have killed my father had I refused to come with him.
Why can’t I make myself hate him?
“No,” he finally says, his eyes still steady. “You should go upstairs. Lock your door. Don’t let me in when I come knocking.”
His words tie themselves in knots in my brain, and I can’t move while I try to figure it all out.
“Go!” he barks, and the tone of his voice startles me.
I run from the living room and bolt up the stairs, taking them two at a time until I hit the landing and charge toward my room.
