Page 43 of Auctioned to the Russian Pakhan
“Good,” she’d replied, leaning down to kiss him. “Maybe now my brothers will stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”
The memory made her smile now as she watched the organized chaos below. She was learning to be dangerous, learning to be useful, learning to be someone who belonged in this world instead of someone who was merely tolerated in it.
“Looks like everything’s under control up here.”
Irina turned to find Matvei in the doorway of the observation room, his presence immediately changing theenergy of the space. Even after everything that had happened between them, after weeks of sharing his bed and his life, he still could make her heart race just by walking into a room.
“It is,” she said, trying for professional composure but knowing from his smile that she was failing. “Pavel’s team found the missing crates. They were mislabeled in the system.”
“Excellent work,” he said, closing the distance between them. The room suddenly felt much smaller. “How are you feeling about all this?”
“Like I finally understand why you love it,” she admitted. “There’s something satisfying about making all the pieces fit together properly.”
His eyes darkened at that, and she realized how her words might have sounded. Everything between them seemed to carry double meaning these days, every conversation dancing around the growing intensity of whatever was building between them.
“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked, backing her against the window. “Making the pieces fit?”
Her breath caught as he caged her in with his arms, his body radiating heat that had nothing to do with the warehouse’s industrial heating system. “Matvei, we’re in public.”
“The glass is one-way,” he murmured, his mouth finding the sensitive spot behind her ear. “No one can see us.”
“But they’ll know something’s happening if we disappear,” she protested weakly, even as her hands came up to grip his shoulders.
“Let them know,” he said, capturing her mouth with his.
The kiss was hungry and possessive, full of the tension that had been building between them all day. She’d caught him looking at her during breakfast with an expression that made hertoes curl, had felt his gaze following her as she moved around the mansion getting ready for the day. Now, with his hands on her waist and his mouth moving against hers with practiced skill, she understood what all those looks had meant.
When he finally pulled away, they were both breathing hard, and she was grateful for the window at her back because her knees felt decidedly unsteady.
“You’re distracting,” she accused, trying to regain some semblance of composure.
“Good,” he said, echoing her earlier words. “I like keeping you off balance.”
Before she could respond, voices from the main floor drew their attention back to the operation below. Matvei straightened, instantly shifting from the man who’d just been kissing her breathless to the Bratva leader who commanded respect and fear in equal measure.
Irina watched him work, noting the way his men responded to his presence, the efficiency with which he handled problems and made decisions. There was something mesmerizing about seeing him in his element, about watching the careful choreography of power and control that seemed as natural to him as breathing.
But as she observed him directing the final stages of the operation, something shifted inside her chest. It wasn’t just attraction anymore; it wasn’t just the physical pull that had been growing stronger every day since that first night they’d spent together. This was something deeper, something that made her heart clench with a mixture of pride and terror.
She was falling in love with him.
The realization hit her like a physical blow, stealing her breath and making her grip the windowsill for support. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be temporary, a marriage of convenience that would eventually end when the power struggles between their families resolved themselves. She wasn’t supposed to care about him this much, wasn’t supposed to feel like her chest might crack open when he smiled at something one of his men said.
But she did care. God help her, she cared so much it scared her.
Needing air, needing space to process what she’d just realized, Irina slipped out of the observation room and made her way to a quiet corner of the warehouse. The industrial space was vast enough that she could find privacy among the towering shelves and stacked inventory, could take a moment to breathe and figure out what this meant for everything.
“Well, well. Look what I found.”
Irina spun around, her heart hammering, to find Viktor emerging from behind a stack of crates. Her brother looked exactly as dangerous as always, dressed in dark clothing that helped him blend into shadows, his face set in the kind of expression that had made grown men confess their sins just to make him stop staring at them.
“Viktor,” she breathed, instinctively taking a step back. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you,” he said simply, as if breaking into a heavily guarded Volkov operation was just another Tuesday for him. “Though you’ve made it interesting, playing house with the enemy.”
The casual dismissal of everything she’d built here, everything she’d learned and accomplished, sent a spike of anger through her chest. “I don’t need rescuing.”
“Don’t you?” Viktor’s dark blue eyes, so like her own, studied her with an intensity that made her want to squirm. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve been thoroughly domesticated.”
