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His hand curls around my jaw firmly. Commanding. The kind of touch that doesn’t ask but claims. His mouth meets mine, all heat and hunger. I kiss him back, biting, resisting, pulling him in deeper because I love to fight him, and I love when he fights me back.

He groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating against my mouth. His knee slides between my legs and presses my thighs apart. “Show me your ring,” he growls. “I want to see it.”

I wiggle my fingers, my diamond engagement band glittering in the overhead lighting.

“Fucking gorgeous,” he says, gently moving his hands up and down my sides but careful not to touch the throbbing pain in my back. “You’re mine.”

“You think you own me?” I throw back at him, teasing, defiant, pushing against the wall of resistance I love. “You better fucking earn it.”

He does. Hedoes.

In one swift motion, he lifts me as if I’m weightless. My legs wrap around his on instinct as he carries me toward the bed. He lays me down and places me headfirst. I grin, already half-naked from the branding. His hands make rapid work of undressing himself. And then he’s there.

Skin to skin. Heat to heat.

“I’ll stop if you say it, baby,” he says, his voice raw and possessive. “I know you’re in pain, and if you?—”

“Stop it,” I say, my words breathy. “Fucking take me. I want you. I need you.”

He takes his time, his movements torturously slow and deliberate. Slowly, his grinding thrusts force me to feel as he slides himself into me. His mouth never leaves me for long—on my neck, biting across my shoulder blades, dragging across my spine, but careful to leave the throbbing brand alone.

I dig my fingers into the bed, wishing I were on my back so I could drag my nails along his shoulders and mark his skin.

“I want you like this. Trembling under me. Marked by me. Mine.”

He thrusts in and out, perfect pleasure making the pain fade and give way to bliss.

I come apart beneath him, and he follows, moaning my name, buried to the hilt, his body trembling over mine.

His forehead meets my back. His breath kisses my skin in the brutal aftermath of branding and lovemaking.

“I love you,” he whispers.

My eyes flutter open, landing on the pressed black clothing that hangs on the back of the door. I let out a sigh.

“And I love you.”

“Let’s go, baby.”

* * *

Chapter34

ANISSA

The funeral isbrutal in its simplicity.

No cathedrals or soaring music. Just a stone courtyard behind the estate. Her body is wrapped in white. Mariah—the woman I barely knew and still mourn. They say she liked flowers, had a green thumb, and was the mother to her little boy everyone wished they’d had.

I like that.

Without thinking, my fingers brush along the rough surface of the obsidian stone in my pocket. Protection. Power. I imagine I draw strength from it. Maybe we all could.

Vadka stands tall and silent. Stoic. He hasn’t spoken, not one word to anyone since the shooting, as if he’s afraid when he opens his mouth, he will fall to pieces. His jaw ticks once, like a pulse, but he’s otherwise marble. And it breaks my heart.

He stands beside the grave and doesn’t move. His sister-in-law Ruthie holds the tiny hand of a little boy dressed in a black suit who seems blissfully ignorant of the horror before him. I wish he wasn’t here, but the Bratva will do what they feel is right. And shielding children from brutality is a luxury they don’t seem to afford.

Ruthie sniffs, then breaks into loud, choking sobs. She clutches a scarf to her chest and presses it to her eyes. Silently, Yana comes to her side, wraps an arm around her shoulder, and Ruthie’s head falls to Yana’s chest. She weeps as Zoya wordlessly kneels in front of the small boy, says something in a soft voice, then lifts him in her arms and takes a little walk.