Page 6 of Bribed & Bred By The BRATVA (Bred By The BRATVA #9)

I don’t sleep.

The house is quiet in that way money buys.

Glass and stone and the sound of water held still.

Next to me, my wife lies curled up and asleep.

I went gentle on her tonight, but she knows it will be the only time I’ll take her inexperience into account.

I took her virginity and filled her with my seed. Tomorrow night I will be ruthless.

My phone lights with a photograph from Maksim. Clara’s hair is a mess, her smile feral and soft at once, the baby a fist of new life tucked to her chest. He is still at the hospital. He won’t return until she does, their eldest child being taken care of in the nursery by Rachel and Sarah.

I cross the courtyard to the main house.

Lights are low but I know my brothers are still up.

Work has been keeping us busy for the last few weeks.

Roman is already in the library so I send a quick text to summon the others.

Nikolai drifts in seconds later, quiet as a shadow.

Mikhail arrives looking harassed, wanting to be with Sarah no doubt, since she is close to giving birth to their first.

Roman looks me over, eyes narrowed. “You called a meeting. You never call a meeting. What’s going on?”

“I got married,” I say.

Silence. It is the clean kind, the cut before the blood. Nikolai is the first to move. He leans back in the chair, mouth tilting. “Got married to who?”

“A woman I met at the hospital.”

Roman laughs once, the sound hard. “You’re joking.”

“‘I’m not.” I pour whiskey but don’t drink it. “Her name is Isabella. Her brother is sixteen and was dying waiting for surgery they’d never be able to afford. I offered the only bargain that mattered. And now she is my wife.”

Nikolai whistles low. “You bribed a woman to be your wife?”

“It’s an honest contract and it gave immediate results for both parties,” I say.

“I’m sure it fucking did,” Roman grumbles, dragging a hand over his face. “It’s a bit fast.”

“We all like to pretend we need time,” I counter. “But we don’t. We need certainty.”

Roman’s jaw ticks. He circles the desk because he is a man who prefers momentum to thought. “You married a stranger on instinct. That isn’t certainty. It’s madness.”

“Instinct is the only certainty worth having,” I answer. “I saw her and knew. I feel like I’ve been waiting for the shape of my life to declare itself. Then I saw her, and it did.”

Nikolai sips his drink, watching me over the rim. “What does she know about us?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Apart from that when I say a thing will happen, it happens. And that her brother is alive because I chose her to be my wife.”

“And what does she think about you?” Roman asks.

“She thinks I’m insane,” I say with a shrug. “She isn’t wrong.”

He barks a laugh that has no humor in it. “Good. That way she won’t mistake you for something soft.”

Maksim calls. I put him on speaker. The line carries the thin cry of a newborn from far down a corridor. “You married?” he says, no greeting at all.

“Yes,” I eye my brothers wondering which one of them sneaked a message to our brother. Our leader.

“Is this a joke?” he asks.

“No.”

He exhales. “Clara sends you a curse and a kiss. She says your timing is appalling.”

“I seized an opportunity.”

Nikolai stretches his legs. “What do you want from us?”

“Your acceptance,” I say. “Understand that she is under my protection. No tests. No games. If anyone so much as startles her in these first days, I will remove the problem at the root.”

Roman’s eyes flick like knives. “You expect trouble?”

“I expect the world to notice when I change it,” I say. “Keep your men from being curious. Keep our enemies from thinking a wife means weakness.”

Roman’s mouth goes thin. “A wife is leverage.”

“A wife is a legacy,” I correct. “I want a child. As soon as possible.”

Nikolai grins like a fox. “There it is.”

I don’t hide from the truth. “Yes. I will have my line, just like the rest of you. I will have it with the woman I chose. If any of you make a joke at her expense, you better do it far from me.”

Roman comes to a stop at the edge of the rug, hands in his pockets, head tilted like he is trying to see a new angle. “You are serious.”

“Deadly. I married her tonight,” I say. “A judge signed. My ring is on her hand and I’ve already filled her once. This is not a plan. It is done.”

Maksim’s voice is softer through the speaker. “Does she want you?”

“She wants her brother alive,” I say, twisting my mouth. “And want is such a small word for what’s coming next.”

Roman snorts. “You always were the most devout believer in your own inevitability.”

“Because I’m right,” I say simply.

Nikolai sobers. “What is she like?”

“Steel where it matters. Not dramatic. Not brittle. She stands in front of me and refuses to beg. She eats when I put food in front of her because she is hungry enough to be honest. She’ll learn fast.”

Maksim sends another photograph. A tiny hand around his finger. Then says “Just try not to fuck everything up while I’m away. We should be discharged tomorrow.”

Roman’s gaze sharpens as he ends the call and looks at me. “Security?”

“Tripled,” I say. “No one outside the family knows yet. I do not intend to hide her. But the first days are mine.”

Mikhail sighs, the kind of sound a man makes when he sees a storm and knows he will stand in it. “No point telling you to be careful,” he says.

“I will be precise,” I answer with a grin.

Nikolai nods slowly. “Congratulations then. I suppose.”

Roman’s mouth curves without warmth. “If you have to do it, do it thoroughly.”

“I do everything thoroughly,” I say. I raise my glass to my brothers and then down the whiskey before sliding the glass back onto the desk.

On the walk back to the pool house the air smells like rain and the lemon trees the gardeners fuss over too much.

The water holds the moon like a coin. In the dark glass I see two shapes layered over each other.

The man I have always been, and the man with his hand on a future that has a woman’s shape.

Inside, the house is quiet. I move to my bedroom and sit in the chair facing the bed, watching her chest rise and fall, listen to the soft little sounds she makes in sleep.

I already want her again. I want her soft and pliable in my hands, her skin against mine, her warmth wrapped around me as I empty into her.

My cock is already hard, straining against the fabric of my trousers. Fucking her earlier only gave me a temporary relief. She is mine. A stranger this afternoon. My wife this evening and for the rest of time.

I undo my belt slowly, because control is still mine even now.

My palm wraps around myself and the first stroke is a relief so sharp it borders on pain.

I keep my eyes on her. On the shape of her beneath the sheets, casting my mind back to the colour of her pussy after I’d fucked it for the first time.

“Mine,” I growl, low enough not to wake her. My hand moves harder, faster. I imagine her whispering it back, shame coloring her cheeks as she begs me not to stop.

I brace one hand against the chair arm as I stroke myself faster. My chest heaves. Every thought sharpens into a single truth: she will bear me. She will swell with me. She will know what it means to be filled by more than cock and seed. She will be filled with my future.

The thought drags me over the edge. I shudder hard, come spilling hot into my fist, jaw clenched against the sound that wants to tear out of me. My seed coats my hand, my wrist. I pump through the aftershocks until it’s too much, until the need softens just enough to let me breathe again.

I sit there for a long moment, chest rising and falling, listening to the silence of night. She sleeps. Oblivious. Safe. Already mine.

I wipe my hand with the handkerchief I keep in my pocket, tuck myself back into my trousers, and rise, knowing exactly what I should do with it.

Patience is still a pleasure. Especially when I know exactly how this ends.

Tomorrow she’ll see her brother. Tomorrow gratitude will take root. Tomorrow she will start to crave me as much as I crave her.