Page 13 of Captive Vows (The Dubinin Bratva #1)

GAbrIELLA

L uka and I finished breakfast on a bad note.

“It’s semantics,” he growled.

“It’s semantics that matter,” I protested, fed up and unsure whether I was being problematic for the hell of it. It seemed like I was getting too comfortable and losing my edge to fight back and keep an escape plan in the back of my mind.

I could not be softening toward him.

I could not be okay with being placed here against my will.

No matter how grateful I was for the food and place to rest, for being spared creeps like Tony, I wasn’t going to be deluded into thinking it was acceptable to be kidnapped.

“Calling me a guest is a joke.”

“You are a guest in my home,” he argued back as he tossed his napkin to the table.

“I’m not. You kidnapped me. And you’re keeping me here against my will. There is no other way to paint that picture.” I threw my napkin down to the table as I stood. Before he could get another word in, I turned and left.

I hadn’t walked away from him yet.

I hadn’t had the last word.

Only now did I have the courage to leave the dining room before he’d excused me or escorted me out. Taking back that little bit of control felt good, but as I marched out of there to go back to my room, I hated how bratty I sounded. How defiant I was to push back.

He didn’t speak to me all day, sending me a text on the phone he gave me that he’d be gone for lunch and dinner.

“Shit. He is mad.” I shook my head and focused on dancing. Worrying about whether my captor was mad had to be the joke of the century.

He was the enemy. He was the bad guy. Or, at least, he was supposed to be. Something was getting awfully twisted in this narrative if I was starting to see him in a good light.

As the hours passed by, I dreaded the possibility that he could seriously be upset and irritated with me. He was still a Mafia boss. He was the leader of the Dubinins. The man ordered people killed. He’d killed people, probably with his bare hands.

And here I was, the moron to think I could push him and stand up for myself about terminology.

When he showed up in my room later that evening, his thunderous expression alarmed me.

“Hey!” I jumped back, jarred from the concentration I’d locked into to perfect my steps.

“Come on.”

“What? No. It’s not dinnertime anymore. Or—” Anything else I could’ve tried to say was lost. He grabbed my wrist and urged me to go with him. “Wait! What’s going on?”

“You’ll see,” he bit out impatiently.

“But—” I growled, digging in my feet.

“No.” He shook his head, doubling back to hold on to me. “Do you want to walk?” Dipping lower, he aimed to pick me up. “Or do I have to carry you?”

“What?” I squeaked, alarmed when he crouched low to hoist me over his shoulder. “Hey!” I slapped at his shoulder as he nearly picked me up. “What are you doing?”

I couldn’t tell if he was mad or what. All I could do was try my hardest not to let him see me smile.

Like this, he was almost playful. Maybe that was just in my head, though, because every time he touched me felt like a new adventure in which I had to decide whether I wanted to enjoy the feel of his fingers or hands on me or not.

“I am trying to show you something.” Realizing I was too quick to escape him from picking me up, he pivoted us until he’d spun me. With my back pressed to his chest, he could band his arm around my stomach and walk me forward.

I was trapped, moving with him, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t feel all of him. His muscled thighs behind my legs. His rock-hard wall of abs bracing me. His thick arm heavy over my stomach. His hand over my chest. His…

Oh, God. No. Don’t think about that.

With every step we took, the bulge of his dick was there too, pressing against my backside. He wasn’t hard, but I could still feel him. The implication of him.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you’d never agree with me,” he growled as he walked me toward another room.

Now, because my back was to him, I gave in to a small smile. “Nope. I wasn’t.”

He moved his hand over my collarbone, resting it more over my heart—and my breasts—than my neck. “Your heart is racing.”

I wasn’t surprised. Desire quickly built up in me and made me delirious for him. A spark of innate need took hold of me.

“Are you excited?” He tightened his arms around me.

“Um.” I furrowed my brow. “Until you showed up, I was sort of convinced you wanted to order me killed for arguing with you at breakfast.”

He grunted a single laugh. “Over that trivial nonsense?” His fingers spread out over my skin. In a tank top like this, I could easily envision him dipping his hand beneath the fabric and really copping a feel.

Don’t delude yourself.

Not him.

Not like this.

I couldn’t deny this attraction taking root, but I wasn’t blind. I wasn’t that na?ve. Luka was a rough, violent, and hard man.

Like Oliver had warned me almost a month ago at the studio, I had to be careful if I tried to play games with older men in charge, the ones who called the shots.

I wasn’t trying to play any games, but this stupid part of my mind that was directed by lust and hormones had me wishing Luka would play with me. At all. In any possible way he wanted.

And he surely couldn’t want someone like me.

Not when he went to such lengths to remind me that I was his thing. His possession to own.

Nothing more.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he stated plainly, almost bored.

“Then wh?—”

“Shh. What do you think of this instead of an assumption that you’ll have a death sentence?

” He pushed open one of a pair of double doors.

The movement of using his foot to nudge it open pressed his leg alongside mine.

Every torturous second of that friction teased me, but I didn’t have long to dwell on the naughty thrill of imagining my bare leg rubbing against his.

Because we were in a studio. A dance studio, to be exact.

He’d dragged me out of my guest room to show me a brand-new dance studio.

I smelled the new wood. Even the hint of stain clung to the air.

The mirrors stretched across the entire wall to the east. On the other side of the spacious room, floor-to-ceiling windows showed the nightscape of the city.

Other odds and ends that made this an area to dance in were installed or set aside.

But it was the quietly playing music from one of my favorite ballets that really got to me.

I was stunned.

Speechless and in awe, I roved my gaze around the room and tried to convince myself that this wasn’t a dream. That I wasn’t hallucinating.

This was a dance studio. But was it all for me?

“I believe that’s twenty-eight now,” he whispered in my ear.

I blinked, so surprised and in a trance at the beautiful studio space that I hadn’t realized he still held me. Leaning my back against him as he kept his arms around me, he secured me in a possessive hug.

“What?” I furrowed my brow.

“Twenty-eight on your tally marks of the silent treatment. You didn’t answer me.”

“I—” I turned, facing him and not entirely eager to push him away. Being within the embrace of his arms felt… good. “I don’t know how to answer you.”

“Say something.”

“I…” I blinked again, putting my hands on his chest to steady myself as I looked around the room again. “What is this?”

“A dance studio.”

“You just happened to have one in your home all this time and are only now telling me?”

“I had it built for you.”

I gaped at him.

“What do you think?”

I couldn’t speak. I could only stare at him and try not to cry.

He leaned in, teasing me with the possibility that he might kiss me. He didn’t. Closing in until he could whisper in my ear, his big hands braced on my back to keep me snug against him, he whispered, “Twenty-nine.”

I laughed. The burst of amusement jarred me, and I reared back. “What are those tallies for, anyway?”

“To be determined,” he answered cryptically. “Tell me. What do you think, Gabriella?”

“I think…” I stepped away from him, too overwhelmed to endure his touches any longer. “I think this is wonderful. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s for me ?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets as he watched me. “I got to thinking that maybe you refuse to dance for me because you don’t have a studio to dance in.”

I rolled my eyes. “Like you don’t spy through a crack in the door,” I teased back.

He shrugged.

“This is amazing.” It was kind of him. It was even sweet of him. And it made absolutely no sense at all. He’d told me over and over how I was his possession, nothing more, yet he’d go to the extremes of gifting me something like this ?

“Amazing enough that you’ll dance for me?”

I lowered my gaze, smiling wide. “Turn up the music.” If he wanted me to dance for him…

I would.

It no longer felt like a war, to withhold from him. To hide myself from him. I’d been here for a month now. While I was no closer to understanding what he wanted from me, I was tempted to believe I was living a better life—in some ways—like this than I had before.

He walked toward the panel on the wall that controlled the music. As the volume rose, I tamped down this excitement that he’d done this for me. That this rich and powerful man had a dance studio created all for little, old me . The nobody. The outcast. The poor girl from the bad neighborhood.

The woman who was given to a Mafia boss as a payment.

Shutting out all my thoughts, I let the music reach me. Like always, it flowed through me and I moved. I followed the beat. I practiced my steps. Like this, I was free and would be forever.

While I danced, I felt his stare burning on my skin.

All those heated looks he gave me were tangible touches I craved.

But like this, while I danced for him in this gorgeous state-of-the-art studio, I wondered if this pleased him.

If his giving me something as grand as this meant he had a heart after all.

Maybe he did, but I couldn’t lower my guard any more than I had so far.

I couldn’t.

Not for any man. Not even him. It had been drilled into my head and my heart for too long that the only person I could truly trust was myself.

The song finished. Then he clapped. Slowly and steadily, he clapped as he pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on as he watched me. As he stared at me like I’d given him the greatest reward of all—my submission.

Over my dead body.

“Thank you, Luka.” I did a little curtsy.

“I feel like I should be thanking you.” He approached, shoving his hands back in his pockets as he eyed me from head to toe.