Page 23 of Captive Vows (The Dubinin Bratva #1)

GAbrIELLA

N othing was the same anymore.

I no longer had to clean and act like a maid for my dad just to “earn” his paying for dance lessons. That felt like another lifetime ago, a whole existence that ceased to be.

I never had to worry about missing or falling behind with my skills. Being privileged enough to have those tutors solidified my intent to be the best dancer I could right now.

But it was how swiftly my dreams had shifted that stunned me.

My passion to dance was still there. My hopes of being on the stage burned within me, and that fire wouldn’t be extinguished.

Yet, after how violently my audition ended and how intimately my relationship with Luka had advanced, I would be a liar to say that all I wanted to fight for was getting into Juilliard and being on stage.

Someday, it would be nice.

The fantasies of performing for an audience like that still played like a movie in my mind.

I had to incorporate new dreams. Luka dominated my thoughts, and I couldn’t deny how he’d been slowly but surely transforming my desires and wishes to center on him and him alone.

But what is the point?

What’s the endgame now?

Those questions were the only thoughts I could count on to keep my head on straight. Being here was like a nightmare that had corrected its course. I felt like I was swimming beneath the surface, suspended in a fantasy. A delusion, even, that this could be my life.

I’d given up my fierce insistence to escape or get out of here.

I was outnumbered. Too many guards remained at posts.

Locks held me inside. Now, though, it was more than the hardware on the doors and windows that had me trapped.

It was more than the Dubinin security force always watching for anyone coming in or out.

It was Luka.

My desire for him was enslaving me to stay. My lust for him never abated, always simmering my hunger for him and his touches. And my enjoyment of this exploration we shared ensured that I’d be a fool to ever voluntarily leave.

He was keeping me here.

I spun through a move, focusing on staying engaged physically as I danced into the night while my mind was preoccupied on the heavy thoughts that I might’ve finally succumbed to him. That he’d won my submission after how valiantly I'd said he wouldn’t ever have it.

It’s not like it would be safe to leave now.

That was a fraction of my survivalist instinct.

The one time I’d left the safety of this house, members of the Viper Cartel came to kill me.

If I were to try to take off, to just leave and start my life over like I’d wished I could when I felt so stuck in my life with my dad, I would be hunted.

Luka’s enemies would target me. They’d try to kill me.

Why, I still didn’t know. The best that I could understand of it after a discussion with Emil was that I was now collateral damage.

Others viewed me as Luka’s prized possession.

Maybe they assumed I was his official partner and not his plaything of the moment.

And for that, they’d attack me and use me as leverage against Luka.

In essence, I was still a pawn.

When it was just me and Luka, though, I wasn’t a thing to place somewhere and lock up for security. I wasn’t a pawn or transaction. I was the other half of a different sort of dance, one where we’d come together like one. I couldn’t tell where I started and where I ended.

As I turned back from the wall of windows in the studio, segueing into a lower position that would lead up to a jump, I stopped short.

I didn’t understand how I'd missed feeling his stare on me. But there he was.

Luka had returned. I never knew his schedule and I realized that his “job” wasn’t conventional or traditional like a nine-to-five. And I knew better than to ever ask about it.

He stood there now.

Haggard but stern. Exhaustion oozed from him as he leaned against the doorframe.

That suit, one like all the other finely tailored ones he wore day in and out, was ripped, dirtied up, and showing blood stains.

His face was swollen in spots, like he’d taken more than a couple of hits in a fight.

Small but visible, a thin cut showed on his lip where it had been split.

It was the severe intensity in his eyes that captured me and had me furrowing my brow.

He stared at me like I was the drink he needed in the desert.

He watched me hungrily like I was the only decadent nourishment he wished to devour.

As he stalked further into the room, limping slightly like he’d been wounded in his left leg, he gazed at me with that addictive energy I could only hope to match.

Like he’d been made for me, and I for him.

As though we were the only two souls that could matter when we were pulled and drawn together with this sizzling chemistry that had yet to fade.

Even now.

Now, as he looked filthy and injured, tired and mad, I wanted him. I still craved him, and I wondered if the allure of being the object of his affection would ever cease or wither away.

“Luka, what?—”

He held up his hand, quieting me. Reaching me, he lowered his fingers toward my elbow until he could smooth his touch all the way up my arm, then higher yet, caressing my neck with a rough grip.

At last, he threaded his dirty fingers up into my messy bun, coiling the strands tightly so I’d feel a sting on my scalp.

Possessive. That was the mood he gave off right now.

And I was all for it.

Falling against him as he hauled me toward him, I sighed and braced for the perfection of his famished lips against mine. That hard and brutal press of his mouth was a kiss that would leave me weak in the knees.

I grunted lightly at the intensity of him kissing me, parting my lips and tasting immediately. Under the increased pressure of him pushing me to meet him in the middle, I moaned. Already, I was embarrassingly wet. Even now, I was desperate for him.

He’d startled me, showing up like this. But the almost feverish pull he seemed to claw at me with was something else.

What happened?

Who did this?

What’s wrong?

What went so badly tonight?

Are you really hurt?

None of those questions left my lips. I couldn’t ask a single one of them with my mouth so preoccupied. The more that I gave in to this mutual desire, the less I cared.

He picked me up effortlessly. Held tightly to his chest, it was instinct to wrap my legs around his waist. Like this, with his bloodied lip sucking at me, his cut-up hands gripping my ass cheeks, and his dick already hard and poking at me, he carried me out of the studio.

Feeling the limp in his gait reminded me that he was hurt. Tasting the metallic tang in his kiss was a show of how he’d been injured in another round of violence.

It all pointed to the fact that he was a dangerous man. One prone to fighting, to killing. To taking whatever he saw fit, including me. All those details should’ve had me running, terrified and logically wanting nothing to do with him. But that was the old me. That was the old reality.

Now, I knew better. I was aware of how right he was for me despite being almost twice my age. I’d realized how perfectly he’d keep me safe and sated.

Keeping my eyes closed, I framed his face and let him take me to bed. To his bed, the one we shared as though we were a real couple.

Instead of lowering me to the mattress, he sat.

I straddled him, not letting up on this seal between our mouths as we continued to kiss.

The rub of my breasts against his rock-hard chest was the ultimate tease of friction.

But when I ground down, moving my pussy over his erection, that had me gasping for air and crying out in need.

“Fuck me.”

He growled it so gruffly that I couldn’t tell if it was a gritty expletive of awe and marvel or if he was ordering me.

“Fuck me, Gabriella.” He gripped the hem of my shirt and shoved it upward. “I need you.”

My pulse skyrocketed. My pussy dripped. Between my aching nipples and this tension banding within my stomach, I was so ready to ride him and appease him. When he was hungry for me like this, it was impossible not to view him as my beast to tame.

“I want to see you.” He wrenched his hand upward to rip my shirt partway.

Giving up on kissing him just so I could acquiesce and get my dance gear off, I stood and stripped while maintaining eye contact.

“I need to feel you.”

My shirt and bra were gone, but I wasn’t fast enough.

He leaned in, hooking his arm around my waist as he pulled me closer until he took my nipple into his mouth.

Biting my lip at the deep suction there, I squirmed and hurried to get my skirt and panties off.

My tights. Socks. All of it. He didn’t give me much leeway, no slack to move with ease.

But that was all part of the thrill. Being held and trapped, to submit when he was in this dominant mood.

He ripped his mouth from my breasts. The wetness left there from his tongue taunted me as it cooled from the air. Goosebumps spread over my flesh. I couldn’t help but shiver from the delicious anticipation of him taking me.

Standing abruptly to tug his clothes off, he narrowed his eyes and growled. “Fuck me, Gabriella. Fuck me now .”

I nodded, but before I could ever reach for him, he’d spun me around and I fell toward the bed. He crawled onto it after me, spanking my ass once as I faced him. Then we were united again.

Pushed to kneel on my hands and knees in front of him, I thrust my ass up and waited for him to enter me.

He didn’t delay. Lining up his dick to my pussy, he pushed the head in and stretched me. Full and wide, I was split open for him. Just like every other time he took me hard, I moaned and pushed back into him.

“Fuck me.” He grabbed my hips and pulled me backward until he was seated. “I said fuck me.”

Another spank landed on my ass cheek. Warmth radiated from the strike. So taboo and naughty. I felt ready to come from that alone.

“Fuck me now,” he ordered as he pushed me.

Even though the position was one where he’d do much better at ramming into me, I wasn’t going to turn down the challenge.

He was in a mood. Mad. Hurt. Impatient. I didn’t want to know what had gone down earlier. All I could focus on was that he was here right now, with me, seeking solace deep inside me.

I rocked back and forth, fucking him and trying not to lose my control. Having his dick deep inside me was the ultimate race to an orgasm. When he added his fingers to my clit, I damn near dropped and gave up then, trembling with bliss.

I resisted it, determined to please him, too, to submit and do as he wanted when it seemed like some days, he’d given me the whole world, the best of the world I could’ve ever dreamed of with all my needs met and my dreams encouraged.

“Fuck me with that sweet pussy,” he ordered with a filthy growl.

The sound of him sucking on his fingers followed, and then the pressure came at my rear hole.

He’d only started playing with other varieties of kinks.

I was proud to move past my virginal na?veté and explore with him.

To learn from him and appreciate how good he’d always make me feel no matter what we tried to introduce.

So far, I’d already learned how much faster I could come with him giving me some light anal play.

Between the furious need to rock back and take his dick as far and fast as I could and the pressure he gave me on my clit and ass, I was lost. I couldn’t hold on. I was fucking him, submitting to pleasing him like this, but it just felt too damn good for me, too.

“Luka!”

As the first waves of my intense orgasm came, he spanked me once more, harder, and roared his pleasure.

I sucked him in. I quivered and nearly collapsed. But as he twitched inside me and shot his hot cum up into me, I knew that I’d won this round. I was milking him dry, earning every one of his guttural sounds of relief as we came together.

He only had to ask now.

And I would agree to be his anything.

His thing. His woman. His lover. His partner.

Just so long as it would always be me and him coming so brutally together like this, spent and weak until we dropped onto the mattress and had to fight to catch our breath again.