Page 26 of Forced Bratva Hostage

He shakes his head, his eyes lifting from my knees to my face.

“You think you’d be at the top by now if I hadn’t interrupted?” he asks with his eyes narrowed.

“Yes, actually. I would not only be at the top, but down the other side and on my way home,” I snap.

“I see. So, you’ve obviously disabled the electric fencing running along the top of the wall?”

I open my mouth to snap back at him, but quickly shut it again.

Huffing loudly, I try again to get off the countertop.

Andrei grabs my thighs and glares at me. “I am going to clean your wounds and bandage them. You are going to sit still while I do it.”

The way he speaks to me sends a shiver of delight shooting through my body.

I nod weakly. “Okay,” I whisper, even though what I really want to do is tell him to jump in a lake.

“Take your pants off,” he demands.

My body spikes like a fever. “No,” I squeal.

“Yes. Take them off.”

He lifts me off the counter and stands me next to him.

When I don’t do as he says, he tugs me close and grabs the button of my jeans, undoing it.

I slap his hand away.

“Stop that. I’ll do it.” My cheeks are on fire.

I might be mistaken, but I swear I see a flash of amusement in his eyes.

With an angry breath of air, I wiggle out of my jeans and kick them away from my feet. Andrei picks them up and throws them over the edge of the bath.

“I’m not sure the blood stains will come out,” he says, talking to himself more than me. His eyes move from the discarded jeans to my legs.

I have never been this embarrassed in my life. The black lace G-string I’m wearing barely covers anything at all. I don’t know what to do with myself, so I stand like a fool doing nothing at all.

To my horror, Andrei wraps his hands around my waist and lifts me onto the counter again. He sits on the edge of the toilet as he rummages through the first aid kit he pulled from the sink cupboard.

His eyes drift to the small butterfly tattoo high up on my inner thigh, and I quickly cover it with my hands. He says nothing.

I got the tattoo in a secret place to hide it from my brother, but he found out anyway when someone from the tattoo shop ratted me out after he sent his guards to find out where I’d been that afternoon and they tracked my steps back there.

Nothing gets past my brother. Not even my little tattoo.

He punished me by locking me in my room for a week—actually, now that I think of it, that was when I learned how to pick locks.

Andrei is busy in front of me.

I can’t stop fidgeting while he pours disinfectant onto white gauze. It smells of alcohol.

“Wait,” I stammer, trying to prepare myself for the inevitable sting.

He places his hand softly on my leg. “It’s okay, it’s only going to hurt for a few seconds,” he says, his voice calm and soothing now; the commanding tone is gone, and he’s being nothing but gentle with me.

“I have to do this, Tatiana, or it might get infected.”