Page 10 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva (Yezhov Bratva #8)

I watched the rise and fall of her chest, the red blooming down her throat. The quiver in her bottom lip that she was trying so damn hard to still.

It would’ve been easy to take her, to claim her, to rip apart the final strand of resistance and claim her fully as mine.

She would resist for a bit, pretend she’s not burning with need, but I couldn’t take her yet, not now.

Not until she was begging.

And I wanted her to be aware, minute by minute, that I occupied the space in her mind, along with her body.

I drew back slowly, the air stretching between us like a string wound too tightly.

Her eyes followed each move I made, pupils wide, and her breath still rapid.

I lifted my hand, tracing her lower lip with my thumb in a slow, deliberate motion, and it trembled under the pressure.

She froze, but she did not move back.

“You’ll feel this,” I whispered, then my voice dropped, rough with restraint. “But not tonight.”

Her breath caught. Only slightly. Only enough to signal to me that she was both relieved and filled with need.

I stood from the bed, leaving her lying there flushed, breathless, and shaken.

The air about her still held the scent of roses and heat and tension, but I took the gravity with me when I left.

She didn’t say anything.

Didn’t beg.

Did not even reach for me.

But I didn’t need her to because I knew precisely what I’d done. I’d left my mark without even taking her.

Now she’d lie awake in that bed, bearing my name, bearing my touch like a ghost on her skin, and she’d be thinking about me.

Whenever her hands closed into the bedclothes, whenever she recalled the pressure of my mouth, the edge of my voice, and when she attempted to persuade herself that she despised me, she wouldn’t be able to escape the memories I’d just planted in her head.

She couldn’t.

I walked out onto the balcony, allowing the chill to nip at my flesh. Los Angeles lay in gold and silver under the blackness. Jagged lights, long shadows, and a city that never slept.

I drew a cigarette out of the pack and lit it one-handed. The flame cast a brief glow over the subtle curve of my smile.

The first drag burned. Good. Now all I could think of was Zoella Yezhov—my wife. It still felt strange to say, felt unreal, but she was mine now.

She thought she could put up a fight, resist me. But she had no idea that she was already yielding—one breath at a time.

And me?

I had all the time in the world.

The cigarette smoldered slowly between my fingers, the tip puffing when I inhaled. I allowed the smoke to fill my lungs, allowed the quiet to wrap around me. The door at my back was still an inch open. I hadn’t closed it completely on purpose.

Not out of oversight, but of something far worse.

I said it was instinct, that I had to be vigilant, that she was volatile, obstinate, impulsive. That she would attempt something foolish.

Yet the reality was more straightforward.

I needed to listen to her.

I wanted to know her—not the mask she presented to me, defiant and quick-witted, but the one she was working to conceal. The one she revealed when she believed no one was looking.

Inside, she paced with irritation in her footsteps, the soft fabric rustling as she stripped off the wedding gown as if she wished to burn it, followed by the gentle thud of shoes hitting the floor.

“Shit,” she muttered.

I smiled, lips twisting over the rim of the cigarette.

She’d stubbed her toe on the bed frame, and it was just like her to swear like the raging fire that she was, even now, half-dressed, enraged, storming through the room that now belonged to both of us.

The version of her that everyone knew didn’t vanish when nobody was watching. She burned.

And I envied that more than I ought to have.

Then I walked down the hallway, past wedding night roses and plaster moldings, to the hidden panel that I had installed two days earlier.

It was for security purposes , I reminded myself.

But the reality was that I needed an excuse to look at her, really see through that tough girl mask she wore all the time.

I pulled open the panel and turned it on. The monitor flickered to life—black and white, grainy, but legible.

There she was.

Pacing.

Hair loose, shoulders tight, pulling her fingers through the waves as if they were choking her. She was disheveled, wild, and beautiful.

She walked on across the room, barefoot, and paused to examine the broken vase I’d knocked over a few minutes earlier. She stood there for a bit, looking down at it as if it had personally betrayed her.

Then, all of a sudden, she collapsed onto the bed’s edge. Collapsed, really, like something within her had finally given way.

I was left breathless as she doubled up, reached for the nearest pillow, and clutched it to her breast, burying her face in the pillow.

She didn’t cry, at least it didn’t look like she did, but her shoulders shook. Little, quiet tremors like an aftershock coursing through her.

It hit harder than it should have, harder than anything else that day.

For the first time, she wasn’t the tough girl who shrieked in silk or spat venom through her pretty red lips. This was the girl underneath.

The one who was still mourning for her sister, the one who hated that she was forced into a marriage. She was still angry. Still scared.

And for some reason, I knew she believed she was alone now in her enemy’s territory.

I pulled in another drag of smoke, but now it was bitter.

Honestly, I hadn’t anticipated this from her. Not the silent sorrow, not the isolation, and definitely not the way it twisted something sharp and unfamiliar deep in my chest.

I should have left to give her some space so she could grieve her old life, an illusion of privacy, but I didn’t.

I simply stood there, looking, listening, pulling her in like smoke and wondering how long it would be before she realized I wasn’t her enemy.

I was something far worse.