Page 14 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva (Yezhov Bratva #8)

It was late.

The kind of late where the world thinned out and silence crawled into the walls. And I couldn’t sleep.

Not that I’d tried.

The bed was too warm, my body too agitated, and my mind a tangle of chaotic breath and skin and memories I couldn’t shake off.

Rather than lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling endlessly, I paced the house barefoot, robe belted loosely at waist level, hair still wet from a shower I took earlier.

The marble floors were cold beneath my feet as I padded quietly along the hall, the only illumination the narrow strips of silver moonlight cutting through the darkness like knives.

I walked in a daze. Past the stairs, past the sitting room. Down the corridor beside the east garden, where the old roses still leaned their fragrance against the window.

And all along, I burned with a desire I didn’t dare to name.

Hours went by, and I’d told myself to forget everything. Matvey. His touch, his voice, his kiss. I’d reminded myself to just breathe, yet I couldn’t.

The heat from before still remained inside me, wound up in my stomach like a secret that I couldn’t get rid of. My fingertips still tingled with feelings, and the organ between my thighs still pulsed with need.

And worse, beneath all that ache and longing, Matvey was behind all of it. I’d fantasized about him all day, touched myself to the memory of his touch, yet it wasn’t enough.

I needed more.

I needed him.

God, what kind of woman was I?

What kind of woman would make herself come, lying on her enemy’s couch and imagining he was the one touching her? I was in his shirt, and I came with his name on my lips.

I hated myself for it.

I hated the part of me that still yearned for him despite the fact that I was not supposed to, and even now, as I walked through the empty hallway, I could feel him everywhere.

The ghost of his voice in my head.

The low rasp of it in the car.

The way he looked at me sometimes, like he was already beneath my skin and waiting for me to realize it.

My fingers tightened on the sash of my robe, blanching at the knuckles. I need to stop thinking of him or fantasizing about him. It was wrong. So fucking wrong.

He forced you into this, I reminded myself. He shattered everything.

And yet….

My chest heaved, shuddering and hot, and I braced one shoulder against the wall, pressing my temple against the cold marble, trying to put out the fire inside me.

But it only burned hotter.

I was coming apart, one breath at a time. And I couldn’t bring myself to stop.

I stopped in front of the mirror at the end of the east hall, one of those huge, old-fashioned things fastened in blackened gold, half-forgotten and half-dusted.

The image staring back at me wasn’t one I recognized.

My hair was tangled, my cheeks damp, and my eyes were wide—too wide, too wild. Like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have.

And maybe I’d really done something I shouldn’t have.

I pulled at the hem of the large T-shirt that was spread over me. Matvey’s. I should not have put it on again. Not after…previously.

But I had not been thinking.

I’d reached for it reflexively. As if I needed to envelop myself in something that smelled of him, which was worse because I had been thinking about him.

And the fabric clung to me in all the wrong places. It was too soft, too worn in, the faint scent of his cologne infused deep into the cotton. Sandalwood, whiskey, and the faint smell of cigar.

His scent enveloped me like a cage I couldn’t see. The harder I tugged on the hem, the more it seemed to grip me.

“Don’t wait up, Mrs. Yezhov.” One of the maids had smiled earlier, arms full of tidy stacks of folded linens. “He’ll be late. Business, I suppose.”

Business.

Perfect.

That alone was all the reason I required to roam. To breathe. To feel as if I had space to exist without his shadow consuming me entirely. So I allowed myself to walk.

I was nearly invincible for the first time in days.

Nearly.

Until the door creaked open behind me..

The sound split through the quiet like a blade, and I stiffened, the hem of the shirt still gathered in my hands.

My gaze constricted in the mirror, my eyes growing wide as my body tensed from the inside out. I didn’t turn.

I didn’t need to, because I already knew who it was from the heavy footsteps and the familiar scent that entered the room with him.

He wasn’t supposed to be home tonight, at least that was what the maid told me. But I guessed Matvey couldn’t be predicted; he always did what he wanted anyway.

I spun around so fast I nearly slipped on the tile, and there he was, behind me, standing in the doorway like a storm ready to burst.

Dark jacket tossed over him loosely, shirt unbuttoned at the neck, that unreadable calm drawn across his features as though nothing in this scene was out of the ordinary.

As though he had not just caught me prowling around his house in the dead of night…

in his shirt…after what I’d done while wearing it.

I was paralyzed where I stood, my hand still grasping the hem, my throat dry and itchy. I swallowed.

He walked toward me with slow, graceful strides, his eyes wandering lazily around the room before they settled on me.

He didn’t look surprised or anything; he was barely even blinking as his eyes wandered over my bare legs, the loose cotton engulfing my shape, the pink warmth spreading up my chest.

“My shirt, kotyonok ? He asked, lifting his brows very casually.

The word coiled around my spine like smoke. Kotyonok? When did he give me that nickname?

My chest flustered, and my cheeks grew even hotter, but I managed not to let it show in my expression. I frantically searched for my voice. “It was comfortable.”

He stayed quiet.

“So, I wore it,” I went on, louder so he knew it didn’t mean anything that I was wearing his shirt. “It was this or the starched washing they sent up. Talk to your maid about it if it’s a problem.”

God, I sounded ridiculous.

Matvey didn’t smile.

He simply halted a few feet ahead of me, then slowly turned his back on me. His face was blank—that risky type of blank that didn’t tell you whether he was annoyed or amused.

Then he stepped forward.

One step. Two.

The distance between us reduced until I could feel the shift in the air. It was thick. Electric.

My breath faltered in my chest.

“Tell me the truth,” he whispered.

I backed up on instinct. My back struck the wall with a soft thud, but he didn’t stop inching closer.

His eyes did not flicker. Those dark, piercing pools were pinned on me. He was calm. Too calm.

Predator calm.

My mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out.

His hand came up slowly, purposefully. And then his thumb stroked along my jaw, feather-light, leaving warmth in its wake.

I winced, not out of fear, but at how much I felt it.

“Did you put it on because it was soft?” He inhaled, his voice a rough whisper down my spine. “Or because it had my scent on it?”

I gritted my teeth and scoffed. “Your scent? You’re not that special.”

His mouth curved. Barely. “Why, then, are your thighs so tightly closed?”

I breathed deeply, ashamed at the reality of the truth in question—the tension between my thighs, the warmth that had not disappeared since the day he kissed me for the first time.

Matvey leaned over; his one hand was flat against the wall near my head. His other hand traced the lower hem of his shirt —my shirt—and shoved it up and up until it bared the skin of my thigh.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he whispered.

I didn’t.

Because I couldn’t.

My body was betraying me. Because some twisted, broken, and needy part of me wanted this.

His fingers traveled up the inner part of my leg, not where I needed him to touch, yet close enough so that my breath trembled.

“Are you ashamed, kotyonok ?” he breathed, his lips brushing the edge of my ear. “Because this”—his hand shaped the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair—“this is the real you.”

I despised how right it felt, how right he was. I despised how my hands gripped his shirt as if I were in need of oxygen.

And when he kissed me hard, passionately, and ravenously, I didn’t fight it.

I opened my mouth to him. To let him experience the war within me. I was willing to let him have whatever fragment of pride I had left.

His hands explored my body, his touch possessive as it claimed every inch of my skin. Every move was a quiet reminder that I was his.

I should have broken it off. Should have pushed him away, yelled something mean, said this wasn’t right.

Yet when he lifted me up against the wall, my legs instinctively wrapping around him, I did not say a word.

I just held on.

My mind fogged, but the ache between my legs only sharpened. His mouth was on mine—hot, desperate, demanding—and I kissed him back like I’d forgotten how to say no.

I should’ve pushed him away.

He was a Yezhov, one of the people who knew about my sister’s death. He forced me into a marriage I didn’t want and claimed I was his without my permission. I shouldn’t have wanted him; I should have hated him instead.

But my body didn’t listen to logic.

My pulse hammered against my skin, each beat louder than the last.

And as Matvey’s weight pressed into me, pinning me to the wall like I belonged there, need coiled hot and wild in my belly.

I kissed him harder.

Like I needed to remind myself that I was alive. That I was still mine

Even when I was in his hands.

Every cell in my body came alive under his touch. My nipples hardened beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. My core throbbed with need for the man who should’ve been my enemy, but who somehow made me feel more real than I ever had.

His hand slipped beneath the hem, dragging higher, until he cupped my breast and brushed his thumb over the stiff peak.

A broken sound escaped me—not quite a moan, not quite a cry.