Page 20 of Forced By the Obsessed Bratva (Yezhov Bratva #8)

She’d been gone for too long.

I seethed at the closed bathroom door, one leg dangling off the bed, the other bent loosely beneath me. A half-full glass of whiskey dangled from my fingers, the ice now melted.

The silence behind that door had made my scalp prickle. It was unusual, especially after the sudden change in her mood after the party a few days ago.

She barely spoke a word the whole way home. Gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Spoke of being tired and needing a shower, and that was all she said.

But I wasn’t stupid.

Something had shifted in her. I couldn’t wrap my fingers around it, but I could feel the change.

I had no idea why or when, but it was somewhere between the garden and the end of the party. Whatever it was had pierced under her skin like a splinter, and she was hiding it from me.

I poured a drink into the shot glass I’d brought up with me earlier and drank from it, the whiskey burning its way down my throat like liquid fire.

Zoella was never the cold type. She was acid and fire-tongued, wrapped in one body. She didn’t cower or watch her tone; she told her feelings exactly how she felt them.

Which was what made this silence so much worse than anything else.

I rested the glass down carefully with a delicate clink on the nightstand, and as if on cue with my own actions, the door groaned as she pushed it open.

Everything inside me came to a halt.

Zoella walked into the room wearing nothing but a transparent black slip of lingerie that framed her hips and hugged her body like a second skin. Her nipples poked through the laced fabric.

She was so goddamn sexy in it that for a moment, I forgot all about her sudden mood swing this evening and how long she’d spent inside the bathroom.

The tension, the questions, the blaze behind my eyes, all of it melted away in the inferno that burst to life in my veins.

She came toward me slowly. Almost too slowly. Every step closer was calculated and smooth, but I could still sense the tension beneath the act.

“Do you care for a drink?” she asked, raising her brows.

I whipped my head to the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. “I have a drink already.”

Her lips curled with a smile. “Not whiskey. Something more magical. You haven’t had a taste of my special cocktail. I’ll go make some to set the mood.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss on my lips, then she left the room.

When she returned moments later, she was holding two glasses of Manhattan, one in each hand, her fingers tightly curled around the stems, knuckles pale from where the blood had been squeezed out.

When she handed me one, our fingers touched and a spark awakened, shooting straight down to my cock until I could feel my dick twitch in response.

Zoella didn’t flinch, but she quickly withdrew her hand from mine as if my touch burned her skin.

Something twisted in my belly.

She slid onto my lap, her knees against either side of my hips, the hem of that wicked slip hiked high up on her thighs.

My hands went to her waist instinctively. Possessively.

Her lips played inches from my own, warm breath sliding over my lip. “Tell me how it tastes,” she breathed, low and raspy. “If you’d like something sweeter.”

I took a sip of the drink and groaned as it slid down my throat like liquid dusk. It was smoky and bitter but had the right amount of sweetness to it.

She raked her teeth through her bottom lip. “How does it taste?”

I took a second sip, then drank the entire glass in one go. “Not bad at all. I didn’t know you could make something this good.”

Her lips quirked as she placed her own drink gently on the nightstand. “There are a lot of things you don’t know I can do yet.”

What she said wasn’t bad, but something about it threw me off just enough to make my jaw tense.

She kissed me before I could say a word, her fingers raking through my hair. Her lips claimed mine passionately, her hands trailing down my throat before her arm curled around my neck.

I let her do whatever she wanted, reveling in the way her taste drowned me.

My grip tightened, my body responding before my thoughts could catch up. But the prickling sensation against the back of my neck did not stop. The feeling that something was wrong was stronger.

This was not her usual fire.

Her kiss was more consuming, her waist grinding against my erection. She moaned into my mouth as I deepened our kiss and wrapped her arms around my neck.

Despite my instincts warning that something was wrong, everything else was perfectly normal until my body started to feel heavier than usual.

I tore my eyes open and immediately felt my vision start to blur. The room spun around me in circles, the glass in my palm suddenly feeling too heavy.

My breath became shallow, labored, as if my body was starting to give out on me even when my mind was still sharp.

Something was wrong.

The awareness struck me like a lightning bolt.

I snapped my eyes to her. She was still on my lap, her weight against me, her warm skin pressed against mine.

Her eyes met mine, and there was a flicker of something like guilt and fear in her gaze as she bit her lip. She didn’t move or say a word; she just looked at me as if she were unsure what to do now.

She’d done this. She’d done whatever was wrong with me.

“What have you done?” I growled.

My breathing was harder now, shallower than before. My legs were numb, my head spinning. The effect of whatever she gave me was getting worse by the second.

I tried to stand, to push myself up, to heave her off me and grab my phone to call Kirill, but I couldn’t get my fucking legs or hands to cooperate. My body gave way instead, joints releasing, like strings cut from the inside out.

Zoella slipped off my lap, gasping and backing away from me as if I still had the energy to reach for her.

“You left me no choice,” she said. “I didn’t want to do this, but there was no other way.”

Her voice was soft. Cracked. Barely audible over the sound of blood roaring in my ears.

Those words she said hit harder than the cocktail burning through my bloodstream. It was worse than the betrayal itself.

My heart lurched in my throat.

I clutched the edge of the bed, dragging my body up like it wasn’t mine anymore, but I couldn’t fucking move no matter what I did. My jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.

I looked up at her. “You could have told me. Whatever the problem was, you could have said it, and I would have helped you with whatever you wanted.”

“No, you couldn’t have. You forced me into all of this. You and your family—” She paused, her lips parting and her chest heaving heavily. “There was no other way.”

There was this look in her eyes; it wasn’t hatred or rage. It was remorseful, as if she felt guilty for what she did to me. And maybe she did because that would mean she didn’t deceive me for the fun of it.

I managed to raise myself from the bed but stumbled forward a step. My foot caught on the carpet, and my knees buckled. I landed hard, first on one side, and then all the way over. My shoulder braced against the edge of the nightstand as I hit the ground.

The glass toppled off, shattering on the floor beside me.

My hands dug into the rug, dragging me half a foot forward. My breathing wheezed with each useless movement I tried to make.

Zoella hovered over me, then she approached slowly, as if she wasn’t sure whether to help me or finish what she’d started.

“Zo—” I tried to speak again, to say her name, but my tongue was too damn heavy to even utter a full word anymore.

Everything inside me was fighting whatever poison was inside me, fighting to stay awake, to understand why she did what she’d done. Nothing made sense, not to me, not right now.

But the darkness was closing in faster and faster until the only thing I could make out was the tears sliding down her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

I don’t know how I found the strength, but I tried to move again.

My hand scrabbled against the ground. The other reached out for hers instinctively, blindly, as if my body would not grasp what my mind already knew—that she betrayed me.

I clasped her wrist, my fingers curling around her slim hand as I tried to pull her closer. “This isn’t going to end well, kotyonok ,” I warned, voice rough from somewhere raw and deep in my chest. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

It wasn’t a threat.

If something happened to me, my family would go to the end of the world to find her, and what they would do to her was unimaginable.

Even in this state, with the betrayal, she was all I could worry about.

She pulled her arm free from my grasp hard and fast, panicked in her breathing. “I don’t care what they do to me,” she huffed, already backing away from me. “All I need is time.”

I tried to stand, tried to reach out for her again, but my body buckled beneath me, sending me tumbling to the floor like a knockout punch.

I had no freaking idea what she meant by she needed time or what she was willing to throw her life away for.

My body had finally, completely given up on me. I couldn’t move or speak anymore. I just watched as she picked up a small black bag from behind the dresser and started throwing things inside it.

She’d prepared well for tonight, and I couldn’t help but wonder when she had started.

My head tilted hopelessly to the side, darkness seeping in around the edges of my vision, darkening the world piece by piece.

The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me whole was her, Zoella, standing in the doorway, one hand on the door handle as she hurried to leave.

But she turned around to look at me, her blue eyes meeting mine with hesitation. “Don’t try to find me.”

With that, she turned, pushed the door open, and vanished down the hallway.

The door slammed shut behind her, and the very last feeling I had before the blackness closed over me wasn’t pain.

It was the sting of betrayal, and the weight of helplessness she left me in.