Page 22 of Mafia King’s Broken Vow (New York Bratva #5)

TWELVE MINUTES OF MIDNIGHT

MILA

T he kiss is everything I expected and nothing I was prepared for.

Yakov’s mouth moves against mine with hunger, like a man who’s been starving and finally allowed to feast. His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones as he backs me against the wall.

Every nerve ending I possess lights up as he deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine in a rhythm that makes my knees weak.

I’m drowning in him—his taste, his scent, the solid heat of his body. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, and he groans low in his throat, the sound vibrating through me like a physical touch.

Then the shouting starts.

Sharp voices in the hallway snap reality back like a whip. The spell breaks, shattered by boots pounding the floor and the clipped cadence of a tactical report.

We break apart instantly, both breathing hard. Yakov’s eyes are dark with want and sharp with alertness, the soldier and the man warring for control. Heavy footsteps pound past his door, radios crackling with terse updates.

“Fuck,” he breathes, running a hand through his hair. The interruption couldn’t have come at a worse time, or a better one, depending on perspective.

I press my back against the wall, trying to catch my breath, trying to process what just happened. What was about to happen.

“I should—” I start.

“Yes.” His voice is rough. “You should go. Now. Before they come checking rooms.”

At the door, I pause with my hand on the handle, heart still racing from more than just adrenaline.

“Yakov?”

He looks at me, and I see everything I’m feeling reflected in his eyes—want, frustration, the knowledge that we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross.

“This isn’t over,” I say quietly.

Something dangerous flickers in his expression. “No. It’s not.”

The promise hangs between us like a loaded gun.

Morning brings a security briefing laced with thinly veiled threats and quiet revelations.

Pablo knows where we are. He hasn’t breached the property, but he’s close—too close.

Igor delivers the news with clinical detachment, using the word “neutralize” like it’s nothing.

Just another bullet point. Another problem to be solved.

They’re planning something. I don’t ask what.

“Your sessions with Gagarin will continue,” Igor tells me once the others have cleared out, his tone clipped, his meaning not. “But I’d advise reestablishing stricter professional boundaries.”

His gaze pins me, sharp as a scalpel. He doesn’t accuse. He doesn’t need to.

“Of course,” I say, tone neutral. “We’re making steady progress.”

He doesn’t believe me. But he doesn’t argue either.

“You’ll be escorted from now on,” he adds. “To and from sessions. No exceptions.”

Translation: no more late-night detours. No more hiding in the quiet spaces between rules.

I nod, feigning compliance. But somewhere inside me, the woman—not the doctor—starts plotting a way around it.

By the time I reach the therapy room later that morning, I’ve wrapped myself in professionalism like armor. He’s waiting, as always, by the window. When he turns, his expression is stone, save for the flicker in his eyes that settles unerringly on me.

“Dr. Agapova,” he greets, cool and controlled.

“Mr. Gagarin.” I match his tone, knowing the guard at the door is watching everything.

The door shuts. Only then does he step closer.

“Are you all right?” he asks, his voice low.

“Yes.” And I mean it, even if my pulse still jumps when he looks at me like that.

“They’ve tightened security,” I add. “No more midnight strolls.”

His smile is barely there, but the meaning is clear. Challenges exist to be overcome.

We talk. Technically. He recounts details of his childhood, his father’s brand of power. I respond like the therapist I’m supposed to be, but the space between us is threaded with everything unspoken. Every breath, every glance, every brush of connection that lingers longer than it should.

When our hour ends, I should walk away and pretend my lips aren’t still tingling from the memory of his kiss. Instead, I hear myself saying, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About feeling safe.”

He tilts his head, waiting.

“I want you to teach me.” The words come out steadier than I feel. “Self-defense. How to protect myself.”

His eyes darken with understanding, but also amusement. “Is that what you want, Dr. Agapova? Or is it a thinly veiled excuse to feel my hands on you?”

Heat floods my cheeks, but I hold his gaze. “Both.”

“Very amenable, Doctor.” His tone wraps around the words like silk, and I get a glimpse of a playful man that is buried under all that control.

The guard escorts me away. I feel Yakov’s gaze pressed against the back of my neck.

Over the next few days, we settle into a new routine. Morning therapy, then training in the gym. The guards hover, but they keep their distance, content to let Yakov work off his tension in something that looks like rehabilitation.

If they notice the heat simmering beneath the surface, they don’t say a word.

The next afternoon, I arrive at the small gym wearing athletic leggings and a fitted tank top. Nothing revealing, but Yakov’s eyes track every line of my body when I walk in, making me hyperaware of how the fabric clings to my curves.

“Ready?” he asks, voice deceptively casual.

“Ready.”

He circles me slowly, predatorily. “First lesson, awareness. Most people telegraph their intentions. Watch.” He moves behind me, close enough that I can feel his body heat. “Someone approaches from behind. How do you know?”

“I…hear them?”

“What else?” His breath brushes my ear, sending tingles down my spine.

“Feel them. The air moves. The temperature changes.”

“Good.” His hand hovers just above my shoulder, not touching but present. “Your body knows danger before your mind does. Trust it.”

The guard in the corner looks bored, scrolling his phone. Perfect.

“Now,” Yakov murmurs, still behind me, “if someone grabs you like this—” His arm slides around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. The contact is electric, professional boundaries disintegrating at his touch.

“Don’t struggle forward,” he continues, voice rough. “Drop your weight. Make yourself harder to control.”

I follow his instruction, letting my body relax against him. The move brings us impossibly closer, my back pressed to his chest, his arm banded across my ribs just below my breasts.

“Like this?” I ask breathlessly.

“Exactly like this.” His voice is strained. “Now drive your elbow back. Here.” His free hand guides my arm, fingers wrapping around my wrist as he positions me.

I execute the move in slow motion, feeling the power behind it. When I’m done, we’re still locked together, his arm around me, my body molded to his.

“Again,” he says, but neither of us moves.

By the third session, the pretense of actual self-defense has become laughably thin. Every lesson is an excuse to touch . Every demonstration an opportunity to feel.

“Grappling,” he announces, leading me to the mats. “An essential skill.”

He shows me how to fall properly, his hands guiding my body down to the mat. But when it’s my turn to practice the takedown, I end up straddling his waist, my hands braced on his chest, both of us breathing hard.

“Good technique,” he says, voice hoarse. His hands rest on my hips, brushing the exposed skin where my shirt has ridden up.

The guard glances over but sees nothing more than standard training. He can’t see the way Yakov’s thumbs trace small circles on my skin, or how my pulse jumps when he does it.

“What’s next?” I ask, not moving from my position.

“That depends.” Darkness bleeds into his eyes. “How far are you willing to go, Dr. Agapova?”

The question has nothing to do with self-defense.

“As far as you’ll take me.”

His grip on my hips tightens fractionally. “Dangerous answer.”

“I’m learning to like dangerous.”

The fourth session pushes us to our limits. He’s teaching me to break free from a pin, which requires him to hold me down on the mat while I practice the escape. But every struggle brings us closer, every movement more charged.

“Focus,” he commands when I fail to execute the move properly. “Don’t let me distract you.”

But he is distracting me. The weight of his body over mine, the way his muscles flex as he controls my movements, the heat in his eyes that has nothing to do with combat training.

“I can’t,” I admit, breathing hard beneath him. “You make it impossible to think.”

Something primal flickers across his features. “Then don’t think.”

He releases my wrists but doesn’t move away. We’re frozen like that—him above me, me beneath him.

“Mila,” he breathes my name like a prayer.

“Yes.”

“Tonight,” he says, low and quiet. “Midnight. The east corridor. The camera loops from 12:05 to 12:15. Guard swap at 12:10.”

I don’t ask how he knows.

This time, when the guard looks over, Yakov is helping me to my feet with perfect composure. But the promise in his eyes burns like a brand.

As I collect my things, he approaches again. Casual on the surface. Anything but underneath.

“Tonight.” I keep my face blank while my chest pounds.

I walk away, but I feel him behind me like a shadow, watching. Wanting.

The psychologist in me knows what this is: an accelerated intimacy created by pressure, fear, confinement. A textbook case of transference and misdirected desire.

But the woman in me?

She doesn’t care about diagnoses.

She only knows that this is the most awake she’s ever felt, and that at midnight, she’s going to walk willingly into whatever waits for her in the dark.

I return to my room and open my laptop, pretending case notes might hold my focus. They don’t. I skim a security briefing, read the same paragraph five times. Nothing sticks.

My mind’s already elsewhere.

Every touch replays on a loop. The way his hand guided my hip. The heat of his chest pressed to my back. The roughness in his voice when he said, “Like this.”

My body aches with tension I can’t categorize, let alone release. It’s not clinical. It’s not rational. It’s want, stripped bare.

Tonight, something breaks. I can feel it coming like a storm, inevitable and unstoppable. And I know exactly what it means—ethics abandoned, lines erased, a choice I’ll never be able to justify if anyone asks. Especially not to myself.

But still, I count down the hours like a woman waiting for impact. For collision. For ruin.

Because the truth is, I don’t want to resist him anymore.

And tonight…I won’t.