Page 12 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

He waits until I stop shaking, and then presses his mouth to my ear. His breath is hot and wet, speaking a language that my body responds to in kind.

I think of the bodies, the roses, even the goddamn tampons.

Anything to stop me from thinking about how, in different circumstances, I would be happy to be held like this, melting into a wall of muscle and heat as his strong hands slowly peel away my defenses, my clothing, and the lie that I don’t want this.

“If I take my hand away, will you be a good girl and not scream?” His voice sizzles against my ear, and my knees buckle at how intense his rumbling voice feels against my back.

I know what I should do, what I’d tell any other woman to do: agree to whatever he says until you have the chance to call for help, then kick him in the balls, and jab your fingers in his eyes.

For all he knows, I’m lying when I nod.

But I’m not.

Not to him.

Never to him.

He has me right where he wants me.

He laughs and my body rumbles with his chest. “Good girl.”

The phrase ignites in my stomach. Shame fills me even as my body says yes, I’m your good girl.

He slides his hand away from my mouth, leaving a cold memory where it once was. I gasp, but don’t yell.

“What are you doing with the little man at the bar?”

His voice is conversational, but there’s a blade in every syllable. A flash of anger hits me. Finally , I think. The thing I should have been feeling all along .

I won’t lie about not screaming, but I will lie about this. I’m not going to let this monster act like he owns me. He has no right to my life or my body or what I do with either.

Because he fucking doesn’t.

He’s nothingbut a delusional pervert. I didn’t get this far in life just to forget who I am.

“I’m flirting with him,” I say, and I feel his hand tightening around my wrist in response. “Because I like him. I think he’s hot. In fact, I’m thinking about bringing him home and draining his balls while he calls me good girl.”

His free hand returns, and this time it wraps around my throat.

Thick fingers squeeze ever so slightly while his thumb feathers along the lines of my jaw.

I hate that the pressure in my core builds.

I hate how heat bubbles in my heart. And I hate how I can feel an undeniable wetness starting to drip between my legs.

“Oh, little viper. You are a murderer, aren’t you?”

The word chokes me harder than his hands ever could. “No.”

“No?” His thumb moves lower until it traces the vein in my neck to feel my pounding pulse. “Because I thought you know by now what happens to men who put their hands on what’s mine.”

“I’m not—” I start.

But he squeezes and chokes my response into silence.

I clench my jaw and manage to fight through his grip around my neck. “I don’t belong to you.”

“No?” His soft dark laughter rolls around my ear like a midsummer thunderstorm. “You’ve already lied for me. And you’ll do so much more.”

He pulls me closer, and I can feel another heat now prodding against the small of my back. A pulsing heat that warns me to choose my words very carefully, or else he’ll make me pay for daring to refuse him.

My spine settles into place against his chest, and the lack of oxygen is making me dizzy enough to loll my head back under his chin.

He leans in, lips grazing the curve of my ear.

“I’ll carve his heart out and leave it on your pillow. Nobody is allowed to touch you except for me.” He nibbles my ear with every word. “And I. Don’t. Make. Fucking. Empty. Threats.”

His words are an ice bath even as his touch and his jealousy set my body on fire.

I fight to think through the buzz of his intoxicating smell in my nostrils and the heat of his body burning me down. I can use his jealousy. I’m sure of it.

My imagination is running wild. One half is thinking of what he might make me do to someone else, and the other half fantasizes what he might make me do to myself.

The hand around my neck releases, and the removal of that weight feels like an emptiness I can’t survive.

There is a slight shuffling behind me. He’s reaching into his pocket. For a second, I flinch, expecting a knife.

Instead, he brings his other hand to my ear, and I feel the familiar bite of an earring post sliding home.

Once in my left ear. And then again in my right.

His hand lingers, cupping my jaw. It’s all I can do not to push back into his palm, nor let him cradle my head as relief settles into my ribcage.

“It’s not so bad being mine,” he says. “I take good care of my things.”

He clicks the clasp closed, locking it in place with a tenderness his rough hands shouldn’t be capable of.

I shiver. It’s the most intimate thing anyone has done for me in a decade.

He doesn’t move away. “There are worse things than me in this city, little viper.”

“You’re a murderer,” I whisper, trying desperately to put a drop of venom in my voice even as my nipples tighten and the space between my thigh slickens.

“I only kill those who deserve it.”

“Who are you?”

He is silent. There’s nothing but the darkness and his heartbeat between my shoulder blades, steady and even. The smell of him continues to drive all thought out of my mind. His breath slows as he greedily inhales the air I expel from my lungs.

And my traitorous, tingling body starts longing for him to put his hand on my stomach and slide it all the way down to find just how badly I want him.

The first press of his lips against my neck surprises me. I bite back a yelp just in time even as it sends a burst of wet heat through my shivering skin. Then he starts kissing his way up, as if he’s counting just how many kisses it takes for him to claim the entirety of my neck.

I close my eyes, and clench my jaw to muffle the moan threatening to pour out of my lips at how wrong this feels. At how good this feels. At how much more I want to feel.

If he hears just how much I’m enjoying his touch, his embrace, and his lips, then he’ll have won forever.

I can’t have that. I can’t let him win so easily.

“I’m going to find out who you are,” I finally say through gritted teeth. “And I’m going to put you away, someplace you’ll never see or touch me again.”

He plants one final searing kiss at the base of my ear before he gives it a soft yet sharp bite.

“Then find me, little viper.”

He lets go so fast I nearly collapse to the floor without him holding me up. I hear the door open and close, then the lights flicker back to life. It blinds me for a second, and the earring burns in my lobe, hot as a brand.

But not as hot as the memory of his lips.

I stand, heart pounding, hands shaking. I leave the stall, look in the mirror, expecting to see bruises or blood, but there’s nothing. My hair is wild, my face flushed, but otherwise I am untouched.

The only proof is the earring, and the smell of him clinging to my skin.

The moment I take to put myself together is already too long. By the time I burst back into the bar, hip-checking and shouldering the crowd out of my way, he’s long gone.

Instinctively, I reach for Serena’s earring and stop just before I touch it.

He wasn’t wearing gloves , I realize .

I know he wasn’t, because I felt everything, more than I wanted to and somehow still not as much as I needed.

Then find me, little viper.

The earring isn’t a kindness. It’s a clue. A physical contact point.

The bastard replaced it himself, pressed the clasp closed with his bare fingers. He wants me to find his prints. He wants me to chase him.

When I find Ida with Nick and Luke at the bar, they’re confused but understanding when I say something came up at work.

Ida’s eyebrows shoot up, but I shake my head slightly. Not what you think, I say with my eyes. Her expression softens but she still looks worried.

“I’ll text you later,” I tell her. Ida hugs me gingerly, too sweetly. I don’t want to be touched right now, not like that.

Nick tries to hug me as well but I dodge it.

I can’t take chances with anyone right now.

“It was nice meeting you,” I say lamely.

He recovers quickly enough, smiling as he pointedly doesn’t ask for my number. He’s fine, I guess, with me just walking away. He won’t follow me. He won’t lurk in the shadows. And he won’t corner me in the bathroom while he kisses his way up my neck.

And that’s exactly why I feel nothing for him.

His coy, expert-level flirting did nothing for me, not in comparison to being restrained and taunted by a man whose violence left me dripping through my panties.

Nick is normal and safe.

And Ida’s right.

I want something that can hurt.

Especially if that something can hurt me.

Back outside my building, the street is empty. There are no stray noises, no creeping shapes in the corners, and no haunting blue eyes staring at me in the dark. Not right now anyways.

But I know that means nothing. The echo of his hands and lips are still mapped onto my skin.

Once the door is deadbolted and the chain pulled, I kick off my boots, peel out of my jacket, and leave both on the floor. I flick on the kitchen light, the bulb painting everything in forensic yellow, and grab the pair of yellow dishwashing gloves from the cabinet.

Slowly, I unclasp the earring. My fingers don’t ever brush my skin. I’m careful, so fucking careful, as if the slightest mistake means another admission of defeat.

I drop the earring into a Ziploc bag. The apartment is so quiet that the sound of the plastic sealing is as loud as a gunshot.

I stand there, bag in hand, for a long time.

My mind won’t shut up. It replays every detail of the bathroom from his voice, to the way he whispered “little viper” in my ear, to the tender yet possessive kisses he left along my neck.

And the cold certainty that if he wanted me dead, I would be

The way his hand fits over my mouth. How I didn’t even want to scream.

I throw the gloves in the trash, remain seated by the table—the one spot in the room where the shadows never quite reach—and stare at the bagged earring.

I tap the earring through the plastic, just once, and feel the dull sound echoing in the hollow of my chest.

Find me, little viper.

Two can play that game.

I leave the bag on the counter, ready to drop them off with Arata in the morning.

He wants to call me his little viper? Fine.

But he should remember.

Vipers have fangs.