Page 43 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

GISELLE

Roman pins me to the wall before we’re even out of the basement. His mouth is on my neck, teeth grazing skin, ready to eat me alive again. And I’m so fucking ready for it.

He lifts me like I weigh nothing and I wrap my legs around his waist because I’m done pretending I have control. I don’t have it, and I don’t even want it. I want him to take it from me.

He’ll do it anyway. Thank Christ for that.

“Fuck, little viper,” he breathes into my ear. “You want this so bad, don’t you?”

I need it. I’ll die without his cock inside me, filling me up, pushing away everything that isn’t pleasure. This emptiness will fucking kill me, but he won’t let that happen.

We don’t make it to the bedroom.

He strips my jeans off in one hard pull, his own undone with a grunt, and when he pushes into me, I gasp so loud it echoes up the stairs.

I know Rosa and Dakota can hear.

I don’t care.

His thrusts are savage, unrelenting. He fucks me like he’s trying to drive my past out of me, and for a second, I think he’s succeeding. I’m nothing but sensation. Just pleasure snapping its jaws at my nerves, pain simmering underneath.

“Roman,” I whimper.

I know what happens to him when I say his name. And I love it. The speed of his thrusts increases, slamming inside me like a piston, making my whole body bounce and go stiff with ecstasy.

I come fast and hard, clenching around him, my nails carving welts into his back. He follows with a sound I’ve never heard from him before, like he’s trying to exorcise himself, too.

He carries me up the stairs, still inside me, still half-hard and getting harder. I groan, writhing, his hand holding my upper back to support me as I grind against his waist, his seed slipping out of me around his cock, our flesh hot and wet as we burn together.

“I want another one,” he demands. “Show me what this cock does to you.”

The tick of his hips, back and forth as he walks, creates a mind-numbing rhythm against my clit, until I’m coming again on his abs, our mouths attached, tongues swirling and diving deeper into each others’ mouths.

He tosses me onto the bed and growls as I crawl forward and wrap my lips around his cock, tasting both of us on his skin. I drag my tongue along the thick vein beneath the shaft, flicking it across the swollen head like I’m taunting him.

Like I want to be punished for how good it feels.

His hands find my face. Big, rough palms cupping my cheeks like he owns me. Like he’s about to crush the thought out of me. And then he starts to fuck my mouth—slow at first, then deeper, harder, until he’s in my throat and I can’t inhale, can’t even think.

And it makes me soaked.

Maybe this is the only way I know how to pray: on my knees, with my mouth stretched wide and my throat full of cock.

Because even now, I’m the one making him lose control.

The growls tearing from his chest? Mine.

The flame in those ice-pick eyes? Mine.

The way he shudders and empties himself into my stomach, hands shaking on my jaw?

All fucking mine.

“More,” he groans, voice cracked open. One hand slips between my thighs and finds me dripping.

I immediately buck on his palm, my swollen clit buzzing against the heel of his hand while his fingers curl and stroke inside me, mouth still slick from the taste of him, brain gone white with need.

He pushes me down, forces my legs apart and my knees up, wraps his hand around my neck and squeezes until I fall apart again.

By the time we’re through, we’ll be fuck-drunk and filthy. He’ll have tied me to the bed and whipped me into a submission I thought only the devil himself could ask of a soul.

I’ll be covered in his cum, sticky with my own juices, exhausted enough that whatever hell we walked through to get here will seem like the sanest part of the night.

At least, that’s how it’s been—night after night.

Tonight is different.

We’ve been doing this for two weeks now: he brings them to me and we break them open, seeing what’s inside.

We draw out their pain until they admit to whatever role they played in Serena’s fate.

They’re always Bratva, involved in not only Serena’s murder but more girls than I want to imagine: auctioneers, scouts, handlers, men whose filthy hands dragged my sister to hell.

The man Roman brought me tonight didn’t look like the others. It wasn’t just the unassuming clothes, the rimless glasses, and the boring haircut. He didn’t have that predator’s gleam in his eyes. He was a schoolteacher. He could’ve been my neighbor. Or yours.

Did he get the wrong man? Did Roman finally make a mistake? He said he wouldn’t, but he’s not a fucking superhero. It’s only a matter of time before we torture an innocent man.

And when I demanded Roman tell me who the guy was, he just told me I’d find out. It felt like a test.

Goddammit, I know I passed, but I shouldn’t have.

The only clue was the way the man didn’t beg.

I realized, too late, that he didn’t need to be tortured to tell us anything.

He probably would have confessed if all I’d done was cry at him.

Even as Roman drove nails into his knees, the man just stared at the wall, tears streaming down his cheeks in silence.

He was one of the first ones to pay for her, and I actually fucking believed him when he said he didn’t know. That he was just a john trying to scratch an itch, and if he’d known, he wouldn’t have touched her.

I have no reason to believe him. How could he not have known? He at least had to know she was underage, right? And they’d have beaten the fight out of her to even get her to that point. She would have been terrified.

Girls like that don’t end up in hotel rooms unless someone puts them there.

I needed to hate him, but all I felt was this dull, pulsing pity that’s as twisted and useless as a phantom limb.

“Why did you do it?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You had a wife. Kids.”

He shrugged, a tiny, tepid movement. “I didn’t know. It wasn’t personal.”

I hit him for that. Because how fucking dare he tell me it wasn’t personal? That he just had a habit, and Serena could have been anyone. But the anger didn’t feel the same. It feels knee-jerk, and not slow-burn. It doesn’t hurt in that satisfying the way I’ve grown used to.

“It was personal to me,” I said, the words catching in my throat, shaking out my busted knuckles. I wondered if Roman heard it, was finally seeing me as weak. Not his equal at all. “She was my sister.”

He finally looked at me, eyes already dead. “I’m sorry.”

Roman slit his throat before he could say anything else.

They always look so small once they're dead—especially this one. Blood pooled under the chair, pigeon-toed in his inoffensive boat shoes. He was just a man.

No! He was a monster, camouflaged in suburban blandness.

Was he, Giselle? Or is that just what you have to believe?

A fact: vipers don’t care who they bite. They just want to stay alive.

“Satisfied?” Roman asked, voice soft and the blade still dripping onto the floor. There was no mockery or sadism in the question. He was being sincere Like he honestly wanted to know if I’d gotten what I needed.

“More or less,” I said. Heat rose in my cheeks, shame curled in my gut. Not from what I’d done but from how willing I was to do it again. I wanted to ask him if this is really why we’re here, if this man was worth another slice of my soul.

But I didn’t, because Roman walked over and took my hand. His fingers are warm, always, no matter how cold it is down there.

“Come upstairs, little viper,” he said. “You’ll catch cold.”

There was a time that would’ve made me laugh: A man covered in someone else’s blood, worried about me catching a chill.

But now? I just followed. This is the only part of the dance that I can do with my whole heart: his hands on my hips, his breath in my ear, my body burning with a fever I never want to break. Fine. More like my whole pussy, but the point stands.

I’m still under Roman’s spell, stuck in this cycle of craving and caving. He leaves me purring in his lap, drowsy and drenched. Sometimes, it even wears me out enough to sleep.

But tonight, I lie awake and twist Serena’s earring. I’m afraid to fall asleep, because I’m afraid to wake up and walk through another day.

At night, the violence is mercifully simple and my body is loose from violence and pleasure.

During the day, I get visitors from my old life—usually in the form of texts from Ida. Russo and Teddy have texted, too, but not as much. Ida’s relentless because she’s worried. She knows I’m alive, but she also knows I’m not myself, and that terrifies her.

I keep lying to her. And how easy it is? That terrifies me.

Just resting.

Just hiding out.

Just taking some time for me.

My best friend isn’t stupid. She knows something is wrong. I don’t honestly know how long I can hold her off from filing a missing person’s report and coming after me.

Shit, that’s assuming Arata doesn’t get to me first.

At least he hasn’t reached out yet. Either he’s not onto me, or he’s onto me so hard that he’s building a case in silence. A case against Roman, which means a case against me.

That’s not what you’re worried about. You’re worried because nothing can hurt Roman except, maybe, you. And that’s a horrible kind of power to hold.

It’s bad enough to get the reminders of the relatively normal life I used to live but knowing Roman can see them too is even worse. Nothing I do now is private, because I know he’s bugged my fucking phone.

As he should.

Doesn’t he deserve the truth of what I did?

Maybe then he’ll finally let me go.

You can go anytime you want. There’s no curse keeping you here. You won’t spontaneously combust if you step foot off the property.

Fine, then maybe I’ll finally have a good enough reason to leave.

Because this? This can’t be my life.

It might be what I want but that doesn’t mean it’s good for me.

But then I think of how alive I feel every time Roman’s hands are on me, every time his knife carves away a little more of the rot from this city. I didn’t realize how fucking tired I was of pretending I didn’t want this, until Roman made it so that I didn’t have to.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Serena staring at me like she wants to know what the hell I think I’m doing. Would she be proud of me? Would she want vengeance like this? Or would she be horrified?

I wish she could tell me. I wish anyone could.

Thick tears prickle the edges of my eyes. I clutch the sheets closer to my chest and bury my face in them. She wouldn’t want this. She forgave everyone for everything. She once tried to save a bee that had stung her.

If she was here, she’d already have walked away.

My heart cracks in two at the thought. The pain is bigger than the darkness, bigger than Roman, bigger than my own life. It makes me feel like my blood is taffy, too slow and thick to circulate. My lungs won’t fill. The air isn’t for me anymore, I’m not allowed to use it.

Please, I beg myself. Please, please, stop, stop thinking, just stop thinking, stop feeling, stop, stop, for fuck’s sake just STOP!

I slide out of bed and stand by the window, looking out at the dark grounds. Manhattan sparkles in the near-distance, pretending at peace.

It’s not personal. I’m sorry.

I want to believe none of this is personal, that I’m just doing my job, even if my job is now murder. But every time I kill one of them, I feel less human and I want it more.

Surely, he’ll eventually run out of men to bring me, right?

The whole goddamn city couldn’t have something to do with my sister.

Maybe tonight was the beginning of the end.

Maybe he’s running out of real monsters, and the schoolteacher was the first of the dregs: men who were evil, yeah, but not fully culpable. At some point, am I going to be killing men who considered paying for her but decided to go home instead?

If I could kill every man who touched Serena, what would I do after?

Who would I be without my hatred to fuel me?

There will always be more. Other girls. A Dakota, a Rosa. Serena was my sister, but every girl is someone’s sister, or daughter, or mother or best friend. The list of monsters grows every single day.

Forget the Bratva. There will always be men laying their hands on women. Ivan slapping my ass and MacDougal with his interns, even before they became enablers for the Bratva. The world is too big and dirty for it to ever end.

I can punish so many of them, in exactly the way they deserve to be punished, but not all of them. And I can’t punish the ones who haven’t done it yet, but will soon enough.

I’ve never felt so powerful, or so powerless.

And then my phone buzzes on the dresser.

I’m almost glad for the distraction, something to do with my brain besides ruminate. I expect another message from Ida.

It’s Arata.

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!

We need to talk about the special evidence you gave me. It’s important.

The world slides sideways, my stomach twists, I can’t breathe, my hands shake so badly I almost drop the phone.

This can’t be happening!

You always knew it would happen.

I can’t deal with this!

You’ve pictured this moment a thousand times.

Maybe he doesn’t know?

He knows.

I force a breath. I need to decide what to do. Do I ignore him? Pretend I changed my number? New phone, who’s this? If I close my eyes and plug my ears and sing a happy song, will it all go the fuck away?

No. I need to know what he knows so I can find my way out.

I think about Roman, wherever he is now. Maybe sleeping, like I should be. Maybe dreaming of me and the world burning around us. Of a prison he’s already survived once, and shouldn’t have to survive again.

Predatl. Traitor.

If he bugged my phone… Shit. My brain starts cycling through lies and excuses, but I can’t make any decisions about what happens next until I know exactly how far it’s spiraled out of my control. Swallowing, I tap out a reply.

Outside, the sky is bleeding from black to gray.