Page 56 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

ROMAN

I sit at the desk in the Jersey City suite we’ve gotten for the night, using fake names and paying in cash. My shoulder is wrapped in gauze, a souvenir. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, but the pain is honest. It reminds me I’m not untouchable.

She’s the only person alive I’ll go quietly for.

That’s probably why I let her talk me into bringing them in.

But fuck, I hate it.

I didn’t drag her out of that blood-soaked apartment just to share her.

I saved her life. I should get to keep her for the night.

Hell, forever. Instead, she’s pacing like a caged animal, and I’m pretending to focus while all I can think about is those bruises on her ribs—I’ve never hated anything more.

I want to lick them off her. Erase the memory of anyone else’s violence from her skin.

The only marks she should carry are mine.

I should’ve lit that bastard on fire and strapped his corpse to the hood of my car, driven it through Manhattan like a goddamn parade float. A warning to the whole city: this is what happens when you touch what’s mine.

This week without her was hell enough, I don’t have it in me to imagine a lifetime knowing she died because she chose me. I wanted her devotion, but now that I have it, the weight of what it almost cost is a splinter I’ll never dig out.

The world wouldn’t survive her death.

She stalks the room, crossing in and out of the shadows. Sometimes she stops, and I see her reflection in the window: dark hair wild, jaw locked, hands curling and uncurling like claws.

I want those nails flaying the skin off my back as I drown in her. I want her ripping into me, screaming my name, pouring out all that pain and rage and needing straight into my fucking mouth.

I force my gaze away from her silhouette—and land on the glint of cheap metal hanging from her ears.

Serena’s earrings. Always those earrings.

She’s as loyal to me as she is to those earrings, and the girl they memorialize.

I don’t like that. I love it.

More than her sharp jaw, her sweet cunt, or that vicious hunger for revenge—the only person I’ve ever met whose desire matches mine—I love knowing she’ll give herself to me above anything else.

My beautiful, ruthless little viper.

She’s been pacing for five minutes, saying nothing. I break the tension before it strangles us both.

“Planning to wear a hole in the floor?” I ask.

She halts mid-stride and shoots me a look that could peel paint.

“Why? Worried about getting your deposit back?” Giselle snarks, but she still drops into the chair opposite mine, legs splayed, hands gripping the armrests like she’ll launch herself at me any second.

She doesn’t.

Part of me—fuck it, most of me—wishes she would.

I never thought I’d get on my knees for anyone, but right now it’s exactly where I want to be—fingers digging into her thighs while I wrap my tongue around her clit and make her come for me.

But now’s not the time. My dick disagrees. It keeps twitching to life, aching for her, but I ignore it. I’m pretty sure if she saw how hard I am, she’d ride me raw. And I need her sharp and awake enough to stay alive through all this.

Her phone buzzes. A pedestrian, earthly sound that reminds us we’re not alone in the universe. She glances down.

“They’ll be here soon,” she says. “I still don’t understand why you want me. Here, I mean. Involved.”

I lean in, elbows on the desk, letting the ache in my shoulder fuel me.

“Obeying me has never been your strong suit, little viper. At least not outside the bedroom.”

Her jaw clenches.

“But I need you to hear this: I’m past it. I’m not spending the rest of our lives arguing over whether you deserve forgiveness. It’s mine to give.”

Her eyes narrow, a slight twitch on her lips.

“The rest of our lives, huh?” she asks.

Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that part out loud.

“Not that those are destined to be very long,” I say quickly.

She doesn’t need to know I’ve started fantasizing about her in new ways. Ways that, for me, are even more perverted than the ones that started this whole brutal affair.

I imagine Giselle becoming something else: not my partner, not my ally, not even my live-in cocksleeve.

My wife.

Mother to my children.

I want to keep her so close to me that she forgets how to breathe if I’m not there to remind her.

I want her barefoot and bleeding in my kitchen, smiling while she stirs soup with bruises I put on her thighs.

I want her in a rocking chair, hair gone silver, still snarling at the world but soft in my hands.

I want all of her, forever.

“You were right,” she says, snapping me out of my disgusting white-picket-fence fantasy.

“About what?” I ask, pleased despite myself. Giselle isn’t the type of woman to admit defeat to anyone, but I’m not just anyone.

“Sometimes justice isn’t enough,” she says. “Sometimes you have to burn the rot out.”

“I know,” I say. The words come out calm, but inside me, satisfaction blooms like fire.

About fucking time.

And it only took blood and betrayal and the death of everything soft inside us to get here.

But if she were easy to sway, she wouldn’t be her .

But if she were easy to sway, I never would’ve touched her.

Instead, I’d let her lie to me every goddamn day if it meant waking up next to that mouth.

“But you were wrong about the rest of it,” she says, chin jutting forward as she folds her arms over her chest. There she is. “You can’t keep doing this alone. You can’t just kill your way out of everything.”

I want to argue that killing is the only thing that ever solved anything, for men like me and the ones I hunt. And, whether she likes it or not, for her.

But I nod. Because if she’s willing to bend for me, I’ll break for her.

She just needs to ask at this point. The whole world is hers and I want to give it to her on fire. But if she wants it all rainbows and jury trials she can have it that way.

“I know,” I say. “Why else would I let you bring in the suits? I just don’t trust anyone else to do it right.”

“You mean you don’t trust me,” she scoffs.

“No.” I hold her eyes. “I mean I don’t trust anyone else .”

She looks away again, jaw working. I watch the tendons in her neck. I want to touch her, but I settle for the desk, tracing a pattern in the wood.

A knock at the door breaks the spell. Giselle gives me one last look, begging me to behave, before opening it.

“This is all extremely fucked-up,” Teddy says, sauntering in with a file folder and laptop under one arm. He drops the folder on the desk, scattering a few pages. “I’m honored to be a part of it.”

I could fucking kill him. Giselle knows it. She stiffens beside me, warning Teddy with her eyes. He doesn’t get it, because he glances between us, amused.

“I hope I get an invitation to the wedding, too.”

“Sit down, Oborin,” she says. “We need your brain. Not your mouth.”

He takes the seat at the end of the desk. “That’s a first.”

He’s a dead man. Once he’s given me what I need, he’s joining that fucker I just killed in her apartment.

Giselle just sits back down and rolls her eyes. It hits me: she has never looked at him the way she looks at me.

Not even close.

Even when she wanted to hate me, she looked at me like I was the center of her goddamn universe.

It’s that look I can’t live without and I know she wouldn’t want to attend her dear old friend’s funeral.

Lucky motherfucker.

Arata appears in the fed’s wake, lingering in the doorway, both hands wrapped around an energy drink, eyes scanning the room like he’s looking for exits.

“Is this really happening?” he asks, like a teenager finally invited to the cool kids’ party only to find out they’re smoking pot.

Teddy and Arata have been briefed on the mission. Nothing they didn’t need to know, but hell of a lot more than I’d have told them—which is nothing.

Giselle says we can trust them.

And whether she thinks she deserves it or not, I trust her.

“Afraid so,” I say. “Get in. Close the fucking door.”

He does, door shutting behind him with a click. He doesn’t belong here. Him or Teddy.

This was supposed to be ours. Me and Giselle. Our war, our vengeance, our church of bones.

Dakota arrives last, banging on the door like it owes her money. She moves like she doesn’t care if she belongs here or not, which is probably true.

She sits on the bed near the window, knees drawn up, hoodie zipped to the chin, hands stuffed in the kangaroo pouch. Her eyes never stop moving.

“Why is she here?” Teddy asks, but it’s not derision I hear in his voice. It’s a knee-jerk instinct to protect. I might hate him just a little bit less.

“ She’s here because her father was Pavel’s chief money-man,” Dakota sneers. I bite back a laugh.

Teddy’s brow furrows, but he slowly nods.

“Fair enough,” he says. “That could come in handy.”

“So glad you’ll permit me to stay,” Dakota says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“We’re all here for one reason,” Giselle says. “Taking out this one man will save thousands of girls, and I know we all want that.”

“We can’t just arrest him?” Arata asks, clearly less committed to violence than everyone else in the room. “Surely, if we have enough evidence?—”

“I prefer the direct approach,” I say. She made me agree to work with the system—to a point. But I’m not letting that bastard sit in some cushy prison, surrounded by guards he can buy.

I don’t want him alive in any cage.

I want him dead.

That’s the only protection that means a fucking thing.

Giselle looks at me. She fingers the earrings, and her lips twitch. She turns back to Arata and Teddy. “He’s right. If we do this, we do it his way.”

I feel a surge in my chest, like the first inhale after a long dive. I want to kiss her, or kill something, or both at the same fucking time.

I just nod.

“Let’s get to work.”

After hours of talking, we have a plan.

One that hinges on everyone in the room playing their part.

Arata, covering our tracks and using evidence to track down Pavel’s inner circle.