Page 4 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA (Bred by the BRATVA #6)

She freezes when she sees me.

I don’t move. I don’t speak. I just stand at the end of the corridor and let her look. It’s the first time I’ve given her the chance. Until now, I’ve been nothing but a shadow in her periphery, a shift in the air she can’t quite name.

But she needs more than that.

She needs to feel my eyes on her and know, even if she won’t admit it yet, that they belong there.

She’s clutching the towels like they’re armour. Her knuckles are white against the fabric. Her eyes are wide, wary, but not in the way prey looks at a predator right before it bolts. There’s something else there, buried beneath the fear. A flicker of something she doesn’t want to name.

I wait.

She doesn’t move.

The light catches the curve of her cheek, the pale skin of her throat. I imagine my hand there, feeling the jump of her pulse beneath my thumb. I imagine the way she would look if I walked toward her now, slow and certain, until there was nowhere for her to go but back against the wall.

Not yet.

I let her see me. Let her mind twist itself in knots trying to figure out who I am and what I want. Then I turn and disappear around the corner, my stride unhurried.

She’ll come after me in her mind, even if her feet stay rooted. She’ll replay it over and over, the stillness, the silence, the way I didn’t break eye contact until I chose to.

I make my way to the study, where the monitors are already waiting.

The hallway camera shows her standing there for several seconds before she moves again, her steps quicker than before.

She keeps her head down the rest of the way, but I can tell from the tilt of her shoulders that she’s thinking about me.

That’s the point.

The gifts are one thing. The perfume moved just so. The nightgown. The flower. They make her question herself. But seeing me, knowing there’s a man behind it, will make her question everything else.

Her brother sent her here to be punished. To be broken. He didn’t understand what kind of men live in this house. We don’t break what’s ours.

We keep it. We protect it. We claim it. And Sarah is mine.

I watch her slip into the guest room with the towels, watch her glance out the window like the daylight can save her. It can’t.

I’ll give her more time. Let her believe she’s safe a little longer. But soon, I’ll take another step closer. Soon, I’ll stand in that hallway again, and this time, I won’t turn away.

Because one way or another, she’s going to learn that the safest place she’ll ever be is in my hands.