Page 23 of Taken by the Bratva (Bychkov Bratva #1)

Aria

“Yes.”

That single word seems like I’m agreeing to much more than just playing a game with him. I’m agreeing to go deeper into whatever we’re doing this week. Deeper into each other. Deeper into our desires. Deeper into peeling back our layers so by the end of the week, all we have left is the real us no one else has ever seen or known.

It's bigger than a single word, and the look he’s giving me tells me he’s thinking something similar.

“Go and hide, my little prey,”

he says in a smooth voice, giving my ass and neck another little squeeze before letting me go so I can climb off him.

“You’ve got five minutes,”

he tells me, and I race back up the stairs and into the house.

My heart is racing.

Five minutes feels like too short of time, but also an eternity when all I want is to be caught by the big bad bratva boss. I want to feel like his kidnapped prisoner trying to hide from her captor but gets found in the end and punished for disobeying him.

It should scare me that it’s similar enough to our actual situation, but my body is flooded with adrenalin rather than fear as I race through the house for a place to hide.

I don’t know this house well enough to know a good hiding place, but decide to go upstairs since that’s where the beds are, and I want a soft place for my knees to rest when he catches me.

“Shit!”

I whisper yell when Rex appears at the bottom of the stairs, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Outside, now,”

I tell him, and I quickly run back over to the sliding door and open it just far enough for him to slip out.

I hurry back to the stairs, but at the last second, decide going upstairs would be too obvious, so I head down to the level I’ve yet to go.

It’s a finished basement that’s the entire length and width of the house, and outfitted like a media and game room. Damn it, there’s nowhere down here to hide except a bathroom.

Oh, wait. What’s that?

I jog across the basement to a slightly ajar door that’s partially hidden by a chair. I move the chair and see that the door isn’t a door, but a piece of the wall that’s open.

What the hell?

I peek inside the room, but it’s dark, so I feel along the wall until I get to a switch and flip it.

Jesus Christ.

What the hell is this room?

I want to run back upstairs, but I’m out of time for our game, so I close the door behind me and hope it takes Daniil awhile to find me so I can figure out what this all is.