Page 13 of The Bratva’s Innocent Sold Bride (Fokin Bratva #9)
Once the idea of escaping took hold, I couldn’t shake it. Sleep was impossible, and feeling like I had a fever from excitement, I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. No one stirred, and no alarms went off. I got to the end of the property and over the fence, and still, nothing.
It looked like I was free, except I didn’t know what lay in the direction behind Mat’s house.
It would have been quicker to double back along the property line and get to the road leading out to a more inhabited area, but what if I tripped some sort of sensor or something?
Mat had a guard at the gate, so he might have them around the front perimeter as well.
It seemed safer to risk being out in the brushy wilderness. It wasn’t pitch dark since there was a quarter moon, but I was still making quite a racket until I found a wide path that looked like it was used by tractors at one time or another.
There was a breeze that ruffled the leaves in the trees, and an occasional rustle in the growth alongside the path that made me walk a little faster, but overall, it was peaceful.
My only plan was to follow the path, which had to lead to some other house or another road eventually, hopefully before daybreak.
It wasn’t like I could research my escape once the idea came to me, and it wasn’t something that was offered as an elective in college.
A few times, I thought I heard something and stopped dead, twisting carefully to look in all directions while remaining perfectly still. I wasn’t afraid of the local wildlife, but I had recently acquired a healthy fear of other people.
Something about the glow of my phone made the surrounding area seem desolate and creepy, so I traveled only by the light of the moon, but after what seemed like hours, I risked a glance at the time.
12:40. My heart sank. I had only been out for less than an hour, and only crossed the fence about half an hour ago.
I broke into a jog, but it was so dark I instantly stumbled over a root growing across the path, and went back to my methodical plod.
Did it really matter how slowly I went? Unless he had a helicopter, there was little chance of Mat finding me before morning, and surely, I’d be out on a main road by then.
After that, I didn’t know what would happen, but the thought of getting my life back kept me going.
This was happening. I had saved myself. I was going to be free.
Then I heard a distinct throat clearing behind me. Close behind me. Whirling around, Mat stood only six feet away. Even in the darkness, I could make out his broad shoulders and his wide stance. I couldn’t really see it until he came closer, but I imagined he didn’t look happy.
Nope. That was one of the worst scowls I’d seen on him. I squared my own shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. Then he laughed.
“I’ve enjoyed this little stroll long enough,” he said. “It’s time to go back to the house.”
I made the mistake of glancing behind me, the brief notion of making a break for it into the darkness flitting across my mind. He covered the distance between us in two strides, gripping my arm.
“CJ, you haven’t even left my property yet. If you keep following this path, it will lead you back to the house, but you’ll cross about another fifty acres before that happens.”
“But the fence,” I said.
“It’s supposed to keep coyotes from getting too close to the house.”
“How long have you been following me?” I asked, my cheeks flaming as I recalled those noises I dismissed as my imagination.
“I’ve had a guard keeping an eye on you since you scaled the fence. I’ve been here for about ten minutes or so, but now I’m getting tired.”
He was toying with me all along. Every second I thought I was free was a cruel joke. At any moment before this, his guard could have dragged me back, but he thought it would be funny to let me breathe the air of false hope a little bit longer.
I wanted to punch him.
“Well, let’s go, then,” I said, my anger giving me courage I probably shouldn’t have had.
Shrugging out of his grip, I started walking the way I had come, and Mat fell into step beside me. He must have been rubbing off on me because as we walked in silence, I mentally catalogued all the ways I could kill him.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” he asked with so much sincerity, I cracked up.
I was losing it. Turning into a cold-blooded killer while taking a moonlit walk with one. He scowled at me and waved his hand at the hills and the trees.
“Is it that different from Moscow?” I asked.
“Very different. Even the air is different.”
“Better?”
“Not better. But I like it. I’m growing to like it quite a bit.”
I glanced up at him to see him looking at me with that intensity that turned my insides to jelly, and not necessarily in a bad way.
“I guess you want to stay, then,” I said, kicking a stone.
He chuckled. “Oh, very much.”
After a few minutes of nothing but the sound of our feet and the whisper of the wind, he turned to me, grinning broadly. “What made you try something so dangerous?”
“Pfft, there’s nothing dangerous out here. And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.”
“Oh, so you miss your chore schedule?”
I sputtered at his infuriatingly smug tone. “Don’t worry. I got the message that I’m supposed to decorate the house.”
“Supposed to?” he asked. “I thought you’d enjoy it. If you don’t want to, I’ll hire someone, as simple as that.”
Oh. Well. I only grumbled, turning that information over in my mind. He kept grinning.
“Maybe it was me you missed,” he said. “Although you were going in the wrong direction to find me.”
There was no way to fight his teasing except with stony silence.
We came to an electric off-road vehicle that was practically silent when he started it up.
The thing was surprisingly fast, and I grabbed onto his middle as we zoomed back toward my beautiful prison.
With the wind whipping at me, I tucked my face against his strong back, absorbing the warmth of his skin through his shirt.
He’d taken his jacket off, but he still had on a dress shirt out here in the middle of nowhere.
Where had he been this late at night? Who had he been with?
It hit me that he might not consider our marriage real, and if he wasn’t spending his nights with me, his wife, he might be spending them with another woman.
But who cared if he was? It had to be something else that made my stomach turn over. Probably the ATV is bumping over the rough trail. I loosened my grip on Mat and shivered in the cold instead of resting against his back.
We ended up back around the front of the house, and Mat left the ATV in the driveway. As soon as we were in the house, he snapped on the lights so I could see just how displeased he was by my escapade.
His blue eyes were dark, his cheeks ruddy from the wind. His hair was a tangle of dark waves that he raked his fingers through before taking me by the arm again.
“This was fun,” he said in an ice-cold voice. “But let me remind you that your father’s life was spared because he gave you to me. I don’t yet consider his debt repaid.”
My breath froze in my chest. He was once again threatening Dad’s life. It wasn’t enough that he’d utterly broken the man; he would have gone so far as making me go to his funeral, the fault of his death squarely on my shoulders.
Still, I raised my chin, narrowing my gaze on him. “I won’t be anyone’s prisoner,” I spat.
His eyes lightened, and the quirk of a smile lifted a corner of his lips. “You’re not my prisoner, CJ. You’re my wife. And you’ll start acting like one.”
His arms tightened around me faster than any striking snake. My body was crushed to the heat of his hard chest, and his mouth was on mine in a flash. The firm pressure made me gasp, and at the slight opening of my lips, his tongue darted past them.
One hand moved up my back, the other down, to cup my backside, leaving a trail of heat everywhere they touched.
There wasn’t even a single moment of trying to shove him away.
My mind short-circuited the moment our bodies collided.
He was hot and hard and completely commanded all my senses.
I hadn’t realized how tense I was until he was holding me, and I could go completely limp in his arms, knowing I’d be supported.
As I melted against him, I slid my palms up his firm biceps, digging my fingernails into the crisp fabric of his sleeve to feel the spring of his muscles underneath. Up over his broad shoulders, I ran my fingers through his silky, messy hair.
A slight rasp of beard scraped my cheek as he twisted his mouth away to kiss down the side of my neck and behind my ear, brushing aside my own windswept hair. I let my head fall back, lost in the warm, wet feel of his lips, the slight tickle that sent heat rushing to my core.
Breathing him in, he was scented with the pine trees and night air.
My shaking hands dug in deeper, grinding myself against the stiff shaft between us.
He roughly kissed me on the mouth again, pulling back to look down at me with wild eyes.
I had to blink away the film of lust to see him properly, and I began to tug him down again when I remembered what he said.
I was his wife, and I was going to start acting like one. My eyes flew wide, and I froze in his arms. Lowering his head, he kissed me gently along the side of my mouth, teasing my lower lip with his tongue.
What was he doing to me? Where was my good sense? Within a few hot minutes, he’d completely erased my anger, but that didn’t mean I was going to give in to this bully. I certainly didn’t want to, did I?
Just as fast as it started, it was over. I was out of his arms, and he was looking down at me with a wolfish grin.
“We’ll have dinner together tomorrow at eight o’clock,” he announced. “A dinner that you prepare.”