Page 18 of Trapped by the Bratva (The Valkov Bratva #5)

DMITRI

N one of my business.

That was what Hannah tried to tell me. Wherever she went and whatever she did, it wasn’t “my” business.

Which was funny. Because the last time I told her she was my good girl, she fucking loved it.

“Slower,” she coached of my reps with the goddamn elastic bands. This time, for my shoulder. It was the neediest area of maintenance, that was for sure.

“I am going slow.”

“This”—she took hold of my upper arm and elbow, easing me through the motion—“is going slow.”

I clamped my teeth together to ward off the sensation of her touching me. Any time her fingers pressed against my skin, I was torn between sighing and holding in a breath. Every inch and second of contact between us left me feeling charged and alive, yet also deprived and frustrated.

She kept it all strictly professional between us. Nothing flirty. Nothing weird. All business and proper care.

I wanted her to grope me. To grip me. To grab me and hold me tight like she did when she kissed me so hard I swore I’d pass out, those times when her tongue was fucking magical and addictive and her taste too enticing to pass on.

I got nothing. Hannah was firmly locked in professional mode, and it was about to drive me insane.

None of my business, huh?

I asked Ivan about where she went, and he gave me such a quizzical look that I felt like I was missing something.

“Where’d she go?” I asked yesterday, three days after she’d taken off after I…

well, after I told her to leave me alone.

My anger about the Feds interfering with taking down Avilov had faded to a lower burn.

In hindsight, I was a dick to take out my anger on her, but I’d look like a bigger dumbass to apologize about it now, days later.

“She didn’t tell you?” Ivan asked, brows raised.

I shook my head, rushing to decipher why he thought she’d tell me. I wasn’t her keeper, but I wanted to be hers now.

“Where’d she go?”

He shrugged. “You’d have to ask her.”

“For fuck’s sake, man.”

“She seriously hasn’t talked to you? About any of it?”

I narrowed my eyes, wondering why I had to be the one in the dark. “No.”

“You gotta ask her about it.” He held his hands up in a surrender move and backed up.

“Ivan.”

He shook his head.

“Throw me a bone. A fucking clue.”

He smirked. “Just talk to her, you ass wipe.”

Ever since he’d left me with that stellar advice, I stewed on it. Conversations with Hannah only seemed to go two ways. We argued and butted heads during therapy sessions, or we fell into grunts and moans as we fucked.

“I said slow ,” she said, again taking hold of my arm and adjusting my posture.

“It’s harder to go slow.” I hated the whine in my voice. I knew I had to take it slower, but I was too damn weak with this specific move and my instinct was to rush through it.

“Because it’s still relearning how to work,” she said of the stitched up muscles I’d lost to the infection in my forearm.

Ask her. Ask her something . Anything. Just bite the bullet and fucking start a conversation.

I couldn’t handle this pent-up pressure and tension.

The attraction was a living force between us, sparking and snapping, about to catch fire.

We couldn’t fuck again, not until I made it clear to her that she wasn’t going to matter in any long-term sense of a relationship.

I needed to clarify that my priority had to be seeking revenge, not starting something up with her right now.

If sex was out of the question to relieve this tension, then talking, like Ivan advised, had to be a smarter solution.

“I think that’s enough,” she said, stopping my arm.

“That was only fourteen,” I argued.

“Fifteen,” she corrected. “I was watching and counting.”

Whatever. I was distracted. Again.

I sat on the nearest ottoman and sloped forward. Letting my back curl forward wasn’t comfortable, but I suspected it would help the ache in my shoulder after working it so hard. The chair behind me would be cozier, but once I leaned back in it, I wouldn’t want to get back up.

“It’s been a while since we had the masseuse in here for you.”

I rolled my eyes. “That blond dumb fuck?”

She sighed as she set the elastic band on the cart off to the side. In her other hand, she held a water bottle that she offered to me.

I took it and looked up at her smirking. “Sven wasn’t a blond dumb fuck. He was a very skilled and talented masseuse.”

“You know that from experience?” I drank from the water and glared at her. “You enjoy having his hands on you, too?”

She licked her lips, peeved. “No.”

“Never?” I taunted, just because I couldn’t help myself. Amy asked her post-natal masseuse about any recommendations for me, and that was how we found Sven. He’d come twice so far, and I hated it. “Because he sure as fuck thought about putting them on you.”

“He did not. He was a professional, trying to loosen the scar tissue around your surgery sites.”

“All while he checked you out and fantasized about touching you.”

She shook her head. “I’m not talking about men’s hands on me.”

“Why not?”

She met my gaze head on. “Because it’s been a while since I’ve had anyone touching me. And it’ll be an even longer time before it happens again.”

Fuck me, Darling. I wanted to. I wanted to hold her, play with her, and fuck her. I needed my lips on hers, my fingers in her cunt, my dick anywhere she’d let me.

“You, however…” She walked around me. When she pressed her knee against the chair, she rolled it further across the carpet.

“You’re tense.” As she laid her fingers on my shoulders and pressed in, I fought not to groan.

It had been a while since I’d had a massage.

I liked to get them as a habit, a form of taking care of myself, even before I was tortured and wounded.

Afterward, I found that it helped at the worst areas of healing.

“Of course I’m fucking tense.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she replied. “The therapy should help. The hot tub, too. And if you’d stop being so biased about Sven, more massages would loosen up this scar tissue as well.”

“Then go on.” I groaned. I couldn’t keep it in. It felt too good.

“You have all the resources to have the best rehab therapy possible. So take advantage of me. I mean…” She stopped, her fingers going still on my muscles. “Take advantage of it . All that your money can buy.”

Nice save there, Darling.

I wouldn’t pounce on that slip of the tongue. She rendered me speechless with her kneading pressure. I let my head roll toward the right, accommodating her deeper rubs on the left, then back again.

Goosebumps raised on my skin, and I couldn’t tell if the chill was from her massage or the fact that she had her hands on me for longer than a second or two.

Too soon, she lifted her fingers from me and walked back around. I hated the absence of her hands on me, sharing her warmth and skillful touch.

Now would be the time for her to leave. The session of exercising my battered body was over. I wouldn’t be treated to her presence for a few more hours, and it felt like too damn long.

That isn’t enough. Every day I toughed out being near her but talking myself out of actually going for what I wanted from her, I grew infinitely more frustrated. The nearness was killing me. This tension storming between us damn near suffocated me.

“I can take this up to the kitchen if you want.” She reached for the tray that contained my lunch.

“You’re not a housemaid.”

She huffed. “Never said I was.”

And you’re not supposed to be my good girl or Darling either…

“I’m going to go up there anyway. It gets pretty lonely in my room between your sessions.

Maybe I can see if Becca needs help with Emily or— Shoot!

” She overextended her arm and knocked an empty bowl down.

As she stooped to get it, her ass bumped into my knee.

“Sorry.” She glanced up, cheeks turning pink, as she hurried to grab the container and avoid me with a buffer to spare between us.

Once she stood again, she rubbed her hand over the spot she’d touched me. I watched, staring at her fingers over her ass before she moved it away. As though the contact tingled her skin too.

Lonely? She shouldn’t have to ever feel alone when I was right here, desperate for her against my better judgment.

She looked back at me once, lowering her lids before pressing her lips shut together tightly. Fuck me, that flicker of awareness mirrored my own. She wasn’t quick enough to mask her look of longing.

Hannah. Stop fighting it. Make a fucking move. Please. It couldn’t be me. She had to show me that she wanted it just as badly.

A curt nod was her polite farewell, but when she made eye contact again, she dropped her focus to my lips and frowned.

Before she could step away, I took the tray out of her hands and set it back on the side table. “What do you mean?” I asked.

She faced me, shy to look me in the eye. “About what?”

“Being lonely.”

Smiling too quickly for it to be genuine, she shook her head. “Never mind. I, um, I didn’t mean to actually say that.”

I stared at her, willing her to stay. Wishing she’d snap before I did.

“Are you?” I asked.

Her shoulders lifted then fell with her deep sigh. She lifted her arms to hug herself, then lowered them, only to bring one back up. “It’s…” Another exhale whooshed out of her. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

I grabbed her hand. It wasn’t a tight hold, but a strengthening grip to let her know I wasn’t in the mood to release her any time soon.

Something about this woman being lonely made me want to roar. She wasn’t. She never would be here. With my family. And later, after I saw to my revenge, if she wanted to wait for me, I’d be there for her too.

“Dmitri…” She shook her head, still not looking at me. “I can’t…”

“Are you lonely?” I asked as I tugged her closer.

“It doesn’t matter if I am.” She turned her head to the side even as I led her to approach.

“Says who?” Inches parted us. I gazed up at her, wishing she’d face me.

“ I don’t matter, so?—”