Page 20 of Trapped by the Bratva (The Valkov Bratva #5)

HANNAH

A fter we caught our breath, Dmitri nudged me to get up.

“Huh?” I was sleepy, so sated and lazy, that moving at all sounded impossible. He was so warm. Even though he was solid and hard, all muscles and no fat, lying against him was the most comfortable place in the world. I felt safe and secure with him, and I dreaded having to give up this moment.

A moment we likely shouldn’t have had. All common sense flew out the window with this man, but this wasn’t my first rodeo. He was due to switch back to the cold treatment now and ice me out.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he maneuvered me to sit up with him. Once he was on his feet, he stumbled a bit, and I hurried to stand and help him.

“This fucking ankle,” he groused as he leaned on me.

“Maybe that’s what you get for carrying me,” I scolded as he guided me to walk with him toward the bathroom.

Side by side like this, naked, was new. I’d assisted Dmitri with walking and moving with and without his cane or walker often, but never without a stitch of clothing between us.

He looked at me, shooting me a dark look, as though he hated that he wasn’t free to simply do as he pleased and count on his body to be strong enough.

In the bathroom, he tugged me alongside him as he turned the shower on. As steam filled the room, he brought me inside the huge stall with him.

Staying close together, we cleaned up and relaxed under the kneading pressure of the hot water raining out of two showerheads.

With slippery hands, we kept each other company.

I helped him stand and washed his back, and he took his time roving his hands all over me, everywhere.

It felt like he was trying to memorize me, to etch the map of my body in his mind.

No words were needed. In the hazy steam of the stall and the comforting warmth surrounding us, we continued this simple companionship after such mind-blowing sex.

The last time, I ran out of his room. I avoided facing him and dealing with the aftermath, too guilty to have given in.

This time, running away from him was the last thing on my mind.

We showered and dried off together, and he didn’t give me any easy opening to ask what would come next.

He showed me. Guiding me back to the bed where we’d messed up the sheets and blankets, he pointed at the mattress and indicated that I was supposed to climb on.

He grabbed a water bottle and lay next to me, and as he sipped it, he lifted his arm for me to snuggle up against his side. How he could just know that I craved his contact, I had no clue. But I did. Pressing up against him, flush like this, was becoming my favorite place to be.

“Hannah?” he said after several quiet moments.

I looked up at him as he set the water bottle down on the nightstand to his side of the bed.

“You matter.”

I swallowed, staring up at him with wonder.

“You matter to me,” he admitted honestly. I saw the sincerity in his eyes. It was all too easy to revel in the glow of our connection. He meant it.

“You matter more than you should.”

And there he went, ruining the moment.

“Sorry?”

He rolled his eyes before lowering to kiss me once. “No. You’re not sorry. I’m not either.” He cupped my face and rubbed his thumb over my cheek as he searched my face. “You’re getting under my skin, and I can’t fight it.”

“As… a fuck buddy?”

He grunted. “As something,” he quipped wryly.

I appreciated that he was opening up more.

His initiative to start a conversation like this was a huge step.

Still, I remained guarded. I regretted the moment I blurted out that I wanted to matter, afraid that it could’ve made me sound needy or pathetic.

Then I worried that he’d want to know why I wanted to matter and hadn’t already.

I couldn’t bare myself further than that. Not with his hot-and-cold treatment. Not when he could swing from one end to the other, being so affectionate and passionate one second, then flipping to be so aloof and dismissive the next.

“Where did you go that one day?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

He brushed my hair back, staring at me like he’d never get enough of looking at my face. “Yeah. Because you seemed upset afterward.”

“I was upset because you shoved me aside and pushed me out.”

“I was mad, too.”

“I wasn’t mad.”

“Yes, you were,” he argued. “If not mad, upset about someone or something.”

This is exactly what Margie was talking about. This overprotectiveness. I couldn’t lie and say it was a bad thing. He wasn’t being controlling and dominating to want to know. He was merely asking.

My determination to keep up the walls guarding my heart crumbled. I lost some of my defensiveness and sighed. “I went to see my sister.”

“Sister?” He raised his brows.

“Yes. Melissa. She’s a few years older than me. We used to live together, but I left the day I came here to work with you.”

“Did you leave on good terms?” he asked.

I snuggled closer to him, happy when he draped his arm higher to rub small strokes on mine. His touch was soothing, and it relaxed me enough that I wanted to tell him everything.

“No. She became my guardian when our parents overdosed. I was fifteen then, and ever since that day, she’s been using me for money.

I have held down multiple jobs, even before I was legally allowed to work, because she was so lazy.

She’s never done anything except date some loser drug dealers, and she acts as though I ‘owe’ her all my income because she prevented me from being an orphan or living on the streets. ”

He didn’t reply. He just kept rubbing my arm and listening. And that was more than enough. This chance to share this information with someone was a gift I’d never had before. I told Becca quite a bit, but with Dmitri, it felt more significant somehow.

“She’s always wanting something from me, expecting to scoot through life without working or doing anything for me.

It’s money, usually. That was what she wanted that day.

I’d been ignoring her calls since the moment Becca found me and asked me to come work here.

I haven’t spoken to Melissa since my first day here, but when you kicked me out the day after we… ”

“Fucked,” he finished for me.

“Yeah. The day after we fucked, and you shouted at me, I went to my room and accidentally answered her call. She wanted to meet up so I could give her money, so I told her that it was the last time. Ivan had a guard go with me, and I’m glad he did.

She was mean, like usual, demanding to know where I’d gone.

I didn’t tell her anything, and I made it clear when I left that she wasn’t to reach out to me ever again.

I’d been planning to leave her for a while.

The day she stole money from my secret bank account, the savings I had built to run and start a new life somewhere else, that was the day Becca found me and offered me this job. ”

“Good timing.”

“Very good timing. I only went that one last time to tell her that I was finished. No more guilt tripping me into giving her money because she’s my sister. My ‘family’.” Riled up and mad from discussing this, I looked up at him. “You have no idea how lucky you are to have a real family.”

He eased me up to lay over him and kissed me deeply. “I am grateful. But not all families are the ones we have by blood.” He kissed me again, slower. “You will always have a place here in the Bratva.”

With you? Or just as an employee?

“I can’t imagine that kind of a life, not like that.

My uncle and my cousin were terrible, manipulative and rotten like how you’ve described your sister.

Uncle Pavel was going to run the Bratva down to the ground with his shitty leadership.

And Andrey never lifted a hand, letting everyone else do his dirty work for him. ”

I didn’t even want to know what that “dirty work” consisted of. I wouldn’t think about it. The less I knew, the better, and that distinction between our lives was fine.

“Having my brothers, though…” He sighed and rubbed my back. “They mean everything to me. Family means everything. I wouldn’t be the man I am without their support.”

I leaned in to kiss him and smiled. “I can see that. They care about you no matter how much of an ass you are.”

As the sounds of babies crying sounded from the open window, likely the twins in the courtyard, he chuckled. “And our family is only getting bigger and bigger.”

“Lots of little ones. Emily. Alana. Sophia and Pyotr. Becca’s due. Lots of girl power there.”

“Well, I’m not in the mood to have one yet. I’ll let them stay busy.” He gave me a slow smile. “I’m content to be an uncle for now.”

I sighed, resting my chin on my hands folded on his chest. “I’d love to have a family. Sooner than later.”

“In a rush?”

I nodded but then worried how he’d interpret that. “Not like right now. I won’t leave this position. I meant it when I said I’d commit to helping you recover.”

“Hmm.” He rubbed his hands up and down my back, all the way to my ass. I couldn’t help but feel so possessed and captured. He wasn’t holding me down, but any time he had his hands on me like this, I felt coveted and secure.

It didn’t matter what I wanted. It was crystal clear that we would never mesh and make a family together. I was here to assist in his rehab. Sure, we were fooling around on the side, but that didn’t imply anything concrete and lasting between us.

No expectations or responsibilities lingered. We were only surrendering to the need to clash and come together while we endured the close proximity.

Each time we fell into each other, the flames of our desire seared us. It wasn’t impossible to count on this continuing while I was here. I wasn’t any stronger than him in ignoring the lust he caused in me. He seemed too tense to try to fight it.

And that would have to be enough for me.

He’d told me—and showed me—that I mattered, and I believed him.

If he could overcome his grumpiness to pull me into those dizzying kisses and thrust into me with such expertise to make me come, he cared.

My happiness mattered in that sense, and I was grateful for how he could meet me in the middle and compromise in the language of love and sex.

But that was all I could count on happening between us. Just sex. Only the physical scratching of an itch.

Nothing more.

But…

I wished I could have it all with him, to really belong here with the Valkovs. With Dmitri. Now that we’d been talking about it, I wanted to have his kids and add to the adorable babies and toddler taking over the mansion.

It wasn’t simply lust that I held for this gruff man. That realization rocked me to the core, but I couldn’t deny it.

I lowered my face, resting my cheek on his chest to avoid looking at him. Because if he studied me, he’d see the emotions in my eyes. Scared to admit that I was starting to feel more for him, I took the easy way out by staying quiet and not mentioning anything at all.