Page 23 of Trapped by the Bratva (The Valkov Bratva #5)

DMITRI

I van left me to stew with my anger. He was one of the deadliest men in the Bratva, but his reaction to not killing Erik seemed too tame. While he wasn’t on board with handing over the rival Mafia lord to the Feds, he wasn’t as eager as I was to go after the elusive man himself.

“I trust Alek,” he’d said in parting. “With whatever he decides.”

I did too, dammit, but I had to have closure. I had to clear the pain and horror of the past by paying it back to the man who’d caused me to be so broken and weak.

I paced until that tired me out. All the while, I watched the time and counted down until Hannah would come to me.

I wished she’d come to me just to see me, because she wanted me as much as I lusted for her. But she was too proper. Too professional.

She’d be here any minute for my exercise session, and I wondered how much longer it would be until I could work out in the gym again. With real weights and equipment I was familiar with at a harder, heavier pace.

Five minutes later, she snuck into my room. I had been tempted to look for her in her guest room and demand to know why she was tardy, but I knew myself. I’d lash out. I’d lose my temper—not at her or because of her, but due to all that I was experiencing.

“Where the fuck were you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Hanging out in my room. Why?”

I narrowed my eyes. She was acting aloof and distant, and I didn’t like it one bit.

I knew how good it felt to have her pussy wrapped around my dick.

I remembered the bliss of coming in her, the triumph of pushing her to an orgasm.

In those moments, the rest of the world faded away.

During that time we came together, all that mattered was the present, with her.

I wanted that utopia again.

“You ready?” she asked without her usual pep and cheer.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded as she moved toward the elastic bands to start my reps.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me.”

She glanced at me, the challenge clear in her eyes. “I’m not that easy to read.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked again, seething that she was giving me a hard time tonight.

“Do you care?”

I narrowed my eyes as I began the stretches under her care. “What kind of a question is that? Of course I care. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”

I was speaking harshly, being rough with her in my tone and with the glare I gave her.

I couldn’t help but be a hard asshole like this when she was acting like something was bothering her but she wouldn’t tell me what.

I didn’t deserve to be left in the dark.

It already seemed like I was with the Erik Avilov situation, expected to sit aside.

“I care more than I should,” I ranted as she stood there with me and supervised me through my reps. “You’ve been a distraction since day one.”

“Gee, thanks,” she quipped. “You’ve really got a way of giving compliments.”

“I mean it,” I growled. “You’re a distraction I don’t need right now. I should be focused on getting my revenge. On recovering so I can be strong enough to go after the fucker who dared to torture me.”

She pursed her lips and frowned, seeming like she wanted to say something but wouldn’t risk it.

“But more often than not, I’m thinking about you .” I stared at her, daring her to speak up. “You’re what I’m focused on. You’re who I think about. Nonstop.”

“Then don’t.” She shrugged and glanced at me. The look of resignation and sorrow on her face cut at my soul.

“What?” I lowered my arm.

“Then don’t think about me, Dmitri. I’ll leave.”

The fuck you will. Right when I’m thinking about a future with her, she’ll dare to say she’d go? Fuck that. Not on my watch.

“This isn’t the place for me.”

How was it not? How could she not see how well she fit at my side, with me?

“And this isn’t the kind of life I think I’m meant to have. Being with the Bratva.” She lowered her face, frowning at the ground.

I watched her inhale deeply and wondered what could have made her distance so far from the almost clingy mannerisms she’d shown earlier.

“You don’t need me.”

I growled, stepping closer to grip her chin and force her to make eye contact.

“I do.” I’d realized it, even if I loathed to admit it. “I do need you.” I lowered to press my lips to hers but thought twice. She had to hear these words from me. I wanted to leave no room for any misinterpretation. “I can’t imagine not having you close, Darling.”

Her breath hitched as she lifted her vulnerable gaze to me. I drowned in the brown depths of her eyes, mesmerized just like I was every time she looked directly at me and enraptured me.

“And I’ll be damned if you let me go.”

She sighed, wrenching out of my hold even though it seemed to pain her to do so. “You need me to help you with your rehab therapy.”

I chased after her as she moved toward the door. “Hannah?—”

“But you don’t want me. Right?” She furrowed her brow. “Right?”

“I want you so bad it makes me insane.”

“You don’t want me as much as you want to kill that man, though.” She raised her brows, staring at me expectantly like she was waiting for me to deny it. “Right? That’s your goal. To seek revenge. Not to start a real relationship with me.”

I licked my lips, unable to argue with her on that point. She spoke the bald truth, and I wouldn’t give her the impression that anything else could be possible.

“Right?” she echoed. “You might want me for a quick fling, here and now. But I don’t matter in any other way. I’m just a way to pass time before you can take off and do what you really want.”

Clamping my lips shut tight, I stared her down. “I need closure.”

She swallowed. Her throat tensed with the forceful motion, and she reached for the door. “That’s what I thought.”

Then she let herself out, leaving me frustrated and stunned.

She had never walked out during a therapy session like that. Never. No matter how much we shouted and argued. Regardless of how badly I pushed her and pissed her off, she stuck through it.

Until now.

Why? Because this is a matter of the heart?

I hadn’t considered how deeply she might be feeling for me. But I did for the next two hours. As I worked through my routine of strengthening exercises, I debated and analyzed the possibility of Hannah developing real and sincere feelings for me. Whether she could be falling for me.

She had to be experiencing something deeper and more meaningful than a quick fuck. This couldn’t be a fling for her. If it was, she wouldn’t be so hung up on how I decided what I wanted.

While it almost seemed like she was forcing me to pick between starting a new beginning with her versus preparing to go backward and deal with my past, I didn’t think that she was trying to do so in any sense of manipulation.

It seemed more like she was hurt, wounded even, with the thought that she might not matter in my life.

Sleep was impossible. After a long, hot shower, I tried to relax, but my mind was simply running too fast, all on thoughts of her. She vexed me. She pushed me to aggravation, but I didn’t begrudge her.

Hannah was a distraction I didn’t need, but as I gave up on lying in my bed and waiting to fall asleep, I got up and went to her room with the conviction that she was the distraction I wanted. So damn badly.

I stood there watching her sleep. Her black curly hair lay in a halo around her head, and her face remained slightly pinched, as though she was uncomfortable and restless in her sleep.

Beautiful.

And she could be mine.

All mine and no one else’s.

Watching her sleep taunted me to really envision what it could be like. If she were my woman, my wife. If I were to knock her up and add on to the next generation of Valkovs here.

I wouldn’t be alone. Nor would she. In each other, we’d belong to a brighter future—so long as I could fight to have her and she would continue to put up with me and my flaws.

Approaching the bed, I crept closer toward her while being careful not to rouse her in this peaceful quiet. I was drawn to her, and a twisted, strong urge to have her coasted through me.

I lowered my sweatpants and boxers before crawling up onto the bed.

She stirred, moving in reaction to the mattress sinking and dipping from my added weight.

But she slept on. Like an angel. Or the devil.

She inspired both admiration and annoyance from me, but right now, as I lowered next to her as she stayed curled on her side, I pushed her nightgown up.

Fuck me, Darling. You are my good girl. She wasn’t wearing any panties, and it was all the invitation I wanted to assume I could claim her. I shifted her leg up, draping it over mine as I pulled her toward me.

My dick bumped at her pussy, and I bit my lip not to groan at the warm flesh I’d push past. With both of my fingers, I spread her folds apart and open.

She sucked them in as I slid them into her tight heat, and after a few strokes in and out, testing my patience, she became slick with her cream dripping out.

A low, sexy moan left her lips. Rolling her head toward me, she moved in her sleep.

I won’t last.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to have her. Now.

I pushed my cockhead into her entrance, driving hard and quick. With a long, agonizing slide in, I seated myself in the tight vise of her smooth, wet channel. Her cunt swallowed me in, and I stopped.

Breathing hard, I held her close to me and waited. My fingers curled around her breast as I hugged her to my chest.

My dick throbbed, prompting me to move. My heart raced, charging full speed ahead with the hit of adrenaline of what I was doing.

I should’ve woken her up first. But I didn’t. I wanted the peace of fucking her without any strings. Without having to discuss it all. And without hearing her out as she doubted what we could have.

Thrusting into her slowly, I filled her over and over again, speeding toward an intense orgasm. After all the negative energy I stored and bottled up all day from that disappointing meeting, I had to expend it and vent.

Into her.

Just before my balls could tighten and I’d shoot my load into her pussy, she woke. Startled at first for finding my cock rammed into her, she flinched, then gasped.

I turned her face toward me, forcing her to crane her neck to see me. Once she was lined up, our mouths parted with shallow, rapid breaths, I held her chin and tipped her closer for a kiss.

“I thought…” She closed her eyes and arched back into me as I drove in deeper. “I thought I was dreaming.”

I slammed my lips over hers and lowered my hand to her breasts. She kissed me back, twisting to keep her face close to mine. But she redirected my hand from her jiggling tit. I let her shove my hand, and as soon as I realized she wanted my hand—or my fingers—on her clit, I took over.

I broke the kiss, staring down at her sleepy, lust-filled face.

“You going to be a good girl for me and come?” Before she could reply, I grabbed her thigh and forced her to widen her legs more.

To open up for me. She did, and as I stuffed her pussy, I found her clit and teased it.

Rolling circles around it. Rubbing against the nub.

Then flicking my finger at it until she rode my dick in return.

Every time her ass pushed against me, I growled and wished she’d milk me dry already.

I couldn’t last. I wouldn’t.

So when we came together, her pussy clenching my cock, I bellowed a loud roar of satisfaction. Every time was perfection. Guiding her to a climax was a reward in and of itself, but having the chance to flood her womb with my hot cum was a bonus I’d never pass on.

“You’re not going anywhere,” I promised as we lay together afterward, our limbs entwined and our combined cum leaking out of her pussy to smear on our skin.

I wouldn’t stop with my crusade to get revenge on Avilov. It seemed impossible. But I would compromise however I could to keep Hannah in my life like this.

Sated. Safe. And staying with me, no matter what.