Page 7 of Watched and Bred by the Bratva (Bred by the Bratva #7)

I can still feel him everywhere. On my lips, in my thighs, inside the soaked places no one else has ever touched.

I’m trembling. Not just from what he did to me, but because I can’t decide if I should hate him or fall into his arms all over again.

My head rests against his chest, his heartbeat thunderous against my ear as he carries me out of the shattered dining room.

I expect another demand. Expect him to throw me into his bed and finish what he started.

But instead he veers into a wide hallway lined in oil paintings and chandeliers, his boots heavy against the marble.

He nudges a door open with his shoulder, and suddenly we’re in his bathroom. Light gray stone, a tub carved like it belongs to royalty. Steam fogs instantly as he twists the taps.

He doesn’t speak and I can’t. I’m limp in his arms, throat raw, and the ache between my legs won’t stop pulsing.

Nikolai crouches, lowering me onto a padded chair beside the bath. It’s absurd, how careful he is—like I might break if he sets me down too hard. Though he had no hesitation about breaking all my resistance minutes ago.

“Sit,” he murmurs. One command, but softer, with a weight I’ve never heard from him before.

My fingers knot against my knees. Steam curls through the air. He waits until the tub is full, shuts the water, and without meeting my eyes he drapes a towel across one rail. Then—just like that—he turns and leaves.

No demand. No order. Just silence, the door clicking shut.

For a moment, I don’t move. Then I strip out of the shredded dress and sink carefully into the tub.

Warm water climbs my shoulders. My head tips back.

And against all logic, it feels… comforting.

My body still aches with the force of what he did, but the heat makes it softer, more bearable.

My tears bead on the surface in little ripples. This time they’re not only from fear.

I soak until the tremors quiet. Until my pulse doesn’t feel like it will crack my ribs.

When I finally step out, I find fresh clothes waiting neatly folded on the counter. Not silk slips, not lingerie. Denim jeans and a soft pink concert tee.

I freeze.

It’s the shirt. That shirt. My favorite singer—the tour that sold out the day tickets dropped. The concert I never got to go to, only mentioned once in passing when I said to a friend that I’d kill for some of the merch.

My throat tightens. I smooth my palms over it like I can erase the impossibility. There’s no way he could have found one, not when they ran out before my friend even made it inside the venue.

But here it is. Folded. Waiting. Like he’d been listening the whole time.

My stomach knots as I slide the shirt on, tug the denim up my sore legs. It fits perfectly. Too perfect. He had this measured for me, didn’t he?

The thought makes me dizzy.

I pad barefoot through the hall, past antique rugs and tall windows spilling lake light. I find him in the library.

The library is cavernous. Cathedral-tall shelves swallow an entire wall, dustless and immaculate.

Rich leather chairs wait around a polished table.

A glass-fronted cabinet gleams with bottles and crystal.

At the far end, enormous arched windows spill daylight across a lake so bright it looks painted into existence.

He stands at the glass, hands clasped behind his back.

Shoulders rigid. Watching the water like a king watching over spoils of war.

For a second, I don’t say anything. I just… look at him. The man who wrecked me. The man who made me come for the first time in my life. The man who then left me alone to bathe, and folded a wish into reality without even asking.

I bite my lip. Because, hell, what do you say to a man who kidnapped you, demanded your first orgasm, but then left you to luxuriate in bath salts and an exquisite, pool-sized tub?

“Thank you… for the shirt.”

His head lifts. Slowly, he glances over his shoulder, gaze flicking once over me. Not at my face. At the shirt. At the pink cotton stretched across my chest. For a heartbeat, he looks feral. Then his mouth curves—barely.

“You like it.”

It isn’t even a question, but I nod anyway, my fingers twisting in the hem. “Yes. I thought there weren’t any left.”

“I found one.” He doesn’t explain further. As if it were nothing. As if I don’t know how fucking impossible that must have been.

I stand there a moment too long. Wondering if I dare ask him what this means. Why he bothers with details so small when he could move mountains. He turns fully, hand extended.

“Walk with me.”

The gesture startles me. My instinct is to refuse. To retreat into the shelves towering behind me, into comfort and quiet. My mouth even opens—ready to say no.

Then I see his eyes. The look in them. Dark and unreadable, but his jaw tight like refusal might cost him more than bullets.

So I take his hand.

It feels like stepping onto a carousel, circling round and round at a slow, dizzying pace. I can’t keep up with the spin of him. Commands and silences. Violence and tenderness. Hunger and restraint. It leaves me reeling, breathless, unsure of where the ride will end.

He leads me through arched hallways, out a set of French doors, and onto a stone terrace.

The air is cool, still holding the crispness of late spring.

Sunlight pools across the lawn that stretches forever, manicured emerald down to the water’s edge.

Beyond, the blue of the lake dazzles, dotted with the blurred wings of ducks skimming its surface.

It’s too much. The grandeur, the quiet, the expanse. I’ve never seen land like this. Never stood where the horizon belongs to one man.

“Why do you live here,” I ask, “in a house this big… alone?”

We’ve reached the curve of the path, brick crunching beneath our footsteps. He stops and turns his head toward me. His hazel eyes mirror the lake’s glint.

“I bought it for you.”

The words don’t make sense at first. They hang in the light air of spring, absurd as if he told me he purchased the sun. My steps falter. “What—”

He catches me by the elbow before I can stumble.

“Last week,” he says, expression iron. “After you admitted what you wanted. I watched the tape again. Heard you say you wanted me.” He takes half a step closer, his shadow folding over mine. “So I bought this. For you. For us.”

“You—? But you lived in the city. Didn’t you have a penthouse, you—”

“I still do. We can stay there whenever you wish,” he interrupts, voice steady but sharp.

“But you wanted children. Children shouldn’t grow up in fancy apartments.

Families need homes. Space.” His eyes drag across the vast green, the insane house rising regal behind us. “So I brought you one. A home. Ours.”

I never stumbled, but my breath sure does.

What the actual? This isn’t flowers after a date.

This isn’t a gift from duty. It’s a fortune, carved into marble and acres.

A man uprooting his life, shifting his empire—not because he wanted to, but because I said once that I dreamed of something like it.

I have no words. He stares like it’s ordinary. Like it isn’t madness.

By the time we walk back to the house, my legs feel hollow. My chest too tight.

Inside, the wide staircase curves upward, iron spokes glinting in the light from tall windows. The foyer gleams with immaculate polished stone and carved doors.

He turns to me, hands loose at his sides now, as if he isn’t the same man who just shattered my world. “I’ll be in the study.”

I blink, caught off guard.

“Go where you like. This house is yours.”

“Anywhere?”

“I have no secrets from you.” His gaze lingers, hard enough that my stomach knots.

Yeah, right. “So you’ll tell me your Bratva business, too?” I can’t resist asking. Because, why not taunt the Bratva boss? After all, everything else I’ve done and accepted is equally crazy.

That earns me a long, level look. The kind that says you might not want the answer you think you’re asking for.

Finally, he says with his voice low and certain, “I’ll answer any question you ask. But it might be best if you don’t ask. You may not want to know everything. And I will never lie to you.”

My mouth goes dry. Ooo-kay. I have no quick comeback. Because, hell, he’s right. I probably don’t want to know his business details.

“In the meantime,” he continues, flicking his hand toward the dining room and the gleaming halls beyond, “help yourself. The kitchen is yours, the library, every room. Whatever you want.”

Something feels wrong, like he’s letting me down easy. I blink hard, struggling to read him. Did I do something wrong? Did the shirt, the bath, and the walk mean nothing? Did I disappoint him already? Bore him?

“That’s it?” I shove my pride aside and ask. “You give a girl a screaming orgasm, walk her around your Beauty and the Beast mansion, and then go to your study? Just another day for you? Or maybe I didn’t outshine whatever twisted fantasy you had of me. Now you don’t want me.”

His head snaps, eyes narrowing. Emotions streak across his face too fast for me to decipher.

Then, he storms forward. He catches my face between his palms, crashing his mouth down on mine in a searing, possessive kiss that leaves me gasping when he rips back just enough to growl against my lips.

“Does it feel like I don’t want you? I want you as much as my next breath. My next morsel of food.” He growls against my mouth. “You are the first ray of sunlight after I’ve endured the darkest fucking night. So take what you want— a book, a bath, a fucking banana, I don’t care.”

He pulls back an inch, chest heaving as if holding himself back costs him blood. “…and let me pretend to be a gentleman for once in my goddamn life.”

My pulse stutters, my body trembles, and the words spill out of me, barely a whisper.

“What if what I want is you?”

That’s all it takes. His restraint, already cracking, is obliterated.