Untamed (Bratva Kings #2)

Chapter 28

RODION

I didn’t set out to test her. But I know if we return to the gala, she’ll be permanently immersed in my world—brutal, unforgiving, but loyal.

I’m checking her for signs of shock, but she’s only quiet, clinging to me.

“Stop,” she finally says. “You have no idea. The memory of what he did haunted me so much worse than what we just did. That was awful, yeah, but I’m…god, I’m relieved. But I need a stiff drink, stat.”

The gala is in full swing when we return. Laughter spills from the open doors, mingling with strains of violin music.

I get her a stiff drink. Actually, two.

It should feel surreal—stepping back into the world of glittering celebration. It doesn’t for me.

I feel nothing but relief. Maybe that’s fucked up.

“You alright?” I ask Ember. She’s cleaned herself up and changed, with fresh makeup and her hair down her shoulders, loose and wavy.

“Yes,” she says with that majestic energy fitting of the queen she is. She stands next to me, her chin held high, her fiery red hair cascading over the silk of her dress.

She doesn’t shrink back or hide.

Maybe she’s as fucked up as I am.

God, I fucking love her.

I watch the way their eyes track her, both men and women alike, as if they’re drawn to her beauty, her magnetic energy, and can’t quite put it into words. A part of me wants to growl at all of them to look away.

Because she’s mine.

But when Ember turns toward me and buries her head on my chest, I wrap my arms protectively around her. It was a lot tonight, but she’s handling it so well.

“You sure?” I whisper in her ear.

“Yeah,” she repeats. “I feel like I should be a lot more upset about what happened, but I…” Her voice gets a little choked, and she doesn’t complete her sentence. “I needed closure. I needed to know there’s no going back, that it can’t possibly happen again.”

“You don’t have to explain. I understand.” I tip my finger under her chin and bring her gaze to mine. I stare into her bright green eyes, and my heart swells because I know—I’m staring into my forever. “But I want you to trust me to handle the details. The rest of this. Can you do that?”

Holding my gaze, she nods. “Yeah.”

Ekaterina swirls her champagne, oblivious to what we just did or what we’re talking about, but I know that even if she did know details, she wouldn’t judge. After all, it was her son’s cleanup crew I borrowed.

“I’ve heard you’re a photographer, Ember?” she asks with a welcome smile. “We hired someone, but they didn’t show.” She rolls her eyes. “Sometimes our reputation gets in the way of such things.”

“I am,” Ember says. She stands up tall. “Do you want me to take pictures?”

“Just while we hand over the big check,” she says with a wink.

Ember slides into artist mode, her eyes trained on various people. I watch her take snapshot after snapshot until finally, she lowers the camera and turns to me, her cheeks either flushed from the heat of the room or from the weight of my eyes on her.

“Done yet?” I’m getting impatient to have her alone. My thumb grazes the small of her back.

Rafail and Semyon join us, their hands in their pockets. Rafail gives me a curt nod. “All taken care of.”

Semyon nods. “Anything you need from us now?”

I shake my head. “A promise that nothing happens tonight that will tear me and my wife from much-deserved rest.”

Rafail nods. “Granted.”

I turn to Ember. It feels like we’ve had three nights rolled up into one, and I’m at the end of an exhausting marathon.

“Let’s get some rest. No more eyes on anyone else, baby.”

Her breath catches before her hand slides along the front of my jacket, tugging me closer. I grin at her.

She gives me the barest hint of a kiss, but it’s enough to make my blood hum.

Let them see. Let them all know exactly who she belongs to.

I pull back, brushing a strand of hair from her face and tucking it behind an ear. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Don’t we have to, like… wait until people are going home?”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

We head to the room. Ember’s fingers are threaded through mine as if to ground herself to me. Leaning into me on the landing, she presses her cheek to my shoulder. “We survived the night.”

“Yeah,” I say on a breath. “All of it. It feels like we’ve lived a full lifetime in twenty-four hours.”

“But we did it together.”

“I knew we would.”

Back in the room, I lock the door and throw every dead bolt into place.

I don’t say anything. I tug the zipper on the back of her new dress down, watching the silky material peel away. It pools at her feet, leaving her bare.

Wordlessly, she reaches for me next and unfastens every button on my dress shirt before pulling it off. Leaning in, she kisses the swell of my bicep. “So hot,” she whispers with a wink. “So fucking hot.”

“Oh yeah?” I flex just to show off, and she predictably whimpers. She leans over and kisses my cheek next.

“Shower?” she asks, her eyes flicking up to mine.

“That sounds good. And food?”

“Mm. I’m starving. Can we order delivery or something?”

“Anything for my queen.” I pull out my phone and open an app. “Anything in particular?”

“Pizza,” she breathes out. “New York style, with pepperoni, and if they have any cheesecake… supposed to be pretty good around here.”

I grin at her and order a large pepperoni pizza and a few slices of New York-style cheesecake. I text Yana and ask her to bring it up when it arrives, since she’s the one most likely to mind her own business.

I turn the shower on and toss our dirty clothes to the side. Steam billows up around us. I open the shower curtain and gesture for her to step inside. I welcome the hot water as it curls around our bodies.

On a normal day, this would be like foreplay. Tonight? Sex is the furthest thing from my mind, and I want to make sure that she feels safe and taken care of.

It seems she wants the same for me. The way she touches me tenderly, smoothing a washcloth over the suds until the water runs clear.

The shower is small, not really built for two, but we make it work.

“I don’t realize how unnaturally huge you are until you’re squashed under a showerhead,” she says, her lips twitching.

I pinch her wet ass with my palm, and she squeals. “I’ll give you unnaturally huge,” I mutter before I grip her other cheek and knead. I bend and kiss her.

Water streams over us, the rhythmic sound of it soothing like rain on glass. She leans on my chest, her forehead pressed to my collarbone. My hand rests lightly on the back of her neck, fingers tangled in the wet strands of her hair.

I spin her around and tilt her head back. Her eyes close when I massage shampoo into her hair, suds it up, then rinse it slowly. Conditioner next, then another rinse.

I imagine we’re washing everything away. The memory of her assault. The lies between us. Anything that will tear us apart ever again.

Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to.

My chest rises and falls beneath her touch when she turns to face me, soap bubbling under her palm. I haven’t let anyone take care of me like this in… god, I can’t remember. My parents died when I was so young, and Rafail had his work cut out for him with a houseful of kids. We learned independence early.

I reach for her hand and kiss her palm.

“Thank you, little queen.” Her soft smile warms me through. When she draws closer to me, I stifle a groan. My cock stiffens between us, but this isn’t the time.

“Happy to see me?” she says with a smirk, her brow raised. “Or…”

I bend and kiss her shoulder when she yawns widely. “Always. But you’re exhausted.”

“Yeah.” Her voice is a breathy whisper.

“You have to stay awake until the pizza gets here, and then you can sleep for days for all I care.” She needs to eat.

“I can handle that,” she says on another yawn.

I turn her around to rinse her off.

It feels like we’ve walked through something we can’t really name—an unspoken battle neither of us wants to admit we were fighting.

It’s more than Shawn. More than her fears and mine. Neither of us does vulnerable easily—and yet here we are. We stand under the stream of water, bare in more ways than one.

I shift, reaching past her to adjust the water temperature. I move carefully, almost reverently, as if I could shatter this moment between us. But there’s nothing fragile about the way she turns to me and holds on, her arms about my waist.

Steam coils around us. My scars stand out against the warmth of my skin. Wordlessly, she traces one of them, brushing over it as if committing it to memory.

My hand covers hers, stilling the movement. My thumb grazes over her knuckles in slow circles.

Her fingers slide down my arm, stopping just above my wrist. Slowly, she traces the thick gold band on my finger. Her voice is quiet. “What if I don’t want temporary, Rodion?”

I bend my head, kissing her temple. “What if I don’t either?”

She draws in a sharp breath as if she wants to believe me, wants to believe herself, but can’t quite trust it all yet.

I brush the wet hair from her face. “Listen, Ember. I’m not going anywhere. Tonight was about survival. Survival is only the first step.”

She swallows hard, her fingers tightening around my wrist. We stand, wrapped in the heat and silence, letting the pounding water drown out the rest of the world until our skin is wrinkled and her stomach growls audibly.

I reach behind her and shut the water off just as a knock sounds at the door. “Food’s here!” Yana shouts.

She smirks. “Guess you really are staying, then. One way to keep you here.”

I smile at her. “Are you really afraid I’m going to leave, little queen?”

She holds my gaze for a long moment, searchingly, before she finally shakes her head with a sigh. “No. I don’t think you will.”

“Woman, you couldn’t chase me away if you tried.”

I wrap her in a towel, then wrap another around my waist. Wordlessly, she sits up in bed, and I get the food outside the door. We open the box on the bed.

“Rafail would kill me for this,” I say, lifting a slice and handing it to her.

She swallows and licks her lips. “Rafail can fuck off. I can’t think of a better way to honeymoon than pizza and cheesecake. You?”

I take a bite of the pizza and groan. “I would’ve said sex, but right now, this pizza tastes better than sex.”

Ember laughs softly, tucking her legs beneath her. The towel falls off her shoulder and pools in her lap. The warmth in her eyes lingers longer than usual. “You know,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “If I were still making videos, I’d be running to make a video about this scene right here.”

I shake my head at her. “Why?”

She shrugs. “We can talk all day about a hot, tatted guy taking care of us. But being comfortable enough to share a pizza, half-naked, in bed… could be the hunger talking, but this is the stuff of dreams.”

We eat in silence. In the distance, we can still hear the muted sounds of people talking and music playing, but it seems we’re almost a world apart here.

She tilts her head up just enough to meet my eyes. “I meant what I said, you know. About not wanting temporary.”

“You say that now…” I want to believe her; of course I do. But I want her to say the same thing after she’s accepted what this really means. I’m not built for soft edges and quiet endings. I don’t like the thought of my world swallowing her whole.

But when I look down, she’s already watching me, eyes steady and unwavering. Like she sees the storm inside me and isn’t afraid of getting caught in it.

“I mean it,” she says softly, her fingers tightening around mine. “I know what I’m asking for.”

She drops her crust in the box, grabs another slice of pizza, and takes a huge bite.

I take her crust and bite it.

“Things sometimes go to shit, Ember. We don’t always have happy endings. Sometimes?—”

She stops me with her hand on my arm. “Rodion. I get it. I know.” Shaking her head, she smiles at me. “I’ve read all the books, remember?”

“Oh, right.” I grin at her. “You’re an expert.”

She giggles. “I don’t know if I want to kiss you or write fanfic about you.”

“Oh, really?”

She sighs and says in a lilting, teasing voice, “The way he’s morally gray in all the right ways…”

I snort.

“The way I need you to ruin me , sir.”

I shake my head.

“Do you have a tragic backstory, a deep emotional wound, and a loyalty kink with a heavy side of competency porn?” She sighs dramatically and brings her hand to her brow. “I’m dead. ”

I finally get it. “Oh my god. You’re pretending to be a fangirl.”

“Yes and no,” she says with a shrug. “I’m not really pretending. Listen, Rodion. I know you’re worried about me losing it when things go sideways, but I… I know what you’re like when things go right. ”

That hits deeper than I thought it would. I tilt her chin up with two fingers, holding her gaze. She licks her lips adorably. “And anything else we can figure out.”

She smiles back at me. “That’s what happily ever afters are made for.”