Chapter Ivor
Ivor
She stares at me like she can’t decide what to do.
Good. That’s exactly where I want her, on the knife’s edge between fury and surrender.
Most women don’t understand what they’re asking when they come sniffing around the Bratva. They think they can peer through the keyhole, scribble down a few juicy secrets, then walk away untouched. They don’t realize that once you’re inside, there’s no leaving.
But this one… she’s different. She’s sharp enough to know the danger, reckless enough to step into it anyway. Brave or suicidal, I still haven’t decided.
What I do know is this: if I’m going to give her the truth, she has to be bound to me in every way that matters. She has to carry my mark inside her, under her skin. That’s the only contract worth making.
Her throat works as she swallows, and I can see the fight in her eyes. Ambition colliding with instinct. She wants the story. She wants the risk. But she’s not ready to admit that she wants me too.
So I’ll help her.
I slide my hand down the line of her throat, slow, deliberate, until my palm rests over her heartbeat. Steady. Fierce.
“You think you can stay outside of this, little dove,” I murmur. “Write your piece, walk away, go back to your neat little life. But the moment you stepped into this ballroom, you stopped being a bystander. You put on a mask and came hunting. That makes you part of the game.”
Her lips part, ready to argue, but I don’t give her the chance.
I take her mouth again. Harder this time.
Demanding. A collision of teeth and heat, staking my claim before she can talk herself into running.
She pushes back, just like before, and the fight of it makes my blood roar.
She doesn’t kiss like prey. She kisses like a rival, like she’s daring me to devour her whole.
And I’ve never wanted anything more.
I break the kiss just long enough to breathe against her lips. “You want your story?” My thumb drags across her swollen mouth. “Then you take me. Tonight. You let me fill you until my seed takes root, and in return I give you more truth than you’ll know what to do with.”
Her breath shudders out, hot against my jaw.
I know I sound like a madman. I don’t care. This is the only way forward. For me. For her. For the empire my father threatens to hand to my vulture cousins if I don’t secure my line.
“You want immortality?” I press. “You’ll get it. In ink. In blood. In the child I put inside you.”
I pull back just enough to see her eyes. Wide. Bright. Terrified. Tempted.
She’s trembling. Not a visible shake anyone else would see, the kind you feel when your palm is pressed to someone’s back, when your mouth is still wet from theirs. I can feel it like an electrical current through both of us.
Every instinct in me wants throw her down and make good on every promise I’ve just whispered against her lips. Fill her until she can’t run, make her understand with my body what she refuses to admit with her mouth.
But that’s the fast way. And I’ve already decided I don’t want fast with her. I want her to know exactly what she’s stepping into. I want her to choose, even if she doesn’t realise she’s already chosen.
I ease my grip just enough that she can breathe, but not enough that she can step back. Her pulse still beats against my thumb. Her eyes still dart over my face like she’s trying to memorise me for later. Evidence. Proof. A witness cataloguing her captor.
I lean in until my forehead brushes hers, our masks rubbing softly together. “You’re thinking about running,” I murmur. “I can feel it.”
She inhales sharply.
“You should,” I go on. “You should run now, while you still can. Walk back into the crowd. Disappear. Write a little gossip piece and forget all about me.” My mouth curves. “But you won’t.”
Her lashes flutter. “Why are you so sure?”
“Because I see the same hunger in you that you have in me,” I say.
“You want more than a byline. You want a world that burns hotter, brighter, more dangerous than the one you’re living in.
You want it enough to risk yourself. That’s why you’re here among all the people in the world who could ruin you in a heartbeat. ”
I slip my fingers up into the hair at the back of her neck, tilting her head back a fraction. “And that’s why you’re not walking away from me.”
Her breath hitches. Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak. That tiny surrender, just the tilt of her chin, the way she lets me hold her there, hits me harder than any plea.
I lower my mouth to hers again, slower this time, a drag of lips over lips that feels like a promise instead of a demand. She tastes like defiance and salt and the story she’s dying to write. She kisses me back, hesitant at first, then with a pulse of heat that makes my chest ache.
When I finally draw back, I keep my hand in her hair, thumb brushing the line of her jaw.
“This is your last chance to walk away,” I tell her, voice low, rough.
“If you stay, you don’t get to be an observer anymore.
You become part of it. You become mine. And once you’re mine…
” I let the weight of it hang between us. “…I don’t let go.”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes search mine, still masked but wide, bright, caught between fear and fire.
I straighten, slide my palm down to her hand and twine our fingers. “Come,” I say, turning toward the door that leads deeper into the suite. “If you’re going to hear my story, you need to see where it begins.”
She hesitates for the space of a heartbeat.
Then she steps forward.
And just like that, she crosses the line.