Chapter 26 #2
Vaska nods once. “When he was younger. Before the title. Before the weight. Hungry. Angry. Always waiting for the next person to try and take something from him.” He studies me like he’s seeing through layers I didn’t know I had.
“You’ve got that same look. Like the world already tried to kill you once and you’re pissed it didn’t finish the job. ”
My chest twists sharp.
I swallow. “I’m nothing like him.”
“You are,” Vaska says simply. “That’s why he keeps you close. Has he fucked you?”
The words hang there.
The question is crude on purpose; meant to shake me, meant to see what I do with it.
Vaska steps back—giving me space again, giving me the illusion of control.
He flips his knife. Slides it back into his boot.
“I’m guessing he has,” he says, voice back to that casual cruelty. “and yet he’s kept you. We can keep dancing. Or we can sit down and you can tell me what your plan is.”
I don’t lower my knife.
The room feels smaller now. The air thicker.
“My plan?”
He nods, taking his seat again. “Your plan now that you belong to the Pakhan.”
***
Vaska’s question follows me back here like a shadow.
Your plan now that you belong to the Pakhan?
I don’t have a plan. I have instincts.
Stay. Survive. Don’t give him a reason to let go.
Gabriel is breathing down my neck, and if Maksim is done with me, I need to know before I’m the one standing outside.
The townhouse is too quiet. Not peaceful quiet.
The kind that feels like he’s somewhere in it, breathing, and still choosing distance like it’s discipline.
He’s been doing it for days. He sleeps beside me every night like I’m something he has to guard—arm heavy across my waist, a hand at the back of my neck when he thinks I’ll drift off without him.
Possessive touches. Small ones. Enough to remind me that I’m his. But he won’t touch me.
Not like that.
Not since the couch. No kiss. No hands under my clothes.
No heat. Just control.
I find the garage by sound. Metal on metal. A soft clink. The slow scrape of a tool.
The low rumble of a man busy enough to pretend he isn’t avoiding me.
The air changes the second I step inside—oil and rubber and cold concrete. Familiar in a way I don’t like admitting.
He’s in front of me, back turned, shirtless, leaning over a motorcycle balanced on its stand. My breath catches anyway. It’s not the body. It’s the work.
Maksim in meetings is a tyrant with a bored stare—reckless, dangerous, like he might start a war just to feel something.
He sprawls in his chair like a king who doesn’t need to prove he’s king.
Here, he’s the opposite. Focused. Quiet. Almost… careful. His shoulders flex as he tightens something near the chain, grease streaked across his hands and forearms.
And on his back—black ink and shadows—there it is. The skull. It stretches across him like a warning. Like a promise. Like the only softness in this man is the fact that he turned his pain into art and wore it like armor.
I stand there long enough that I should’ve been noticed.
He doesn’t turn. Of course he knows I’m here.
I clear my throat anyway, because I’m not about to announce myself like I’m asking permission to exist in his space.
“Is that—”
“Yeah,” he says, still not looking at me.
And then I see the bike clearly. Not the Ducati he rides like it’s an extension of his body.
The other one. The one that exists in my head like a sharp flash of headlights and gunfire and his blood on my hands.
My stomach tightens. I step closer, boots echoing once against the concrete.
The tire is new. Fresh.
The paint is darker than I remember—clean enough that the bike doesn’t even look like it’s ever kissed asphalt.
“The one from the bakery,” I say. “The night you hijacked my car.”
His jaw shifts, the smallest tell. “You wouldn’t leave your car.”
“I didn’t have time,” I shoot back, because if I let that memory breathe too long, it turns into something else. “You pushed me.”
“You refused.”
I can still feel it—his arm shoving me across the console like my life was just another obstacle to move.
The smell of gunpowder. The sound of bullets snapping past glass.
The fact that he was bleeding and still drove like the world owed him survival.
I circle the bike slowly. The new tire looks too perfect. Too deliberate.
I reach out and drag my fingers over the tank. Smooth.
Newly painted.
He goes still. Just a pause, but it hits anyway because it’s the first real crack I’ve seen from him in days.
I keep my tone light on purpose. “Why’d you fix it?”
“It still runs.”
That’s all he gives me. No explanation, no sentiment, no softness to grab and hold. Just a fact like facts don’t bleed.
I glance at him. He’s watching me now. Not the bike.
Me.
“You don’t strike me as the type to restore things,” I say.
“I don’t.”
“Then why keep this one?”
His gaze drags over my face like he’s measuring whether I’m trying to cut him open.
“It didn’t fail,” he responds.
I lift an eyebrow, because he can pretend all he wants, but I was there.
“The tire got shot out,” I say. “That’s not the bike being dramatic. That’s someone trying to kill you.”
His mouth tightens. He sets the tool down with a careful kind of violence.
“It got me out.”
It kept him moving.
It kept him alive. He says it like it’s nothing—like the night I met him wasn’t a knife edge.
I step closer anyway, because I didn’t come down here to admire machinery.
I came down here because I’m tired of sleeping beside a man who acts like he owns me… and still won’t take what he’s claiming.
I put myself between him and the bike, close enough that I can smell oil and soap and heat. Close enough that the air turns dense.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” I say, simple.
His eyes darken. “I’m right here.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
His stare holds mine like a threat. Like a dare.
Like he’s deciding whether to punish me for saying it out loud.
“You’re testing me,” he says quietly.
Maybe I am. Maybe I’m tired of pretending I don’t want his hands on me the way he wants them there. I tilt my head.
“Am I?”
His hand lands on my waist; firm, immediate, not gentle enough to be mistaken for kindness.
My breath catches.
He doesn’t move closer. He doesn’t have to. The grip says it all.
“I don’t like games,” he murmurs. I look down at his hand on me and back up.
“Then stop playing one.”
For a second, his face doesn’t change. And then something shifts—tightens, like restraint turning into something else.
His other hand slides to my lower back.
The bike’s seat presses into the back of my thighs. And suddenly I’m pinned between him and the machine he resurrected like it matters. His mouth drops near my ear.
“You came looking for me,” he says.
A fact. A claim.
I swallow. “I found you.”
His grip tightens. “You didn’t come to talk about a bike, Beda.”
His breath is hot against my ear, ragged and uneven, like I’ve split him open just by stepping into his space.
That bruising grip on my waist tightens, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, sending heat surging low in my belly until I’m throbbing with it.
I don’t pull away. I press back into him, deliberate, because fuck him for thinking he can starve us both and still act like every part of me belongs to him.
“You’re right,” I say, voice steady even though my heart is slamming against my ribs. “I didn’t.”
His fingers flex, yanking me flush against him.
The motorcycle’s seat bites cold into my ass, pinning me exactly where he wants me—like he’s been dreaming this setup for weeks.
His eyes drop to my mouth, dark and furious, the want in them so stark it looks like pain.
Like craving me this badly is a personal insult he can’t forgive himself for.
“Fuck, Beda,” he growls, voice scraping low and gravel-rough. “You think you can just show up and shove me over the edge? I’ve been keeping my hands off you on purpose—to keep from ruining you the way you fucking beg for without saying it.”
I hold his stare, unflinching. Bullshit.
He’s the one who’s been sleeping inches away, coiled like a spring, refusing to snap. My hand slides up his chest, slow, grease streaking under my palm as I map the tense ridges of muscle jumping under my touch. He’s fever-hot, strung so tight I can feel the tremor in him.
“Keeping your hands off?” I murmur, nails scraping lightly. “That’s done now.”
The leash snaps.
His mouth slams onto mine; hard, claiming, tongue piercing clicking against my teeth as he forces his way in, tasting me like he’s furious at how good it is.
I bite back just as vicious, nipping his lip until he hisses, the faint copper taste blooming between us.
His hands are everywhere, my hair, ass, hips; hauling me closer until I feel every thick inch of him straining against my denim.
He breaks first, forehead pressing to mine, breath heaving like he’s fighting a war under his own skin.
Frustration flickers in his eyes, sharp and feral.
He hates this.
Hates how much he needs it.
“You have no fucking clue how bad I want to bend you over this bike and fuck you.” His hand tightens on my waist. “Stretch that tight cunt on my cock until you’re dripping, make you take every pierced inch until you’re screaming. But you keep pushing, and I’ll make sure you feel it all.”
The words land like sparks on dry grass.
My pussy clenches, aching and empty. I shift against him, feeling the hard line of him, the subtle promise of that ladder waiting to drag me apart.
Those metal rungs—fuck, each one catching and rubbing inside me, turning every thrust into torture so good I see stars.
“Keep talking,” I challenge, popping the button on his jeans slow and deliberate.
My other hand slides into his hair; anchoring him, before trailing down to his chest so I don’t get shoved back when he moves.
His eyes flash with possession and heat, bitter resentment because I’m making him give in. “Tell me how you’re gonna break me.”
He snatches my wrist, locks it to his chest where his heart is hammering, then shoves my pants down in one rough yank. No patience left.
He frees himself with a growl; thick, veined, those silver rungs glinting under the garage lights like a weapon. “I’m gonna pin you down, fuck you deep, make that greedy pussy grip every rung until you’re begging. Fill you up hot and messy, because you keep driving me fucking insane, Ayla.”
I stroke him once—firm, feeling those cool rungs warm under my palm. He groans, hips jerking, but he shoves my hand away, spins me fast, and bends me over the bike.
My hands catch on the leather, one gripping the edge, the other flattening to steady myself.
The seat is cool against my chest, the edge of it pressing into my stomach as he kicks my legs wider.
One hand clamps my hip, the other guides himself to my entrance, teasing the tip through my slickness.
His breath fans across my back, ragged, like even this proximity is costing him control.
“You want rough?” he snarls, voice breaking with frustration. “I’ll give you rough.”
He thrusts in hard; all the way, no warning. The stretch is brutal, perfect, those rungs dragging fire along my walls, each one catching and rubbing with devastating precision.
I cry out, fingers scrabbling on the leather. He doesn’t let up—sets a punishing rhythm, hips snapping, pounding deep like he’s trying to punish us both.
“Fuck, you’re soaked,” he bites the word off like it hurts him to say it. His hand slides up my spine, then down, thumb brushing over my arsehole, slow, deliberate pressure that makes me shudder hard.
He groans, low and feral. “Gonna fill this hole too, Beda. Soon. Gonna stretch you here, mark you everywhere.”
I laugh, breathless and defiant, even as another wave of heat floods me. “That’s never fucking happening.”
His thumb presses just a fraction harder, enough to make me gasp, enough to make my pussy clamp down on him like a vice. He curses under his breath, thrusts turning erratic for a second before he regains control.
“You say that,” he rasps, voice dark and filthy against my ear, “but every time I touch it, your cunt grips my cock like it wants to keep me forever. Traitorous little body, begging for what your mouth won’t admit.”
He drives deeper, relentless, the bike shifting on its stand, those piercings dragging with every stroke, building that unbearable pressure. His free hand snakes around to find my clit, rolling rough circles that match his rhythm, while his thumb keeps teasing, light then firmer, making me shake.
“Blyad, your pussy grips me like a fucking vice, wet and perfect, milking my cock, begging for my load. I’ll flood you, Beda, pump you full until you’re leaking me, make you mine from the inside out because you drive me to this madness.”
“Maksim,” I whimper. My face heats
“Fucking perfect,” he growls, voice cracking with the strain of holding back. “Those sweet submissive little sounds. Going to make those whimpers when I fuck your ass?”
“Fuck you Maksim,” I spit.
His thumb leaves my arsehole, his fingers gripping my hip hard. “You are, Beda, and you’re about to come, because you like this shit don’t you?”
A moan escapes my lips when he thrusts in hard.
“You like when I tell you how fucking good this cunt squeezes my cock. Come for me, Beda.”
I try to hold back, to spite him. But his thrusts and the way his fingers circle my clit, I can’t.
I shatter around him; hard, violent, clenching so tight he swears in Russian, the ladder amplifying every pulse.
“Maksim!” I gasp his name into the leather.
He follows with a guttural curse, burying deep and spilling hot inside me, hips jerking as he rides it out.
He doesn’t pull out right away. Stays buried, chest pressed to my back, arm banding around my waist. His breath is harsh against my neck, frustration simmering under the afterglow.
His mouth brushes the side of my neck—barely there.
“You wanted my attention?” he murmurs.
His hand tightens on my hip.
“Now you have it.”