Chapter 47
Maksim
My blood on her lips. The way her cunt clenches around me and her pulse pounding against my thumb has my adrenaline coursing so hard that fucking her isn’t enough.
It will never be enough.
I can’t keep staring at that fucking delicious smirk or those eyes that tempt and tease me at the same time.
I flip her hard—grab her hips, yank her up onto her knees, face down in the leaves and dirt.
She gasps, arches instinctively, ass presented like a goddamn offering.
Skirt still bunched around her waist, torn panties hanging off one thigh.
Boots planted wide in the undergrowth. The second-skin over her fresh tattoo gleams faintly in the moonlight, my cracked crown sealed on her shoulder blade.
Mine. The Bratva’s. Protected.
Claimed.
And it’s still not fucking enough.
I peel off my shirt toss it to the trees, let the cool air lick my skin before I line up behind her, grip her hips so hard I’ll leave bruises she’ll feel for days.
One brutal thrust and I’m back inside her—deep, ruthless, the ladder dragging every ridge along her walls.
She moans broken and filthy, pushes back to meet me like she’s starving for it.
“Fuck! Yes, like that,” she pants.
I release her hips, lean over her, chest to her back, one hand fisting her hair to arch her neck, the other clamped over the tattoo through the plastic. I feel the raised lines under my palm. My mark. My queen. My everything.
“You feel that?” I growl against her ear, hips snapping forward hard enough to make her cry out. “That’s me inside you. On you. In your fucking blood now. You don’t get to run anymore, Beda. Not from me. Not ever.”
She laughs—ragged, breathless, defiant even pinned under me. “Then take it all, Pakhan. Take everything.”
Everything.
The word vibrates around my skin.
I fuck her harder, savage, punishing strokes that slap skin against skin, leaves crunching under us, dirt grinding into her knees. The ridges of my piercing catch on every withdrawal, drag on every plunge, and she’s shaking, clenching, dripping down my cock.
“Look at you,” I rasp, voice shredded. “Spread open for me. Dripping for me. Wearing my crown like it’s jewelry. You think this is enough? You think marking you once keeps you safe? Keeps you mine?”
I slam in deep and hold—grinding, circling, feeling her flutter around me.
“No,” I snarl thrusting hard with every word.
“It’s not. I need more. I need every fucking second of you.
Every breath. Every fight. Every time you open that smart mouth and dare me to break you.
I need you beside me. Under me. On your knees.
In my bed. In my war. In my fucking grave if that’s what it takes. ”
My hips stutter when she whimpers my name—soft, wrecked, pleading. “Maksim—”
The sound rips through me. My chest caves. My cock throbs so hard it hurts. My heart slams against my ribs like it wants out, wants to fuse with hers.
I love her.
The truth slams into me so violent my rhythm falters. I love her so much it’s tearing me apart. Cock and heart colliding, no fucking coordination, just raw need. Obsession. Forever.
I can’t breathe around it.
I can’t survive without her.
“Marry me,” I rasp, just before the edge hits, voice cracked and desperate. “Fucking marry me, Ayla.”
I come with a guttural groan—spilling deep, hips jerking, flooding her while my hand presses harder over the tattoo like I can brand the word into her skin. She shatters right after, cunt pulsing, milking me, a broken cry echoing through the trees.
We stay locked like that for long seconds, me buried to the hilt, her trembling under me, both of us gasping, sweat and dirt and blood mingling.
I finally pull out, slow, reluctant, watch my cum drip down her thigh, mixing with the mess we’ve made. I shift and drop to my back on the forest floor, chest heaving, staring up at the slivers of moon through the branches.
She rolls into me immediately. Drapes one leg over my hip, skirt still rucked up, skin sticky and streaked. Her head finds my shoulder. A soft, breathless chuckle vibrates against my neck.
“I thought I was bad with the ‘I love you,’” she murmurs, voice wrecked and teasing, “but you have me beat with that proposal. The answer’s no, by the way.”
My chest tightens, sharp, almost painful. For one stupid second it feels like rejection. Then I remember who she is. My Beda. My trouble. My equal.
I let out a low chuckle, force it smooth, cover the ache. “That cunt is worth a ring.”
She laughs; bright, sharp, slaps my chest once, playful but hard enough to sting.
She starts to sit up. I don’t let her.
My arm bands around her waist, yanks her back down against me. Hard. Possessive.
“Stay.”
She makes a soft sound, half laugh, half huff, but settles again, warm and damp against my side. For a second I think she’ll curl into me.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she rolls onto her back beside me, shoulder brushing mine, and tips her face up toward the night sky. One boot bent at the knee, hair full of leaves. Dirt streaks her thighs.
We lie there breathing.
My heart still hasn’t come down. Neither has my head.
Ayla turns her face slightly toward me, then back to the trees. “So we’re just going to lay here in the dirt?”
“For a minute.”
She snorts softly. “Romantic.”
I almost laugh.
Silence stretches again. The night presses in around us, all pine and cold air and the lingering scent of sex and blood. Her fingers twitch once against her stomach like she wants to move, wants to fill the quiet with something sharp or careless.
Before she can, I say, “Remember when I told you about my parents?”
She turns her head fully this time. “About them being stepsiblings?” She inhales. “Is this really the conversation we’re having right now?”
“Yes.”
That gets a small incredulous laugh out of her. She folds her arms over her chest. “All right, Pakhan. Go on.”
I reach for her hand, uncurl her fingers one by one and drag her palm across my sternum until it rests over one of the scars there.
She goes still.
“You feel that?”
Her fingertips brush the puckered skin. “It feels like a bullet wound.”
“It is.”
Ayla lifts herself slightly on one elbow, peering down at my chest. Moonlight catches in her eyes as she studies the scar, then the others, then this one again.
“That’s not the one I patched up,” she says.
“No.”
Her gaze flicks to mine.
“This one my father gave me.”
The teasing leaves her face.
She pushes up higher, looking at me properly now. “Your father shot you?”
“There’s one on my back too.”
She blinks. “Exit wound?”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “No. Shot me twice.”
Her mouth falls open. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
She lowers herself back down beside me, slower this time. “Why?”
My jaw flexes. Above us, the branches shift in the wind. Somewhere deeper in the woods, something small moves through leaves and goes quiet again.
“I was seventeen,” I say. “And stupid enough to think I could fix things by force.”
She turns her face toward me again, listening now without interruption.
“I walked into his office one day without knocking. He was fucking Vera.”
Ayla frowns. “Vera. Your aunt.”
“One and the same.”
She goes very still.
“At first, I thought he was cheating on my mother,” I say. “Thought that was the scandal. Thought I was the one who’d found out something ugly.”
“And?”
“And I told my mother.”
Ayla waits.
“She told me it was fine.”
Ayla turns onto her side fully now, propping her head on her hand. Her expression is somewhere between disgust and disbelief. “Fine?”
“That was the word she used.”
She lets out a dry, stunned breath. “I thought my mother being a mistress was bad.”
“It gets worse.”
Her brows lift.
“I found out it wasn’t an affair. It wasn’t betrayal the way I understood it, anyway. The three of them had been like that for years. My father, my mother, Vera. All together.”
Understanding hits her in pieces. I can see it happen in her face.
“Oh,” she says slowly. Then, “Oh.”
I stare up at the sky. “My father preached loyalty to the Bratva like it was a religion, but he didn’t just preach it—he beat it into me.
Blood above all else. No lies. No weakness.
No betrayal. He’d beat the shit out of me for less than what he was doing behind closed doors.
He made a weapon out of me in the name of loyalty, all while carving exceptions for himself anywhere it suited him. And it wasn’t just that.”
I swallow.
“There were other secrets. Other lies. Corruption. Deals made for himself, not the Bratva. He stood there talking about honor while building everything around his own appetites.”
“And he expected you to live by rules he didn’t.”
“He expected me to bleed for them.”
“And the Bratva didn’t know.”
“Some of the men did. Enough of them, anyway.” I swallow once, hard. “Enough that when I started talking, they listened.”
She studies me for a second. “You started a revolt.”
“I started a war.”
The words settle between us.
I drag a hand over my face. Dirt. Sweat. The metallic trace of old blood. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Thought I was going to take over, clean it out, run it the way it should’ve been run. I thought I was going to tear him down in one night.”
Ayla says nothing. Just watches me, her hand landing on my chest.
“I killed most of his men before I even got to him.” My voice goes flatter, colder, the way it always does when I touch that part of myself. “Guns first. Then knives. Then my bare hands. Broke throats. Punched out teeth.”
Her fingers shift against my chest, barely there.
“When I finally got close enough,” I say, “that fucker shot me in the back.”
Ayla winces.
“I still went for him.”
“Of course you did.”
A breath of something almost like laughter leaves me. “He shot me again. Front this time.”
She makes a face. “That part’s not funny.”
“No.” I stare at the moon through the trees. “What came after almost is.”
Her mouth tightens. “Worse than getting shot by your own father?”
“He had me committed.”
She jerks upright. “What?”
“To a psychiatric hospital in Russia.”
The words land hard. I can feel it in the silence after.
Ayla just stares at me for a second. “Fuck.”
I nod once.
“How long?”
“Two years.”
“Only two?”
I turn my head and look at her.
She lifts one shoulder. “I’m sorry, but based on everything I know about you, I expected worse.”
Despite myself, I bark out a laugh.
“There she is,” I mutter.
“Shut up.”
“Brat.”
She smiles, small and sharp, and lies back down again. This time she comes closer, fitting herself against my side. Her hand drifts over my chest, tracing absent lines until her fingers find the scar of her name.
Everything in me stills.
The anger. The old humiliation. The urge to tear the past open with my bare hands.
Gone, just like that, under her touch.
“My grandparents visited,” I say after a while, voice quieter now. “They told me to survive it. Tell him what he wanted to hear. Promise I’d keep my mouth shut. Get out. Wait.”
Her thumb strokes once over her name.
“So I did.”
“And he believed you?”
“He believed he’d beaten enough of it out of me.” I pause. “Or maybe he thought locking me away did the rest.”
Ayla’s jaw tightens.
“When he finally let me out, I kept my head down. Prepared. Waited. Then I took what was mine.”
“The Bratva,” she breathes.
“The Bratva,” I confirm.
She’s quiet for a beat. “And now?”
I look at the trees again.
“Now I’m lying.”
She knows immediately. I feel her body shift with the understanding of it.
“About me.”
“Yes.”
I expect that to sit badly in my mouth. It doesn’t.
What sits badly is that for the first time in my life, I understand exactly why people lie when it’s about protecting the one person they can’t fucking lose.
Ayla exhales through her nose. “Any other family secrets I should know before I accidentally fuck my way into another one?”
That drags a real laugh out of me.
“Yes, actually.”
“Oh, good,” she mutters.
“You remember Vasilisa?”
She goes stiff against me. “Yes. And I don’t like her.”
“Wonderful.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” I drag my thumb over her hip once. “Publicly, my father married my mother. Privately, he never ended things with Vera.”
“Okay…” She slowly lifts her head from my chest.
“Wait.”
I meet her eyes.
“Vasilisa isn’t my cousin,” I say. “She’s my half-sister.”
Ayla blinks. Once. Twice.
“Damn.”
I huff a laugh.
“Well,” she says after a second, settling back down, “if it helps, you treat your half-sister better than my half-brother treats me.”
That hits me wrong and right at the same time. I chuckle anyway.
“There are two of them.”
“Two?”
“Vasilisa has a younger sister. Mimi.”
“Where is she?”
“Andras Academy.”
Ayla frowns. “I don’t know what that is.”
“You don’t need to.”
That answer doesn’t satisfy her. I can tell by the way her fingers pinch lightly at my side.
But she lets it go.
For now.
The woods go quiet again.
Her hand drifts over my chest again. Over the scars my father gave me and the heart he never managed to kill.
After a while, she says, softer now, “We have really fucked up families.”
I stare up at the moon and don’t answer.
Because that’s the part of the story I still don’t know how to mend.
So instead, I tighten my arm around her waist and keep her there in the dirt with me, under the trees, where for one impossible minute everything in me feels split open and soothed at the same time.