Chapter 21 Gabi
GABI
Little bird…
I should say something—anything. Ask him what moya ptichka means, but I’m caught. A hummingbird in a spider’s web, wings seemingly glued, too tense by this sense of danger to open them and fly off. Even worse, the more I struggle, the tighter the web will wind around me.
It’s his alpine scent, fresh from the shower, his body hot and wet, distracting me, making my legs powerless.
It’s the perfect contours of his arms, each muscle accentuated by shadows that fall from the bedside lamp he switched on.
His body encapsulates pure male strength, contained power…
and now…and now he is touching me, so gently, as if the smallest force could break my bones.
His eyes search mine, and I’m drowning in their blue of an endless ocean.
With the slightest quirk of a brow, he instructs me again, if silently, to have a proper look.
And I want to so badly, I ignore how wrong all of this is and breathe him in, allowing myself to stare at his perfect male body, basically the rabbit hole to lust. My gaze roams. Takes in, soaks up, inch by inch, the wide expanse of his chest. The fine dusting of hair over his pecs and his darker nipples, pebbled like my own.
I can’t stop myself, even if the thought heats my cheeks up even more, because if he looks down, he will see how my breasts press against my nightshirt, my nipples embossed against the fabric, seeking friction, seeking touch.
It’s a novel feeling, because I’ve always been able to suppress my sensuality, but I’ve never been in the presence of a man like him. Ivan. A man who is barely dressed…
But he isn’t looking down. He is gazing into my eyes as I peruse him, taking my time to tally all the black ink on his skin.
Stars on his shoulders, a skull with daggers on his one pec, on the other writing in Cyrillic script I don’t dare decipher now or I’ll give my lie away.
On his sternum, there’s an eye that stares, unblinking, at me.
The eye that sees everything. It sends a chill down my spine.
As if Ivan feels my physical response, he brushes a tender line along my jaw with his thumb, and I burst out in goosebumps that rush down to my sex.
“Breathe, moya ptichka,” he instructs me then, his thumb on my lips, gently smoothing over the bottom one.
I drag in a soft rush of air as the featherlight brush of his thumb cascades down to rest between my thighs. Oh, no—
“Good girl.”
At his soft praise, an intense pulse shoots through me, fueling the building need I always suppress. Two simple words, but they jolt something in me… and his tone…his tone makes me want to be everything but a good girl, especially not when wet heat flushes in my core as if he commanded it.
Oh, yes…
I blink at my body’s reaction to those two little words. Then I register his tattooed eye on me, watching, seeing—knowing.
My mind hits the wall, built sturdy and high through years in a system that chants this is sin. In a flash, I’m reminded why I always fell back on that fucked-up doctrine, simply because it’s the easiest way to flush away memories in the moment and not relive my trauma.
I tear my gaze away. I must step away from him, push back at my body’s reaction to his. I can’t…I can’t feel this. Not for this man. Not for any man. Ever.
With a forced and painful swallow, my gaze travels up to the hollow at his throat and the smooth lines of his clavicles, which underline the strength of his shoulder muscles.
I stall.
And gasp. “You’ve been shot!”
He has two pale pink scars close to each other, somewhat circular in shape, below his collarbone, just above the sword’s tip of the skull tattoo. So close to his heart, just to the side.
My gaze jumps up to his as the memory of gunshots tears through my mind.
He got hurt. He could have died.
I fist my hands as I resist reaching out for him, wanting to erase these scars from his perfect body, but what I want deep down is to wipe the mutual memory of our trauma from his body, since I can’t wipe it from my own.
I want to heal these imperfections on his skin as if it would heal me.
Caress the pain away and dilute our harrowing experiences until memories run clear as water. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” he murmurs, his thumb sliding over my lip again. “Only protecting what’s mine…keeping my girls safe.”
His gentle touch vibrates with sparks down my skin, and I should step away, but I’m mesmerized. This man…he could have died and then his girls—
“Irisha and Katya—”
“They weren’t here and don’t know about it. And they never will.”
Heavens. It happened here?
It isn’t a direct answer, but it hints at an answer to some of the questions I have: about the rooms we aren’t allowed to access, the men outside with their machine guns and guard dogs, Yuri, stoic and shadowing me the whole day, and Milana…
she’s sad. Some puzzle pieces turn over, giving me patches of color to build a picture with.
“Who?” I ask, knowing I’m asking a question I have no right to ask. In this world, everything functions on a need-to-know basis, and the less you know, the better.
“Doesn’t matter, moya ptichka. It’s over now.”
“It is?”
He’s leaning deeper into me, searching my eyes, and the move is so subtle, so gentle and caring, I tilt my face up to his, letting him peer into the windows of my soul…and wanting him to see everything. To know me.
“You feel unsafe here?” he asks.
It hits me that I don’t feel unsafe with him at all, except I am unsafe, in a way I’ve never foreseen.
With him like this, his every touch and gesture are the direct opposite of what I’ve experienced with men.
I’m rooted to the spot, for the first time a hot mess with the blooming desire for a man. This man. And only this one.
The intense desire catches me off guard. Thank God every conscious and unconscious part of my mind is chained to some rules, whether God’s, the convent’s, or the church’s, and then the vows made on my behalf. Because of them, I’ll never be free, but I’ll also never act out of character.
“No, but I wanted to ask why the house…everything seems new and, I don’t know. It’s just strange.”
“It’s the aftermath. I’m looking to the future now. Securing it for my girls. I need sons, Gabriella. Sons to protect my girls. Sons to inherit the Petrov legacy and carry it on. Sons I plan to have with my wife.”
My breath catches. His wife… A wife who will step in and look after his girls. Who will be allowed to touch and heal and love this man. A wife to share his bed and the pleasures he promises with a single caress of his thumb.
A wife who will never be me. I’m only here because it was the easiest way to get away from my brothers and secure their safety.
With a wife to look after his girls, I’ll be able to leave.
Ivan won’t need me. Until then, I have to bide my time.
Hope sprouts in my chest, and why do I hate it?
Because already, I want to stay…and have more of this.
I recognize this temptation as the Devil’s work, but nothing about this feels like sin…just like Chiara had said. When it’s right, it’s so beautiful, it’s Godly…and you won’t be able to stop yourself. You’ll beg for more.
His hand hasn’t moved, warm and tender against my cheek, his fingertips barely shifting, but I can’t seem to take even a single step backwards to break the magnetic connection between us, because parts of me are already begging.
In a weak attempt to do something, I close my eyes to block his intense blue gaze, to block the visual of his lips that with a slight dip of his head could graze mine. This is madness because I want him, so badly, to just brush his lips over mine, to feel what it would be like.
I want to reach out and rake my nails down the beautiful line from the base of his throat, lower to the tattooed eye that stares at me, seeing what I want, what I need, who I am at my core.
I want to press my palm over it, stop it from staring at me, and at the same time feel his heartbeat… feel if he’s as affected as me.
But I can’t touch. I can look all I want, but I can’t touch this man. He is going to have a wife, and I’ve been promised to another. A vow made with the Devil himself, and only death can break it. My death or that man’s death.
“Have you ever been kissed before, Gabriella?”
Ivan’s voice is soft, intruding into my scattered thoughts, luring me deeper into this trance as his hand slides lower, dipping to my neck where he can feel the racket of my pulse.
His fingers still, but he doesn’t stop there.
His thumb trails lower, caressing the dip at the base of my throat in a slow, torturous circle, so gentle, the lingering trace seems to swirl and curl to my breasts, making them heavy with the need for more.
“No,” I whisper on a swallow, looking up at him again, shocked by the ease of his seduction, the way he manipulates my body with his voice, his subtle touch, leaving me defenseless. It’s effortless, and I succumb to him as if I were born to it.
To think I’ve been avoiding all thoughts and dreams of intimacy, the horrors of it burned into my mind so long ago now. But Ivan…this…what he’s doing seems to cast a blinding light into the darkness, making me see there could be more, so much more between a man and a woman.
He trails lower, fingers splayed at the top of my chest. My breath catches as he leans down to my ear.
He circles his hand around my neck, rushing chills over my body as his thumb rests on my jaw, tilting my head to the side.
With one subtle move, he’s opened me up, neck exposed, ready for the sensual invasion of his lips. I’ve never wanted anything more.
“Something to look forward to, or…?”
With him—yes. The warm tease of his breath is such a sudden and intense pleasure as it flows over me, more fire chasing the goosebumps on my skin.
I lick my lips as my gaze homes in on his mouth, wishing he’d do it already and break Randazzo’s promise to that Russian for me.
Then I can plead innocence, that I was taken advantage of, forced to break my vow under duress.
These thoughts only drag me back over a bed of nails to my truth.
“I don’t know.”
The words simply slip out without me thinking.
Kissing is the sweet side; everything else leaves me sour with bile in my mouth.
I’ve had night terrors of my first kiss for years, of how it would probably be.
What it would lead to, if it would even happen before that man’s hands grabbed me, fingers digging into my skin, ruthless, prying me open, leaving bruises.
Forcing me, invading me with his body, brutal and painful.
My first time is saved for the man I hate, who has bound me to him with a contract signed by Randazzo—the owner of my body to give away as he pleased. But Randazzo is dead, the contract never honored in his lifetime, and now that Russian is hunting me down.
Yet, I’m here, in this moment, with another Russian…
Ivan dips his head, tipping my chin up, staring into my eyes as if he’s looking for an answer to a question I didn’t even know he’d asked. In his gaze, I see how he withdraws, then how he bodily inches away and widens the gap between us.
The way he’s been controlling this encounter—the way he’s been controlling me, with his words, with his fingers holding me at the base of my neck—hits me full in the face.
My inexperience embarrasses me. I’m so naive despite everything I’ve experienced, overprotected and clueless, to the extent where he can manipulate me with a simple, tender touch.
I’m not sure what Ivan is expecting of me, or how he wanted me to react, but I feel myself flush, probably a full bouquet of red, from my cheeks to my sex where everything is too hot and wet and bothered.
I am no match for this man. I was never meant to be a match for any man. I was born to serve in whichever way my husband saw fit, and I’ve seen the worst.
As if he reads my mind, seeing there’s no challenge here, he drops his hand away and with a subtle shift of his feet, steps back. I miss his touch immediately, and it does nothing to dilute the tension wound tight between us.
“That’s something to work on, isn’t it, moya ptichka? Your first kiss should be something you look forward to.”
He drags his hands through his hair, gathering the wet strands, and the movement seems to accentuate every muscle on his arms. He turns away, giving me his sculpted back as he strolls over to the walk-in closet. I have no clue why, but it feels like rejection.
“For now, the gate stands open. If I were you, I’ll make a run for it. Otherwise, you get to sleep here, with us.”
I turn around and flee the room, sensing I’d be clipping my own wings the longer I stay here.