33. NIKOLAI #2
“You, on the other hand,” she continued, “have had no problem digging through every part of my life. My records. My routines. My friends. You even watched me in my own apartment.” She gave me a crooked smile.
“A bit over the top, don’t you think? I think you’re more than casually interested. Obsessive, maybe?”
I smirked. “Maybe.”
She tilted her head. “No comment on the spying?”
I took a slow sip of my vodka and let the silence stretch.
Finally I said, “If I’m going to protect someone, I don’t do it half-assed. I do a full background check. I learn their patterns. Their vulnerabilities. Their threats. Their tells.”
“Sounds more like you were preparing to own me rather than just protect me.”
My mouth twitched. “Can’t do one without the other.”
That shut her up for a second.
Then she changed her approach, growing bolder.
“I need someone who can be an amazing lover,” she said, more confident now. “Someone who understands how my body works. Someone who can push my limits when I need them to—and make me…submit even when I don’t want to. A man who doesn’t flinch when things get intense. A man who doesn’t run away.”
She looked me dead in the eye. “You acted like I was some innocent little flower, and maybe I was. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t choose you .”
I stared at her, running my thumb across my lower lip.
“You don’t get to decide to limit me,” she said. “That’s arrogant.”
At that, I leaned back into the leather, spreading my legs wide and draping one arm across the back of the sofa, placing the other on my thigh.
The air between us had grown thick.
Charged.
“Is that so?” I said. “I recall you trembling—shrieking for me to stop.” I took a slow inhale through my nose. “Like I told you, I’m not a rapist.”
Her eyes fluttered down to her hands, and she bit her lip so hard I thought it would bleed. Fuck! My dick twitched, roaring to life. Any blood on her lip should be of my doing.
“Little lamb, you have no idea what your limits are. And baiting a man with few might get you more than you bargained for.”
Her gaze stayed fixed on her lap as her fingers worried the corner of the cushion.
“Look at me when I speak to you,” I demanded.
Her eyes shot up to mine, and those stormy irises were now hidden beneath black pools.
“If you were mine,” I said, “I’d strip you bare, tie your wrists behind your back with my belt, and bend you over that island.
” I glanced toward the kitchen. “I’d have you spreading those sweet cheeks of yours apart.
Holding them open for me while I drool over your little pink puckered hole as I pound my cock deep inside your cunt, knowing I’ll be fucking your ass next. ”
Her eyes were enormous now. Her mouth dropped open. I’d made her pant with my words alone.
“I wouldn’t let you stand up straight until your thighs were shaking from how many times you’d come.”
I watched her carefully, enjoying every reaction I elicited.
“And then I’d flip you over, make you look me in the eye, and fuck you so hard you wouldn’t remember your own name—only mine.
My woman will only have my name on her tongue…
and I’ll be the only man who ever hears her cry out when she comes.
I will own her body and soul, use her to please me, force her to submit fully, and punish her as I see necessary. ”
Her breath caught.
She didn’t speak.
Her fingers pulled at the fabric of the pillow so hard, I thought she’d rip it.
Good, I’d gotten her attention. If there was one thing she needed to learn, it was that she couldn’t fucking tease me…or try to take control, because I would make sure she found out my appetite was limitless and I knew no mercy.
She shifted and squirmed.
Every inch of her body was screaming with need.
And I hadn’t even touched her yet.
She tightened up her legs underneath her and adjusted the throw pillow in her lap, but it was clear there was an internal war going on as she tried to figure out how to react to my words.
She was attempting to demonstrate a certain, deliberate calm.
She was trying to hold her ground—trying to prove she wasn’t some trembling girl who was way out of her depth.
But she was out of her depth. And I was the fucking ocean.
Still, I admired the effort.
She cleared her throat. “So…shifting topics before you decide to run away from me again… Who are you? What are you? What’s the deal with Russian men? Is it true they’re all…y’know, psycho?” One of her eyebrows lifted. “In and out of bed?”
I snorted and shook my head. “That’s your smooth segue into small talk?”
Her lips curled up. “What can I say? I’m curious.”
“You’re right,” I said, taking a sip of my vodka. “Russian men do tend to be psycho…in and out of bed.”
She nodded slowly.
“As for me,” I continued, “I was born the heir to the most powerful Pakhan in Russia.”
Her brows drew together. “A what?”
“Pakhan. Mafia boss.”
That made her sit up a little straighter.
In her eyes there was a flicker of innocent unease that she didn’t know how to hide. She didn’t have a clue what it meant to be tied to someone like me. Having been raised outside all of this, she wouldn’t be able to grasp the weight behind the word bratva —let alone the violence that came with it.
And yet, she was here. In my world now.
I took another drink.
“Being born into that kind of power doesn’t make you strong,” I said. “It makes you dangerous—or dead.” I set my empty glass on the coffee table. “It’s not exactly the kind of legacy you shake off. You don’t grow up at the table with men like that and come out clean.”
She quirked her head to the side like a puppy listening intently.
“Everyone assumes a son like me eventually takes their old man out. That’s how the story usually goes. But no, despite the rumors, I didn’t kill my father. But my choices…they did play a part in his death.”
Her expression tightened, but she didn’t ask how. Smart girl.
“He was a brutal man,” I said. “No boundaries. No line he wouldn’t cross. He would’ve sold a girl like you to someone like Delgado without blinking. And he would’ve carved her up first just to make sure she didn’t talk.”
Lyla shivered.
“It’s a good thing he’s dead,” I muttered.
I didn’t bother hiding the venom in my voice.
She asked quietly, “What about your mom?”
I scrubbed my hand over my jaw. How could I explain to a girl with parents who had showered her with love and affection that I’d been bred as a human killing machine?
“She survived,” I finally said. “Escaped back to Russia. And now she’s latched herself onto the next most powerful bratva boss she could find. Just another piece of jewelry on a rich bastard’s arm.”
“That word…bratva,” Lyla said, squinting. “Trina—at the coffee shop—she mentioned that once. I asked what it meant, and she blew me off.”
“Brotherhood,” I told her.
But these weren’t the kind of brothers that held your hand through life.
“It’s a world where loyalty is currency, violence is tradition, and betrayal is paid for in blood. Every man earns his place through brutality, and every woman is claimed, owned, or discarded—depending on her usefulness. There are no innocent players in the bratva, only survivors and corpses.”
I let that sink in before finishing. “You don’t join it.
You’re born into it. Molded by it. Or destroyed trying to escape it.
And the few who aren’t born into it—men with rare talents, the ones who can kill without blinking or the ones who can disappear behind a keyboard—get pulled in, tested, broken, and rebuilt until they prove they’ll bleed for the brotherhood like the rest of us.
You either come in dirty—or you get dirty fast.”
“Oh.”
I watched her process it. She couldn’t understand the full meaning of all of this. Not yet.
“My mother was always cold,” I added. “Selfish. Calculating. She’s the kind of woman who only cares about appearances and power.”
Lyla tilted her head. “So…I’m guessing family dinners were a blast?”
I huffed. “Family dinners…”
The pinch of her lips and the tug of her brows told me she felt sorry for me.
“Did you always have such a hate-filled relationship with your parents?” she asked.
I gave her a humorless smile. “Let’s just say hate would’ve been a cakewalk.”
“Oh, that’s so awful.” She blinked slowly. “I can’t imagine growing up like that.”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and steepling my fingers. “No. You can’t imagine the world I’ve been raised in. I was doing the unthinkable by the time I could hold a gun,” I said quietly. “My father taught me to hunt more than just the wildlife.”
Her gaze dropped to her lap. For once, she didn’t have a comeback.
“You don’t know how the world really works, Lyla,” I said.
The silence between us stretched until she finally reached for her wine and took a slow sip, carefully avoiding meeting my eye.
I’d pushed too far again, shown her too much ugliness. Too soon.
I sat back, letting the tension settle before I shifted gears.
“I’ve decided what I’m going to do with you.”
Her head snapped up. “I’m sorry— what ?”
There it was. Instant fire.
I held up a hand, trying to suppress a smirk. “Relax. You’re safe. I won’t lay a hand on you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So you’ve decided what to do with me. Wow. You really don’t hear how that sounds?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “For now, what you need is rest. You need to stop trying to run and just…breathe.”
“Right,” she muttered, “because you’re the one calling the shots.”
“I’m not a cruel man,” I said quietly. “But unless you start trusting me, there’s only so much I can do for you.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off.
“You’ve been through hell, experienced the kind of trauma most people never come back from.
And when it’s your first time facing that kind of violence—when your world shatters overnight—your brain doesn’t know what to do.
You swing hard. Emotions ricochet. You fight.
You cling. You beg. You try to take control of anything you can. ”
She squirmed a little.
“You tried to escape. Then you gave me your virginity like it was nothing. Both were survival instincts, not choices.”
Her shoulders dropped a fraction, and the fight in her eyes dulled, just a little.
“I’m not changing anything about your future until you’re in a position to make a real decision about it. Not one based on fear. Or adrenaline. You can’t go around making life-changing choices just to feel in control again.”
She exhaled slowly. “You make me sound like a child.”
I leaned toward her and said in a low voice, “There is nothing about you that’s childish.”
She froze.
“You’re brilliant. Scrappy as hell. The most naturally beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. You walk into a room like a damn storm. You’ve got sensuality you don’t even know how to wield yet, and it’s fucking enthralling .”
Her lips parted slightly.
“You’re a goddess. You just need to slow down and regroup.”
In silence, she looked down at her lap. She ran her fingers along the seam of the pillow like she didn’t know what to do with the compliment.
A flicker of something crossed her face—guilt, maybe. Or disbelief.
“I don’t feel like a goddess…and I don’t feel like there’s anything left to salvage,” she said softly.
I sat back.
“How can you when you’re crawling out of a nightmare?” I asked. “But you will.”
She glanced at me skeptically. She wasn’t convinced, but she wasn’t arguing either.
“And when you do,” I added, “I’d like to know who you really are. Not just Lyla Laine.”
That made her look up again.
I shrugged slightly. “I’ve researched your background. But I don’t want your file, Lacey Grace. I want your story.”