Chapter 67What Was Almost Ours
What Was Almost Ours
Isabella
His gaze traces every skin cell like a sin he intends to confess only with his hands.
Those eyes, cut from winter and war, narrow once they find mine.
There’s no patience in him tonight. None of that carefully measured silence he uses like a weapon in meetings.
No. This is the man behind the myth. And he’s dangerous in a different way.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak yet.
The low light from the chandelier catches on the rim of his glass, half-full with vodka, slow-tilting in his hand. His other arm drapes over the armrest like a king holding court in a room he built with blood.
He’s been gone all day.
I knew better than to ask where, but now that we’re alone, I want it.
I want all of it, and I know I’m in the position to ask.
I walk to the center of the room, still barefoot, still in the silk slip I refused to change out of after dinner. His eyes follow the line of my bare legs, up my thighs, over the fall of the fabric against my hips. He’s looking like he’s already had me and wants to again just to confirm I’m real.
I stop in front of him and raise a brow.
“Well?” I tilt my head, fold my arms. “You disappear for hours, come home reeking of cold air and secrets, and don’t even think about telling me what the hell you did? You better made sure no one saw you.”
He exhales through his nose. Sets the glass down beside him with that deliberate, unhurried grace that always makes me want to slap it off the table—or straddle him and steal the breath from his throat.
He doesn’t rise. He just looks up at me, sharp and slow.
“I met with Malik,” he says simply.
I blink. “Who?”
He tilts his head like he’s surprised I don’t know. “Malik Gusev. They used to call him the White Vulture .”
Still nothing. I lift my brows.
He leans back, voice colder now. “Weren’t you little Miss Detective once? He was the Bratva’s ghost architect. Ran ops out of Istanbul, trained ex-military into perfect shooters. He suddenly vanished. No one could find him.”
I cross my arms, half-curious, half on guard. “And you just… did?”
“He owed me a favor.” He picks up the glass again, takes a slow sip. “Now he pays it.”
“How?”
He looks up at me, and something in his eyes sharpens, like he’s finally showing me the razor beneath the calm.
“He’s sending men. Snipers. Precision shooters trained to see the whites of your eyes from rooftops. They’ll be watching from high ground across Brighton. Rooftops, towers, old tenement buildings. Their only task is to eliminate any man who moves without my command.”
I stare at him, the full weight of that calculation settling into my bones.
“You’re putting eyes in the sky,” I murmur.
“Not eyes,” he says. “Predators. Unseen. Untouchable.”
“And they’ll only listen to you?”
“They’ll listen to Malik,” he says. “Which means they’ll listen to me.”
A beat of silence.
Then he adds, lower: “No one gets in. No one walks out. Unless I allow it.”
I swallow, suddenly very aware of the silk against my skin and the sheer power sitting across from me. He’s not just preparing for battle. He’s writing a massacre with clean lines and sniper rounds. It doesn’t surprise me the slightest, but it always reminds me of the man I share a bed with.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
He studies me for a long moment, then shifts slightly in the chair, the leather groaning under his frame. His voice drops lower, almost thoughtful.
“He was surprised to see me.”
I lick my lips, ‘‘Yeah, I’d be surprised too, considering you have been declared dead.’’
“So now Malik knows,” I say quietly. “That you’re alive.”
“He knows enough to keep his mouth shut. And that if anything touches you from the sky, he dies first.”
I laugh, “You’re so utterly fucked, Diable .”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares.
Long and deep, like he’s reading the parts of me I haven’t spoken aloud yet.
The kind of stare that could pin a woman to a wall without lifting a finger.
His gaze drags slowly down to my mouth, then to the silk draped over my hips, then back to my eyes like he’s deciding what part of me he wants to ruin first.
I take one step closer, close enough to feel the tension radiating off him like heat from coals. My hand lifts, slow, and I press two fingers against the center of his chest, right over his heartbeat.
“You love me way too deep,” I whisper. “That’s your problem.”
His jaw tightens slightly. But he doesn’t deny it.
He tilts his head, eyes sharpening, heat creeping into them like smoke curling under a locked door.
“ Diable ,” he murmurs, tasting it like it’s something he wants to bite.
I smirk. “You like how it sounds in my mouth?”
“I like it best when it’s the last thing on your tongue,” he replies, voice low and rough now, “right before you forget how to use it.”
My stomach coils.
He rises, slow and lethal, the chair groaning as he leaves it behind. He steps into my space like he owns it, because he does. His hand lifts to cup my chin, thumb brushing just beneath my bottom lip.
“And when I say your name, Isabella…” he murmurs, voice a rasp against my skin, “I want it to feel like a prayer you don’t want answered.”
My neck cracks from the angle as I tilt my head back to meet his gaze. He’s towering over me now, and I swear the space around us shifts, pulling tighter, darker, quieter. Like the air knows what’s about to happen.
He doesn’t kiss me. Not yet.
He just stares, like he’s memorizing the shape of me before he ruins it. Like I’m already marked, already owned, and he’s deciding where to start tonight.
Then his thumb drags over my bottom lip again. Lower. Across my chin. Down the line of my throat.
I feel it when it happens—his shift. The surrender of restraint. The choice to take.
His hand slips around the back of my neck and pulls me to him, rough, sudden, like I’m not something fragile but something his. The kiss crashes into me like a match striking dry earth. Heat, instant and consuming.
I open for him without hesitation.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth with the kind of hunger that makes my knees give, and he catches me, one hand gripping my hip, the other tangled in my hair, keeping me close while his mouth tells me everything he hasn’t said in days. It’s not just lust—it’s war declared on silence.
When he pulls away, I’m gasping.
He doesn’t give me time to recover. Doesn’t give me time to think.
He grips the hem of my silk slip and lifts it in one brutal motion, over my hips, my ribs, off my arms. I raise them without question, letting the silk whisper off my skin and fall to the floor like an offering.
He takes one step back.
Let’s his gaze drag over my body like a man made to conquer.
“Turn around,” he murmurs.
I do.
His hands find my waist, fingers digging in like he needs proof I’m not going to vanish. He bends to press his mouth to the nape of my neck, teeth grazing my skin before he bites. Just enough to leave a mark. Just enough to make me gasp.
I lean into him, already shaking.
His hands slide around to cup my breasts from behind, thumbs brushing across my nipples until they harden under his touch. My head falls back against his shoulder, and I moan.
He spins me around without warning.
Lifts me by the waist with little effort, his hands bruising in their grip, and turns toward the table.
That heavy, carved wood thing he always uses to plan wars and deliver orders.
Tonight, he’ll use it to wreck me.
He sets me down on the edge, the cool surface shocking against the back of my thighs. My breath stutters, but I don’t move, not even when his hands trail from my hips to the small of my back, firm and unforgiving.
“Stand up and bend,” he says.
My breath catches.
I obey.
I lower forward until my chest touches the table, palms flattening against the cool wood.
But he’s not done with me yet.
He grabs both my wrists, gathers them behind me in one of his hands, and pins them there. My back arches instinctively, spine straining, exposed.
The position is primal. Controlled. His.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, pressing his body flush to mine from behind. “All that fire in you… and still, you bend for me.”
I can feel him, hard and thick, grinding against my ass, still clothed, still holding back. Barely.
“You always want to fight,” he growls, dragging his free hand up the inside of my thigh. “But you break so fucking beautifully.”
His fingers find me, wet, throbbing, and he groans low in his throat.
“Dripping,” he mutters. “You want it like this?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “God, yes.”
He frees himself, and I feel the blunt heat of him pressing against me, thick, heavy, unrelenting.
“I should make you beg,” he says, lining up.
“You already know I would,” I whisper.
That’s all it takes.
He thrusts inside me in one deep, brutal stroke.
I cry out—shock and pleasure slamming into me all at once. The table jerks beneath us. His hand tightens on my wrists, holding me there, helpless against the force of him.
He sets a rhythm, rough, deep, punishing. The sound of skin on skin echoes through the room, vulgar and raw.
My cheek presses to the wood, eyes squeezing shut as he pounds into me like he’s trying to carve his name inside me.
“You’re mine,” he growls, every thrust a declaration. “Say it.”
“I’m yours,” I gasp. “I’m fucking yours.”
He groans at that, deeper now, hips snapping harder, rougher, until the table threatens to shift beneath us.
“You take me so well,” he rasps. “You were made for this.”
Made for him.
For his hands, his hunger, the way he breaks me down just to build me back up again with every filthy word, every bruising stroke.
And when I finally come—shaking, wrecked, his name a broken cry on my lips—it’s with his hand still wrapped tight around my wrists and his mouth pressed to the back of my neck like a promise.
He follows with a growl, spilling inside me like he belongs there.