Chapter 6
LILA
The smell of coffee pulls me halfway into consciousness. Another scent slips through—soft, sweet, heartbreakingly familiar.
Coconut shampoo.
My coconut shampoo.
I sit up too fast, and the world tilts as Ivan's penthouse takes shape. Right. I’m in a luxury cage of his making: the guest room, complete with silk sheets and a skyline view.
The smell is coming from the main living area.
I rush to find my jeans from yesterday and pull them on under Ivan's shirt.
Time feels weird here, like I've fallen into some alternate dimension where normal rules don't apply. It feels like no time and all the time in the world have passed.
The moment I step into the main room, I know something's wrong.
Ivan sits at the breakfast bar. My entire life sits spread across the marble surface.
My books. The ones from under my bed, where I hid them away, because even I knew they were too much, too revealing, too honest about the things I wanted.
And worse—so much worse—my sketchbook. The private one I kept hidden like pornography because that's essentially what it is.
He's holding a book: Enslaved by the Bratva. The most explicit one in my collection. The one with the most notes in the margins.
"Good morning," he says without looking up.
My throat closes. I can't think, let alone breathe. All I can do is stare at the evidence of every fantasy I've ever had laid out like exhibits in a trial.
"You went to my apartment."
"I told you I would."
"You went through my things."
"I packed what you'd need." He turns a page. "Found some… interesting reading material."
Heat floods my face. Not the pleasant warmth of a blush but the searing burn of complete humiliation. "Those are private."
"Nothing's private anymore, little dove." He finally looks at me, and those blue eyes are molten. "Not between us."
Little dove. The endearment sounds like ownership.
"You had no right—"
"I had every right. You're under my protection. That means I need to know everything about you." He picks up the sketchbook and flips it open to a page I can't see from here. "Including this."
He turns it around.
It's my drawing of him naked against a window, city lights behind him, one hand braced on the glass. I spent hours on that one, getting the muscles right, the shadows.
"So you've been drawing me naked for months?" He holds up another page—a full-frontal sketch I did after a particularly vivid dream. "Your imagination is thorough. Almost accurate."
I want to die. Want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Want to be anywhere but here, having this conversation, watching him examine my private fantasies like evidence.
"Please," I manage. "Please don't."
"Don't what? Acknowledge that you've been obsessing over me as much as I've been obsessing over you?" He sets down the sketchbook and picks up the novel again. "Let's see what else we have here. Page forty-seven: 'Why is this so hot???' Underlined three times."
"Stop."
"Page eighty-nine: 'The way he just TAKES control...'" He looks at me over the book. "Is that what you want, Lila? Someone to take control?"
My legs wobble, and I grab the counter for balance—bad idea. It pulls me closer to him, close enough to see what he’s holding. His thumb is marking that sketch. The one where I drew him at a desk, head thrown back in ecstasy.
"This one's my favorite," he says conversationally. "Creative positioning. Should we test whether it's physically possible?"
"Oh my God." I cover my face with both hands. "Please kill me now."
"Why would I kill you when we're just getting started?" He stands and moves around the counter with predatory grace. "Tell me, when you drew this—" he holds up the shower scene, the one where I spent an embarrassing amount of time getting the anatomy right, "—were you touching yourself?"
I make a strangled sound that might be a denial or might be confirmation. I don't even know anymore.
"Answer me."
"This isn't happening. This can't be happening."
"Oh, it's happening. And based on these—" he gestures at the spread, "—you've been wanting it to happen for a long time."
He picks up Enslaved by the Bratva again and flips to a page marked with one of my sticky notes.
No, please, no.
When he begins reading, his voice dips lower and rougher.
"She knew she should resist, but his darkness called to her own hidden desires.
When he commanded her to kneel, her body obeyed before her mind could protest. This was what she'd been craving—the surrender, the submission, the complete loss of control to someone who knew what to do with it. "
"Stop. Please."
"But you drew this guy in this scene." He shows me the sketch—unmistakably him, unmistakably dominant, a woman on her knees before him in perfect graphite detail. "That’s me, right? Were you thinking of me when you drew this?"
I can't answer. Can't breathe. My face is so hot I might actually combust. And worse—so much worse—there's a pulse between my legs that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the way he's looking at me. Like he can see straight through my humiliation to the want underneath.
He flips to another marked page, and I know which one it is before he even starts reading.
"His hand fisted in her hair as he pushed deeper, watching her take him. 'That's it,' he growled. 'Show me how badly you want this.' She moaned around him, the sound vibrating through them both, and he knew she was already dripping for him, already ready to beg—"
"Stop!" My voice cracks. "Please, I can't—"
"Can't what? Can't handle hearing your own fantasies out loud?" He sets the book down but doesn't look away. "You marked this page and drew little stars next to it. Multiple stars, actually."
My knees feel unsteady. He’s too close—too alive. Everything I’ve imagined has stepped off the page, and it’s unbearable, seeing it there between us. Every fantasy turned into proof.
"There's another one," he says, flipping pages. "This one's interesting. You didn't just mark it—you wrote in the margin."
Oh no. No no no.
"'God, yes, exactly this,'" he reads my handwriting back to me. "'The way he doesn't ask. Just takes. Just knows.'" He looks up. "Want me to read what you were responding to?"
I shake my head frantically, but he continues reading.
"He pushed her against the wall, one hand circling her throat—not squeezing, just holding, just reminding her who was in control.
'You're going to come on my fingers,' he told her, 'and then you're going to beg me to fuck you.
' His other hand slid beneath her skirt, finding her already wet, already open for him.
'Just like I thought. You want this. You've always wanted this. '"
Every word lands heavy, a pulse under my skin, and I can feel myself getting wet, right here, right now, while he watches me fall apart.
He sets the book down, and his focus shifts entirely to me. My deepest secrets lay forgotten in favor of something more immediate.
"Here's what's going to happen," he says. "Dmitri and I have been at each other's throats for months. After last night, it's war. He probably already has eyes on this building and definitely has people looking for you. You're stuck here until I handle him. Could be days, even weeks."
"You can't just—"
"I can and I will." He sits on the barstool across from me. "But we both have needs, Lila. And based on your artwork, our needs align perfectly."
"This isn't... I don't..."
"Don't lie. You've been fantasizing about me for months. Drawing me. Reading about men like me and wishing it was real." He leans forward, elbows on the counter. "I like to savor my conquests. Take my time. Break them down slowly until they're begging for what they claimed they didn't want."
"Screw you. I'm not your conquest."
Defiant or not, my voice wavers. Because looking at him now—the sharp angles of his face, the way his shirt pulls across his shoulders, the heat in those blue eyes—my resolve cracks.
Three months of wanting compressed into this single moment, and my body doesn't care about pride or resistance. It wants what it wants.
"No?" He reaches across and plucks a strawberry from a tray I hadn’t noticed. Fresh fruit, pastries, and orange juice await, like room service in a five-star hotel. "Let's find out. We'll go step by step. Like a game."
"I don't want to play games."
"Sure you do. You've been playing them in your head for months." He holds the strawberry to my lips. "Step one—introduction. I am Ivan Petrov, Pakhan of the Chicago Bratva and son of Viktor Petrov. I've killed seventeen men with my own hands.”
I swallow hard, but my lips part automatically for him. I hate myself for it. Hate how easily my body betrays me. How the scent of him makes me dizzy.
His thumb brushes my mouth with the fruit, and it’s like static under my skin. Strawberry. A refreshing coolness. Sweetness that makes my thoughts scatter. My thighs press together involuntarily, seeking friction, seeking relief from the ache building there.
I swallow.
"Good girl," he murmurs.
The praise shouldn't affect me. It's manipulation, control, precisely what I should be fighting against. Still, heat floods through me, pooling between my legs, making me shift on the barstool.
I pull back like I've been burned. "Don't."
"Don't what? Acknowledge that you liked it?" He grabs another strawberry, larger this time. "Step two—you'll eat every meal from my hand today. Every. Single. Bite."
"That's insane—"
"That's foreplay. Open."
"No."
"Lila." My name in his mouth is a command and a caress. "Open."
I shouldn't. Every rational part of my brain is screaming at me to refuse, to fight, to maintain some boundary between his fantasy and my reality.
But my mouth opens anyway.
He feeds me the strawberry slowly this time, watching my tongue catch the juice. His thumb lingers on my bottom lip, pressing gently. I feel the touch everywhere.
"Each step will be more obscene than the last," he says quietly. "By the end, you'll be begging me to fuck you like in your sketches."
"Never."
"We'll see." He picks up a piece of croissant and tears off a small section. "Tell me, what's your favorite scene you drew of me?"
"I'm not answering that."
"You will eventually." The bread touches my lips. "We have time."
I eat because refusing feels impossible. Because my body is betraying me. Because some sick part of me has been waiting for this since I drew that first sketch months ago.
"I hate you," I whisper.
"No, you don't. You hate that you want me." He offers a strawberry again. "Open."
I do. And this time, when his thumb brushes my lip, I don't pull away. My tongue catches the juice, tastes him along with the fruit, and the intimacy of it makes my breath catch.
"Good girl," he says again. "See? You can follow instructions when you want to."
"This doesn't mean anything."
"It means everything. It means you're who I thought you were." He taps the open sketchbook. "Someone who craves what I can give her."
"You don't know what I crave."
"Don't I?" He stands and moves behind me. His presence sends goosebumps across my skin. "You crave danger wrapped in safety. Violence controlled. Someone who can hurt you but chooses not to. Someone who sees how dark you are inside and wants you anyway."
His breath is hot against my ear, overriding every instinct to run as he leans in, "Someone exactly like me."
I’m shaking—deep, uncontrollable tremors that make it hard to breathe. Fear hums under my skin, shame right beside it. But beneath all of that, a hotter pull stirs—one that makes me want to lean back, to find the warmth of him at my back and let myself be held before I fall apart completely.
This is what the heroines in my books feel, I realize. This surrender that's half terror, half relief. The giving up of control to someone who knows what to do with it.
"Tell me I'm wrong," he murmurs. "Tell me you don't lie awake at night thinking about this. About me. About all the ways I could ruin you."
I can't. The words won't come because they'd be lies, and we both know it. Because I have laid awake thinking exactly that. Have touched myself to thoughts of him. Have drawn him in positions that made me wet just sketching them.
"That's what I thought." He steps back. Losing his heat feels like abandonment. "Finish your breakfast. I have calls to make."
He walks away as if he hadn’t systematically dismantled every defense I had with a freaking strawberry. Like this is totally normal. Like he feeds women from his hand every morning while discussing their private sexual fantasies.
I sit there, surrounded by evidence of my obsession. Then I remember I never had control. Not from the moment he walked into the diner bleeding. Maybe not even from the first time I drew his face.
Now he knows.
Now he knows everything.
I don't move.
I just stare at my drawings, tasting strawberries, feeling the ghost of his thumb on my lip, and wondering what step three will be.
Wondering if I'll fight it and knowing I probably won't.
From his office, I hear him speaking low, rapid Russian. Business. Bratva business.
Normal, for him.
But nothing about this is normal for me.