Dariy
I kiss her long and hard and slow and pour everything I am into it. This beautiful stranger would marry me to prove her trust. Dedicate her life to being my wife when she doesn’t even know what that means.
But how do I know it’s for the right reasons? Hell, I don’t even know what the right reasons would be. Dragging a poor, unsuspecting woman into my life would be an act of cruelty. And I’ve never been cruel. I always get the job done swiftly. Cleanly. Mercifully in most cases.
When she said you need to marry me, it took every ounce of self-control not to drag her behind the nearest tree and fuck her against it until the bark is imprinted on her skin.
“You don’t know what it would mean to be my wife. A Bratva wife.” I finally say when I break away from her. I keep my eyes closed while I cage the beast inside me that became all too fucking excited at the prospect of making her mine in every fucking way.
She pulls back from me, putting a small amount of distance between us so she can look me in the eyes.
Hers are so vivid in the sunlight that they look purple.
Actually fucking purple. She is extraordinary.
She tips her head slightly, her expression serious as she takes a breath that makes her nostrils flare.
“Whatever it means, every part of it, the good, the bad, the ‘fixing’, the killing, the choices…all of it. I’m in.”
I glance at the facility behind her, beautiful gold stone and windows that shimmer in their cleanliness…it’s a far cry from York Bridgeway Care Facility. She catches my train of thought and takes my hands in hers.
“Not because of what you did for my grandma, even though I appreciate that more than I could ever express. But because last night you claimed me, and somewhere along the way I claimed you right back. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it, and I know it.
I know I’m strong enough to be your wife, to carry your children, to face a future neither of us can predict. ”
I look back at her, knowing she is right. She is strong enough. I knew the minute she knocked back that whiskey and looked me straight in the eyes when she thought I was going to kill her.
She stands there looking at me like she has already made up her mind. Marriage doesn’t scare her. She doesn’t see the blood on my hands, the ghosts that follow me home like loyal dogs, or the hungry eyes of enemies who would carve her open just to hurt me.
“You are strong enough,” I tell her quietly. “I knew it last night when you didn’t turn and run.”
She nods once, slowly. She truly doesn’t understand the danger she’s in. What marrying me would mean. So I make it plain.
“In my world,” I say, stepping closer, “marriage is permanent. When I put a ring on your finger, there is no leaving. No divorce. No running. The only way out, for either of us, is death.” I hold her gaze, letting that truth carve itself into the air around us.
Most people would break under that. Most would beg to reconsider. She doesn’t even blink.
“I’m not planning to leave,” she says, soft but unwavering. “Ever.”
“You become a Korolyov wife,” I add. “Mine in every sense that word can mean. And then I will fuck you every minute of the day until you are pregnant, and I will keep you that way until we have a house full of kids. I will devote myself to you and the family we make, and you will devote yourself to me.”
Wanting something has always been weakness I avoided. But wanting her feels like an inevitable collapse. Like the side of a mountain falling into the sea. The ramifications massive and unpredictable, and deadly.
“If you think this is love,” I force out, “it isn’t. Not yet. It’s adrenaline. Fear. Proximity. Lust. You’re clinging to the only solid thing in your storm.”
“Perhaps, “ she says. “But you’re doing the same.”
I huff a dark laugh. “You believe you’re ready for my life?”
“No,” she says. “But I’m ready for you.”
Those five words strike deep. Too deep. The idea of claiming her legally, publicly, permanently… it’s a fire I’ve been trying to smother since the moment she whispered her grandmother’s name like a final wish she expected me to refuse.
If I allow this, if I make her mine in the eyes of the Bratva, she inherits every enemy I’ve ever made. She becomes leverage. She becomes a target. She becomes the one thing they know I can’t lose.
She tilts her head to the side and says, “So I suppose the question is whether you really want this, or if you’re looking for reasons to let me go.”
I immediately know the answer when something sharp twists in my chest and my mouth tastes bitter.
“I want you. Every part of you. But that is going to look like obsession and possession and claiming you every godforsaken second of the day and night.” I pull her back towards me, reclaiming the distance she put between us. “I will marry you, Callie, and I will breed you.”
She moves a little and I know she is pressing her thighs together.
“Don’t,” I say against her ear, “I want to smell your arousal.”
She moans quietly as I force my knee between her legs, parting her thighs. “I know you’re as aroused as I am right now, krasótka. I’m just trying to figure out why.”
I trace my lips down the line of her jaw, nipping her soft skin as I move lower over her neck.
“Is it that I’m obsessed with you?” I ask, she responds with a whimper, but I don’t feel that’s entirely it.
“No. Perhaps it’s the danger of becoming my wife.” I wait, flicking my tongue against her pulse point until she moans softly again.
“No, it must have been when I mentioned breeding you.” She exhales long and slow, shuddering as her nipples harden and peak beneath the soft knit of her sweater. Interesting.
“I love how responsive you are to me, krasótka.” I’m fighting every urge I have to cup her hot mound and give her the friction she needs to fall apart in my hand. I know there are camera’s all around the grounds of this place. Even here, near the parking lot.
Her thighs tense around my knee, the tiny tremors betraying her.
She looks around, blinking, like she suddenly remembers where we are.
Nurses and visitors pass in the distance.
A guard smokes near the entrance. Anyone could look over and see exactly how close I am to losing control with her in the goddamn gardens of a Bratva healthcare facility.
“Dariy…” she whispers, warning in her tone, plea in her body.
I smile against her throat. “I like the way you say my name. Like you want me to behave, but you’re praying I won’t.”
Her pulse jumps beneath my lips. She tries to inhale but her breath catches instead. “Someone could see.”
“Let them.” My voice drops into a growl meant only for her veins. “Let them see who you belong to now.”
She shivers, a gorgeous, helpless little surrender. I feel her fingers dig into the back of my jacket, pretending to hold me back but really anchoring herself so she doesn’t melt into the path beneath us.
“You’re already half-wrecked just because I said I was going to breed you,” I murmur, dragging my mouth back to the corner of her lips. “Imagine what you’ll look like when you’re actually carrying my child.”
Her knees threaten to give out. My hands tighten on her hips, keeping her pinned upright and pinned to me.
“You’d walk around glowing… heavy… knowing I put every bit of that inside you,” I continue, letting the filth coat my tone like honey over a knife. “Every man who looks at you would see it. They’d know I claimed you so thoroughly your body changed to prove it.”
A soft, strangled sound leaves her, the kind of broken exhale that ruins rational thought.
I kiss the corner of her mouth, but only barely. A tease. A promise. A command.
“Say it,” I whisper. “Tell me what part of that gets you trembling like this.”
She swallows, eyes dark and wide with hunger and need tangled tight. “All of it,” she breathes. “Every part.”
Christ. I almost come in my pants.
I press my forehead to hers, jaw tight, breath thick. “You’re going to make me lose it right here.”
Her lips curve, the beginning of a smile she tries to hide. “Maybe I love knowing I can make you feel that way. Maybe I’d let you if it wasn’t a waste of your cum.”
A low sound cracks from my chest, half laugh, half threat. I slide my hand up her spine, fingers threading into her hair just enough to control the angle of her face.
“You want me to snap?” I ask softly. “To drag you into the back of the car and make you mine in a way there’s no coming back from?”
Her nod is tiny… but it’s there.
My teeth graze her lower lip, the gentlest scrape, but she gasps like I pulled time itself tight around us.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I murmur into her mouth.
“So are you,” she whispers back.
I take her chin, tilting her eyes up to mine so she sees exactly what she’s doing to me.
“No,” I tell her. “I was never playing.”
I step back finally, only enough to appear decent, but my voice stays right against her skin when I promise:
“Get in the car, krasótka… I’m going to finish every wicked thought we just started.”
Her blush is instant. And breathtaking.