210

Kira
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It must still be the effects of the drug in my system. I should be engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Maykl right now. Fighting for my life. Trying to escape this prison.
Instead, I’m sitting across from Maykl at the tiny two-person kitchen table that sits in front of the picture window. My muscles are still loose. My body sated.
Soon, my stomach will be, as well. “Roasted salmon with caramelized cauliflower and broccolini or braised short ribs with wilted arugula?” Maykl pauses in dishing the gourmet dinner from the to-go containers they came in onto plates to look at me. “Or a little of both?”
“Salmon, please,” I say.
This feels more like a date than captivity, despite the fact that I’m sitting here naked with handcuffs on my wrists.
And I suppose that’s the main reason I’m not fighting.
Some part of me doesn’t want to run away. No matter how hard my brain keeps trying to convince me that I’m a dead woman, that I may never see beyond the confines of this apartment again.
I want to be with Maykl. To explore this dangerous, unconventional relationship we have.
He doesn’t seem like a psychopath or a killer, though the tattoos prove otherwise. Bottom line? He sees me for who I am.
I know that for certain because I told him everything when I took the drug he gave me. He absorbed it all and still gave me two orgasms. Still brought me into the shower and washed me with so much care it made me want to weep.
Embarrassingly, I did weep. And then I told him why I wept. I confessed that no one had ever taken such care of me. That after my dad was murdered, my mom became severely depressed, and Anya was the only person who looked out for me.
He said very little, but he didn’t stop. He washed my hair and rinsed me. Toweled me dry. Then he wrapped me in a blanket, handcuffed me to the bed, and handed me the remote to the television.
What did I tell him? I remember the words pouring out of me without any filter. I told him about the FBI. The bugs. The security code. I’d confessed…
Oh boy.
Did I actually say I wanted him to punish me?
Thinking of it makes my core heat. I must be crazy. I cannot be enjoying this scenario. What total insanity.
What had he said?
I plan to punish you thoroughly. I just haven’t decided how much will be pleasure and how much will be pain.
It must have been the drug that made those words heat my body to the temperature of molten lava. It certainly can’t be that I crave that sort of treatment at his hands. That I desire that rough but attentive way he has with me.
Things could be far worse. I’ve been captured by a dangerous but attractive man who is more interested in sexual torture than anything bloody or painful.
Now, after leaving me alone for a couple of hours, he’s had dinner delivered and is acting like a perfect gentlemanother than the handcuffs and his refusal to allow me to wear clothes.
The smell of the food makes my stomach rumble. I didn’t realize how hungry I am. Maykl slides the plate in front of me. Despite being transported, the food retained visual appeal, with a slice of lemon and sprig of rosemary atop the salmon.
Maykl stands over me, hesitating. “Can I trust you with a fork, little warrior? Probably not.”
“I’m too hungry to fight,” I tell him, unable to take my eyes off the food. My mouth waters for it.
He tsks. “If only I could believe you. But I think the truth serum is out of your bloodstream now. I can’t trust anything that comes from those pretty lips.”
He retrieves the other plate of food and one fork and sits down beside me. “I don’t mind feeding you, though. In fact, I rather enjoy it.” He forks a piece of salmon and holds it out to me.
I take the morsel into my mouth and moan softly at its perfection. Lightly salted and herbed, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, it’s delicious.
I watch as he takes a bite of his own food. He doesn’t make me wait long for my next bite.
I should hate him for reducing me to eating from his hand. Or better yetI should feel nothing. Should be able to keep emotions out of this scenario so my mind can work out how to escape, but I’m still in some kind of surrendered state to him.
He finds feeding me pleasurable. I find eating from his hand equally satisfying. Like I’m proving the bond we forged. The one he doesn’t trust yet. I tell myself it’s a manipulation, but that’s a lie.
I’m doing it for him.
For me.
For us.
I do feel bonded to this man. I trust him with my body. Trust him to pleasure me. Now, to feed me and care for me.
I’ve had to rely on myself and myself alone for most of my life. Now I have no choice but to rely on Maykl for even my most basic needs. I both hate and love the way it feels. Terrifying. Like I’m falling from a precipice, and I’m hurtling through the air. The rush of the wind and the sense of soaring are exhilarating, but I don’t know whether I’ll reach the cushion of water or the destruction of rock when I touch down.
He continues to feed me, eating his own dinner between bites until we both are finished. Then he picks up the plates and fork, washes them, and returns with a bottle of water, which he uncaps and hands to me.
I wash the dinner down and use a napkin to wipe my lips.
“What’s happening, Maykl? What are you doing with me?”
Maykl towers over me. “I’m keeping you, Kira. And if you prove you can’t be kept… well, then…” He shrugs and leaves a space for me to fill in the blank.
“Well, then, what?”
He sinks into the chair beside me. “You won’t walk free. Not as an enemy of this cell.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I knew this had to be the case, yet hearing him say it makes it solid and real.
A sheen of tears coats my eyes, but I blink them back. “So I must prove…what? That I’ll be your pet?”
He holds my gaze. Neither of us moves. I can’t breathe.
When he shakes his head, there’s regret there. “I don’t want you to get hurt, Kira.”
My lips tremble. I don’t think it’s from fear. It’s more like my feelings are hurt although that’s absurd. But it’s true. It hurts to have Maykl threaten me, unembellished though the threat may be.
I nod, bitterness twisting my lips. “So, you keep me until you have no further use for me, and then I’m dead?”
He winces. “Nyet. No. Not like that. I’ve been charged with your keeping. If you escape, I’m dead. We both are. We’re saddled with each other now. We might as well make the best of it, no?”
“Where’s my phone? I will need to check in with my boss, or he will know something’s wrong.”
“We have it.”
Something in the way he says it gives me the feeling they will be using it to set a trap for the FBI.
“I will need to check in with my boss or else he will think something’s amiss.”
“We’re handling it.”
Yep. I was right. This is bad. If they fight the FBI, good people could get hurt. Plus, the FBI will think I’m a double agent, and I’ll never get the information I need on Mika. I need to try to stop this.
I blink at him. “How can you live this way? You are in constant fear for your life. What’s the reward? This nice apartment? Enough money to buy a fancy meal?”
“No. Brotherhood is the reward. Protection and power. Family. Belonging. But you already knowonce you’re in, you’re in for life.”
“We could escape. Together.” It’s probably too soon to suggest it, but I have to try.
He doesn’t even consider it, though. He shakes his head. “I would never betray my brothers. Nor will I allow you to harm my family.”
“Your loyalty is misplaced. These people aren’t your family. If you’re afraid for your life”
“We live by a code. The code is honored, or there are consequences. I don’t live in fear. I’m proud of what I’ve become.”
Something about that statement, and the clear, confident way he holds my gaze shakes me to my core. Maykl is a criminal. His crimes are marked all over his skin. Yet he conducts himself with honor, holds himself with pride. And I don’t think it’s from a warped sense of self. I do think he’s an honorable man, in his own way.
He’s protected me, even as his prisoner.
And that dislodges something at the very bottom of the foundation of my case against the bratva. A pebble that stopped up the drain rolls aside, and the basin of hate begins to leak its contents. To slip away. Because how can I reconcile my belief that the bratva is all bad when this man before me is fundamentally…good?
It makes me want to be more like him. He has clearly suffered traumas, same as I have. Yet he’s come out of them with a strength and resiliency. I guess I have, too, but there’s an underlying bitterness, anger, and hate behind my strength. Maykl is rooted in generosity and brotherhood. Unlike me, who resisted and refused all human bonds after my painful past, Maykl seems to have forged strong ones, and they clearly have made him what he is.
I think again about how he stood in the doorway of that pottery studio marveling over the art involved in creating a pot. It’s such a small thing, and yet it shows a depth. He’s capable of contemplation. Of appreciation.
“I want to learn to throw pots,” I blurt.
Maykl’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “That can be arranged,” he says slowly. “You will have to earn it as a privilege, though.”
That’s when the anxiety simmering inside me goes quiet. As if the simple privilege of being allowed to learn to shape clay changes everything.
But it says so much. It says I have a future of some kind. There’s something beyond these four walls and Maykl’s bed. And…I’m eager to explore it.
Maykl
Ravil texts me during dinner to say that Kira’s nephew is with Vlad. The bratva boss is protective of his adopted son. He wished to speak with Mika to see if he wanted any contact with her.
I hold this information back for the time being.
Kira remained surprisingly docile through dinner, even after I informed her she can’t leave. I can’t decide if she’s trying to play me again. But no, she never fooled me before. Right from the beginning, I knew there was something off about her helpless female act followed by the blatant seduction.
Now, something about her seems more real. The truth serum made her drop her walls with me. Or else it’s still in her system, but I’d prefer to think that isn’t what wrought the change.
I lead her to the couch, and we sit down together. I wrap a blanket around her and arrange her next to me, pulling her close to my side with her legs over my lap.
“Is cuddling required?” There’s a light softness to her teasing I haven’t heard before.
“Yes,” I say gruffly.
She leans into me and rests her head on my shoulder. “I don’t mind.”
I kiss her hair.
I give her the remote, and she scrolls through the options for a long time, as if nothing will satisfy her. Or perhaps she’s just not used to the choices on American television.
Eventually, she stops on Bridgerton, a historical soap opera of some kind, which seems an odd choice. I would expect my little warrior to pick something suspenseful. Or even a horror film. I don’t protest. Maybe she’s trying to annoy me with something she thinks I’ll hate.
But no, she seems completely absorbed.
Which makes me absorb it, as well.
We watch the first episode through to the end, both of us sitting in silence, seemingly riveted to the story. As if it might tell us something about our current situation. About each other or our relationship.
It rolls into a second episode, then a third.
When Kira yawns, I take the remote and turn off the television. “Let’s go to bed, moya Valkiriya.”
We stand together in the bathroom, brushing our teeth, like the most ordinary of couples. Well, except for the handcuffs. Maybe some ordinary couples use those, too. Probably not for brushing teeth, though.
In bed, I unlock the cuffs and attach one to my wrist for the night. After I turn off the light, I tell her the news.
“My pakhan knows where your nephew is.”
She goes still, waiting for more.
“What will you do for the information?”
“A-anything.”
That was what I suspected. “You chose the wrong side.”
She remains silent.
I guess I want her to say it. To be sorry she worked against us, but of course, that’s foolish. Just because we can locate her nephew doesn’t erase the wrongs that were done to her by the bratva.
And no gift I give her could cancel out what I took from her on my initiation night into the bratva.
I reach for her in the darkness. Find the curve of her cheek with my hand and caress it. “Be good, little warrior, and I’ll give you what you want.”
It’s cruel of me to try to win her allegiance this way, but I already know it can be bought. It was with this promise that her supervisor convinced her to help the Moscow bratva get past our defenses. Of course, she believed she was helping the FBI.
“What do you need me to do?” she whispers in the dark. She thinks I will ask for some deed. A double-cross of the “FBI” perhaps.
Of course, we already have that planned without her help.
But it’s good to know I have enough leverage if we do need her.
“Just be good,” I murmur, stroking her cheek with my thumb.
“Mmm.” She makes a little sound of consideration like she’s trying to figure out what that means.
How could she know that I’m trying to negotiate for her love? To win her permanent allegiance? But perhaps giving her Mika will do that. When she learns he has been well cared for, as a real, adopted son, not as a young bratva brigadier, maybe she’ll think differently of us.
“He is safe and happy. His adopted father will ask him if he wants to see you.”
She sucks in a shocked breath. “Where is he? Who adopted him?”
“No. You haven’t earned your answers yet. I don’t owe you this.”
She lets out a little sob of breath. “I don’t know if I can even believe you.”
“You will have to decide, won’t you? Who you can trust, and who is feeding you lies.”
She falls quiet. Her fingertips find my chest, and she traces the contours in the darkness. “It feels wrong to trust you.” Her words hit me like a blow until she adds, “But I think I do.”
Guilt mingles with satisfaction. What will happen to this trust when she finds out I’m the man who pulled the trigger on her dad?
I want to tell her. No, I don’t want to tell her, but I know I should. Just get it out right now to see if there’s any possibility of moving past it.
But I’m savoring this moment too much. I can’t bring myself to snap this tenuous gossamer thread that’s reaching between our hearts and connecting them right now.