Page 34 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

The scrape of wood against tile sends a shiver up my spine, and my fingers tighten around the stem of my wine glass. He doesn’t stand yet, just sitting there, legs spread slightly, forearms resting on his thighs. The posture is so effortlessly predatory that my breath catches.

“Come here,” he orders.

Not a command like before, but an invitation because of the way his voice softens at the end, the way his head tilts just so.

I should hesitate. Every rational part of my brain is screaming at me to hesitate, to protect myself, to remember that men likeMikhail don’t build things—they burn them down. But my body is already moving, rounding the table, and the rational part of my brain can go to hell.

He reaches for me before I’m close enough to touch.

His fingers find my wrist, encircling it completely, and the heat of his palm is a brand. He tugs me into the V of his legs gently, dark eyes looking up at me with something that resembles awe.

“Zara.”

My name in his mouth is a prayer.

“Your pulse is racing,” he murmurs, thumb pressing into the tender underside of my wrist.

“I don’t understand you sometimes.”

The honesty spills out before he can catch it, and I brace myself for his retreat, for the walls I’ve watched him build brick by brick every time I get too close. But he doesn’t pull away. Instead, his free hand settles on my hip, and the weight of it anchors me to the floor.

“Good,” he says. “I don’t understand you most of the time. I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be gentle.”

The confession cracks something open in my chest. I lift my hand—the one he isn’t holding—and touch his jaw. The stubble there is rough against my palm, and he leans into the contact like a starving man offered bread. His eyes close. The lashes are dark smudges against his cheeks.

“Then don’t be gentle,” I whisper. “Just be here.”

His eyes open, a decision and surrender.

He stands, and the movement forces me back a step, then another, until my spine meets the edge of the table. His body follows, not quite pressing, not quite pinning, but close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him in waves.

The tattoos on his neck are more intricate up close—leaves and thorns and tiny blossoms I didn’t notice before. I want to trace them with my tongue.

“Mikhail.”

“You have no idea,” he says, and his voice is wrecked, “how long I’ve wanted to hear you say my name like that.”

“Like what.”

“Like I’m already inside you.”

The admission sends a pulse of heat straight between my thighs, and I know he feels the way my breath stutters because his mouth curves into the ghost of a smile.

His hands find the hem of my blouse. His knuckles brush the bare skin of my stomach, and the contact is so light it’s almost unbearable. I arch into him, a wordless plea, and he answers by dipping his head.

The first kiss lands on my collarbone.

He’s mapping me with his lips, trailing up the column of my throat, pausing at the hollow beneath my ear; when his teeth graze the lobe, I make a sound I’ve never made before—a whimper, a plea, something animal and honest.

“Look at me,” he growls.

I do.

His face is raw in a way I haven’t seen before. The danger is still there—it lives in the set of his jaw, the blades of his cheekbones—but beneath it, something fragile is unraveling. He’s terrified. I can see it now, and the recognition makes my eyes sting.