Mine. She's mine.
Slowly, carefully, I lower her legs to the floor and keep one arm around her waist to hold her up. With my other hand, I brush the hair back from her face and tuck it behind her ear. "Okay?" I ask.
She nods, but she won't look at me now. Her gaze is fixed somewhere over my shoulder, and I can see her starting to retreat, pull back into herself and put distance between us eventhough we're still pressed together, even though I'm still inside her.
I pull out slowly, and she winces. The loss of connection feels wrong. I want to be back inside of her now, to fuck her again until I'm imprinted on every inch of her body, inside and out.
I lift her into my arms and carry her to the bed. She doesn't protest, just lets me settle her on the mattress, and lets me lie down beside her and pull her against my chest. For a few minutes, we just breathe together. Her heart is racing against my ribs and mine is doing the same. The room smells like sex and sweat, and this feels dangerously close to intimacy. I stare down at her, at her beautiful face, and the possessiveness that sweeps through me is crushing.
"How can you say you're not mine?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "How can you say that when you touch me like that? When you beg me like that? When your body responds to me like that?"
She goes very still in my arms. Then, slowly, she pulls back so she can look at me. Her eyes are serious now, all the pleasure-haze burned away.
"I don't know," she whispers. "But I want to be my own person. I've been my own person for a long time, Andrei. I've lived my own life. I can't just... disappear into someone else. Even someone I want."
My chest tightens. "You want me."
"Yes," she whispers. "I want you. But this life terrifies me.Youterrify me."
"I would never hurt you?—"
"That's not what I mean." She sits up, pulling the top blanket around herself, and I immediately miss the warmth of her against me. "Do you know why I've barely spoken to any of your guards since we got here?"
I frown. "Because you're angry with me?"
"No. Because I'm terrified of what you'll do to them if you think I'm being too friendly." She looks at me as if I'm taking too long to catch up, her gaze guarded and tired. "You reassigned Dmitri because he talked to me. You killed that guard because he looked at me. How am I supposed to interact with anyone when I know that any conversation, any smile, any moment of basic human connection could get them killed?"
The accusation stings because it's true. I did those things. I would do them again. "They need to know you're off-limits."
"I'm not a possession, Andrei. I'm a person." She wraps her arms around herself. "I've been locked in rooms, isolated, cut off from everyone except you. And yes, part of that is the situation. Part of that is the war. But part of it is you. Your jealousy. Your possessiveness. Your need to control everything around you."
"That's what keeps you safe?—"
"That's what keeps me imprisoned." She stares at me, shaking her head. "If we were going to be together—if there was going to be any chance of that—you need to trust me. You need to give me space to be myself. To talk to people without worrying you'll hurt them. To have some autonomy, some freedom, some sense that I'm stillmeand not just... yours."
The words settle between us heavily. I want to argue and tell her that she doesn't understand how dangerous this world is, how many threats there are, how the only way to keep her safe is to keep her close and keep everyone else away.
But I can see the truth in her eyes. She's not asking for much. Just the basic dignity of being treated like a person instead of something I own and control.
And I don't know if I can give her that.
"All I know is being consumed by something," I hear myself say. The admission feels like pulling out my own teeth. "The Bratva. The organization. The need for power, for control, fordominance. That's all there's ever been. That's all I know how to be."
She's quiet for a moment, but her gaze softens a little. "There has to be more than that."
"Why?"
"Because you're more than that." She reaches out, touches my face. "I've seen it in the moments when you let your guard down. When you held me while I cried. When you told me it wasn't my fault. When you look at me like I'm something you wanted to keep instead of something to own."
I want to believe her—that there's something in me worth saving, worth building a life around. But I've spent so long being what the Bratva needed me to be that I don't know if there's anything else left.
"Tell me about yourself," she says softly. "Who were you before all this?"
No one has ever asked me that. Not once in my entire life.
I should deflect, change the subject, maybe fuck her again until we're both too exhausted to talk.
But I don't.
