Page 20 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

His grip around my waist tightened.

Not to hold me up anymore—I was up, I was steady, and my feet had found the floor again. The grip tightened anyway. Reflexive, or not. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell anything except that I was pressed against his chest with my hands in his jacket and his arm around me.

We weren’t moving. Neither of us was.

I tilted my head up to say something—I don’t know what, something that would have functioned as a reset, as a restoration of the appropriate distance between two people in this situation—and he looked down at the same moment, and the angle closed the remaining space between us, and—

Warmth.

Brief. Soft. A brush of his mouth against mine that lasted less than a second and felt like considerably more than that. It wasn’t a kiss in any deliberate sense. It was two people moving toward the same point at the same moment and arriving there and then going still.

Neither of us moved for what felt like much longer than it probably was.

Then I gasped and pulled back.

My hands released his jacket—I hadn’t noticed how hard I was holding it until I let go and felt the released tension in my fingers. I took a step back, my heart beating violently.

The control was back in his posture—I could see his jaw tightening, his expression resettling into that unreadable neutrality of his.

His eyes were darker than they’d been thirty seconds ago.

“I—” I started.

“Don’t,” he cut in, his voice quiet and tight.

“I wasn’t going to—”

“I know what you were going to do.” He took a step back on his own, creating the distance I should have created first. “You were going to make it into an argument. That would be a mistake.”

“For which one of us?”

His gaze held mine for a beat longer than necessary. “Both.”

He reached for his jacket, straightening it. Then he looked at me with an honesty that was more unsettling than the control had been.

“Think about what just happened and whether it confirms your argument or complicates it.”

I said nothing.

He moved toward the door.

“Before you say no, if you’re still insisting on saying no, think carefully. Because the world outside won’t be gentle with you the way I will,” he uttered, not turning around to face me again until he walked out the door.

The door closed with a soft, definitive sound, and I stood in the middle of the room in my borrowed clothing, looking at the half-eaten breakfast on the table.

This is the most insane situation you have ever been in, Isla Monroe, and you have been in some genuinely insane situations.

Then my legs gave out like they’d been threatening to do for the last three minutes, and I sat down. On the floor.

My lips still felt warm. They still tingled.

That was the problem. Probably the biggest problem at the moment. My mouth still felt warm from a contact that had lasted less than a second, and my hands could still feel the fabric of his jacket. His heartbeat had been fast against my chest, not the slow, controlled pulse I would have expected.

He’d felt it too.

He hadn’t pretended otherwise. He could have—a man with that kind of control over his expression could have reset and looked at me like it hadn’t happened, like it was a minor physical incident, and I would have had to accept that facade because I had no standing to argue it. Instead, he’d gone still. Instead, his eyes had gone dark.

I pressed my palms harder against the floor.