Page 29 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

He pressed twelve. I watched the numbers and said nothing.

I remained silent as Alexei walked ahead of me down the hallway. I didn’t say anything as he walked past the door of the room I’d occupied since I’d been here.

Of course, couples sleep together.

Finally, we got to the second of the only two doors on the left. He opened the door and, instead of going in ahead of me like I’d expected, he stepped aside and held the door for me. I felt something warm flood my chest in that moment.

I took two steps, and I was standing in a mini-parlor, if it could be called that. It wasn’t as large as the main one, but it was just as impeccable. A small, open-plan dining area featuring a table and four chairs was to the right. The left side of the room consisted of a sleek television that practically spanned the breadth of the wall, a black two-seater couch, and a beige professor’s chair.

He came to stand beside me, pointing to the only door on the right. “The bedroom.” Then he pointed to the first door on the left. “My private office. The other room is my private gym. And strategy room, on occasion.”

“Unexpected,” I said before I could stop myself.

“What?” he asked, genuine curiosity seeping out beneath his usual unreadable expression.

“Your space, it’s… I gestured around the parlor, “not as bland as I’d have expected. Still colorless but… not dead.”

He inclined his head a fraction like he was giving what I just said some serious thought. Then he wordlessly led me to the bedroom.

On getting inside, I realized I had no reason to be surprised about the size of the room I had formerly occupied. The man definitely had something for extra-large spaces. A king-size bed covered in navy silk sat magnificently against the wall facing the entrance door. To the right, a bar cart with a high wooden chair took the corner space while a huge dresser that looked and smelled new occupied the other side, with a chair backing the bed.

He pointed to the two doors on the far left. “Closet. Bathroom.”

“Right.”

I moved to the chair facing the dresser as Alexei moved to the bar cart and poured two glasses of something amber. He set one on the table in front of me and kept one, and then stood near the window looking out at the city that never ran out of light, and for a long moment neither of us said anything.

Then he said, “You don’t owe me anything tonight.”

I looked at him.

He had his back partially to me, profile visible against the window light. “The marriage is protection. Like I told you. I don’t want you to feel that agreeing to one thing commits you to everything.”

His restraint confused me more than his dominance ever could.

“You don’t get to decide what I owe,” I answered, my tone quiet. “And you don’t get to decide what I want.”

He turned from the window.

“I’m not deciding anything,” he said.

“You’re trying to control… to decide this again. You’re trying to…” I pressed my hands flat on my knees. “You’re giving me an out before I’ve indicated I want one, and you’re doing it in that voice you use when you’ve already decided how the situation is going to go.”

Something moved through his expression. “I’m not trying to do anything. This is an inevitable situation except your safety is being taken out of the equation.”

“That’s it right there. You’ll keep throwing the safety card in my face every fucking time, won’t you? What about my life that was thrown upside down in the blink of an eye? What about what it costs me to be somewhere I wouldn’t have dreamed of?” I lashed out, rising from the chair.

He came closer, his gaze on my face.

“I never claimed to be a savior.”

“Like you’re not acting that fucking way already,” I bit out. “You—”

“What do you want, Isla?”

The question came out unarmored. Not a challenge, not a strategy. The flat, genuine version of a question from a man who had been managing information and outcomes for so long that asking without preloading the answer was a skill he’d had to consciously rebuild.

I looked at him. My anger and fury melted into a different kind of heat.