Page 68 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

It was so foreign I almost didn’t recognize it. And then I recognized it, and something cold moved through me underneath the warmth, because calm was what got you killed. Peace was what you felt right before you stopped watching the doors.

I waited until her breathing was deep and even. Then I dressed quietly, lifting her and carrying her into the bedroom and onto the bed. I covered her with the duvet and watched her body settle into sleep again with an unblinking gaze before getting off the bed.

I walked the perimeter.

Trees remained still. The access road empty in both directions. The southern slope undisturbed.

We were safe. I knew we were safe. I had just confirmed it.

I told myself this as I stood in the cold, and every nerve in my body hummed its low, constant alarm the way it always did when I had something real left to lose.

I went back inside, but I didn’t sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Isla

I woke up slowly like someone, nothing or no one was chasing.

There was no jolt. No immediate inventory of threat—door, window, sound. Just a gradual surfacing, like rising through warm water, until I was lying in the grey-gold light of early morning with birdsong outside the window and the smell of pine through a gap in the casement, and I realized with quiet shock that I was not afraid.

I lay still for a moment, just to make sure.

There was nothing. No coiled muscle, no low-frequency hum of dread that had become so constant over the past weeks I’d started seeing it as the simple texture of being alive.

It was gone. I was without fear.

I turned my head. Alexei was already awake; I suspected he was always already awake, but he hadn’t moved. He was lying on his back with one arm behind his head, watching the ceiling with his usual focused stillness. The morning light fell across the planes of his face, the ridged architecture of his chest, and the map of old damage I’d traced with my hands last night. And something warm moved through me slowly, like a tide coming in.

He felt me looking. His eyes dropped to mine.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked.

“A while.”

“You could have woken me.”

One corner of his mouth shifted slightly. “You were sleeping without your jaw clenched. I decided to leave it.”

I hadn’t known my jaw was clenched when I slept. But I believed him.

“Leave it to my husband to notice things like that,” I commented.

Then I realized what I just said.

Alexei’s eyes were still on mine, giving me no hiding space. He blinked slowly like he was digesting what I was sure he’d heard.

I sighed.

Well, I said that already.

I stretched, the cotton sheet cool against my legs, and listened to the birds.

“You’ve never called me that,” he uttered when I thought that chapter had been closed.

“I’m sorely aware of that, Mr. Golovin,” I answered, looking anywhere but at that ridiculously handsome face.

“Just checking, Mrs. Golovin,” he said.