Bratvas vow, p.8
Bratva's Vow, page 8
Wren smirked. “How’s that working for you?”
“I’d say pretty well. Don’t you think? That’s the second time I’ve come inside you today, isn’t it? I could feel my cum inside your ass when I was fucking you just now. So I have absolutely no complaint.”
Wren wrapped his arms around me and buried his face against my chest. “I’m a slut, aren’t I? Maybe I shouldn’t be so easy. The things you do to me…say to me…I shouldn’t like them as much.”
I slapped his ass, loving the little jiggle, so I did it again, then forced two fingers into his hole. He fucking moaned. “Are you kidding me? It’s a huge turn-on the way you’re into what I am.”
We got back into the shower, lingering far too long, kissing, flirting, and touching until our skin started pruning. Only then did we leave the bathroom.
Wren grabbed his clothes and followed me into the bedroom, towel-drying his hair. “You should let me blow-dry your hair.”
“No time.” I rummaged through my closet, found the outfit I’d already selected, and placed it on the bed. “Because you distracted me in the shower, I’m running late.”
He watched me dress like he always did—stretched out on the bed, naked and unashamed, looking like the kind of sin a man would sell his soul to commit. He rubbed the towel through his curls lazily, legs crossed at the ankles like he didn’t have two loads of cum up his ass. I was pretty sure his ass must be sore.
“You’re really going out to a business dinner and not taking me?” he asked, his voice soft and petulant.
I paused at the mirror, adjusting my collar. “No, solnyshko. I’ll handle this. Just stay home and relax.”
He sat up straighter, blinking like I’d offended him. “You sure? I can be charming at business dinners. I can smile, say thank you, look pretty, flirt, and distract your business partner so you get the best deal possible.”
I scowled at the little imp. “Absolutely not.” I crossed the room and bent to kiss his temple. “Under no circumstances are you permitted to flirt with anyone. This dinner won’t be fun either. And I need to keep my focus. You are a distraction.”
He sighed and nodded, watching as I grabbed my cufflinks and fastened them with mechanical precision.
Wren slid off the bed and came to stand in front of me, helping to adjust the lapels of my blazer like he’d done it a hundred times before. His hands lingered, smoothing invisible wrinkles, his eyes trailing over my face like he was trying to memorize me.
“What is it?”
“Just thinking. If you lose your fortune, you could easily make it back.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, by playing one of those supervillains in a movie.”
I went rigid. “A supervillain?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, the ones who do despicable things but everyone forgets because of how hot he is and all they can think about is what it’d be like to sleep with them.”
He had no clue how close he was to the truth.
“You watch too many movies.” I caught his wrist and reeled him in closer. “Stay home tonight. Don’t go anywhere while I’m not here.”
“Maxim…”
“Please.” I cupped the side of his face. “Just… please. Don’t leave the house. Don’t make me worry.”
He leaned into my touch, and for a second, I thought he might argue, but then he nodded. “Okay. I’ll stay in. If I’m hungry, I’ll order in.”
“No. I don’t want even a delivery person on this property when I’m not here.”
“But, babe—”
“Nik is on call tonight. You need anything and I mean anything—even a toothpick—call him. He’ll expect it.”
“Always so paranoid.” He tipped his head, and I pressed a soft kiss to his nose. My phone buzzed.
“I’d rather be paranoid but know you’re all right.” I checked my phone. “That’s Sergei. He’s here.”
“I’ll walk you down—”
“No.” I grabbed my keys from the dresser and met his gaze. “Just stay. I’ll call in to check up on you.”
I pretended not to see him rolling his eyes but forced myself to leave before I changed my mind, before I made an even bigger enemy out of Arkady by not showing up tonight after calling the meeting.
CHAPTER NINE
MAXIM
Sergei drove in silence, jaw tight, the faint flicker of the dash casting his profile in a hard glow. Two other vehicles tailed us. One up close, the other hanging back at a cautious distance. My men. Armed. Watchful. Ready.
We were heading into the kind of meeting that didn’t call for suits and speeches. This was the kind that smelled of gasoline and gunpowder.
The location was a gravel clearing near the docks. An abandoned construction site that had never quite turned into anything. Concrete slabs, rusted scaffolding, half-sunken shipping containers, and towering cranes that loomed like metal skeletons over a man-made graveyard.
Arkady was already there. Of course he was. He liked to arrive early to wait. Made him feel like he had the upper hand.
What he didn’t know was that a man who waited had already chosen to follow and could never lead.
I stepped out of the car and adjusted my blazer, the chill biting under my collar. Gravel crunched beneath my boots as I walked forward, Sergei flanking me to the left while Darius and Dezi hung back near the cars, on alert.
Arkady leaned against the hood of a matte black SUV, surrounded by three of his men who stood with the bored, dangerous ease of people used to violence.
“Maxim.” He pushed off the car and extended a hand. “You look… expensive.”
Like a supervillain. Wren’s description. My lips twitched, and I had to fight back my smile.
“I do my best.” I clasped his hand in a firm grip. “No sense dying in cheap shoes.”
He barked a laugh. “That’s fair. I take it business is good, then?”
“Business is always good as long as you’re above ground and still breathing.”
A luxury to men like us.
“You have news about the crypto wallets?” Arkady asked as we walked side by side across the lot, away from the cars and the bodyguards.
“You’ll have it by the weekend,” I said. “The wallets are secure. My guys are transferring the goods onto new hardware to be sure. Clean, untraceable.”
“Good,” he said, hands in his coat pockets. “I’ve waited long enough.”
I didn’t rise to the bait. Arkady liked to poke. He liked to rattle the bars to see if the lion inside would bite.
“You’ll get what’s yours. You always do.”
He hummed in approval, but his eyes—flat, wolfish—didn’t soften. “Heard you’ve had a bit of trouble lately. With the chief of police.”
I didn’t react. Didn’t blink. “I’m dealing with it.”
“Sure you are. But you know how rumors spread. Especially when things go… sideways.”
“I’ve got it under control.”
“Good, because if you need help, I’m always willing to offer some of my men.”
“That’s quite generous of you, Arkady, but I’m good.”
“Don’t mention it. Men like us need to have each other’s backs.”
I stopped walking. So did he. The wind hissed through the unfinished steel framework above us, making it groan like the bones of something ancient.
He turned to face me fully. “Heard something else too.”
“Seems like you’ve been hearing a lot lately.”
“Well, this one’s quite interesting.” His voice was casual. “Heard you’ve got a boy toy living with you now.”
Inside, my blood turned to ice. Nothing showed on my face. I’d trained too long for that. But his words detonated behind my ribs like a timed charge. My pulse thudded hard, as if my heart was deciding whether to stop or explode. I’d spent years mastering silence, control, the art of revealing nothing, but that nameless flicker of Wren on Arkady’s lips scraped against every nerve.
This was the one thing I couldn’t afford.
The one soft thing I had no armor for.
Arkady smirked. “Imagine my surprise when Boris sent me a message about that boy. Then poof. Radio silence. Both he and his brother disappeared. Didn’t take me long to put two and two together.”
The air between us dropped ten degrees.
“I thought it was odd at first. Why you’d throw extra security on a civilian. Maxim Morozov, merciless. Cares about nothing else but power. Until this boy. So I watched, and sure enough, the script that followed was intriguing.”
My jaw flexed.
“You treat him like gold. Like he’s irreplaceable. He’s got more eyes on him than you do. Makes a man curious what’s so special about him.”
I didn’t realize I’d moved until my hand was around his throat.
Arkady didn’t flinch. His men didn’t step in. Both his and mine were at a standoff.
“Do you want to fuck with me?” I growled, my face inches from his. “Do you think that’s a smart idea?”
He held my gaze, eyes glinting with something sharp and dangerous. But he didn’t reach for his weapon.
“Relax, Morozov, I don’t want to hurt the boy. Though you just confirmed everything I suspected. Believe me, I have no interest in where you get your dick wet. As long as you keep priorities in order. Can’t have any more of that airport fuckup to inconvenience me.”
My hand stayed on his throat a second longer. Then I let go and stepped back, adjusting my blazer like nothing had happened.
“If I were you, Arkady, I’d forget you ever said anything tonight that wasn’t about the crypto wallets. Sometimes the deadliest thing you can do is to know too much.”
We stood in tense silence for a moment longer. Then he offered a quick nod and turned, signaling to his men. “I look forward to what’s mine on Saturday, Morozov. A word of caution, though. Not everyone in our world is as accepting as I am. You don’t flaunt the thing you’d kill for unless you’re ready to kill for it every day.”
“I’ve buried for far less.” I let the warning drift in the air as Arkady walked back to his car and got in.
I waited until he was gone, the tail lights of his car fading into the distance, before I let the tremor ripple through my body. A cold knot formed in my stomach.
I felt sick.
“Everything okay?” Sergei said.
“Arkady’s up to something.”
Sergei frowned, staring after Arkady’s entourage. “What do you want to do about it? Have them followed?”
“Yes. And take out the men he brought with him tonight. All of them.”
Sergei hesitated. “You sure? Arkady’s meant to be an ally.”
“He stopped being that the moment he mentioned Wren.”
He’d crossed a line. Not carelessly—deliberately. Testing me. Provoking me. If this was the game he wanted to play, I would play it well.
“I want him to understand the price of talking out of turn. Of knowing too much. I want him to watch his men die and know that could’ve been him. That should’ve been him, but I showed him mercy.”
From the look on Sergei’s face, he didn’t agree with me, but he knew by now Wren meant too much to me for me to be bothered by what he thought. He spoke into his comm unit, and one of the cars that had followed us drove away. I climbed into the back seat of the car, and Sergei slammed the door shut. I clenched and unclenched my fist.
“Home?” Sergei asked.
“Yes.”
The meeting with Arkady hadn’t lasted long, but our location was forty-five minutes from my house. A long enough drive for me to convince Wren I’d had a quick business dinner, then returned home to spend the evening with him.
Arkady.
That son of a bitch had me under surveillance. I had to teach him a lesson.
When I walked through the front door of the house almost an hour later, it was dark. Quiet. Except for the low hum of the television. I followed the sound into the living room, where Wren lay fast asleep on the couch, a half-eaten large pepperoni pizza on the coffee table. My stomach tightened. Had he disobeyed me and called for delivery?
I picked up his new phone from the floor next to the couch. I’d deliberately dropped his older one so he would have no more excuse to not use the more updated version. What Wren didn’t know was that I’d also programmed my fingerprint to unlock the device.
A quick scan of his phone set my mind at ease. He hadn’t ordered in, but he’d called Nik. Just like I’d told him to do. As long as he kept following my instructions, I could keep him safe from men like Arkady, couldn’t I?
I brushed my finger across his smooth cheek, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
As long as there’s breath in my body, I won’t let anything happen to you.
I scooped Wren up in my arms. He stirred but didn’t wake. Just sighed and leaned into me like he knew he was safe. I tucked him close to my chest and carried him up the stairs to our bedroom. Gently I laid him down but didn’t let go right away. I toed off my shoes, which was hard to do because of the laces, but eventually, they fell to the floor with a thud. I curled around him, still dressed in my expensive clothes, and held him too tightly.
Could I keep him safe?
Wren snuggled farther into my embrace, and I breathed in deeply, burying my nose in his hair. Wren always smelled good. A blend of sweetness and spice that was uniquely him. It was soothing, a calming presence amid the chaos that was my life.
As I lay there in our bed, staring at the moonlit silhouette of Wren’s peaceful face, every inch of him unconscious and vulnerable beneath me, I promised myself one thing. They could take everything I had, they could take my life even, but they wouldn’t lay one finger on him. No one could hurt him.
For the first time since I fought for the position, I wished I’d never become a Pakhan.
CHAPTER TEN
WREN
The screen on my phone lit up with a delivery update, and I nearly squealed in my chair.
Your package is ready for collection.
Finally.
I’d been tracking the damn thing like a hawk for days, checking the estimated delivery window every few hours. And now it was here. The gift I’d poured way too much thought and money into. Something I was convinced would actually surprise Maxim. Something thoughtful. Sentimental. Something that screamed, “I know you, even if you don’t always let me in.”
I bounced a little in my seat, glancing around the mostly empty hallway, then flicking back to Maxim’s calendar on my monitor.
Meeting with M. Voronov – Estimated Duration: 1hr.
Yes. Perfect. Maxim was locked away in his office with his phone turned off and at least two heavy hitters sitting in with him. He wouldn’t notice I was gone. Not if I was quick.
I grabbed my phone again and dialed Nik.
It rang.
And rang.
Then clicked to voice mail.
Weird. Nik always answered. Always.
Frowning, I hung up and tried Jess.
She picked up on the second ring. “Hey, sunshine. You miss me?”
“Hey, like a hole in the head. You wouldn’t happen to know where Nik is, would you?”
“Sleeping. He’s been working overtime lately. Why?”
“I need to pick up a gift I had customized for Maxim’s birthday.”
“Want me to wake him?”
“No, no. Let him sleep. It’ll take him a while to get down here, and I need to grab this gift before Maxim notices me missing.”
“Nik won’t mind. Don’t go out on your own.”
“Please don’t. I’ll ask someone else at the office. You know the place has been crawling with Maxim’s bodyguards recently. You’d think the president was gracing us with his presence.”
“All right. But call me as soon as you get back.”
“I will.”
“I mean it, Wren, or next time Maxim threatens to tie you to the bed, I’ll provide the rope.”
“Traitor. You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“Anyone who buys me Louboutins has my undying affection. Remind me to tell Maxim thanks, by the way. They’re absolutely gorgeous.”
I frowned. “I still have no idea why my boyfriend’s buying you expensive shoes.”
“Oh, Wren, don’t be catty. You’re the one with the sugar Daddy now. You can at least share.”
“He’s not my sugar anything. He’s my equal.”
She gave a loud snort.
“He is.”
She only snorted louder.
“Bye, Jess! I need to get that gift.”
“Call me.”
“Okay.” I hung up the phone, shaking my head. She was as bad as Maxim. What did everyone think was going to happen? That if I took a step outside without Nik, I would be abducted by aliens?
I pocketed my wallet and tugged my jacket off the back of my chair. Everything had to be perfect for Maxim’s birthday tomorrow, and that meant collecting his gift. I could have had it delivered to the house, but that meant Maxim would have seen it. Not risking the exposure, I’d chosen to grab it in person.
I took the elevator down, heart fluttering a little as I thought about my plans for tomorrow. Maxim’s calendar was light for the day. I’d done that deliberately for him to have a fantastic birthday. Then in the evening, all our friends would join us for his birthday party by the poolside.
I couldn’t wait to see Maxim’s face when I gave him his birthday gift. Although I’d spent way too much time obsessing over the details, it was worth it. This wasn’t just any present. It meant something. Hopefully, he’d see that.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and I stepped into the quiet lobby.
“Wren.”
I turned, pulse skipping. Bradley stood near the reception desk. He had a manila folder in hand and that same unreadable look he always wore when he wasn’t trying to flirt, which was rare.
Shit. Since he walked in on me blowing Maxim beneath his desk, I’d been avoiding him as much as possible. It was hard to look him in the eye after my misconduct with our boss.
