Page 17 of Claimed By the BRATVA Grump

I lower my head and taste her.

She's sweet with my salt and something darker, something that tastes like the center of her. I groan against her without meaning to, the sound vibrating into her flesh. She arches off the mattress with a cry that I feel in my spine. I grip her hips to hold her still, not to trap her, but to give her something to push against, something steady while I unravel her.

I start slow. I've waited for this, I just didn’t know. I'm not rushing now. I trace her with the flat of my tongue, long strokes from bottom to top, learning the way she responds to every different pressure, the way she tenses when I hit a certain spot, the way her breath stutters when I linger. She's responsive in a way that destroys my self-control. Every flick of my tongue draws a sound from her, and I keep them all. The soft gasps. The broken whimpers. The way she says my name like it's the only word she remembers.

I part her lips with my fingers and find her clit, still a little swollen, and circle it. I’m gentle but relentless, and her hands fly to my hair, gripping tight enough to sting. I welcome the pain.It keeps me grounded while I lose myself in her. I suck her into my mouth, fluttering my tongue against her, and she screams, the sound tearing out of her and echoing off the walls of my bedroom. A room that has never heard a sound like that, never held anything this alive.

"Eduard, please, I can't, it's too much," she babbles, but her hips are rocking against my face, seeking more, not less, and I don't stop. I slide one hand up her thigh and press two fingers inside her, curling them, and she breaks apart around me. I feel her pulse, feel her tighten, feel the wave crash through her as she comes on my tongue with my name breaking across her lips like a hymn.

I don't lift my head. I keep licking her through it, softer now, drawing it out, not letting her come down too fast. She's shaking, her thighs trembling against my shoulders, and I kiss her inner thigh, her hip, anywhere I can reach, because I can't stop touching her. I want to stay here forever, between her legs, drunk on her, ruined by her.

When I finally look up at her, she's wrecked. Hair tangled, face flushed, eyes glassy and wet. She looks at me like I'm something holy, and I almost laugh because she has it backward. She's the miracle. I'm just the man worshipping at her altar, finally allowed to pray.

I crawl up her body and kiss her, letting her taste herself on my mouth. She moans into it, greedy, and I know I'm not finished. I'll never be finished. Not with her.

I pull her into my arms and she falls asleep. The last thing I’d ever do is wake her, not after the sleepless night she just had. Instead I fumble around on my nightstand for my phone and send a text to Jasper.

Fix it. All of it. I want the Popov’s back in their own territory or I’ll burn it down.

Watching Sammie come apart for me made me realize something. She isn’t just a nice person; she is the sun. And keeping her locked up, even if it’s for her own safety, will be the quickest way to extinguish her light.

She needs to be back in her own world. Her own environment. Even if that means she is without me.

She wakes somewhere before lunch time, and flies out of bed in a panic.

“I need to call Dee or all hell will break loose,” she says, dashing out into the kitchen which is where I presume her phone is.

When she comes back a few moments later, she is punching the number into the phone like it’s personally offended her.

She walks through to the bathroom, still naked, my cum dripping down her thighs. The sight of it makes me hard again.

“Don’t you dare clean yourself up,” I say. “I want you dripping with me.”

She glances over her shoulder, popping her ass at me before laughing.

“Dee, I’m fine,” she suddenly says into the phone. “It’s not as bad as all that. Well, not for me… no… no I need to keep you safe. It’ll only be… no Dee… Do not call my mother.”

I make a call of my own and order take out for us, since neither of us have eaten properly since yesterday.

The food arrives forty minutes later, brought up by Pavel, who hands the bags over at the door with a face working very hard at total neutrality. He knows. There probably isn't a man on my payroll who doesn't know. I find that I don't care. That's new. I add it to the list of new things, which has been growing at an unmanageable rate for the last week.

I set the food up on the balcony. I never use the balcony. It has never had a use. Today it does, which tells you something about the apartment, or about me, or about the woman currently walking out of my bedroom in my sweatshirt and nothing else, hair wet from the shower she took while arguing with Delilah, and I stop laying out cartons and watch her come toward me through my own living room like this is a thing that happens. Like she's always been here. My chest does the tight thing it's been doing all morning. I've stopped fighting it.

"This is nice," she says, stepping out and pulling the sweatshirt sleeves over her hands.

I hold the chair for her. She gives me a look at the gesture, pleased and suspicious in equal measure, and sits. "Eat."

I ordered from three places, because I didn't know what she'd want and had no intention of asking and getting a polite answer instead of a true one. Georgian from the place Valeria swears by, khachapuri and dumplings. Thai. A ridiculous quantity of dessert. Her eyes move over the spread and she goes quiet.

"You didn't know what I liked," she says.

"No."

"So you got everything."

"It felt efficient."

"It’s very sweet," she says. "You're going to have to get used to me saying that word about you, by the way. I know it goes against your very being." She tears off a piece of the khachapuri, cheese pulling in long threads, and makes a sound that I felt an hour ago in another context. I pour her water and reorganize my thoughts.