Page 7 of Forced & Owned By the Bratva Boss

“Doesn’t your hand hurt?”

His question snaps me back to reality and I drop my hand, letting my hair down again. I clasp my hands together and fiddle with my fingers to distract myself.

“Wow.” I clear my throat and force myself to be coherent. “Sir…I mean, Mr. Nazarov. Do you…do you want something? I was heading back to the—”

“You.”

I almost choke on my own saliva. There’s no way I heard that right.

“I’m sorry,” I say slowly. “What was that?”

To my utmost horror, he takes a step forward. Then another, and another, until I’m suffocating in the depth of his intimidating aura.

My pulse throbs and my stomach takes a huge dip when he lifts a hand to my face and tilts my head backward with a flick of his calloused thumb.

Igor leans forward. His eyes are cold, hard, and unreadable, and his warm breath caresses my face when he speaks. “We both know there’s been something hovering around us since the first day you set foot in here.”

This has to be a dream. This is NOT real!

“Something hovering…around us?” I suck in a deep breath, slowly processing it. “You and me?”

His lips lift in a familiar curve. It’s the same smirk I noticed earlier.

Slowly, he drags his thumb across my lips, and a raging fire awakens in the pit of my stomach. “You’ve been watching me, and I’ve been watching you,” he states calmly. “And when a woman watches me for as long as you have, I consider giving them what they want.”

I have a million questions at the back of my mind, but the one I ask is, “You think I want something from you?”

He nods and moves his lips to my ear. His jacket brushes my chest as he speaks. “I know you’ve thought about fucking me.”

So blunt and forward. And sadly true.

I should be repulsed by his vulgarity, irritated that he’d assume I’m like all the other thousands of women who would willingly offer their bodies to him.

But my body betrays me. All I feel is an irrational need, a yearning I can’t explain. Warmth floods between my thighs and my heart rate triples erratically.

I take a step back. At least, I try to. He thwarts my plan by slipping his hand around my waist to trap me.

I meet his gaze and let out a shaky breath. “I really should get back to work.”

“You work for me, Audrey.”

And that’s my undoing—hearing my name from his lips.

“I don’t want anything from you,” I manage to say, though it comes out as a whisper.

“Not even a kiss?”

My eyes widen. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fantasized about what it would feel like to kiss him.

Would there be fireworks? Explosions? Butterflies?

“No.” I shake my head. “I want nothing from you.”

He chuckles, a deep, velvety sound that travels all the way to my toes. “How about we try one time, and if you still don’t want it, I’ll walk away and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

Before I can muster a response, Igor dives in and captures my lips with his.

My eyelids flutter shut.