Page 22 of Kept By the Bratva
“Please, Nik. Let me go.”
I’d fucking tried. I did my best to stop thinking about her all this time apart. I’d forced myself to give up the idea of her and end this curse of missing her.
But I’d failed.
I shook my head, tugging on her hand until she stumbled in her steps, almost crashing into me.
“I can’t,” I whispered, lowering my face toward hers.
She blinked, furrowing her brow as she marked the difference in my tone. I was telling the truth. I couldn’t let her go.
Not when I wanted her with every fiber of my being.
“I can’t stand the thought of ever letting you go,” I whispered as I dragged my thumb along her plump lower lip.
Her breath hitched. She parted her lips, gazing up at me with a swift surge of desire I swore I could feel vibrating from her body.
I had yet to explain it to myself or own up to anyone else. I didn’t know how to explain how badly I wanted to keep her in my life, as my one woman forever.
Her doe-like eyes disarmed me as we stood here suspended in the calm quiet of privacy. Staring right back at her, I let this simmering fire of unbridled awareness rekindle, and I wondered if I could resist her ever again—no matter the unlikeliest circumstances that could bring us back to each other’s path.
10
AMY
Nik.
Not Nate.
Somehow, the name suited him. It flowed through my mind as I looked at him, searching him for any other sign of a lie.
He’d already lied so damn much. What his name was. His features. And who he was.
No. That’s on me.
That night we met, we knew it was a fling. It was a hookup with a random stranger, but we’d done the basics. I told him that I was Amy Simmons, a twenty-three-year-old vet tech. He’d told me that he was Nate John, a thirty-seven-year-old who worked for his family’s business.
Maybe that was true. That those soldiers and thugs he’d stormed into that place with were all criminals in a family-oriented business.
Right now, as I gazed into his light-blue eyes, so soft with genuineaffection, those details ceased to matter. Those labels and descriptions fluttered away.
In the aftermath of this hellish night, the worst experiences of my lifetime, I could only feel and see his face as he took me in like I was the world’s rarest treasure.
His hand was firm and warm under mine, and as he slowly and gently tugged me toward him, I crumbled.
I’d been craving him. All those weeks, I’d missed him so badly. He’d tormented my thoughts from the moment I woke to when I fell asleep, and even then, he was in my dreams, too.
It made no sense, how one man could make my body sing with so much pleasure that I’d be addicted to the idea of more with him.
A deep sigh shuddered out of me as I shook my head. I should hate him. I should be running and fighting my hardest to escape, but that look arrested me.
Because it suggested that he felt the same.
“Amy.” He whispered my name like it was a benediction, like hestillstruggled to believe I was here and within reach.
It seemed like a glorious miracle at the same time I wondered if it was a damning nightmare.
Hours ago, I’d foolishly clung to the faint hope that I could ever have a man like him to lean on. I couldn’t know if hehadrescued me from those men, but he’d gotten me out of there. He’d chosen to single-handedly remove me from captivity, and that longing returned full-force.