Page 68 of Trapped By the Bratva
“Then don’t.” She shrugged and glanced at me. The look of resignation and sorrow on her face cut at my soul.
“What?” I lowered my arm.
“Then don’t think about me, Dmitri. I’ll leave.”
The fuck you will.Right when I’m thinking about a future with her, she’ll dare to say she’d go? Fuck that. Not on my watch.
“This isn’t the place for me.”
How was it not? How could she not see how well she fit at my side, with me?
“And this isn’t the kind of life I think I’m meant to have. Being with the Bratva.” She lowered her face, frowning at the ground.
I watched her inhale deeply and wondered what could have made her distance so far from the almost clingy mannerisms she’d shown earlier.
“You don’t need me.”
I growled, stepping closer to grip her chin and force her to make eye contact.
“I do.” I’d realized it, even if I loathed to admit it. “I do need you.” I lowered to press my lips to hers but thought twice. She had to hear these words from me. I wanted to leave no room for any misinterpretation. “I can’t imagine not having you close, Darling.”
Her breath hitched as she lifted her vulnerable gaze to me. I drowned in the brown depths of her eyes, mesmerized just like I was every time she looked directly at me and enraptured me.
“And I’ll be damned if you let me go.”
She sighed, wrenching out of my hold even though it seemed to pain her to do so. “You need me to help you with your rehab therapy.”
I chased after her as she moved toward the door. “Hannah?—”
“But you don’twantme. Right?” She furrowed her brow. “Right?”
“I want you so bad it makes me insane.”
“You don’t want me as much as you want to kill that man, though.” She raised her brows, staring at me expectantly like she was waiting for me to deny it. “Right?That’syour goal. To seek revenge. Not to start a real relationship with me.”
I licked my lips, unable to argue with her on that point. She spoke the bald truth, and I wouldn’t give her the impression that anything else could be possible.
“Right?” she echoed. “You might want me for a quick fling, here and now. But I don’t matter in any other way. I’m just a way to pass time before you can take off and do what you really want.”
Clamping my lips shut tight, I stared her down. “I need closure.”
She swallowed. Her throat tensed with the forceful motion, and she reached for the door. “That’s what I thought.”
Then she let herself out, leaving me frustrated and stunned.
She hadneverwalked out during a therapy session like that. Never. No matter how much we shouted and argued. Regardless of how badly I pushed her and pissed her off, she stuck through it.
Until now.
Why? Because this is a matter of the heart?
I hadn’t considered how deeply she might be feeling for me. But I did for the next two hours. As I worked through my routine of strengthening exercises, I debated and analyzed the possibilityof Hannah developing real and sincere feelings for me. Whether she could be falling for me.
She had to be experiencing something deeper and more meaningful than a quick fuck. This couldn’t be a fling for her. If it was, she wouldn’t be so hung up on how I decided what I wanted.
While it almost seemed like she was forcing me to pick between starting a new beginning with her versus preparing to go backward and deal with my past, I didn’t think that she was trying to do so in any sense of manipulation. It seemed more like she was hurt, wounded even, with the thought that she might not matter in my life.
Sleep was impossible. After a long, hot shower, I tried to relax, but my mind was simply running too fast, all on thoughts of her. She vexed me. She pushed me to aggravation, but I didn’t begrudge her.
