Page 77 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

“You.” My voice doesn't shake now. “All of you. Slowly.”

A muscle jumps in his jaw. He walks me backward slowly and I go without resistance, which is itself a thing I would not have done in Dubai, would not have done three months ago.

I let him have this because I trust the person moving me there. His forehead drops to mine and we breathe in the same air for a moment.

The distance closes between us; he reaches for the hem of my shirt, lifting it with a gentleness that makes my eyes sting. His knuckles graze my stomach as the fabric rises. My arms go up. The sweater falls to the floor.

“You're so beautiful,” he says earnestly as his eyes shine. He says it like a fact—like gravity, like sunrise—and his eyes trace the curve of my shoulders, the swell of my breasts above my bra, the bronze expanse of my skin.

My fingers find the buttons of his shirt. One by one, I work them open, revealing the ink that covers his chest—the sprawling black that tells his story in images instead of words. When I push the fabric off his shoulders, it joins my shirt on the floor.

“You're shaking,” I whisper.

“So are you.”

We are. Both of us, trembling like teenagers, like we haven't done this before, like the weeks of fear and planning have stripped away everything but this raw, aching need to be close.

He unclasps my bra. The straps slide down my arms. His breath catches audibly when I'm bare to him, and he lowers his head topress his mouth to the hollow of my throat, right where my pulse beats wild and visible.

“I love you,” he says against my skin. “I love you so much it terrifies me.”

The confession hits like a wave, warm and overwhelming. My hands come up to cradle his head, fingers threading through that dark, messy hair.

“I love you too.” My voice breaks on the last word. “Mikhail, I—”

He lifts his head and kisses me quiet. His hands move down my sides, over the flare of my hips, and he walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the bed.

We sink down together.

Achingly slow, he removes the rest of my clothes like unwrapping something precious, and each inch of skin he reveals, he worships with his mouth—the curve of my belly, the soft flesh of my thighs, the sensitive hollow behind my knee. I'm not just naked beneath him.

I'm laid bare, opened, seen.

Mikhail's weight pins me to the mattress, his hips nestled between my thighs, solid as an anchor. His dark hair falls messily across his forehead, and I reach up to push it back, letting my fingers trail down to the ink that crawls up his throat.

Thorny and intricate vines, wrapping around the column of his neck like something that could choke him but chose not to.

“You're staring,” he murmurs, voice low and rough as gravel.

“I'm memorizing.”

His mouth quirks—that almost-smile that never quite reaches his eyes but settles somewhere deeper. “You've had months to memorize me, Zara.”

“Not enough time.” My thumb traces a thorn. “Never enough.”

Something shifts in his expression. The danger that lives in the sharp planes of his jaw, in the lean muscle that cords his shoulders—it softens. Just for me. Just for this breath of time where the world outside doesn't exist.

His lips find my forehead, creeping to my temple, then the bridge of my nose.

Each kiss is deliberate, worshipping.

“I want to taste you,” he says against my cheekbone, and the words are a demand wrapped in velvet.

My breath catches. “Yes.”

He pulls back just enough to look at me, my bronze skin against the pale canvas of his chest, where more ink sprawls across his pectorals, down his ribs.

“You're sure?”