Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva #4)(41)

He held her until she finally passed out, too exhausted to do anything more. Luka didn’t move an inch, too afraid of jostling her and waking her up. After being up for nearly twenty-four hours, she needed the sleep. Stroking her back, he wished he could take every bad memory from her and take it on himself.

Pain and misery usually excited him, inspired him to break someone further, but never with her. He didn’t think he wanted to see anyone smile as much as he wanted it for her.

He’d been content before, keeping his desires in check, letting her be free of what he wanted, but something turned on in him. Or it might have already been on and he was just now tired of fighting it.

It wasn’t like she was the only constant in his life over the years working within the Volkov Bratva. But he couldn’t think of anyone who made his heart beat the way she did, nor how she made him feel like he was more than his past.

Luka would give anything to bring her back to life.





19

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Just A Little More





She grew weaker by the hour, and soon, she could do no more than lay there shivering. Despite sweating bullets, she felt colder than she ever had in her entire life.

She wasn’t even able to muster the energy to turn over when she felt the bed dip beside her, still waiting for the throbbing in her stomach to stop.

When his hand landed on her shoulder, she winced. Even that small contact was painful.

“You gotta drink something, Alex,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

She shook her head, not wanting to risk moving any further in case the skull-splitting headache she’d been suffering through only got worse. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt this much pain, not even when she had been dancing nonstop for three days.

But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Carefully shifting her, not that it was hard since she barely had the energy to put up a fight, he supported her head as he gingerly pressed the bottle to her lips, tipping it up just far enough that a light stream of liquid fell into her mouth.

She swallowed as much as she could, but it only made her feel worse, so when he tried to give her more, she turned away.

“Just a little more,” he said softly.

But she had already fallen under.

____

Her body wracked with chills, it didn’t matter what she did, she couldn’t fight the chill that had consumed her. Now that she wasn’t trying to fight Luka to escape the room—no matter how badly that urge ate at her with every passing minute—Alex was laying on the bed, facing away from him, listening to the rain patter against the window.

It could be worse, her prison. Every day—at least this was what she thought he did—Luka left the room, attended to Loki, and brought back food, enough to last them the day. Only once had she woken up and he wasn’t in the room, but when she had tried the door, it was locked, which was surprising since she hadn’t noticed a deadbolt on the outside of the door, though it wasn’t like she was conscious coming in here.

Luka was on the other side of the room, shirt off, his back against the wall, an unopened bottle of Gatorade next to him. A number of empty ones littered the floor, the only thing he seemed to drink besides water. In the time they had been inside that room, he had been forcing them on her as well, though she had never really taken a liking to the energy drink before now.

She didn’t have to look at him to know that he was watching her. He had been doing it enough for her to practically feel his gaze.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Alex tried to ignore the pain in her gut, the way her hands shook uncontrollably, no matter if she balled them into fists, and the sweat that practically covered every inch of her. It didn’t matter that the heat was on and she was buried under a mound of covers, nothing helped.

She ground her teeth, trying to stop their chattering, but with the silence of the room, there wasn’t much she could do to help it.

The old wood creaked as Luka got to his feet, and she briefly wondered if he’d had enough, but instead, he came closer, crawling onto the bed, the covers briefly lifting as he slipped beneath.

His arm came over immediately, snaking around her waist, pulling her back against his body. She probably smelled and was undoubtedly gross, but there was no fight left in her.

Her eyes watered, her emotions out of whack as she tried not to read too much into what he was doing, but it was hard.

“Want to hear a story?” he asked, his voice lacking any emotion.

Not sure where he was going with this, she nodded anyway.

“I knew a guy once, some thought he was a sociopath, but no one knew him the way I did. I even thought that eventually, somebody was gonna have to put a bullet in his head once he was too far gone. One day, he met a girl—nice enough with pretty eyes—but he wasn’t good for her. He broke everything he touched, you see—I’d watched him do it. Fuck, I tried warning him to leave her alone, but he couldn’t. He was just glad that he had met someone who was kind to him, even if she had been forced to be around him.”

Luka shifted, pulling her in tighter though there was hardly any space left between them. Alex didn’t complain.

“I could have tried harder to make him see reason, just so he could understand what he was doing and how it wouldn’t just affect him, but the girl as well. Two broken people like that? They were practically perfect for each other, but I think…I think a part of him knew that it would never work because of the power difference between them. Even when she confessed her love to him, he didn’t believe her. He knew it wasn’t real for her, even if it was real for him.