Hunted By The Bratva Beast: A Bratva Stalker/Captive Romance by Jagger Cole (books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

a stop. Dimitri’s face turns gleeful, his eyes shining with a dark hunger. He racks his rifle and winks at me.

“Time to grow up, Kostya.”

“Go!” Fyodor roars from the front seat. “Go!”

Dimitri kicks the back of the van open and jumps out. I’m right behind him, my pulse thudding in my ears as we charge the front door. Dimitri is through first, but I’m half a second after. He starts shooting first, and when I turn, I stare at the way he’s laughing as he sprays the room with bullets.

Something catches the corner of my eye. I turn to see a man rushing me with a gun in his hand. But Dimitri was right: there’s no hesitation.

I lift my rifle, I stare him right in the eyes, and I pull the trigger. Just like that, my first kill.

After that, it’s actually easy. I turn, joining Dimitri as I start to fire into the rest of the men rushing us. But in seconds, it’s over. I’m still squeezing the trigger, even though I’m out of bullets. Dimitri is laughing as he claps me hard on the back and yells in triumph.

“Ay! Kostya!” He laughs, punching me in the arm. “You are a man now, my little brother. Not a boy anymore, da?”

I turn, numb as I nod quietly. “Da.”

“A man, Kostya. Now, you are a killer.”

Present:

I move like a shadow, crossing the rooftops like a wraith. It’s been like this ever since I started watching her, knowing she’s in danger. Knowing there’s a predator out there, hunting her.

The men her brother has watching her are a joke. Perhaps they’re trained Bratva killers, but I’ve snuck circles around them, for months. I’ve been close enough to some of them to kill with my bare hands, though I have not.

And so, it’s on me to watch her—to keep her safe, as she once kept me safe.

I never take the same route when going to keep watch over her apartment. I’m careful, I plan my moves four plays ahead. Tonight, I parked seven blocks away and took a fire escape up to the roof of another apartment building. From there, it was the roof of a grocery store, then a bank, then down into the mid-levels of a new construction project. From there, I used the angle of the construction crane to move to an office building. And from there, dropped to the roof opposite hers.

Danger is everywhere. The shadows hunting her could very well be hunting me. So I keep my senses tuned. I keep myself ready, for anything. These are the survival skills Fyodor drilled into me—day and night. And I honed them in the bleakness of prison.

When I finally stop, I look across the darkness towards the bright lights of her apartment. When I see her step into view, my mouth curls into a smile. Whatever hardships I’ve endured, whatever hell I’ve fought through—she’s worth it.

I look at my angel standing by the window, and the rest of it all fades. The cruelty of the world that failed me. The life that was taken from me. The ten long years in prison for two crimes—one I never committed, and the other I’d commit a million more times for her.

Across the way, Nina turns from the window. She walks slowly to her bedroom, and then the bathroom. When she steps back into her bedroom, from routine, I know she’s about to take a shower after her nightly session on the exercise bike.

But the lights in her bedroom stay on, and Nina walks towards the windows. I frown, curious. She reaches down and suddenly peels her tank top off. My jaw grinds as my eyes slide over her body, clad in the sports bra and bike shorts. She drops those, and I groan. The sports bra is next, and I growl when her utterly perfect tits are revealed to me.

She turns, and my pulse thuds as she bends at the waist. Her fingers slip into the thong panties she’s wearing, and she slowly peels them down. When she stands, she slowly turns—seductively, even. I can see her face blushing red, and her pink nipples hard as she slowly runs a hand over her hip.

She’s putting on a show.

Realizing it makes my cock throb and my desire for her skyrocket. Part of me wants to leap the divide between the building and crash through those windows to grab her. To pin her to the bed behind her and make her moan for me.

She knows she’s being watched. It’s the only explanation for the way she stormed through her apartment the other day with the gun, looking scared and wild. Somehow, she knows. And yet here she is, putting on a strip tease.

For me.

I groan, and my hand slips between my legs. I cup the bulging erection in my jeans and hiss. But when I look back up, I see Nina pause, and sigh slightly. She scans the night—not seeing me, of course. But perhaps looking for me. Then she turns and steps into the bathroom, and she’s gone from my view.

I scowl and sink back down onto the roof. My phone buzzes, and I angrily whip it out to answer it.

“What.”

The man laughs. “And a good evening to you too, sunshine.”

I frown. It’s Erik. It took some hard hunting to find a man like him in this city, but I did. He’s ex-military, and a bit of a gun nut. But he’s good at what he does—very, very good. That and he knows every other gun nut, arms dealer, and collector in the city. For the information I needed to know, there was no one but him.

“Do you have something for me?”

“Nah, brother. I just called to soak in that charming personality and those witty conversational skills.”

I scowl into the darkness. Erik sighs.

“Yeah, I’ve got something for you. I think I traced a lead on those pieces you gave me to take a look at.”

I freeze. “You think?”

“Nothing in this world is