Page 96 of Deviant Need

“I’m in love with you too,” I say, the words spilling. “I’m such an idiot for not seeing it sooner, for being too scared to admit what I’ve known since we were kids. But it’s always been you, Danya. You’re the center of everything for me. The reason I keep trying even when I wanted to give up. You’re the only person who’s ever made me feel like I wasn’t completely broken.”

He presses his mouth to mine, kissing me hard and desperate. I kiss him back, pouring everything I can’t say into it, and he makes this sound against my lips that breaks me all over again.

When he pulls back, his face is still wet with tears. “Promise me you won’t do that again. Promise me.”

“I promise, Danya. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, his hands still on my face. “We need a plan. A real one. We need to get out from under him somehow. After the club event, we find a way to break free. I want to fucking murder him for what he did to you.”

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to do that. He has control over everything. Our money, our lives, all of it.”

“Me neither, but we can figure something out together. We have that meeting in a couple of days with the rest of the idiots. We could ask them for help. Alexei, Yulian, maybe even Lev. They hate him too, even if they won’t say it out loud.”

“Okay,” I manage to get out.

“My heart is still going a million miles per hour.” He shifts slightly to look at me, his hand coming down to rest over my chest where my heart is still racing too.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Don’t apologize. Just don’t leave me.” He pushes his lips to mine. “I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too, Danya.”

He presses his lips to mine again, soft and desperate, then moves to kiss my forehead, my cheeks, my jaw, leaving wet marks everywhere his mouth touches. My eyes close from exhaustion, from the weight of everything crashing down on me at once.

He wraps himself around me completely, his weight settling over me like a blanket.

“Mikhail, you promise, right? You won’t do that again?”

“Yeah,” I rasp out.

“I need to hear you say it again.”

“I promise.”

He nods and squeezes me so tight I can barely breathe, but I don’t want him to stop. We stay like this for what feels like hours. The sun starts going down, golden rays filling the ceiling and casting long shadows across the room.

Chapter 22

Daniil

My fingers trace over the veins in his hands, following the delicate lines up his wrist and forearm. My gaze drifts slowly up his chest to his neck, and my stomach twists. His entire neck is bruised and red, the marks dark and angry against his skin.

My eyes burn looking at it, tears start to spill as my hand trails slowly up toward the damage he inflicted on himself. He’s slept a lot since it happened, barely waking except to use the bathroom or take his pills. I’m glad for that. His body needs the rest, needs time to recover from what he tried to do.

Fuck.

Watching him like that, with the cord still around his neck, seeing how bad things got in his head that he thought that was his only way out, it broke something in me that I don’t think will ever be whole again. I wish he would have come to me. I wish he knew, really knew deep down, that I’m always here for him no matter what. There’s nothing he could say or do that would make me leave. If he’d already been dead when I found him, I would have followed immediately.

His hands suddenly come up and catch my fingers mid-motion, stopping my path toward his neck. He brings my hand to his mouth and presses a soft kiss to my knuckles, his lips warm against my skin, before his eyes finally open.

“Hey,” I whisper, and then I launch forward and bury myself against him.

His arms come up immediately and wrap around me, pulling me tight against him. He buries his face in my hair and breathes me in. “Hey.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m better today,” he whispers into my hair, his grip tightening on me. After a long moment, he releases me and reaches over to take a joint from the nightstand. He lights it, the flame flickering in the dim light.