Papa lifted me then, wrapping his arms around me the way I liked. My thighs locked tight around his waist, and I wondered if I could just stay like this. For hours.Days.
“This is what’s got you so worked up this morning?”
“Toby washurt, probably traumatized, and I’ve… I’ve barely spoken to him because I don’t know how to be his best friend while celebrating his trauma.”
My voice was hushed, barely a hint of a whisper, but I knew the moment it touched his ears because he flinched.
“You were shot so Toby could be taken, and what the hell kind of friend does it make me to wish he would’ve been taken sooner?”
A very familiar, very putrid taste filled my mouth, and I swallowed it down with a choked breath.
“Solnyshko—”
“Loving you has made me feral. Cruel. Insane enough that I want to tear your scar off your body, yet I’m happy that it’s there. I’mhappyyou got shot, and if I would’ve known it was a bullet that would force us together, I would’ve picked up a gun and shot you myself.”
He took in my confession with a sharp breath and eyes burning the lightest shade of blue. It seemed impossible—his beauty. Born into pain and raised by violence, the wounds he carried and the blood he wore should’ve left him shattered and grotesque… but they only made him more alluring.
“You think that makes you cruel, Solnyshko? To need me so much you’d press the barrel of a gun to my skin and pull the trigger without so much as a blink?” His forehead touched mine. “If a bullet was what you needed, I would’ve fucking shot myself.”
God.
It was fucked… but it waseverythingmy heart wanted.
“Say you promise,” I begged.
“I promise, baby. I do.” The pressure on my throat increased.
“I can’t remember what my skin felt like before you touched it, and if it’s a bullet I have to thank, then I’ll wear the damn thing around my neck.”
My intensity touched every pocket of warm air that surrounded us, but he didn’t look overcome by the strength. His chest grew, and his nostrils flared as if he was breathing it all in.
“That doesn’t make you cruel.”
“It makes me crazy. Insane.”
“Baby, I see your lips moving, but all I’m hearing is bullshit. If you’re insane, then I’m a goddamn threat to humanity and should be locked up beside my father.”
Fuck that guy.
I hope he gets shanked next to a urinal.
“I’m not well-versed in being inspiring, but there was something babushka used to say about good things coming from bad situations. That’s you and I. Pain lit love, and we’ve been running wild ever since.”
My heartbeat quickened, as if it was running just as wild as Ivan claimed it to be, and maybe that’s what he and I were from the start.
A wild heart.
“You were conditioned,manipulatedinto recognizing guilt before any other emotion. That shit is poison, baby, and I can’t fucking stand what it’s done to you. If I could tear all that shit out of your body and put it in mine instead, I would.”
“What if it breaks you?”
“For you, Solnyshko? I’ll live in pieces.”
Oh.
He consumed me.
Every breath I released, he kept for himself, and I burned for the way he protected me.
