Page 195 of Dark King Daddy

I wanted to be furious with him. I wanted to tell him he had no right to decide I could live through losing him. But I had seen the gun pointed at him and thrown myself at a steel door. I hadn’t stopped to think what might happen to me, either.

“I couldn’t let him shoot you,” I whispered.

Daniil’s face changed. He pressed his forehead to mine.

“I know.”

We stayed like that until the car turned and I had to lean against him again.

“Your hand,” he said after a while. “Is the pressure too much?”

“I need you to keep holding it.”

“I will.”

I listened to his heart. It was beating hard beneath my ear.

I held his shirt tighter.

“I’ll never you let you go.”

Chapter 19

Daniil

Three months later.

My wife was standing on the kitchen table with a screwdriver.

“Before you say anything,” she said, “the power is off.”

I set down the coffees.

“Well. Good morning to you too.”

She wore my dark blue shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and nothing I could see beneath it. Her hair was pinned up badly. A loose strand kept falling into her eyes as she examined the light fitting above her head.

“It was buzzing again?”

“It’s a hum. Not a buzz.”

She pointed the screwdriver at me.

“Choose your next words carefully.”

I looked at her bare legs. At the tool. At the expression.

“You look beautiful.”

“Coward.”

“Maybe. But at least I’m still alive.”

She laughed, and I put a hand out. She set the screwdriver on the table, took my hand and stepped down onto the chair, then the floor. Her palm was warm against mine. The scar had faded to a pale line.

She caught me looking.

“Perfectly functional,” she said, and used that hand to steal my coffee.