Grasping For Air (Adair Empire Book 6) Read online

  “Hey, D,” I say as the other man unlocks the hotel room door, and Danika enters the room without a word. Shoulders slumped and eyes downcast.

  “What?” I know he’s frustrated.

  “She’s hurting, too, you know.” Stating the obvious only makes him roll his eyes at me. “I mean, she lost you and then me in a span of a few minutes. With no one to lean on and no one to assure her I was all right afterwards, I’m betting she’s torn to pieces.” I watch Dimitri’s reaction as he realizes what I’m saying, and the tempest forms like funnel clouds within a tornado.

  “This is my fault?” he growls. “That she’s acting like a petulant child. I don’t fucking think so, Danny-boy.” His voice says one thing while his eyes project another. He knows he has damage control to complete, he just doesn’t want to admit it.

  “Not saying that, D. But she’s hiding something, and you barking and snarling at her all the time isn’t helping. You’re not letting her open up to us. You shut her down before she can form a fucking thought.”

  He opens his mouth to deny it, but I level him with a hard glare, and he shuts it again. “Fuck,” he mutters under his breath and turns to walk into the room.

  These two are going to have a blowout of epic fucking proportions soon, and I’m going to be the one left picking up the pieces. Whether either of them survives or not remains to be seen.

  Following behind Dimitri, the tension is sharp enough to cut with a knife. Danika sits on the bed by the window, staring out into the night while Dimitri sits on the couch glaring at her back.

  Like it or not, both their thoughts are clear as fucking day. He wants her to tell him she needs him, and she needs us to show her that we’re here and not going anywhere. She craves the stability a promise would give her.

  Ignoring the two of them, I head to the bathroom for a shower and some space. I fucking love Dimitri, have for a long damn time, but he’s slowly killing me inside as well. He’s pushing us both away, and I sometimes wonder if I—we—will be enough for him to open up to.

  Never in my life have I been as unsure about where I stand, where I’m going, than I have in the past year. Here I am with two people who have the potential to ruin me in ways no one has ever gotten close enough to. I both love and hate it.

  Shaking out my shoulders, I try and wash away the uncertainty of the future. The heat from the water beats down on my body as I close my eyes and press my hands to the wall, hanging my head between my arms. I let everything—all the pain, the questions—wash away with the water. Seeing it swirl in the drain, I imagine that tornado that Dimitri and Danika remind me of, and I’m tense all over again.

  “Fuck this shit,” I curse, shutting the water off and preparing to go head to head with the both of them. I’m not living like this. I’m not going to let either of them ruin something that could be life-changing.

  Wrapping the towel around my waist, I don’t bother to do much else as I slam through the door, hearing the crunch of plaster as the doorknob crashes through the wall.

  Danika jumps as I startle her.

  Dimitri turns his glare on me.

  Heated stares watch me as I move towards the woman on the bed. Droplets of water following me as I go.

  Reaching a hand out to her chin, I lift Danika’s gaze up to meet mine. “No more secrets,” I grit out. “No more lies.” I lower my head to her mouth as I push her body back on the mattress, mindful of her injuries. “You hear me, mi amour?”

  “Yes,” she says barely above a whisper. “He hates me.” Her words come out in puffs of air against my lips, and I can’t stop the growl that leaves me.

  “He doesn’t.” I try to reassure.

  “You died on me.” Tears pool in her hurt gaze, and I fight back the self-loathing even though I couldn’t have prevented any of what happened.

  “But I’m here, Danika.” And I’ll never fucking leave her again.

  “For how long, though?” Her vulnerability shines in her eyes, her words, the way she’s afraid to touch me.

  “Until you make us leave,” Dimitri says, coming up to lay beside us. Her stare slides to him, not quite trusting his words. “I’m a dick, Nika, it’s who I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to your pain or heartache.” Her lids close, and she holds her breath as he speaks. “I lost him, too. Long before you ever had him.” Fuck. “Believe me when I say, I grieved fucking hard. I’ve been selfish where Danny-boy is concerned, and I’m fucking sorry I pushed you out. That I made you leave and didn’t recognize your desire to help us.”

  “I came here to die,” she confesses with a hitch to her voice.

  What the…

  Dimitri

  …Fuck.

  To die?

  Her.

  No. Hell fucking no.

  “What do you mean you came here to die, Danika?” I couldn’t harness my anger if I damn well tried. I’m fucking pissed.

  “I knew what would happen by coming to Russia.” She inhales a deep breath, her chest touching Daniel’s wet skin, and her shirt comes away damp. As sexy as I find it, I have to focus on her words. “I’m not nearly as sheltered as Viktor thinks I am. I see and hear things around his estate all the time. It’s hard not to.”

  “Mi amore.” Daniel’s voice is hoarse.

  “I’m sorry.” She looks up to him, tears still falling freely.

  Blowing out a breath, I roll on to my back, throwing one arm over my eyes as I let out a harsh laugh. All of this could have been prevented if I’d just fucking allowed her to stay. If I’d called her when Daniel woke up.

  He was right, this was my fucking fault.

  Which means I need to be the one to fucking fix us. Stabilize our footing.

  “Danny-boy, call King, let him know what’s happening, and that we won’t be coming home just yet.” A plan begins to form in my mind.

  Thomas is gone.

  The Haggens will hopefully be too busy with whatever Vashchenko has done in Russia to give two fucks about us.

  I’m going to repair whatever we have left. Salvage the feelings that flow through me anytime these two are within my vicinity. I may be a cold bastard, but I ain’t fucking dumb. I know what we have is different, and people will judge, but I dare them to say one wrong thing. Just one and I’ll have them eating the barrel of my pistol.

  Nika and Danny-boy are mine and no longer will I let either of them have a sliver of doubt as to where I stand with my feelings towards them.

  I can hear Daniel on the phone with King as he explains what we didn’t have time to tell him upon landing in Russia and everything after. Danika, however, is silent and still. Two things I don’t like when it comes to her. I love when she argues with me. Butting heads with her kept me going when I was waiting for Daniel to wake up.

  “Come here,” I mumble, reaching an arm out for her. She’s hesitant at first, so I pull her into my chest gently. Her splintered fingers rest across my belly as she lays tensely alongside me. “Relax, Nika.” I try to soothe her, and I know I fail when she only shifts around.

  While Daniel talks to King, I try a different tactic. Telling her about me, my childhood, who I am and other things she doesn’t already know.

  “I grew up with everything,” I begin. “Great parents, good neighborhood, a dorky brother who looked up to me.” Snorting, I feel her withdrawing further, but I continue on. “We even had the white fucking picket fence. We had…everything.” I pause, not because I’m being dramatic, but because I’ve pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind for so long, I’m not sure how to process the feelings assaulting me. “Until we didn’t.”

  I close my eyes, Danika shifts to look up at me. Daniel ends his call. “What happened?” comes her soft voice, filled with the pain she suspects I’m about to reveal.

  “My brother was an oops kid, but we loved Andrei. He was eight years younger than me. Eager to learn anything I had to teach him.” Smiling, I remember how much fun we had playing baseball. Drei would swing at every ball I tos
sed his way and couldn’t care less that he only connected three in ten balls. “When I went away to college, Dad lost his job, Mom became depressed. And Drei tried to hold them together. He was a good kid.” I say the last for my benefit more than theirs.

  “He sounds like it,” Danika murmurs.

  “I don’t know what happened.” I have to fight to remain where I am. All I want to do is pace around the room, run away from everything I’m feeling. All the suffering after it happened, I want it fucking gone. “I don’t understand how it happened, mostly.”

  “Tell us,” Danny-boy encourages from my other side, and I roll my head to meet his stare. He knows. Fuck does he already know.

  “Dad started drinking, became abusive towards Mom. Andrei didn’t like that. Scrawny little shit tried to fight back.” My eyes sting from holding my own tears at bay while I feel Danika’s on my chest. She knows, too. “Dad shoved him a little too hard and knocked his head off the fireplace. Killed him before anyone realized what had happened.” I can still picture the scene that day. The pain and suffering. The anguish that consumed me. The blood. So much fucking blood.

  “Mom went crazy. Andrei was her baby, you know? He was the “sweet soul” she used to say. I was jaded. I saw the world for what it was, and maybe that’s why she thought I’d do okay on my own. Maybe she thought I could make it.”

  “What did she do, Dimitri?” Danika’s fingers tighten on my shirt as she speaks.

  “She killed him. Stabbed him twelve times. Her anger outweighed her fear that day, and she took the family down with her.” Tossing my arm over my face to hide my tears, I explain the rest. “I came home—a surprise visit—to find them.”

  “Gesù Cristo,” Daniel utters.

  “Mom’s body was lying over Andrei, bullet to the head.”

  “How did no one hear the shot?” Danika asks curiously.

  “We lived in a working-class neighborhood. It was the middle of the day, and there were no stay-at-home moms, no little old grannies keeping watch. It just…was.” Everyone in the community was shocked when they learned what happened. How it happened. Guilt shuffled through the street like wildfire.

  “I started training at Quantico that fall. One year on my own, and I lost everything. I wanted to prevent it from happening to others, even if it wasn’t some rampageous murderer, they could have been saved.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Dimitri.” Danny-boy’s voice is full of anger. He doesn’t get that I could have stopped it. I could have stayed home, gotten a job, helped with the house expenses. I was selfish. I left. Kept doing what was best for me, even though I knew they were struggling.

  “He’s right. Circumstances are to blame. You couldn’t have prevented that. You would have been part of it if you had tried.” Danika’s words spin off into hiccups as she cries for a life she had no idea about.

  “If I’d gone down with them, I wouldn’t be the fucked-up man I am today. I wouldn’t have watched as McCray sold kids, as he nearly killed Ariel so many times.” I’ll never be able to forgive myself for the hell that girl went through.

  “Fuck!” Daniel’s curse speaks volumes to me. He played his own part in hurting that girl. It may not have been nearly as large as mine, but his fists touched her, and I know he carries it with him still.

  “What?” Nika’s voice breaks the silence, obviously catching on to the tension emitting from us at the mention of Luther’s girl.

  I keep forgetting she hasn’t met the girls yet, just Meadow. “Ariel is Luther’s girl. She went through a special kind of hell. Neither of us helped with her will to live.” I try to explain as best I can.

  7

  Daniel

  I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. Move forward. Be together. None of it. We’re all so fucked up, not a single one of us can see past our own inabilities.

  I’m sitting on the deck of our hotel room while Dimitri and Danika sleep a little more, waiting on a call from King. Lilith and baby Holden are holding their own at home, and I know bossman is trying not to show his stress.

  His fear.

  Before this mess, I was Lilith’s guard. Her confidant. So often she told me her own anxieties and misgivings about bringing a baby into our world. Raising a child in our life isn’t going to be easy.

  The phone vibrating beside me is loud in the early morning light as I notice it’s not King’s name flashing, but Lil’s.

  “Little dove, how are you?” She claims to hate the nickname Carver gave her, but she always giggles.

  “I’m perfect, Daniel. Holden’s perfect.” Her happiness radiates over the line.

  “And King?” I try my best to stifle my own laughter when she growls.

  “King is overbearing, hard-headed, annoying, and such a perfect father.” She pauses a moment before continuing. “Talk to me, Daniel. You were barely home for a minute before you went jaunting halfway across the world. How are you?”

  Confused. Weak. Desperate.

  But I don’t tell her those things. Even if she likely knows. She and I have a special kind of bond because of our roles. We have a trust with each other that is unshakeable.

  “Tell me about her, Daniel.” Right to the heart of the matter.

  “She’s hurting.”

  “So hold her.”

  “I think I love her.”

  “Then tell her.”

  “What if I’m not enough?” Guess I’m confessing anyways. Fuck.

  “Then she doesn’t deserve you. Or Dimitri. The two of you are a packaged deal. We all know it, Daniel. You guys think you’ve hidden your feelings and desires so well, but us girls? We’ve seen it, all of it. I want you happy, Danny-boy. If she makes you happy, then you’re more than enough.”

  I almost hate how often she’s right.

  “Thanks, Lil.”

  “You’re like a brother, Daniel. If she hurts you, I’ll break her neck.” I laugh at that because even though she’s likely kidding and trying to give me the boost I need, I know how serious she can be. There’s been more than once over the past year that she has ordered a death. It’s not usually because someone broke a heart, though. Generally, it’s because the system failed a victim, and someone needed to meet their maker.

  “Don’t let them push you away, Daniel, not ever.”

  “I won’t, Lil.”

  “Good. King and Luther are here, they’d like to talk to you.”

  That’s never good.

  “Danny-boy?” Luth gets a kick out of calling me that for some damn reason.

  “I’m here, boss.”

  “Viktor is getting pissed about his sister not being home. Care to explain?” King asks, his tone authoritative rather than inquisitive.

  “Executive decision, bossman. She’s gotta heal before we take the long flight. We also need to know there’s not going to be any flack when we depart or land. Once that’s guaranteed, we’ll be home.”

  “No, we won’t.” I spin hearing Dimitri’s voice behind me. Clad in only his briefs, the man is packed with muscles and tattoos. Not an ounce of fat has touched his flesh. I lick my lips when I see his cock react to my perusal.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” King yells in my ear, so I put it on speakerphone and motion for D to close the patio door, so we don’t wake up Danika.

  “It means, we’re taking her back to my cabin, and we’ll be in touch. Tell Viktor to calm his tits and find some pussy to lose himself in.” Dimitri smirks when Luther and King simultaneously curse.

  “That’s not why we sent you, Dimitri,” Luther hisses between what I imagine are clenched teeth.

  “Things changed, and that’s what’s happening. Deal with it.” He hits the end call button and tosses the phone in the corner before either can respond.

  “They’re gonna be pissed,” I groan as he leans down to me, his hard cock brushing against my forearm.

  Running his nose up my neck, Dimitri bites down, leaving a mark, and I feel my own dick beginning to twitch in res
ponse. Fuck do I want this man.

  “I need something from you, Danny-boy.”

  “What?” My voice is breathless as his mouth crashes down on mine.

  “Your mouth wrapped around my dick.” He pulls my hand over his hardness to show me just what he wants.

  My mouth waters.

  Dimitri

  When I woke up with Danny-boy missing from bed, the worst-case scenario entered my mind. He left. When I heard the whispered words from the patio, I got curious.

  Listening to him talk to Lilith, witnessing the softer side of him shouldn’t have shocked me as much as it had. They’ve always been close. Before I showed up and even after. They reminded me of siblings.

  When King started mentioning Viktor, I wanted to choke the man. I don’t care if it’s Nika’s brother or not, the Russian brute needs to back the fuck off. I told him that when I spoke to him before we left Russia for London. He’s clearly not getting it through his head that she has us now. That we’ll always be here for her.

  After tossing the phone away and telling Daniel what I want, I wasn’t surprised to see his pupils dilate. His breathing picked up and his shorts tented with his own need. My fingers itch to delve into his hair and force his mouth around my cock. I want to feel the warmth, the gentle glide of his tongue. To feel him swallow around the head and drown in my cum as I explode in his throat.

  “On your knees, Danny-boy.” I can’t fucking contain myself. I fist his hair as he drops down in front of me, his chest bare. A sprinkle of hair dusts his pecks, leading down in a thinner line to his own bulge. “You want this, D?”

  He licks his lips again before answering me. “Yeah.” His voice is husky as he leisurely works my briefs down my legs. It’s fucking torture. The cool breeze brushing across my heated flesh is goddamn agony as I wait to feel his mouth. I close my eyes and let my head roll back on my shoulders as he slowly moves forward, his breathing harsh against my sensitive ridges.

  “Fuck,” I hiss. “Danny-boy.” His name leaves my lips like a damn prayer, and I haven’t prayed since I was a boy.