Page 50 of Vital Signs

And if he needed to reclaim what had been stolen from him, maybe I could help with that.

Misha started to pull back slightly, his hand stilling against my chest. "Fuck, sorry for being so needy and philosophical. I get that way when I'm stoned."

"You're not needy. You're just human." I caught his wrist before he could retreat further. "Also, you're French. Being philosophical about everything is basically in your DNA."

I lifted my hand, hesitant at first, then settled it on his back, massaging gently.

Misha made a soft sound, almost purring. His whole body seemed to melt into my touch, tension draining away like water.

"That's good," he murmured against my chest. "Keep doing that."

So I did. My fingers mapped the lean muscle of his back, the sharp angles of his shoulder blades, the vulnerable curve of his neck. Each touch made him relax further into me, made his own movements gentler against my skin.

A distant sound made us both freeze. A car engine on the main road, headlights sweeping briefly through the trees before continuing on. Paranoia spiked through me for a moment. Wright's people? Police? Someone hunting for the van that had been at the clinic when alarms went off?

The car passed without slowing, but the reminder was there. We'd stolen Wright's secrets, declared war on him. By morning,he'd know what we'd done. And men like Wright didn't just call lawyers when their secrets got stolen.

But immediate threats weren't the only thing on a countdown timer.

"I need to score soon," I said, more to distract myself from that thought than anything else.

"How soon?" His hand stilled against my ribs.

"Few hours. Maybe less." I closed my eyes, counting the seconds until the next wave of need would hit. "Withdrawal's predictable. Starts slow, builds fast."

"And then?"

"Then I turn into something you don't want to be around."

Misha was quiet for a moment before saying, "What if you stayed?"

The question caught me off guard. "Stay where?"

"Here. With me." He sat up. "What if instead of running off to score, you stayed and let me help you through it?"

"You don't understand what withdrawal looks like. What I become."

"I understand suffering. I understand what it means to need something so badly it consumes everything else. Maybe I understand better than you think."

The offer tempted me more than it had any right to. The idea of not being alone through the worst of it. Of having someone who wouldn't judge the shaking, the sweating, the desperate bargaining my brain would do for chemical relief.

But withdrawal made me mean. Made me willing to hurt anyone, including people I cared about, if it meant ending the suffering faster.

And I was starting to care about Misha more than was safe for either of us.

"You might regret that offer," I said.

"Let me worry about my own regrets." His hand moved to my throat, fingers resting against my pulse. "Stay."

The single word hung between us like a challenge. Or a promise.

My heartbeat hammered against his fingers, time measured in pulse points and shared breath.

Outside the van, wind rattled through dead trees. Inside, Misha's fingers mapped the geography of my throat, learning the rhythm of my blood.

I'd been alone through every withdrawal for four years. Suffered through the shaking and sweating and desperate need in solitude, telling myself it was better that way. Safer. No one to hurt when the chemicals turned me into something unrecognizable.

But lying here with Misha's touch anchoring me to something other than need, I realized how tired I was of being alone.