“… and then showed Owen the reservation. Four people. “But we’re only two,” Owen said. “Yeah, but my ego needs more space than that.”

“I love you more than I can say, than I can even think and what you give me takes my breath away, but breathing is overrated when I can kiss you.”

“You really do love him, don’t you?” she said quietly.Vadim blinked, then looked to the side, without seeing colours and patterns, but it helped him find words. Speaking about love without cliché, without borrowing somebody else’s well-worn words that were too comfortable. "Dan changed me in ways that stripped away the man I wanted to be, and the man I was made to be, and the man I was expected to be. He skinned me alive, and left only…..somebody who….” He breathed but barely. “…can live and die now, like a human being, not an automation, not somebody else’s creation. Dan took my fear of death. I can’t die now. I know I’m immortal.”“Immortal?” she said quietly, sitting still. “Your soul? Your being?”“I don’t believe there’s anything like a soul. But I believe most people are asleep. They aren’t even aware what they are, or that they are alive. And we are all scared to die, so when it happens we scream for our mothers and clutch our guts because we’re scared. I’m not. I’m not afraid of death. The only thing I’m afraid of is losing Dan.” But if that happens, he thought, Dan might just keep the promise and kill him on the way out.”

“Aye, that’s me. Rough tough squaddie with the intellectual depth of a shallow baby bath and the educational background of a hedgerow. Complicated? Yeah, right.” Dan laughed.Vadim laughed, too. “Sorry, but that just about nails it.” He grew more serious and whispered. “But you also have the heart of a tiger and the vastness of a mountain.”

“More weapons hidden on his body than hallelujah-singing angels, dangling from a Christmas tree.”

“You’re with me,” Dan murmured against Vadim’s lips. “In my thoughts, my heart, my mind, no matter what I am doing. I goddamned need you, and I want you—always.”

“One touch from you...,” water coated his lips, gathered in thick drops on his dark lashes, “makes me feel more than a whole goddamned orgy.”