A Million Different Ways to Lose You (Horn Duet 2)

Sebastian moaned. His arms overhead, he stretched his back from side to side. “Do you have any fucking idea how many beds we own? Or for that matter, how many king size mattresses? But here we are, squeezed into this shitty double bed.”

I couldn’t help but snicker. I’d made the decision to move back home today, a surprise he would get later. Throwing the covers off, I mumbled, “Somewhere there’s a triple shot cappuccino with my name on it.”

“I’ve got something right here with your name on it.” He drawled then took my hand and pressed it against the erection bursting out of his boxer briefs. I poked him as I got out of bed because, as usual, he was making me late for my shift at the clinic.

“Ouch––that hurt, Dr. Mengala,” he said, rubbing the side of his gorgeous chest. In the three weeks since I’d left the apartment he had already gained back most of the weight he’d lost.

“You’re such a baby,” I replied over my shoulder, and hurried to put on my underthings. He leapt out of bed and wrapped his arms around me from behind, enveloping me in heat and a hundred proof testosterone. He rocked his hips into me, and I almost rethought my decision.

“It’s your fault I’m soft and sensitive there, woman,” he drawled seductively in my ear. I rolled my eyes and elbowed him there again for his corny reference to Adam’s rib.

“You better go take a cold shower because I’m late as it is.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, after which I got a hard slap on the ass and watched him squeeze every naked inch of his six three frame into my tiny shower.

“How the fuck does Yannick shower in this thing?” I was certain it was a rhetorical question. Then, more muttered insults directed at the poor shower.

My resolve had been fading since the day I’d moved back to the studio apartment. I never wanted to be apart from him ever again, plagued by a constant craving to feel him, hear him, touch him. Every night he came over, and every night we would spend hours talking and making love. Even my skeptical self had to admit that it felt like something had shifted within him…between us.

I’d read somewhere that a relationship cannot survive if either of the two people in it held anything back, that love was nourished by revealing yourself to the other. That intriguing piece of information stayed with me for a long time because I never really understood it.

For so long, we had both been trying to protect ourselves from the world at large that we had to learn how to trust all over again, how to let someone in…to reveal ourselves to one another. We had to almost lose everything to realize that the only thing worth protecting was the love we had for each other. Without it, nothing else mattered.

A bling alerted me to the text. I fished the IPhone out of my pocket quickly, expecting to see one from Sebastian. We were going to dinner and a movie that evening; I’d been looking forward to it all day. What I found instead turned the hot blood in my veins to ice.

It was a picture…a picture of a bloodied and bruised Emilia. Naked and lying on a dirty cement floor, her hands and feet were bound together with rope like an animal being prepared for a spit. An instant later I couldn’t see the picture any more. My hands were shaking so violently that my phone fell, landing in a soft pile of snow on the sidewalk. I dropped to my knees. My heart beating a mile a minute, I frantically dug in the snow until I finally found it.

That’s when a second text from an unknown number came in. The bling hit me in the gut. I was terrified to look.

6 pm. The train station. Platform 3. Alert the authorities or your husband and I’ll send her to you in small pieces.

The weight of the world came crashing down on me. I knew in my bones that whoever had her wasn’t bluffing. My first instinct was to call Sebastian, but I might as well have signed her death warrant, so instead, with great trepidation, I dialed Yuri’s number.

“I haven’t seen her in a week,” Yuri casually claimed. “The bitch probably ran off with that bartender she was always shaking her ass at. He hasn’t been to work either.”

“I swear to God, you deplorable piece of shit, if anything happens to her I will make it my life’s mission that you spend the next half of yours in jail!”

“I’m telling you I don’t know where she is.” After that, he promptly hung up on me.

Gathering all the sense I had left, I started to form a plan. In an hour, Sebastian would be showing up at the flat for our date––on time. He was always on time. Loaded down with the groceries I had just purchased at the market, I began to sprint home. Slipping and sliding in the snow, like a pinball I slammed into people crowding the sidewalk and still, I kept running…because nothing was going to prevent me from being on platform three in an hour.