The Player (The Game Maker #3) - Kresley Cole Page 0,82

I could deal with my past, but my present was providing fresh misery.”

I couldn’t imagine having a wound that festered—for decades.

“Logically, I knew there would come a day when I would stay gone. I was just twenty-five when I concluded I could never sustain a relationship. Which meant Orloff had left his mark on me, was having the last laugh. That filled me with so much rage. For years, rage was the only emotion I felt. In a way, I was unwillingly being true to him, but I knew how to shuck off that monster’s hold forever.” He rubbed his scar.

Suicide. The culmination of all that terror and violence and pain.

“After Maksim intervened, he pressured me to go to a facility. A doctor suggested a pill to keep me anchored in reality, one with a notorious side effect. It killed my sex drive. I had a choice. Sane and celibate, or insane and sexual. My protocols of pills and no sex enabled me to concentrate on my work. I spent years like that.”

“Before me, when was the last time you were with someone?”

“A while.”

I could tell he hoped I would leave it at that. “How long is a while?”

“Years.”

“How many years?”

He squared his shoulders. “I was completely celibate for eight.”

I masked my astonished reaction. This explained so much of his behavior, starting with our first night together—the wonder in his expression as he’d explored my body in the penthouse bathroom. . . .

Not to mention his family’s unnerving enthusiasm at his interest in me.

“I had my work for most of that time,” he said, a defensive edge to his tone. “And I wasn’t alone in my suffering; Maksim battled his own shadows. His back is covered with scars, and because of what he endured in that cellar, he couldn’t stand to be touched.”

No wonder Maksim’s longest relationship lasted for an hour.

“My brother was as scarred on the outside as I was on the inside. I assumed both of us would be damaged forever, wanting nothing to do with Aleks, the two of us sharing our secret burdens.”

“Then he met Lucía,” I murmured. Dmitri had told me he’d hated the idea of her. “You felt abandoned again.”

He sucked in a breath. “Yes.”

I put my hand over his. “That’s normal. I would’ve too. Anyone would have.”

“I was so frustrated with him.” Beneath my palm, Dmitri’s hand clenched into a fist. “He and I used to believe in reason and logic above all else, but he swore he felt a connection to her that defied any rational explanation. My ruthless, cynical brother started talking about something that sounded a lot like fucking soul mates.”

Just as Natalie, Lucía, and Jess had said.

“I derided Maksim for that, thinking he’d gone as crazy as I was. But when he risked his life for Lucía, I accepted he did truly believe. I still didn’t.”

The jaded part of me wanted to scoff as well, but my parents . . .

“For some reason, Maksim loved her touch alone. He could sleep through a night with her beside him. He laughed. He even reconciled with Aleks.” Voice gruff, Dmitri admitted, “When Maksim married, I felt more alone than I ever had before.”

I pictured Dmitri by himself on that deck, gazing up at the moon. Lucía had said he was a lone-wolf type. Just like the beast from fairy tales, Dmitri didn’t want to be.

I took his fist in both of my hands and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “No longer.”

His brows drew together. “No longer.”

“Please go on. I want to know more about you.”

Seeming resigned to sharing, he continued, “Before I hit thirty, I’d made a fortune, but I derived no satisfaction from it. The money was like some grotesque entity, growing faster than I could ever spend it. My wealth mocked me, because the more I had, the more I became aware of what money couldn’t buy: sanity, companionship, a family of my own.”

And that explained why he was so adamant about spending it.

“Eventually I comprehended I was the only thing getting in the way of Maksim’s happiness, and that I would always be a burden to him. A year ago, I made arrangements to check myself into a permanent facility in California, but on the way there, I decided to permanently check myself out. A life avoiding pleasure isn’t worth living. I was done.”

He’d been suicidal again just a year ago? “What happened?”

“A weather front forced the plane to touch down in Las Vegas. We