More Than Life by Garrett Leigh Read Free Book Online

and tucked her behind her skirt. “Leka,” she said quietly. “Take the children up to the cabin. I will follow you in a moment.”
    Leka looked as though he might protest, but he didn’t. He scooped the young girl from the ground, summoned the younger boy to his side, and with one last, wide-eyed glance at Isa, he was gone.
    Isa stared at Rea as conflicted emotions raged inside him. He’d spent four years dreaming of the moment he might see Mik’s face again. His young Kosovan lover had been the one thing that kept him alive during long years of captivity and torture. The fantasy of holding Mik in his arms again had been the only reason he hadn’t succumbed to the hell of a Serbian jail, the only reason he hadn’t taken a plastic knife to his wrists.
    Four years was a long time. He knew Mik would’ve believed him dead. Hell, his own father had left this world believing he’d died on the streets of Pristina, but though he’d prepared himself to find Mik had moved on, that his life was already rebuilt without room for Isa, never in his lowest moments had he imagined Mik would find love with a woman.
    The thought made him want to puke. He’d loved Mik, and he’d known Mik had loved him. What they shared was a rare thing, a bond so deep it couldn’t be matched by another. Or so he’d believed.
    Rea’s hand on his arm brought him back to the present. “We thought you were dead, Isa. All these years…the Serbs. We thought they’d killed you.”
    Isa clenched his shaking hands into fists. “They weren’t that kind.”
    Comprehension flashed in Rea’s eyes, like a fabled nightmare had become reality, but when the next voice came, it wasn’t hers.
    “You were captured?”
    Isa spun around again, and for a moment he could see nothing but the vision of the man his young lover had grown into. Gone was the lanky frame and scattered stubble, and in its place were broad shoulders, cut muscles and a man’s thick scruff. The Mik of Isa’s dreams was no longer a boy.
    Rea disappeared. Isa felt Mik’s coal dark gaze rake over him.
    “Answer me,” Mik said. “Were you captured?”
    Isa opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The jerky nod of his head was the only answer he could give.
    Mik took a step closer. “The Serbs?”
    “Yes.”
    “For how long?”
    Mik took another step forward, one Isa wanted to match, but his legs wouldn’t move. “It felt like forever,” Isa said, his voice hoarse from emotion and years of disuse. “But I was released by US Special Forces six months ago.”
    Isa watched as Mik computed the time in his head. His heart skipped and thudded. For those endless moments, he couldn’t bring himself to take a breath. He felt lightheaded, as though the breathtaking man in front of him was a cruelly vivid delusion and his dreams in captivity had been just that, dreams.
    A warm, calloused hand cupped his cheek and coaxed his eyes open. “I’ve been without you for so long,” Mik whispered. “I don’t believe you’re real.”
    Isa leaned into Mik’s gentle touch. Logic and reason abandoned him and all he could feel was the heat of his lost love’s blood pulsing through the palm of his hand. The thrum of it held everything he’d been without for so long—warmth, life, love , but as he closed his eyes, the distant call of a child was a brutal reminder that the all-encompassing warmth was no longer his to feel.
    Coldness seeped into Isa’s bones. He opened his eyes and pulled away.
    The confusion in Mik’s eyes was quickly replaced with a weary resignation. He folded his arms across his strong chest. “Why did you come here?”
    Isa sighed. “I had to know…I had to know you made it through. I looked for you in Greece, Pristina and all over Kosovo. The lodge was the last place I could think of. Strange, really, I don’t know why I didn’t come here first.”
    Four years of silence hung over them as they stared at each other. There was so much to say, but the words just