12. Viktor

[ 12 ]

VIKTOR

Ranger liked the sun.

He lay beneath the late afternoon rays on the patio, angled so the golden warmth hit his whole body, and tipped his face to the sky like a stretching cat.

It was quite the sight, and only making sure my nephew didn’t fall from the tree he climbed stopped me from gorging on it.

Yuri brought me the orange I’d selected. He dropped it in my palm, but his usual question was derailed by Ranger’s simmering presence.

At least, it was simmering to me. Like it had been for the last three days, or however long it had been since he’d got here.

Longer than three days.

Soon it would be the widest stretch of time I had gone without a hit of heroin since I had come here. An itch scratched my soul, one that often sent me to my knees, but . . .

Ranger is here.

“Who’s that?” Yuri’s whispered Spanish drew me down to his level.

“A friend.” I examined the orange, hating that I had already come to rely on Ranger’s dark, comforting stare. “He helps me in the house, like you help your mother.”

A distortion of the truth, but a truth nonetheless. Ranger coerced me to eat. Irritated me enough to seek refuge in the shower, or retreat to my room where there was nothing to do but sleep. And I could not deny that I felt a thousand times more human for it.

Yuri ambled away, and for once, I did not throw the orange at the wall. I took it back to where Ranger tormented me with the long, leonine lines of his body.

He wore only his ripped jeans, and his skin called to me like nothing ever had, save the cursed wrench rotting beneath my skin.

What he does to you is stronger than that.

For now. I could not say how long it would last, and thinking about it made me think of hurling myself from the cliffs.

I crouched beside Ranger, avoiding the healing slash wound to his torso, and dug my fingers into the orange peel, stripping it away from the fruit while he watched, propped on his elbows. Another game of chicken that would hopefully end in him consuming more than bread, meat, and packaged snacks. “Maybe I have an addictive personality. I got hooked on these in the same place I found Lida, and the smell and taste of them has always reminded me of that day.”

On to me, Ranger curled his lip. “Still not eating it.”

“You need some vitamin C.”

“I’m all right with my vitamin D, thanks.”

“Is good for you.”

“You eat it then.”

“That is not how this works. Not if we play by your rules.”

“My only rule is that you don’t die for no fucking reason. Force-feeding me freaky shit has nothing to do with that.”

“You don’t think I need vitamin C too?”

“I think a lot of things, Vik. No—no. Don’t wave it at me.”

I would do more than wave it at him. Because touching him had become oddly normal in the strange existence he and Jake had forced on me.

So normal that he did not blink as I threw a leg over his waist and pinned him in place.

Straddling him.

Blyad.

This man.

He could have thrown me off.

I could have let him.

Neither happened, and I leaned down, easing a segment of fruit closer to his scowling mouth, hoping my chest pressing against his would sway him before the sensation gave me an aneurysm. “I will if you will.”

I meant the words to be a challenge, but they came out deeper than that, and I found myself transported back in time, to that mystical place where I had believed life could be as simple as this.

Me. Him. And an orange we were definitely going to share if it was not to meet its fate on the ground.

Ranger exhaled, rough and long. “You’re trying to figure out how far you can push me.”

“In what sense?”

He flexed his hips, unconsciously, perhaps, but I felt it like a live wire plugged into my nerves. “In every sense. You think I won’t eat a fucking orange? That my limits are that simple?”

Nothing about Ranger was simple. He would not be here if it was. But the orange felt like something to me. To him. So I did not answer his question with words. I kept pushing and pushing until he took the fruit with his whiter-than-white teeth, licking my fingers for good measure.

A shudder rolled through him as he chewed and swallowed. He did not like it, but I could not feel bad for him while he had juice running down his chin. I could not feel anything except the terrifying urge to sweep it away with my tongue.

Do it.

I wanted to. But I knew what would happen if I did. I would kiss him. He would kiss me back, and then I would have to tell him that I was not sure I could stay for what might happen next. I would have to tell him why, if Jake had not already.

If the Kings have not.

A strange feeling crept over me. A shift in my mood, abrupt and visceral.

Jake.

While I was feeding Ranger oranges in the sun, he was at war without me. Fighting for me. For Katya and Ivan.

For Yuri and Polina.

For Lida.

I left the orange on the ground, eased off Ranger, and stood. “We should go out.”

He sprang to his feet as if I had suggested skinning ourselves alive. “Where?”

“To work.”

His frown was instant. And confused. “What does that mean?”

“What I said.” I spun away from him and strode into the house with no real idea of where I was headed until I reached the room that was Jake’s when he did not sleep in my bed.

Ranger followed. Of course. He followed me everywhere, a shadow that somehow still lit up the dark, and it was hard to recall a time when he hadn’t. “Why’s it so pretty in here?”

“It was for Jake’s mother, but she died before we could bring her here. You need more clothes.” I tossed a handful of Jake’s over my shoulder, knowing he’d catch them. “It is too hot to be outside in those jeans.”

Ranger threw most of the clothes back. “Too hot for what?”

He kept the cargo shorts and dark T-shirts. Rejected anything that wasn’t black or grey, apart from a shirt the same shade as the rock he still carried in his bag.

The bag he had watched me poke through with nothing but a grin.

“You think I give a fuck?”

About me rooting through his tiny collection of possessions?

No.

About many other things he’d yet to confess?

Without doubt.

“Why are you carrying broken sticks?”

“You have your assassins, Vik. I have mine.”

A joke I did not get, to be sure. But even days later, it hit close to home, and agitation rolled through me again, a stronger wave.

I pushed past him and out of the room. “Get dressed.”

Ranger appeared in my eyeline again. Unbuttoning his jeans and stepping out of them.

I made myself turn away and duck into my room, opening the safe.

Keys.

Weapons.

I picked up both, sensing Ranger’s presence in the doorway. “You like heavier guns, no?”

“For what?”

“For protection.”

“From what?”

“From whatever waits for us out there.” I stood, ignoring that sharp pain in my hip. The zap that radiated down my leg. “You did not think I would stay home forever?”

Ranger filled the doorway, widening his stance to make up for his narrow frame. “I figured the first time I held a strap, it would be the one you pointed in my face.”

Strap. Gun. “Why?”

“Cos you know I won’t do it back.”

“You think I would shoot you to get high?”

“I don’t know what you’d do to get high. You’re not there yet.”

I held out the weapon I’d selected for him. “How do you know?”

“Feel it, don’t I?” He tapped his chest, ignoring the gun. “Also, there’s a difference between physical and psychological dependence, and it takes longer for the mental shit to manifest.”

“Did you read that in a book?”

“No. Finch told me when I didn’t get why Folk was still rocking in the corner when he’d been clean for a month.”

Finch. The girl he loved.

Folk . . . was her brother?

Interesting. “I knew this already about Folk, but he still does not seem the type to be an addict.”

“Neither do you. Cos it wasn’t your fault any more than it was his, or any other fucker that gets sick from this disease.”

“I am not sick.” I pushed the gun at his chest. “Do not give me more compassion than I deserve.”

“Give you whatever the fuck I want, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s not. Move.”

“No.”

I stepped closer, reeling from the mix of his scent and Jake’s now that he wore my brother’s clothes. “If we do not go out together, I will go alone.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I do not need luck. Do you think Jake could stop me when he was here? Do you think you are stronger than him? That you know me better?”

Ranger’s flinch was subtle. A flicker of his dark eyes before he dug his heels in, setting his jaw. “Me or Jake, it doesn’t matter. You want out, go through me.”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Liar.”

“No.” We were as close now as we had been on the patio. “I will evade you when you force my hand, but I will not lie to your face.”

“Nice of you.”

Frustration caught up with me. The irritability that had made itself at home in my personality. “You cannot stop me. From that, from this. All these things, Ranger. They are inevitable.”

“All these things . . .” Ranger licked his lips again, like he had outside. A slow swipe of his tongue that I now realised bought him time to think when I said things he did not immediately understand. “You’re talking like I know more than you’re telling me, when all you’ve done is pass me a gun and tell me to saddle up. Talk to me, Vik. Then maybe I’ll hear what you’re saying.”

With him so close, I’d almost forgotten what I was saying. What I was thinking. But Jake’s earthy scent kept my feet on the ground and my heart in my mouth. “I need to check if they are still out there.”

“Who?”

“The men who come for me when I leave this place. Who shoot at me in the street and jab poison in the crowds.”

Ranger searched my gaze, his stare skipping over my features until it bored into me with enough force to sway me on my feet. “What does it mean if they’re still out there?”

“That Jake is fighting. That he is not dead.”

“You wouldn’t know if he was dead?”

“Before, maybe.” I tightened my grip on the gun Ranger clearly didn’t want. “But something inside me doesn’t work the way it used to, and now I think I would not know he was gone until his body washed up on the beach.”

Empathy flared in Ranger’s dark eyes. Then suspicion. “You better not be fucking playing me.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll be annoyed.”

“You are always annoyed.”

Ranger leered, but he relaxed enough that I could’ve passed him if I’d wanted.

I didn’t. I had meant it when I’d told him I wanted him with me, not chasing me. And preferably able to defend himself if he did what I suspected he might and put himself between me and any fool who wished me harm. “Take the weapon. Please?”

“Only if you tell me where we’re going.”

“To the capital. To walk on the beach in the open. To roam the streets after dark, and the clubs. If I make it home by the skin of my teeth, I will know, that for now, nothing has changed.”

Ranger’s eyes grew impossibly darker. For a long moment, I thought he might refuse. That I would have to fight him to find out if Jake lived.

Then he shrugged. “All right.”