15. Viktor

[ 15 ]

VIKTOR

Kissing Ranger was as magical the second time as it had been the first. But his reaction was a world away. Back then, he’d slid into kissing me back with a slow meander, smiling against my lips.

Now, he growled, hauling me against him, gifting me every inch of his lean body. His hard body, before he seemed to check himself and back off, leaving me with only his mouth.

It burned that he somehow knew I needed him to do that—that he knew the first time we’d kissed, that ease, that freedom, had been an inconstant thing for me.

You shouldn’t kiss him. He’s not someone you can run away from, not anymore.

But I did kiss him, over and over, until I had backed him against a nearby wall—something I had found myself doing whatever mood I was in.

Something he let me do.

I was an assassin. A soldier. A mercenary with rivers ofblood on my hands. But Ranger was as untamed as my heart. And he was tough. If we fought tonight, he would win. Because I would die before I hurt him.

I would die if I stopped kissing him.

If he stopped kissing me.

He likes to be touched.

My hands remembered this before I did, grazing his painted skin, his abdomen, his ribs.

Ranger shivered, his kiss wavering as he snatched a shaky breath.

Utter madness drove me to slide my tongue into his mouth. To forget the times such a thing had been forced on me by other men.

He is not other men.

And I was no longer a boy. But a deep and wicked part of me did not understand, and bombarded by mixed messages, my heart reacted, beating so loud and so hard that I could not hear the music.

“Easy.” Ranger’s voice was rough whatever volume he spoke at. But his palm on my chest was gentle, even as he applied enough pressure to ground me. “Let’s go smoke.”

Cigarettes. He meant cigarettes. And I caught the wayward spark in my broken brain before it manifested.

I kissed Ranger again. To prove that I could.

To myself.

To him.

I did not know.

But perhaps he really did want a cigarette, and despite the rules for such things being somewhat lapse in my club, I led him away from the crowds and back to the safe room.

Ranger perched on a desk and lit up. “We could’ve stayed out there. Or gone to the balcony where every other cunt is smoking.”

“Everyone here is a cunt to you?”

“Figure of speech, luv.”

Luv. Love. Though I knew it meant nothing, I liked it when he called me that. I liked tasting his kiss on my lips and wearing the imprint of his touch on my skin.

It’s not enough.

“Can I ask you something?” Ranger eyed me through a haze of tobacco smoke. “You can tell me to fuck a cactus if you want.”

“I would not want. Ask me.”

Hesitation danced in Ranger’s dark gaze. Then he shrugged—to himself, not me. “If that other room was for Jake’s ma, where was he gonna sleep?”

“With me.” I answered without hesitation. “Or at Katya’s house on the sofa. He has never been here enough for it to matter.”

Ranger smoked some more.

It took me a few seconds to catch up. “You are asking if Jake and I fuck?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

Another shrug. “It wasn’t my intention, but here we fucking are.”

“Here we fucking are . . .” I parroted his words as he extended his arm, offering me the cigarette, but I didn’t want it. I wanted something else. I wanted the only thing on earth that could pull me away from the warmth and light this man gave me just by existing. And I only wanted it—dope—because I knew what I was about to tell him might mean he’d never kiss me again. “Jake and I have been brothers since his father stole me from a trafficking ring and made me a soldier. But we are not biologically related.”

“So you are fucking?”

“We have fucked. But it is not . . .” I searched for the English words to explain what Jake and I were to each other. “We are not together. Is not . . . monogamous or⁠—”

“You’re fucking other people too?”

“I have not for a long time.” Since I met him. “And . . . I have never with a man that was not Jake. Not by choice.”

Understanding made Ranger’s dark eyes gleam. His hands clenched into fists before he remembered the lit cigarette.

In the time it took for that to happen, I had unconsciously backed away from him.

I made myself stop.

I was not afraid of wanting Ranger.

Of him wanting me.

I was afraid it was going to hurt when I could not give him what we both needed.

Ranger crushed the cigarette into the desk, leaving a scorch mark on the wood. “Tell me to shut the fuck up and I will, I swear.”

“You do not need to be quiet. I have nothing to hide.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you did.”

“Why not?”

“Vik, we ain’t married. You don’t owe me shit. I’m just fucking nosy.”

“About Jake?”

“About you.” He thought about it. Changed his mind. “All right. Maybe I want to know if Jake’s gonna castrate me for putting my lips on his man.”

“He would not. I am not Jake’s man. And Jake . . . he is not anyone’s. He does not think of anyone beyond sex.”

Ranger frowned. “You’re more than just sex to him.”

“That is different.”

“How?”

I tried to answer. A rush of air escaped me instead and my thoughts became like the cement mixers on the Rebel Kings’ building sites. I could not catch them. But for Ranger, I tried. “Jake and I sleep together because we always have. It is a safe place, for us both. Easy, no? Other men . . .” I shook my head. “It has been only women for me. I cannot speak for him. I just know it is not romantic between us. I have never felt that way about him, and he does not even want it—from me, or anyone else.”

In the time it had taken me to trip over my words, Ranger had lit another cigarette. It smouldered in his grasp, but he did not smoke it, gaze fixed on me, and yet somehow distant as however he felt about my explanation sank in.

I stepped closer to him.

Changed my mind.

He rose to meet me.

Said nothing. Just rubbed his cheek against mine, and I felt that more than if he’d kissed me again. “Comfort fucks make sense to me. It’s what I had with Finch.”

“You love her.”

“I do.”

“You would fuck her again?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Life moved on. And every time we were together, I knew it was more than friendship but less than what we both needed to stay. It might be different for you and Jake. You might be fucking him until you’re all old and shit.”

“It is sweet that you picture a world where either one of us lives that long. And I have not been with Jake for more than a year. Since before we met.”

Ranger studied me some more. “Where does he sleep these days?”

“When he is here?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Maybe I’m fucking jealous.”

“Are you?”

Ranger looked away, setting his jaw the way he did when he had plenty to say but had decided he should keep his mouth shut.

I could not have that.

Not about this.

I let my hands return to his skin, tracing a pattern around the healing gash on his ribs. “Can I tell you something you have not asked?”

“If you like.”

I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in. He smelled of fresh sweat and smoke. Of music and dancing, and I raised my head to meet his inky gaze. “I do not know how to navigate this mess between us. But I do know that nothing I have ever done with Jake or anyone else has ever felt like this. Nothing has ever felt like you.”

Ranger’s stare turned to liquid fire. He dropped his unsmoked cigarette and crushed it under the heel of his boot. “Is that what scares you? That you like it?”

“Is more that it will lead us somewhere I cannot go.”

“Cos I’m not Jake?”

“No.”

“It is, though. You let him fuck you cos you trust him. How do you know you’ll never trust me like that?”

His bluntness rattled me. I had not had a conversation this candid about sex with anyone, not even Jake, in my entire life. “Are you playing devil’s advocate?”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Are you still being nosy, or does my answer mean something to you?”

Ranger laughed, shaking his head. “Vik, if you meant nothing to me, I wouldn’t fucking be here.”

“Jake paid you.”

“In crisps that I don’t even have yet.” He flicked my ear. “He offered me five-hundred grand.”

“That is nothing to him.”

“Yeah?” Ranger fully faced me. “Well, he knew it would be everything to me. But I didn’t want it. You know why?”

“Tell me.”

He almost smiled, but it twisted into something else. Something that hurt him as much as it hurt me. “Cos I’d have swum to New Zealand to see you again. Cos I missed you.”

Ranger drew back, as if that was it. That was the end. But it was not. Despite everything I had told him, I could not let him go.

“I missed you too.”

Ranger did not believe me. It was in his eyes as he took another step back.

I reached for him.

He flinched.

“You are as scared as me,” I realised, to myself as much as him.

Ranger pursed his lips. Admitting nothing. Conceding everything with his silence, and the reality of what we had shared was a jagged pill to swallow. Barbed with injustice. We wanted things we could not have. And for reasons I could not understand, the next words out of my mouth were this: “You said I let Jake fuck me. I never have.”

Ranger blinked. “What?”

“He does not fuck me. I fuck him.”

“What difference does that make?”

Everything. Nothing. But I’d exhausted my ability to explain it. The messy, traumatised hole in my head widened enough to suck me under, and I could speak no more. I could not move. I could only drown and pray he would save me before I was lost forever.

It was new to me to care. But Ranger’s gentle touch felt as old as time.

He came back for me. Not to kill a fool who had crept up behind me, but to drop his hands on my shoulders. To fix me with a stare that did not end, and I wondered if this was it for us. And what would happen to me when he left this place and returned to his old life—his real life—and I remained here with nothing but bad habits and regret.

“Vik.”

“Hmm?”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Leave the planet. My company really that shit?”

His gaze was earnest. His question a serious one. I fought for the clarity I’d lost over the past year. The faculties to string a sentence—a thought—together.

For him, I found it. “Actually, it is the opposite.”

He frowned, waiting.

“I enjoy your company too much,” I elaborated. “I do not know how I am going to give it up.”

“Same way you stop other shit. Find something better to do.”

It was my cue to laugh without humour, but the sound died in my throat.

Better than Ranger?

Than this?

No. Dizziness hit. I was going to lose him because I had been ruined long before I met him, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Ranger nuzzled my cheek again. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

His voice was distant enough to terrify me, but the calmness in his touch eased my skipping pulse. Slow, even breaths that belied the rage I’d seen in him just moments ago.

I found a deep inhale of my own. “You can ask me anything.”

Ranger slid his rough hand along my jaw, bringing our lips together once more, but barely. A whisper of a kiss that stole my breath all over again. “Do you like it? When we do this?”

Do I like it?

Thoughts unhinged, I answered in Russian by mistake. But some things did not need translating. Or maybe Ranger had spent enough time stuck with me that he knew my mind better than I did.

“Vik, it’s okay. And it’s always going to be okay.” He feathered that kiss to my lips again. “If this feels good, let’s go back out there and hold on to it a little while longer.”