26. Ranger

[ 26 ]

RANGER

They hadn’t told anyone.

Cam.

Saint and Alexei.

No one knew they were here. Not even Nash, and it blew my mind a bit. Almost as much as watching Viktor and Alexei buddy up in the kitchen, tapping their fingers on those stupid fucking blueprints and talking Russian shit at each other.

They hadn’t looked up in hours. I’d become way too acquainted with the side of Vik’s head, and it was pissing me off. “They’re up to something.”

Saint peered around me into the kitchen. Said nothing. Went back to cleaning the weapons spread out on the coffee table.

Guns.

Silencers.

A fucking garrotte.

I pointed at it. “Who gets that?”

Saint shrugged. “You want it?”

No. I wanted Viktor to look at me. I wanted him and Alexei to speak English so I had a cat-in-hell’s chance of keeping up with whatever fuckery they were cooking up between them. And there was definitely fuckery afoot. Me and Alexei, we weren’t besties, but I knew that mad bastard loved Cam and Saint more than the sun loved the sky. There was no way he was letting them walk into a losing fight, and no way Saint didn’t know that.

I’d smoked more since we got here than I did in a whole week on Satsuma Island. I flipped the top from the box me and Cam were ploughing through at record speed.

Saint took it off me and tucked it in his pocket.

“Dick.”

He passed me a water bottle instead. I was irritable enough to think about tossing it in his face. Smart enough not to do it.

I settled for studying him instead. Saint was harder to read than Alexei speaking Russian. In everything except how hard he loved that weird fucker and Cam. This had to be killing him, right? I couldn’t be the only one dying a slow death to this shit.

“Stop staring at me.”

Saint’s actual voice made me jump. It had more effect on me than any fucker with a gun would later. “I’m not staring.”

Without looking, Saint planted a hand on top of my head and turned my gaze away from him.

I wrenched it back. “Dick.”

Saint almost smiled, but movement upstairs caught his attention. Jake. Cam. Both. He stared at the ceiling for the longest moment before he turned to me. “You trust me?”

Course I did. Back in the day, Saint had been my enemy for more years than I could count, but I’d still been a Crow when he’d risked his life to save Rocco. When he’d almost died for him. There was nothing about this man I didn’t trust. “Please fucking tell me something’s going on in that big head of yours. Something better than whatever mad shit they’re cooking up in there.”

Saint glanced at the kitchen, where Viktor and Alexei remained. And at the ceiling again, where the big bosses moved around each other, low voices filtering down the stairs. “I’m not sure,” he said, eventually. “But I need to know you’re ready to go when I say.”

“You gonna tell me where?”

Saint checked the safety on another strap. Then handed it to me, leaving the garrotte where it lay. “No.”

Amazing. But I’d spoken nothing but truth when I’d told Vik that I wasn’t a dude who needed to know every fucking thing to make a decision. The gun was heavy in my hand, but my answer to Saint flowed as free as the wind. “I’m ready.”

Jakov’s hacking operation was wild. He had eyes everywhere in that fucking building. Knew when any fucker inside took so much as a breath. But somehow it wasn’t enough.

“They have a hacker of their own.” He leaned forward, tapping buttons, annoyed. “Minor league. But they are in my way.”

I was alone with him, on kettle duty. No cleverer cunt to take the reins and have this conversation.

“They know you’re watching them take a piss?”

“No. But that could change at any moment, especially later, when I am distracted by bullets.”

“Not in the mood for a shoot-out?”

“I am never in the mood for a shoot-out. Vitka is the soldier.”

“Vitka?” That turned me around. “What does that mean?”

Jakov muttered something at his screen. Then gave me the weight of his stare. “That he is my friend, my close friend. Why? What do you call him?”

“Lots of things.”

Jakov regarded me as I poured horrendous coffee into a mug and set it on the table in front of him. Seriously. Him. Alexei. Cam. This shit was like tar. What was wrong with these people?

“He told you about what we have shared in the past, didn’t he?”

I doctored my own mug with a gallon of milk. “About you fucking? Yeah. Did you think he wouldn’t?”

“I did not think about it much at all. It was the last thing on my mind when I asked you for help.”

“What about now?”

A faint grin played on Jakov’s lips. Honestly, if Vik wasn’t around to block out the sun, this dude would’ve been hot. “Now, I think it would not matter either way. Viktor has never fucked me the way he fucks you.”

“Knew you were watching.”

“Only once.” Jakov returned to his screen. “For a moment, but it was enough to know he’d never need me that way again, and that is all right. More than all right. You bring Viktor to life, and for that, I will always be in your debt.”

Cute. But unnecessary.

I left Jakov to his James Bond shit and moved through the house, restless. We had a few hours till we rolled out, but time had slowed to a crawl. Every minute felt like an hour, the clocks weren’t fucking ticking, and the whole world felt too quiet.

Upstairs, a shower turned on.

Viktor.

I mean, it could’ve been anyone, but I knew it was him. Felt it even before my feet hit the stairs to the third floor. Before I passed the closed door to the room Cam, Saint, and Alexei had been holed up in for the last hour. Before I reached the landing where I hesitated. Viktor and Alexei—they’d been quiet since Cam and Jakov had come downstairs, adding weight to my theory that they were planning some shady shit. But I was used to Vik’s voice, to his touch. To him waving oranges in my face and berating me for cutting my hair. I wasn’t used to him shutting me out. Or second guessing my instinct to force my way in.

The bathroom door was unlocked, the light off in the windowless room. Viktor was showering in the dark—something I hadn’t seen him do since the last time he’d rinsed a junk pipe.

This isn’t like that. I knew it. But the need to be close to him was stronger now than it had been back then—when I’d truly fucking believed I couldn’t feel more for him than I did. That how I felt was a wicked pain that would never heal.

Hand on heart, loving him still hurt, and it was gonna get worse before it got better. But the idea of not loving him . . . of hanging my head and going back downstairs without laying my hands on him.

Breathing him in.

Kissing him.

I wasn’t fucking doing it, and the resolution propelled me across the landing, kicking my boots off along the way. Cos I was getting in that shower with him. In the dark.

In the light. Wherever Vik was, I was there too.

I slipped through the door, shutting it behind me with a quiet click, braced for instant blackness. But I hadn’t accounted for the phone Vik had propped in the sink, quiet beats popping off. It lacked the resonance I’d been spoilt by in his island home, but his taste never faltered, and I remembered this track. It had played in the club we’d left behind, the first night he’d kissed me on the island.

Weeks ago, but it felt like a year.

Two.

Fucking ten.

Need him.

I waded through the steam, ditching my clothes, stepping into the tub that reminded me of Jean’s old house. It even creaked the same.

Viktor, though. He felt different, as if the fight we’d yet to face had already changed him. Brutal tension bound his muscles. Jaw set. Even the water cascading down him seemed to bounce right off, like it knew Mobster Vik was back in town.

He didn’t scare me.

I traced a finger down his chest, counting the scars that littered his torso. The ink that was as pretty as his eyes.

Trying not to look at his dick, cos honestly, I hadn’t come in here for that. I’d come to be with him. To stop him pushing me away in a moment I fucking knew he needed me as much as I needed him.

On the island, Vik might’ve shivered at my touch. Here, in a safe house in arse-crack northern England, the sound that rumbled out of him was more primal. “You are not supposed to be in here.”

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“You’re too late.”

“Evidently.” Viktor angled the spray towards me, blasting me with scalding hot water, but I was used to these showers with him—the ones that put paid to any notion I’d ever had that he liked the cold. “Why do you have to be like this?”

I tilted my face, soaking my hair. “Like what?”

“Unforgettable. Irresistible.”

“Why are you trying to forget me?”

“I had the stupidest of ideas that it would make it easier to walk away from you later, but such a thing is not possible.”

“I could’ve told you that.”

Viktor caught my wrist. “You could’ve told me a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“And he thinks I say things twice.”

In the dim light of the room, Viktor’s eyes gleamed with something I couldn’t decipher. Memories, perhaps. We had so many but not enough, and contemplating that this might become one of our last did me in.

So I stopped thinking, narrowing my existence to his wet skin and bright eyes. To the raw desire that built between us the longer we stared at each other through the steam.

I moved first, stealing his favourite trick and pressing him against the wall, like I had the first time I’d blown him. The night we’d popped the lid on the inferno between us.

Shit had changed since then. Vik still had his moments, but now, as I braced my forearm to the tiles and kissed the shit out of him, his sharp intake of breath was all heat. His touch pure fire as he reached for me and tugged me tighter against him.

I didn’t hold back, not this time. Couldn’t. But I listened and I watched, attuned to every sound he made. Every flicker of movement in his tight body. Every hot flinch as I fucking mauled him with my teeth.

Viktor tipped his head back, giving me free rein to do whatever I wanted. And fuck, I wanted him. I needed him. In every fucking way, not just this. But right now . . . it was all we had. Words weren’t enough. Nothing was. If I spent a thousand years with him, I’d always want more.

I forgot myself—so much for being unforgettable—and hooked Vik’s weaker leg over my hip.

It changed everything.

For me.

For him.

For me again as a sharp noise wrenched from his chest.

Fuck.

I backed up.

He caught me. “Stay.”

His leg circled my waist and he kissed me, pushing the base of my spine, goading me to grind against him in the narrow space of the bathtub. To switch our dynamic to one I hadn’t let myself imagine in a helluva long time.

Like I was fucking him.

I gripped his jaw, a full-body shudder jolting my bones. “You do some feral shit to me.”

Viktor laughed, a choked, ragged sound that blistered my veins. “No—no. You are the wild one—the one who sets me free. You make me want things I never thought I could.”

I let my hands wander a little, testing him, and he didn’t stop me. But life wasn’t on our side. If Vik was saying what I thought he was, it would have to wait. I wasn’t fucking him for the first time in a house full of brothers. If we were lucky enough to live to that moment, I wasn’t sharing it with anyone.

Slowly, I let Vik’s leg slide down mine, not breaking eye contact. “Whatever you want, whenever you want it, I’m fucking here for it. But right now, I’m gonna need you to show me.”

Fuck me how you want it, Vik. I won’t forget, I swear.

I had his hands pinned over his head. He wrenched them free and spun us. Spun me, my chest where his back had just been.

Fuck.

I was taller than him. I had to hinge my hips to make it work, probably half shoving him out of the bath, bracing both arms on the tiles this time, hiding my face in my wet skin, leaning into it—into all of it, even the fact that unless Viktor was suddenly a Boy Scout at packing, we had no condoms or lube.

Or so I thought. Then slick fingers slid into me and I stopped thinking at all.

Vik, man.

We didn’t have much time.

I didn’t need it. I growled my impatience and Viktor got the memo.

The blunt head of his dick pierced me. He wrapped an arm around my waist and rooted a hand between my shoulders. “You are ready?”

His voice had dropped to that low murmur he got when he was being all sweet and shit. It did things to me I couldn’t explain. So I didn’t try. I pushed back against him, urging him on, and he got that memo too.

Fuck me.

I didn’t know how else to say it without screaming it to the ceiling.

Viktor eased deeper inside me, nudging my feet wider, pushing me lower, the expert in fucking angles.

I reached back, like I always did, grasping his thigh, anchoring myself to him as he pushed and pushed and pushed until he was buried to the hilt.

Viktor had rhythm. All of it. Fast. Slow. But this shit was fevered from the off, and I growled into my arm through clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut, blood on fire as he rocked forward, punching his hips against mine.

Closer.

I needed him closer. But we were in a bathroom—in a bathtub. We had nowhere to go. Not an inch of space between us. No fucking air. And who needed air when Vik was fucking me like this? Silent and brutal. Only the water and the impact of his body hitting mine for company.

So good.

Dizzying pleasure hit me. My body became a pressure cooker of every repressed groan. Every bitten-out curse as his chest welded to my back.

Viktor muttered something Russian. It spun me out. Rough mystery words that had annoyed me all day now sent my pulse clattering into my eardrums.

I was so far gone. Choking on sensation. On love as Viktor tightened his embrace and slowed the pace of his dick driving inside me. Showing me.

He wants me to fuck him like this.

Like I loved him.

And fuck me, I did.

So much.

I hit a peak to that thought. Viktor felt it and buried his face between my shoulders, smothering his own release, staggering as he fought to keep us both upright.

A hot second passed before I could help him. Chest heaving. Lungs burning. My body clenched so tight I couldn’t see how I’d ever let him go.

But I had to, cos more than anything, I needed to see his face. To kiss him and get lost in those gem-bright eyes. Cos I loved him, and I didn’t ever want to be found.

“Careful.” He found his balance and eased out of me, slow and steady. “I did not hurt you?”

The shower was still running, low, tinny music filtering from his phone. I couldn’t lie to him. “I wanted it to hurt. I liked it.”

“Why?”

The same reason I’d thrown myself in front of Nash’s fists instead of facing up to losing Locke as well as Vik. The same reason I had a dozen tattoos I didn’t even like. The same reason I was nothing like the best man I’d ever met.

Viktor’s hair was dripping water into his eyes.

I brushed it back. “My dad was the nicest bloke in every room. Sweet. Funny. Fucking gentle. How he died . . . it’s always fucked with my head. Sometimes, it’s easier to hurt the way he must have when that cunt hit him, than think about how scared he must’ve been when it happened.”

It was the most words I’d uttered about my dad in years. I wondered if Vik could tell. If he saw the open wound they’d left behind. If that’s why he lay his palm over my stuttering heart. Cos he knew I was close to breaking in a moment I needed to be carbon-fibre bones and dead inside.

No, you don’t.

Not yet.

But it was coming. Every shared breath a countdown to the end.

Viktor shut the shower off in the same moment the music from his phone cut out, swamping us in dim silence. He returned the favour with my hair, tucking it behind my ears. “After I came home to the island, even before I could stand on my own, I would crawl to the shower and hide beneath the water. But until you were there with me, I never felt clean.”

“How do you feel now?”

Viktor kissed my cheek. “Lucky.”