I took the molly.Mandy, as Ranger called it. Dizzle. Whatever. His vernacular was like nothing I’d ever heard, and perhaps by the time this was over, I would be a different person because of it.
The music morphed into a track I did not know.Not mine. My eyes had fallen shut. I opened them to Ranger propped on his elbow beside me,watchingme.
My gaze locked with his, terminally so. I could not look away, and I did not want to. From a distance, his eyes held no colour. Up close, they were a kaleidoscope of dark things. Shades of sable and soot swirling around an obsidian core. Like his heart? No. This man was warm—he wasalive, and he loved. I’d seen it when he’d spoken of his grandmother.
“You need to take this off.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Take itoff.” Ranger tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “You’re dressed. I’m not. It’s not fucking fair.Unbalanced, remember? Besides, it’s hotter than a runner’s ball bag in here. I don’t want you to bake yourself into a bad trip.”
It was sweet that he cared, but I could handle a bump of molly. His stare sweltered me more.
I sat up, reaching past my shoulder to pull the shirt over my head, chucking it aside.
Ranger didn’t move, but his gaze tracked me, and I found myself lost in it again the moment I was done. “You have ink.”
It took me a second to compute what he meant. Then I remembered the old tattoos on my skin. “They are small.”
Ranger leaned closer, studying my ribcage and my abdomen. “Then they mean something. That’s the rule.”
“The rule?”
He shrugged, taking a sharper breath as something seemed to hit him, his jet eyes hazing for a second, his balance wavering.“If they were for show, they’d be bigger. So that bird and that flower... they mean something.”
I caught him before he toppled over, easing him onto his back. “So your tattoos mean nothing?”
Ranger scoffed, eyes still fluttering. “They mean I can’t be trusted with two hundred quid in my pocket.”
The music shifted, a deeper base thrumming in the heated air. It seemed to draw us together, Ranger on his back, gazing up at me as his stare settled. Me beside him, once again unable to look away. Unable to resist the pull to his lean torso.
I traced his rib with my fingertip. “The blossom is chamomile. It reminds me of a teacher I once had and the flower shops in Moscow that are open day and night.”
“That’s where you’re from? Moscow?”
“Once upon a time. I have not been there since I was a boy.”
Ranger closed his eyes to my touch, a low hum escaping him before he forced his lids up and repeated a question he’d asked me days ago. “How old are you?”
“How old do I look?”
“Younger than me, but you sound older than Folk, so who the fuck knows?”
I did not know how old Folk Whitlock was. He had a timeless face, and I’d never given it much thought beyond that. Ranger, though. His features were young. “You are twenty-seven.”
Ranger scowled. “That’s not an answer.”
“Tell me your name.”
“No.”
“Then you will have toguessmy age and hope you are right.”
I let my hand slide from Ranger’s skin.
A split second passed before he grasped my wrist and put it back. “What does the bird mean?”
“That is a complicated question.” Ranger still held my wrist. It was hard to tell if it was his touch that made my pulse skipor the building heat of MDMA filtering through my blood. “The answer is probably uninteresting to you.”
