Ranger nodded but made no move to take the joint. “I’m too fucked up to find my mouth. You wanna shotgun me, Vik?”
Vik. I was beginning to like the way his gruff voice wrapped around the single syllable. And his proposition appealed to the side of me that had brought him here. That had spent countless hours on the floor with him, leaving the bloodshed and violence we’d survived where it belonged.
This doesn’t end anywhere you want to go.
Not true. It was not aboutwant. And how I felt about that belonged in a vault with Ranger’s grief. “I have you, friend. Relax.”
I shifted us around, manoeuvring him so his head was in my lap. As had become typical of this wild and gentle day we’d spent together, the intensity of his gaze took me prisoner, slow-motion perspective descending on me, my limbs moving as if they belonged to someone else as I watched from the ceiling.
The joint had gone out. I relit it, the crackle of the flame eating the paper the only sound louder than my pounding heart.
I flipped the joint around, the burning end in my mouth, the unlit filter between my teeth. Smoke billowed in a delicate line as I bent over Ranger, exhaling directly into his mouth, my hands cupping his face, his framing my ribcage, his fingers splayed over the chamomile blossom.
Our lips did not touch, but somehow I felt him there.
I drew back.
Ranger tightened his grip. “Again.”
I gave him another hit, longer this time, abusing my lungs as much as his. Lightheaded, I kept going until the joint burned down enough to threaten my lips.
Then I dropped it in the empty vodka bottle and returned to the clutch of Ranger’s potent stare.
Something was different. I could not say what, just that it was irrevocable.
I still held his face in one hand, the tips of my fingers grazing a bruise that had manifested in the hours we’d spent together.
The mark of another man’s fist.
A barbed feeling threatened the glow we’d cocooned ourselves in. Ranger was strong enough to fight for himself and for me, but I did not enjoy the reality of him being hurt in the process. I did not enjoy the reality of him being hurt at all.
“Lie down.”
It was my turn to speak without comprehension. “Hmm?”
Ranger blurred and the thick rug beneath us hit my back.
The movement dizzied me, my senses nothing but warmth and dancing lights. Nothing but hypnotic beats and the heat of Ranger’s stare as music seeped into my bones, melding with my stampeding pulse, quieting any thought capacity I had left.
His neck called to me, his ink. His smoky skin. I did not think before pressing my lips to it.
You’ve done this already.
Had I? I could not remember... I could not remembereverfeeling as I did as Ranger moaned, a low sound of pleasure that travelled through me. Thatbecameme. It seemed inevitable that it morphed into the kind of kiss that transcended the lives we’d led to be here, alive and fused together on my living room floor.
Ranger’s mouth was softer than the rest of him. He rolled us, pulling me over him, and he kissed me as if I was made of molten glass. As if kissing me was the final ascension in the high we’d chased all this time.
I kissed him back as though the burning entity I’d become in this moment depended on it. No tongue, just lips, the hardness between us an otherworldly thing I could not contemplate. The slow grind of our hips incidental as time stopped for this—forhimas he kissed me everywhere without his mouth ever leaving mine.
Seconds passed.
Minutes.
Hours.
I could not quantify how long it lasted—I did not try. Time was meaningless until Ranger’s shaky inhale drew me back to earth.
We had wound up entwined on our sides. I eased him onto his back, his heavy eyes breaking through the haze of his kiss. He was fading. Spinning, perhaps. I lay my hand over his heart,counting the beats. It was not rampaging as hard as mine, the molly buzz giving way to exhaustion and weed. “You are okay?”
