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 leftbehind. 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.”
[ 27 ]
VIKTOR
Fucking Ranger before this mission had been a terrible idea. I had so much to think about, literal life and death matters, but my brain kept defaulting to the arch of his spine as I’d fucked him in the shower. The tight heat of his body around my cock. The promise in his dark gaze before we’d got that far.
The unspoken words that had triggered a need deep inside that I might not live to sate.
I want him.
It was not new. I had always wanted him—I’dhadhim—but this felt different, and I needed it not to. I needed to push him out of my mind entirely and focus on the last-second plans Alexei murmured as Jake drove our attack van out of earshot of our Russian conversation.
“We will not have much time.” To get to the heart of the building before our loved ones followed us at the pace we had agreed on, every footstep timed to the second. “He will know” —Saint— “in a heartbeat that we are not where we should be.”
Ranger’s foot was close to mine as he leaned against the interior side of the van, drowning in introspective tension. His eyes were shut, posture relaxed, meditative, almost. From a man I knew to be hyper-alert, who had barely slept in weeks, it feltstrange. And how was it possible that he was more attractive than he’d been mere minutes ago when I’d last snuck a glance at him?
“We have two choices,” I told Alexei, mindful of Saint not bothering to pretend he was not watching us and seeing every little thing the language barrier could not hide. “We lie over the radio, or we convince them that silence means they shouldwait.”
“Silence might mean we need them. Waiting might put them in more danger.”
“It is a risk. All of it.” I fought another urge to return to the world we left further behind with each mile we travelled. “And why I question your sanity of bringing them, ofbeinghere, when Jake and I could have faced this alone.”
Alexei was momentarily distracted by Cam returning from his own contemplative state and sweeping his gaze through the cramped van. Saint didn’t react, but I’d learned over the last twenty-four hours that Alexei was not as good at hiding the effect his lover had on him, as caught in Cam’s snare as I was in Ranger’s.
“Eto lyubov' s pervogo vzglyada.”
Cam smiled at the murmured Russian that was certainly not for me. He took a breath to respond, but the van jolted to a rough stop, shaking every man to awareness, Saint to his feet faster than I could snatch a breath.
Ranger was swift to follow, Cam and I the slowest, save Alexei, who did not bother at all.
