“Like what?” Consciously or not, Vik pressed his forearm to my windpipe, reminding me that he was a soldier—the kind that came in the night and snapped your neck. “This is all there is. I amboring, remember?”
“Not to me.”
“Then maybe you are boring too.”
A beat passed. One where he could’ve released me.
He didn’t. He held out, the tremor in his arm barely detectable, and my pulse went fucking crazy. Pounding in my ears like an escaped Derby runner.
Slowly, I wrapped an arm around his waist, tugging the rest of his body against mine, as if I could shift this from a death threat to the embrace he needed. I leaned forward an inch, less than that, and nuzzled his cheek as if I had every fucking right to. “I don’t mind boring, but watching you starve to death is killing me already, so this ninja shit is unnecessary.”
His chest caved in, releasing the breath he’d caged in his lungs, and some of the tension in his body deserted him. “Do not say things like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I know. Is why I can’t hear it.”
Viktor dropped his murder stance.
I took a calculated risk and wrapped my other arm around him, pulling him even closer, gripping the nape of his neck, my fingers sliding into his hair.
It felt so good—hefelt so good that a legit sigh escaped me, but I didn’t care. Vik was getting honesty from me whether he wanted it or not, and the honest truth was I’d been waiting my whole life to hold him like this, even if he was dying in my arms.
I relaxed against the fridge, coaxing him to drop his head on my shoulder and just be, while I kneaded his neck and shoulders, breathing him in. He didn’t just smell of oranges. He smelled of the ocean breeze and the sunshine he liked to walk in. He smelled like summer. Bright and edible despite his black mood. And of course, it was the edible part that my body reacted to with another wall-shaking rumble.
Viktor startled, as if he’d fallen asleep standing up.
Maybe he had, but he wasn’t asleep now. He drew back, gaze sharpening with every inch he put between us. “You need to eat.”
“We’ve covered this.” I stayed by the fridge. “I’m not eating alone.”
“Okay.”
I arched a brow. “What does that mean?”
Viktor returned to the scene of the crime—to the stool he’d thrown me off—and nudged the plate. “Come here.”
For the first time since I’d got here, he spoke like the gangster who commanded fear across a fucking continent. Eyed me like one too, but the most enduring effect was that for as long as his hardened stare lasted, I wanted to bang him more than I needed to fix him.
I pushed off the fridge and joined him at the counter. The green stuff was still on the plate. “I’m not eating that.”
Viktor shrugged. “Then I will not eat anything and the stalemate continues, no?”
“Never knew you were such a difficult motherfucker.”
“Inflexible.” A ghost of a grin flickered through his features. “As much as you are stubborn. We will see who wins.”
I didn’t believe he was inflexible. Not in the literal sense. I’d spent long hours watching his body move, and even now it was battered and broken, Vik still moved with grace.
His mind was something else, though. And whoever ate what, I’d already fucking won by goading him into giving a shit.
I reached around him, grabbed a fork from the drawer, and swiped half the vegetable crap in one scoop.
Cramming it in my mouth was the easiest thing in the world.
[ 12 ]
VIKTOR
