“Liar.”
“Maybe.”
I licked my thumb. “Can I ask you something?”
Viktor pushed the empty plate away, leaning against the counter while I lounged on a stool. “Yes.”
“It’s about Jake.”
His gaze turned wary. “About sex again?”
“No...no.” I swigged from the water bottle he’d placed in front of me. “It’s about business. He didn’t tell me much about what was going on for him, and I’m not asking for details, but I got the impression he was gearing up for some fucking endgame shit, and I don’t know what that means for you.”
Viktor backed up a little, shifting from dude chilling in his fancy-pants house to the mobster I’d first met. “Are you asking me what I will do if Jake is killed?”
“Honestly, I don’t fucking know what I’m asking. Just that I’m not as okay with being an ignorant bitch as I usually am.”
“I think this is because you are not asbusyas you would be elsewhere. I warned you I was boring—there you are.” Viktor switched his attention to Lida as she strolled through the open doors, her fur wet from sparring with the sprinklers that watered the orange groves. “You have come for your dinner?”
He fed her and left the kitchen.
I waited for him to come back.
He didn’t. He went to bed without answering the question, leaving me to clean up so Katya wouldn’t do it in the morning.
Wiping wet hands on Jakey’s shorts, I retreated to my room and made myself comfortable on my stolen mattress. Viktor had given me access to his music files and I’d discovered he’d kept all mine from the flash drive I’d jammed into his tablet so long ago. Grateful for the motion sensor Jake had snuck onto every door in the house, I fielded another nosy call from Cam, slipped my ancient Beats over my ears, and settled in to chill the night away. I was soul-deep into one of Vik’s playlists when he got up sometime later and inexplicably took a shower.
I tapped the music off, rousing myself from the stupor I’d slipped into. Vik showered a lot, but he often wasn’t in there for long.
Tonight, though, he bucked the trend.
Time ticked by. At the forty-minute mark, I ventured into the hallway, considering yet another closed door.
The shower was still running. I raised my hand to knock. Braced my foot to boot the thing open if he didn’t respond.
But the water shut off. I heard him moving around and stepped back a split second before the door swished open.
Viktor stared through the steam, a faint energy in his colourful gaze that I hadn’t seen in forever. “Do you ever sleep?”
I propped a shoulder on the wall. “Do you?”
“These days? Yes.”
“You’re not asleep now.”
Nope. And he was naked, save a towel wrapped around his waist. AtowelI knew from experience he’d drop in the doorway of his room, daring me—in my head, at least—to keep my gaze on him.
I hadn’t.
Yet.
And perhaps now that I knew how he felt about sex, I never would unless he outright asked me to.
Viktor came closer, the heat of his skin seeping into me. “If I promised to stay, would you sleep then?”
“No.”
“Because you would not believe me?”
