I didn’t have a straight answer to that. So I didn’t give him one. I let him back up and walk away before I did what I always did and followed him.
He dropped the towel.
I nailed a glare at a pot plant. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“How you’re so chill being naked around me.”
“I am okay being naked around anyone. I do not care.”
“Clearly.” I heard him pull some clothes on and peeled my gaze from the cactus. “That’s what I don’t understand.”
Viktor opened a drawer and rummaged around in it. “You think being forced into sex work made me shy?”
I cringed, more horrible knowledge slotting into place. “Maybe.”
“It did not. And in any case, I grew up in a home for children. I have never had the luxury of caring that I can be seen.”
I wondered if Russian group homes were like the ones I’d spent eight nights in before Jean had rescued me. It killed me to know they’d probably been a thousand times worse. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Viktor glanced up. “I am not offended. I do not think I ever learned how to be.”
“Lucky you.”
“Are you offended, Ranger?”
“All the fucking time.” I crossed the threshold into his room, something I hadn’t yet done while he was awake or around to see, stepping over the clutter on the floor. “There a reason you’re surfing your gun stash? Thought we were staying in tonight.”
“It is morning.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Then why are you awake?”
Irritation found a new BFF in the scratchy exhaustion rolling through me. Was this part of a master plan I couldn’t be sure existed? To keep me awake for weeks on end, then talk in circles until I lost my fucking mind?
A slow thump started in my temple—a warning, more than a headache, that my fuse was burning short.
I kicked the safe shut.
Viktor opened it again like my foot was a fucking sea breeze. He finally chose a gun and held it out to me.
“Fuck off.”
He shrugged and armed himself, rising to face me, nothing in his gaze except the wryest fucking amusement.
Bastard.Hewasplaying me and he was so close to winning, if goading me into a fight was his intention.
A fight you’d lose.
Possibly.
Definitely.
Maybe.
I had him cornered at the side of his unmade bed. He had a gun. I didn’t.
