“Shit the bed.”
“Get out and look.”
“No. You’ll leave without me.”
“Are you sure you do not want me to?”
“I think whatever you’re going to do, you need to get on with it before I have a fucking heart attack.”
Viktor’s gaze pinned me in place, spearing me as if he had nothing else to look at for the rest of his life. Hislonglife, if his whirlybird didn’t kill us both.
At least you’d die together.
No.No. That wasn’t good enough, for me or for him. Vik deserved tolive, and I wanted to be around to see it.
“You are sure?” He asked me one last time, and I chanced a glance at Lida still chilling in her seat behind Viktor.
Her tongue hung out, eyes bright with excitement. And that had to be a good thing, right? Even if I didn’t trust Viktor or his flying death machine, I trusted his dog.
Fuck it.“Let’s do this.”
Let’s do thisdidn’t pan out as quickly as I hoped. Turned out Mr Petrenko was a fucking safety dweeb, and despite me telling him I didn’t need or want to know all the technical shit that was about to turn my world upside down, he forced it on me anyway. The wordthrusthad a whole new meaning, and I didn’t fucking like it.
What I did like was watching Viktor move around his pet chopper like an absolute boss. I loved the moment he shared with Lida as he strapped her in. And I died a slow, glorious death as he straddled my lap to do the same to me.
My heart thumped and his neck called to me.
Don’t do it.
I did it—brushed my lips over his pulse point. Cos fuck it. I was probably about to die, and I didn’t want any regrets.
Viktor shivered, tightening the buckle of the belt he’d fixed around me. “If you keep doing that, we will fight my fears long before yours.”
“You scared of feeling good, Vik?”
His eyelids fluttered as I kissed him again. “We have been over this.”
We had and I’d listened. I’d heard him. But I didn’t want him to have any regrets either, so I kissed my way to his jaw, to his lips, and let us have a fucking moment of our own.
Kissing Viktor sometimes felt like a permanent state of madness. A magic carpet ride that would take me to the grave before I came up for air.
Others passed so fast it was hard to accept that it had happened at all, and this kiss was like that. Over too soon, leaving a wreck in its wake.
Viktor backed up, sliding lithely into his own seat. He passed me a headset. “You will need this.”
“What for?”
“To hear me speak.”
“What are you going to say?”
He gave me one of those fuck-hot smiles. “I will saybreathe, Asher. Everything is okay.”
I wasn’t okay. Not even close. But I slipped the thing over my head cos I didn’t want to give him anything to worry about when he needed to focus on shit far more complex than me.
Also didn’t want to be without his voice, but I kept that to myself and settled back in my seat to die quietly.
Viktor went back to work. He explained more stuff to me, but it went over my head, and I sank into a haze of anxiety that somehow managed to be distant and a roaring present beast at the same time.
