“Asher.” Viktor knelt behind me, his arms around my chest, lips at my throat. “What is making you feel this way?”
“What fucking way?”
“You seem... sad.”
“I’m not sad—” A yawn cracked my jaw. “Youbroke me, and now I can’t hack road trips without you.”
“You are not worried about something?”
Nothing I wanted to talk about in the cramped insides of the Bone Rattler. “What did you bring me?”
“Technically, you brought it.”
“Eh?”
Viktor reached over me and dumped my bag in my lap. “Look inside.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Cos I hadn’t since Rubi stole my headphones. Cos I’d left my dad’s crystal with Viktor, and unless he’d been living in my bag this whole fucking time—Vik, not my dead dad—there was nothing in there I gave a fuck about.
Viktor settled behind me again. He opened the bag and gripped my wrists, shoving my hands inside. Why he was so enthusiastic about a pile of old clothes, I had no fucking idea, but my palms didn’t find tatty denim and worn cotton. They found something sharper, louder, and I pulled my hands free with a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch. “I didn’t pack these.”
“You did not pack anything.” Viktor rummaged around some more and came up with the T-shirt of his that I most regularly stole, more snacks, and a net bag of the posh Spanish oranges Juana had given him a few weeks back. “And Rubi thinks you need some vitamin C.”
I didn’t need vitamin C. I needed the sight of Vik’s deft fingers peeling oranges and his wicked grin as he fed a segment into my mouth that was a thousand times sweeter than the fruit Rubi had bullied me into eating on the road.
My eyes closed. I leaned back into Vik, soaking up a moment I’d needed even more than everyone around me had realised. The Rattler could still fuck all the way off, but Vik’s body, solid and warm against mine, was all the dreams I’d never thought to have come true.
Most of them, anyway.
I tipped my head.
Viktor kissed me, heownedme, with his sweet mouth and the palm he slid along my jaw and down my neck. He didn’t grip my throat, it wasn’t our thing, but his fingertips grazing the sensitive skin there did something to me—something that set me on fire all over again.
These bunks weren’t built for shenanigans. Rubi had warned me of that, though how he knew I wasn’t sure. River never went on haulage runs. Regardless, common sense dictated he was right, but shit like that had never mattered to me. Or to Viktor. Whatever life threw at us, we found our fucking way.
Vik got me on my back and dropped my bag on the floor. He tugged at the clothes covering my upper body. “These are not yours.”
“I already told you that.”
“Take them off.”
I took them off, not feeling the cold as Viktor’s gaze flared in the dim light of the cabin, stare fixed on the puny slash scar that always riled him up. He traced it with the same fingertips he’d trailed down my throat, and I shivered. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Someone did.”
“Lots of people did. Let’s skip that part and get to the good bit.”
“And what is the good bit?”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
Viktor hummed. “I like it when you tell me whatyouwant.”
“Then pin me to this shitty bed and do your fucking worst.”