Page 13 of Vital Signs (Wayward Sons #7)

The truck stop parking lot was mostly empty.

A few semis, some fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows, and me sitting in my van questioning every decision that had led me here.

What had I done? Tracked down a homeless addict in the middle of nowhere.

Planned a break-in at a medical facility.

All because of attraction to a dangerous man and rage over a stranger's death.

My phone buzzed with another text.

Xavier

Family's worried. Where are you?

I turned it face down without responding. Let them worry. They'd made their position clear at dinner. I was damaged goods to be managed, not a partner to be trusted. Tyler's death was a case to be filed through proper channels, not a person whose murder demanded immediate justice.

But Tyler wasn't their obsession. Hunter wasn't making their pulse race with possibilities that had nothing to do with justice.

Through the truck stop's plate-glass windows, I could see Hunter's silhouette at the service counter. Even from here, the tremor in his movements was visible. Withdrawal was eating him alive, and I'd dragged him away from whatever fix he'd been planning.

What did that make me?

I knew exactly what that made me. I was someone who got off on being irresistible. Someone who used his face and his body to make dangerous men lose their minds.

Hunter emerged from the building, and hunger twisted in my stomach. He was destroying himself in slow motion, but even damaged, he was magnetic. Dangerous. Exactly the kind of man I couldn't resist.

"Better?" I asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

"Clean. Still fucked."

The smell of cheap soap couldn't hide the sour scent of withdrawal.

"How long since your last dose?"

"Six hours. Maybe seven." He flexed his fingers, watching them shake. "Gets worse before it gets better."

I understood withdrawal. Not from opioids, but from the cocktail of benzodiazepines and stimulants Roche had forced into my system.

The way your body turned traitor, every nerve ending screaming for chemical peace.

The desperate mathematics of how much suffering you could endure before sanity snapped.

"Can you function?"

Hunter laughed. "Function. Right. Can I walk? Probably. Think straight? Fuck no. Anything requiring steady hands?" He held up trembling fingers. "Right now, I'm not even sure I can hit a vein without getting blood everywhere."

"You need help," I said.

"I need fentanyl." He pulled out a small black case, leather worn smooth from desperate handling. "But I can't hit a vein like this."

He was asking me to inject him. To hold his life in my hands, to be the difference between relief and agony.

To have absolute control over someone who'd once saved lives.

The jealousy was instant and sharp. I was jealous of the drug.

Of the way it would make him feel things I never could.

The way it would touch him deeper than I ever would, reach places in his brain designed for pleasure and pain that no person could access.

He'd give himself to chemicals in ways he'd never give himself to me.

But right now, the drug needed me. And that meant Hunter needed me.

My dick throbbed at the thought.

"If you don't want to do it, then drive me back to camp," he said.

I stared at the kit he'd laid out on the dashboard. "I've never injected anyone before," I lied. "I could kill you."

"At least I'd die clean, warm, and with a beautiful view." His eyes never left my face, and despite everything, heat flickered in his gaze.

"Fine," I said quietly. "Walk me through it."

Hunter's eyes searched my face, looking for something. Fear, maybe. Hesitation. Whatever he saw there made him nod slowly.

"Okay." His voice shifted, became more controlled despite the tremor in his hands. "First, you need to measure the dose. See the bag? Tap a small amount onto the spoon. Half a gram, maybe less. "

My hands were already moving. I measured by eye, tapping the precise amount into the blackened spoon.

Hunter went quiet, watching.

"Like this?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral even as I added water from the bottle cap.

"Yeah." His response came slowly. "Now you need to heat it. Hold the lighter underneath, but not too close. You want to dissolve it, not burn it."

I held the flame beneath the spoon, swirling gently as the powder dissolved and turned amber. I drew it up through a piece of cotton, into the syringe.

"You said you'd never done this before." Hunter's voice had gone flat.

I met his eyes. "I said I'd never done this before. Not like this."

"Bullshit." His pupils were still dilated from withdrawal, but his gaze had sharpened. "You handle that like a nurse. Like someone who's done it a hundred times." He watched my hands tie the tourniquet around his arm, each movement practiced and sure. "What the fuck were you really doing in Paris?"

I positioned the needle against his skin and found the vein easily. "I told you. I was held captive by someone who thought of people as objects to be collected and studied. He liked to preserve his victims."

"Preserve." Hunter's jaw clenched. "What does that mean?"

"He injected them with compounds. Preservation fluids. While they were still alive." The words came out steady, factual. "Roche taught me. Made me practice on his victims before he killed them."

Hunter went completely still. "And you just let me believe—" His jaw clenched hard enough I could hear his teeth grind. "Did you get off on that too? Having me trust you while you lied?"

"Maybe." I didn't look away from his eyes. "Does it matter? You still needed me to do it."

"Fuck you." But he didn't pull his arm away. Couldn't. The addiction was stronger than pride, stronger than anger. We both knew it.

Something dark passed between us then. Recognition. Two people who'd taken medical knowledge and twisted it into something wrong. Hunter had used his training to hurt people for money. I'd used mine to help a monster preserve his victims like butterflies pinned to cork.

We were perfect for each other in the worst possible way.

Normal people would see what we were and run. Would recognize the danger, the damage, the fundamental brokenness that made us capable of these things.

But we weren't normal people. We were survivors who'd learned that morality was a luxury and control was currency.

And right now, with my hands steady on the syringe and his pulse hammering beneath my fingers, I had all the power.

The realization should have frightened me. Instead, it made me hard.

"We're both fucked up," Hunter said quietly, and it wasn't quite forgiveness.

"Completely." I positioned the needle at the perfect angle. "But right now, I'm the one holding what you need."

His pulse hammered against my fingers where I held his arm steady. The vein stood out clearly, ready. Waiting.

I didn't push the plunger.

"Misha." His voice had gone rough. "Come on."

"Tell me about Tyler," I said. "Who was he to you?"

"What?" The confusion in his eyes was almost funny. Almost.

"Tyler." I kept my thumb on the plunger, applying just enough pressure to let him know I was there. "Tell me about him, and I'll give you what you need."

"You're seriously—" He broke off, jaw working.

Fury and desperation warred in his expression.

"Fine. Tyler was... kid reminded me what it meant to give a shit about someone besides myself.

Had all these plans. Top surgery, apartment, real life.

" His voice cracked slightly. "Signed up for Wright's trials because he needed the money.

Wright killed him through sheer fucking negligence. "

The needle stayed where it was. Hunter's pulse thundered against my fingers.

"Now you know," he said. "Happy?"

"One more thing." I drew back the plunger slightly, watching blood bloom into the amber solution. Watching him watch it. "Say please."

"Fuck you." But there was no real heat in it. Just desperation and the knowledge that I'd already won.

"Say it." I drew back the plunger slightly more, watching blood bloom darker into the amber solution. "Ask me nicely."

His jaw worked. Pride warring with need. The addiction would win—it always won—but I wanted to watch him choose it. Watch him surrender.

"Please." The word came out broken, barely audible.

"Please what?"

His eyes blazed with fury and humiliation and something darker. Something that looked almost like gratitude. "Please give me what I need."

"Good boy."

The words were deliberate. A test. I waited to see if he'd bristle, if he'd take offense, if he'd tell me to fuck off.

Instead, his breath caught. His pupils dilated even more. His whole body responded to the praise like he'd been waiting his entire life to hear it.

Oh.

I filed that information away for later. For when we had time to explore exactly how far his submission went.

"Since you asked so nicely," I said, pushing the plunger slowly. Watching his face as chemicals flooded his system.

The sound he made was almost sexual. Breathy and desperate and satisfied all at once.

And I wanted to make him make that sound again. Wanted to find all the ways to make him fall apart. Wanted to be the thing he craved more than the needle.

But for now, I'd settle for this. For the power of giving him relief. For the knowledge that he'd begged me for it.

For the way he looked at me like I was both his salvation and his ruin.

The transformation took a minute or two. Color flooded back into his skin, the tremors stopped, his breathing deepened into something that sounded almost like contentment. His limbs went loose and heavy, shoulders melting back into the seat like gravity had doubled.

But the fentanyl didn't just ease his pain. It made him sloppy in ways that had nothing to do with motor control. His usual walls were down, leaving him raw and honest and saying things sober-Hunter would never admit.