Free Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) by Ryan Graudin

pieces of Luka up with her. A heartstring here, an extra breath there.
    “Tomorrow, then,” Luka managed. He wished he had a better argument.
    Adele ducked down to her pup tent, pushing aside the mosquito net. She looked back over her shoulder at Luka. For a moment hers looked like any other pair of jungle eyes: luminescent against the electric lantern light, harboring some primal eeriness.
    “I’m looking forward to it,” she said.

Chapter 12
    Lips.
    Skin.
    Warmth on warmth.
    These thoughts feasted on Luka with mosquito-needle eagerness, gorging on his concentration. It didn’t matter that the engine whirred beneath him or that Katsuo was fording every river in record time or that the actual bug bites on his neck itched until his nails made them bleed. Whenever he shut his eyes, he saw Adele, a movement away, ready to kiss him, to be kissed. Whenever he opened his eyes, he saw her, too, wheels in time with his own, driving through water with gritted teeth and steeled eyes.
    Both of these things—thoughts and sights—made Luka’s insides soar. Adele was distracting, yes, but she also drove Luka forward: much faster, much further than any Zündapp had ever carried him. He doubted his father had ever felt anything like it.
    Zoom, zoom.
    The second day out of Dhaka was as grueling as the first. Tsuda Katsuo’s pace stretched everyone thin. Ten hours into eleven, mud splashing/gashing over everything, thirteen hours and still going, a darkening jungle blurring by, fourteen hours cramped by muscle agony, wavering wheels, exhaustion thickening the night, making the darkness impossible to pierce, even with the brightest of headlamps. Fifteen hours and they could go no farther. Hanoi was still over thirteen hours away, which was much too far to push without sleep, especially with the HanoiShanghai stretch on the horizon.
    Both Luka and Adele were covered in mud as they set up camp, checking the overhanging branches for creepy-crawlies and driving stakes into the soil. The electric lantern lit their movements. Adele looked more beautiful than ever as she worked. Luka’s smile would not stay tamped down. He wondered, vaguely, if he was being the soft dummkopf his father had always feared he was. The one Luka had spent his whole life trying to prove he
wasn’t.
He was strong. A
verdammt
victor.
    But it wasn’t enough; it was never enough.
    And here was… something.
    Adele felt it, too. He could see it: in the subtle shift of her hips, in the glances she threw Luka’s way when she thought he wasn’t looking. He heard it, as well: in the perfect silence between her sentences, in the way she said his name.
    “Luka…” Adele let the pause stretch, until they were both taut. “This is our last night alone together.”
    Already?
He realized, with a start, that Adele was right. Tomorrow night, Hanoi. After that, the Li River ferry crossing. Once they knocked Katsuo out of the race, their alliance would end. The thought gutted Luka more than it should have.
    He didn’t trust himself to speak on the subject. He chewed on his dinner instead, nodding to her sliced jacket. “How’s your arm?”
    “No gangrene. Yet,” she added. “Your hand?”
    “Getting better.”
    They fell back into a muggy, not-quite silence. Ration packets crinkled. Somewhere in the distance a tiger called out—burning growl against the dark. There was something profoundly lonely about the noise.
    Is this all there is?
    Adele cleared her throat of the last of her meal. “I never thanked you for distracting Takeo.”
    Luka looked down at his bandaged palm. He couldn’t see the blood, but he knew it was there, in crusts, entombing its way back inside of him. The wound would be completely healed by the time he returned to Hamburg.
    “It’s what allies do,” he said.
    “Is it?” Adele tilted her head. “You shaved seconds off your time for me. You risked the blade. I’ve never heard of a racer doing that before. Even for an ally.”
    “I’m