“Yes. Baby. You were the baby. I had to change your diapers. What a mess that was.” Mitya gave a long-suffering sigh.
“You know how to change diapers?” Ania asked, swinging her head around to look at her husband. “You never once mentioned this talent to me. I don’t have a clue how to change a baby’s little butt. Guess who will be doing that particular chore if we ever get lucky enough to have one of those creatures?”
Mitya wrapped his arm around Ania’s shoulders and dragged her even closer. “We’ll have a baby someday, kotyonok. One way or another we’ll have one, although I’m not certain I will remember how to change diapers. You may have to learn.”
>
“Ha!” Sevastyan pounced on that. “He never changed my diapers in the first place. Don’t believe a thing he says, Flambé.”
“In any case, I was being overprotective of him. I feared he entered into the relationship too fast. He was lonely. I knew this. You are beautiful. Anyone can see that. You both have the same interests but you never looked at him the way I thought a woman who would love him would look at him. I had no right to judge you or the relationship the two of you choose to have together. I wanted so much for him and I put my desires and what I believed was the only right way to love on the two of you. I’m very sorry for that.”
“I can’t really blame you for thinking I had one foot out the door,” Flambé said. “Since I did. I’m not good at relationships, or trusting anyone, especially a male shifter.”
Sevastyan wrapped his arm around her waist, ignoring the slight stiffening of her body. They had to start somewhere. He pulled her to him. “I didn’t make it easy, Flambé. Between visiting the club, my work, and a thousand other things . . .”
She bumped him with her hip. “Don’t. You tried way more than I did. I just tried to run. In any case, we’re hopefully past that now.” She turned to Ania. “Flamme finally made her appearance, thanks to Sevastyan. I don’t know how he was able to get her out without it killing me, but he managed.”
She smiled up at him and ran her hand up and down his arm. It was just once, but she did it, a small sign of affection she never would have done before. His stomach did a slow, weird flip and he tightened his hold on her.
“Her leopard is gorgeous,” he told them. “I’ve never seen one like her. Her rosettes are actually red, not black, and her fur is definitely ginger, or closer to pink.”
“Pink?” Flambé looked outraged. “Definitely not pink. Red. My leopard is red. I can’t believe you even said pink. Strike that word from your vocabulary.”
Ania giggled and Mitya coughed behind his hand.
Sevastyan’s fingers danced their way up her rib cage, sliding intimately over her thin T-shirt. “I just dyed more rope this morning, various colors, and one of them was a bright pink. I think we’ll be using that quite often.”
“We will not be using that. Not only does it clash with my coloring, but I’m allergic to pink,” Flambé declared, tossing her head. Several thick sheets of hair dislodged from her ponytail and fell around her face. She tilted her face up toward his, eyes mostly green, looking like twin jewels, high cheekbones flushed with rose.
“Baby,” Sevastyan said, his voice very low. “It’s impossible to be allergic to a color.”
“You don’t know. Strawberry leopards have strange maladies. I very well could be allergic to colors.”
He bent his head to hers before he could stop himself. There was no resisting her. He wasn’t a man who would ever be able to not kiss his woman in public. Or hold her hand. Or put his arm around her. He could refrain from slamming her up against a wall—he was fairly certain he had that much restraint—but he was a shifter and he was oral. He was also tactile. He needed to touch and taste. And claim. The damn truth of it was, he was drowning under her spell.
Sevastyan very gently framed Flambé’s face, his thumbs sliding over her chin, her jaw, tracing the delicate lines. He sipped tenderly at her lower lip. Her long lashes swept down as her breath hitched. He kissed the corners of her mouth and then pressed his lips to hers, his tongue sliding along the seam in a silent command for entry.
Flambé obeyed without hesitation. One hand slid around, shaping the back of her skull, pressing into her thick red hair, all that silky brightness. His heart pounded hard in his chest. His thumb stroked over her chin, back and forth in a small caress.
“I need you, malen’koye plamya, just to breathe, to live. I’ve never said that to another human being, but it’s the truth. Not for Shturm, but for me.” He whispered it to her and then, before she could answer him, or even lift her lashes to look at him and see his intense mortification, he kissed her, this time taking them both into that fiery place that consumed them fast and voraciously.
Flambé kissed him back, her slender arms sliding around his neck, her body pressed tight against his. She gave herself to him the way she did when she was in the ropes. She’d never done that before unless she was tied or in the heat of her leopard. Sevastyan found he could barely stand. As always, his body was completely out of control, his cock diamond hard, ready to shatter at the least little provocation just from having his woman in such close proximity. It wouldn’t do to collapse in front of Mitya and Ania or make a fool of himself.
He lifted his head cautiously and glanced around to check how close the nearest chair was. Could he make it without breaking anything important? Keeping his hold on Flambé so she was in front of him, he took a step back and lowered himself gingerly into the chair, sprawling, legs out in front of him.
Mitya snickered. The ass. He glared at him as he gently guided Flambé onto his lap, making certain he positioned her onto his thighs and not his straining cock. She did a little shimmy thing with her body and he had to stifle a groan. Mitya snickered again.
“Do leopard ashes make good compost?” He glared at his brother while he asked his woman the question, biting down on her shoulder as he did so.
A little shiver went through her. “I suppose it would depend on the leopard. If you’re talking about Mitya, probably not. In fact, his ashes could be toxic to plants.”
Ania burst out laughing. Mitya scowled darkly. “Toxic to plants? You think I’d be toxic to your plants? Woman, you’re insane. I’d nurture those plants.”
“The way you nurtured little Sevastyan,” Ania prompted, and gave in to another fit of giggling.
“Baby Sevastyan,” Flambé corrected, and laughed with Ania.
Sevastyan put his mouth against her ear and stroked his hand along the cheeks of her bottom. “I have a special tie I can’t wait to use on you just to show you what happens to my woman when she teases me like this and I can’t retaliate.” His teeth bit down on her earlobe, tugged and let go.