lightly on his wife’s neck. “Already, you’ve lived with him. You know how he is. Hot-tempered. But still, a good man. My baby brother, although few know this.”
Sevastyan groaned. “Not baby.”
“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