And now that I could speak with the five of them so easily, I didn’t feel so invisible anymore.
She did that. She does that every day, making me feel seen when the world chooses to look the other way.
Lifting my hands, I sign,“I love you, tiny flame.”I tilt my head in thought.“That name doesn’t fit anymore,”I sign to her with a frown.“Your flame isn’t tiny, it’s massive.”
“Big flamedoesn’t have quite the same ring to it,” she says with a grin.
“How about simply, my love?”I sign, in question.
“I like that,” she says before biting her lip, her eyes sparking with heat. I lean in and kiss her again, unable to stop myself.
Pulling back, I remind myself that there is something else I want to discuss.“I wanted to talk about what happened at Ivan’s home.”I regret the change in topic as the warmth fades from her, and she crosses her arms over her chest, nodding for me to continue, clearly not loving the topic.
“When you wrote to us about your so-called date with Ivan, I had this terrible feeling that it was him. But I wasn’t certain. But when you sent us the note with his initials IS, I knew for sure. I didn’t want to tell the others while I was stuck in a cell with them. What if they turned on me? I’d have nowhere to run.”
I pause my signing to make sure she’s catching all my words, and she nods, so I continue.“After I met you in person, I didn’t want one of the first things we spoke about to be him. I wanted us to get to know each other without that looming over us.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t want you around if I knew?” she asks. It’s a fair question with only one honest answer. I nod, and she purses her lips at me. “Jagger, I wouldn’t have cared, even back then. But I understand why you waited. I still wish you had told me instead of him, but I’m not upset. It doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Why are you so perfect?”I ask, which brings the smile back to her face.“I really am sorry. I hope you trust there’snothing else I’m keeping from you? I’ll never keep anything from you again.”
“I know,” she says, reaching forward to cup my cheek. “And I love you, too, Jagger.” This time, she’s the one to lean forward and kiss me. It’s over too quickly, but she manages to suck on my lower lip as she pulls away, leaving me wanting more.
She pushes to her feet as she asks, “Shall we?” I offer her my elbow, and she slips her arm through as we carry on our stroll.
As we come to the place where the path bends around a large pond, there are a lot more people around, and the guys narrow the gap between us, with Sly only twenty feet in front now.
I feel Wren’s hand tighten on my arm and glance down at her and find her frowning. I take a second to scan our surroundings. There are probably a dozen people or so around here, but none of them look like they could be Ivan’s men. It’s mostly families and couples.
I try to assess what Wren is looking at and realize it’s a group of three women ahead on our left, looking at Sly and giggling to themselves.
Ah. She’s jealous.
Internally, I grin. There’s something about her jealousy that’s so attractive, even if it isn’t aimed my way. It’s just seeing that fire in her that has my cock jerking to attention.
As Sly moves closer, they step out onto the path in front of him. He tries to move around them, but they block his path and start talking to him.
“Hi, I haven’t seen you around here before,” one woman says in Russian.
“I don’t speak Russian,” he says curtly, trying to movearound them, but they easily block his path, not letting him pass without physically moving them out of his way.
Wren lets out a small growl as we stop walking and watch.
“American?” the woman asks in a heavily accented English, her eyes lighting up like she’s just struck gold, as she glances at her friends.
“What brings you to Moscow?” another woman asks in English.
“I need to go,” he says, trying to brush them off as he glances back at us and sees Wren’s angry face.
“But we want to talk to you,” the third woman tells him, placing her hand on his arm.
Wren rips her arm from me and bends down, scooping up a large handful of snow and pressing it together in a ball, then, before I even realize what she’s doing, she pulls her hand back and lets it fly. It ends up smacking the second girl who spoke on the side of her head.
She gasps loudly in shock, as they all turn to look at my tiny flame. ‘Cause right now she looks like a spark about to ignite into a full fire, raging at anyone who gets close.
“What the fuck?” the woman screeches in Russian.
I’m just shocked Wren managed to hit her; she usually has terrible aim.
