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Sevastyan scooped her off the bed and carried her into the bathroom once the tub was filled. He’d added bath salts to the water to help heal any soreness. She curled into his chest, feeling lightweight, almost insubstantial to him. There were rope marks on her body as well as marks from his mouth and hands. She had skin that displayed his artwork beautifully. Someday, he’d take pictures of her body after he removed the ropes as well as with the various ties on.
“Sevastyan.” His name came out a husky protest as he sat down in the tub, her body between his legs, the hot water nearly to her neck. “It’s too hot.”
“It’s good for you.” He caught her chin and pulled her head back against his shoulder so he could wash her face. “Keep your eyes closed. I like your face all shiny with my seed, baby, but you might not like it as much as I do.”
Flambé reached back over her shoulder and wrapped her arm around his neck. It was the first real spontaneous gesture of affection she’d ever made toward him that wasn’t sexual since his leopard had claimed hers. He knew she’d done it because she was half asleep, but he’d take what he could get. He was very gentle as he washed her face. She fell asleep as he held her, just soaking her body, letting the salts have time to do their work.
The moment he began to soap her body, it didn’t matter how gentle he was, he could see how sensitive her skin was, particularly now that hormones were raging. If she always had trouble with her nerve endings so close, the merging of the leopard and human cycles had worsened the effects. Her body shuddered with every touch no matter how careful or impersonal he was. He forced himself to use stronger, harder strokes, even though it went against everything he wanted to do, and she quieted.
When he washed between her legs she cried out and turned her face into his shoulder, biting down hard with her teeth, not realizing she was biting him. He murmured to her soothingly and finished, wrapping her once in a towel rather than trying to dry her off, and then putting her in bed and letting her air-dry.
He checked the butterfly bandages and then pressed a kiss into the middle of her back before heading downstairs to the kitchen.
12
SEVASTYAN poured Flambé a cup of coffee. “Tell me about your father. You don’t really talk about him that much.”
He kept his gaze fixed on her face. She was dressed in loose-fitting casual clothes. Nothing sexy about a pair of soft cotton, dark navy pants and a thin cotton ombré top, but for some reason he found her sexier than ever. Her face was devoid of all makeup and her hair was shiny clean, piled high on her head in that messy knot she favored. He knew it was to keep it off her skin, where before he thought it was to prevent the mass from bothering her while she worked or from getting it wet when she was in the tub.
“I don’t?” Her long lashes lifted and then she stared down into her coffee cup as if it would somehow help her to remember if she talked about her father or not. Her lashes were naked of all mascara, strawberry blond with those red-gold tips that got to him every time.
He had studied the photographs of the leopards in South Africa, interested to see what her species looked like. They were very small. The heaviest female strawberry leopard known so far was only sixty pounds. That was extremely small for a shifter. He was Amurov and his male was a big brute, coming in close to two hundred pounds of pure muscle.
“No, baby, you don’t. I never met him. What was he like?”
She moved her shoulders as if she was stiff. “Why did your leopard bite me again?”
“Flambé.” He pushed warning into his voice. Mild. But still a warning. “Things got heated in the bedroom. Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about your father?”
She shrugged. “It’s just difficult to know what to say about him.” She pushed the coffee away after taking a sip. “He was great with plants. Really great.” Enthusiasm slipped into her voice.
She hadn’t eaten much. She’d pushed the food around on her plate more than she’d actually put it in her mouth. He got her a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator and set it close to her hand, removing the coffee cup. “Honey, if you don’t like what I make for you, you need to tell me. I can cook other things. I just don’t admit it to the family. The chef can make anything for us and I can reheat it.”
Flambé sat up straight and shook her head, her eyes meeting his. “No. This is good, Sevastyan. I’m not a big eater as a rule.”
Her voice was very low. Husky. It played along his nerve endings. He watched her take a long drink of water and work her throat. A drop of water from the condensation on the bottle splashed on her top and stained the color a darker hue.
“I know Leland was amazing with his business, Flambé, but that doesn’t tell me anything about what he was like as a father. Or as a husband. I know he took a mate very late in his life. Your mother was a good twenty years younger than he was. She was a chef, wasn’t she?”
He was a rigger, a rope artist, and he paid close attention to everything to do with his partners, but now, especially to his mate. The slightest change in her breathing, the sweep of her lashes, the press of her lips. She was very uncomfortable discussing anything to do with her parents on a personal level.
“You know my mother died in childbirth, right?”
His heart stuttered. Clenched hard enough that it gave him pause. The moment he saw those steady trickles of blood running down her shoulder from Shturm’s claiming bite he knew something was wrong. He felt protective of Flambé. Not just protective. His sentiment went far beyond that. They’d spent time together, but mostly he expressed his passions in his art. He allowed his emotions for her to be wrapped up in his rope. He felt his connection growing with every knot, every tie. The touches on her skin. The sex was inflammatory, wild, the best, but it wasn’t nearly as intimate as the laying of the ropes. Wrapping her up—in him.
“Yes, malen’koye plamya, I’m well aware your mother died in childbirth. That’s one of the reasons I’m against you having children. I don’t want to risk you. I know it’s practically impossible for birth control to work for shifters, so I’d like to talk to a doctor about how to keep that from happening or how to best take care of it before you’re at risk.”
She tilted her chin at him. “Has it occurred to you that I might want children?”
The moment she gave him that defiant little chin lift of hers, Shturm roared and his body stirred, his dominant side rising fast. “Naturally. Which is why I said I was against you having children. I don’t want you carrying our children. We can use a surrogate. There has to be a safer way. When we find it, we’ll have children if you want them.”
He kept his tone mild, as if he wasn’t laying down the law when he was, because he damn well wasn’t going to lose her. He doubted if the strawberry leopards had been wiped out just from poachers. He thought it more likely was from whatever caused them to hemorrhage when they had even a slight cut.
The moment he realized she could be like her mother—a hemophiliac—that it could be genetic, he had set in motion everything he could to aid her. His people were researching. Evangeline, Ashe, Ania. Drake’s people. Jake Bannaconni’s people. Sevastyan had already texted Jake Bannaconni’s doctor, a renowned shifter, asking his advice. He knew there were ways to help treat bleeding disorders. That fast he had an incredible team to make certain Flambé lived a long life—with him. It did make him grateful for the life he led. There were some positive things to it. The thought of losing her was already beyond his comprehension.
“How did your parents meet? Did your father ever tell you?”
Flambé pulled her legs up under her, curling into herself there on the window seat in the kitchen. She looked away from him, her fingers circling the water bottle. “Yes. I was curious of course. She was one of the females he rescued. He put her through culinary school. According to him, she loved to cook and was very good at it.”
“She had a reputation,” Sevastyan encouraged when she fell silent. “Evangeline told me she was a chef at Baume, the r
enowned French restaurant in downtown San Antonio. She would have had to be amazing to work there.”
Flambé sent him a brief smile and then turned back to look out the window. She looked so alone he wanted to gather her up in his arms. It took effort to stay in his chair and just observe her.
Shturm, pay close attention. She is guarding herself. Holding herself so close. He wanted the impression of his leopard as well. More than once he had been forced to interrogate prisoners and Shturm’s observations had been helpful. This was more important to his life—and his leopard’s—than anything else.
“Keep going, baby. Tell me about them.”
“He wanted children and he never found his mate. The species was nearly extinct. He said it stood to reason that his mate had already been killed. She was in her first cycle.”
She turned and looked at him again. Straight. Her eyes meeting his. Her eyes were nearly emerald. Was there hostility there? Some kind of accusation? Her lashes lowered and she turned her head before he could read her.
Shturm?
She doesn’t trust us. Either one of us.
He waited a heartbeat, turning his leopard’s assessment over and over in his mind, letting it process. “Your father told you that your mother was in her first life cycle but that he had another mate?”
“Yes.”
Short. Clipped. By all accounts, Flambé and her father had gotten along very well. They didn’t argue. They were good friends. The only thing she’d gone against her father on had been continuing with her rescuing of the leopard species going extinct. Other than that one thing, everyone, including Flambé, said she didn’t fight with her father. But then, Flambé didn’t argue with Sevastyan either.
“Did he talk to you about their life together?” He pushed her just a little bit when he knew she was reluctant to talk to him about her parents.
She took another drink of water and then swung her legs off the little bench seat to stand up, stretching. “He didn’t. I asked a couple of other people I knew, friends of hers, and they told me things. They weren’t exactly nice things. I want to go for a run.”
“That’s a good idea.” He stood up as well. “I think after this morning, we both need a little action.” He gathered the plates from the table.
Flambé instantly cleared the silverware and mugs. She began washing the dishes as he scraped the food she didn’t eat into the compost she’d set up for the plants.
“What did her friends tell you?”
She shrugged. “Nothing good. They’re both gone so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He went hot inside. Red hot. Raging. It mattered. “He didn’t hit her—or you, did he?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
He could barely hear her and she was standing right beside him. Close. She smelled like cinnamon and Egyptian jasmine. At once he got that taste for her in his mouth. On his tongue. She set up a craving there was no denying. Franco Matherson was going to be a big problem sometime in the future as much as they both might want to think he was gone. There was no getting a woman like Flambé out of one’s mind.
Her parents. He needed to do some digging into what life had been like for her mother with her father. “When did you move out to that little studio? How old were you?”
The Carver property was fairly extensive, landscaped beautifully, so much so that it was a showpiece. The house was a long, U-shaped, single-story dwelling with many bedrooms and a wide covered verandah. There were two other houses, both of which had been built as dwellings for the male shifters who worked for them or the rescues who were training under her father. The studio was off by itself a distance from the main house.
She finished washing the dishes and wandered back to the window, avoiding his gaze. “I was seven. He needed the bedroom.”
Sevastyan felt like Shturm did most of the time, wanting to claw and rake, to break free and murder something or someone. She was very subdued, no expression in her voice, but he had been to her property with her to get her things.
The studio was situated right next to a koi pond where lavender and lacy ferns sprang around the wide bluish-black rock and tree limbs wept long green fringe into the water. The walkway leading to the studio was paved in the same bluish-black stones and the building fit perfectly with the setting, a small artsy one-bedroom cottage with a kitchenette and bathroom. The porch overlooked the pond, as did the front windows, giving Flambé a wonderful view, but that view would be far different as an adult than it would be as a child, not to mention it wouldn’t have been all that safe for a child alone.
“Get your shoes, baby,” he said softly.
He was the one who needed to run now. His body raged at him. Normally he would have turned to sex, going to Cain’s club, losing himself in the sheer beauty of tying the ropes, laying down a masterpiece on a blank canvas, and after, giving his body the release it needed, a totally unsatisfying mindless fuck that never did anything but let some of the volcanic rage go long enough to get by for a few days or, if he was lucky, weeks.
Now that he had Flambé, everything was different. His art was personal. Her body was the perfect canvas and each time he tied her, no matter how he decided to lay the ropes on her body, the color or texture, the pattern, it had to be on her because she was the one who made his art a masterpiece. She made it come alive. She took his cock and actually, in spite of his addiction to her, sated him enough that he could sleep. She managed to quiet the ferocious rage in him that he had thought was impossible to ever tame. Sadly, whatever she needed from him he wasn’t giving her—yet. He was determined to figure it out. His little strawberry leopard mattered to him, whether she thought so or not.
He waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. She hadn’t tried to change one thing in the house. She hadn’t asked for her own office. She’d barely moved her clothes into their bedroom. Each time he’d named a day to get married, she’d come up with an excuse why she couldn’t make that work. He was so busy with Mitya’s business, so used to being at his cousin’s beck and call, that he’d let that all slide. The only thing he’d really demanded of Flambé was for her to work at Mitya’s estate when she was drawing up plans and to sleep in their bedroom. She’d given him both.
He gave a low growl as he paced back and forth. How was he different than anyone else in her life? He was truly neglectful of her. He needed to find a way to spend more time with her, to make her know she was his priority. They had sex. Crazy, kinky, hot, wild, insane, insatiable sex. She distracted him with sex and he let her. He distracted her with sex and she let him. Their relationship was founded on sex and seemed to be about sex. She was comfortable with that and wanted to keep it that way. She hid herself from him unless . . .
Sevastyan abruptly stopped pacing. Flambé couldn’t hide from him when she was in the ropes. She was too vulnerable and open to him. Too connected to him. That was the one place she was honest with him whether she wanted to be or not. He had to be careful though. He couldn’t use that too much or too often. In any case, he would prefer to have her trust him. He wanted her to want to get to know him. To want to share his home.
Shturm leapt just as he scented her. It was more than scenting her. He felt her in his skin, that was how connected to her he was. He looked up, watching her come to him. She looked confident, very much Flambé, but he knew her every subtlety now, every little sign, and she was nervous. It was there in the tension of her fingers as she twisted them together to keep them still as she descended the staircase. It was the way she held her head, her shoulders very straight, not nearly as relaxed as normal. She definitely had a problem relating to him when they were alone and they weren’t having sex.
Deliberately, he allowed his gaze to sweep over her, and then he held out his hand. She had no choice but to take it or to be rude. There was just the briefest of hesitations before she put her hand in his. He doubted if too many others would have even noticed the slip. He closed his fingers around hers firmly and drew her in close to his bod
y, walking her to the front door.
“I thought we could walk around to the back of the house to warm up and then jog to the woods and run once we get in them. You had to have created pathways between the trees and I’d like to see the new ones that were planted. It looks so beautiful from a distance and I haven’t had time to get up close to appreciate it. You do amazing work, Flambé. I don’t tell you enough.”
She glanced up at him, looking surprised. “You tell me.”
“No, I don’t. I have to drive around the city quite a bit with Mitya and I make it a practice to find all the places you’ve worked. I like to see what you’ve done. I know it has nothing at all to do with me, but it gives me a sense of pride that I even know you when I look at the various places you’ve transformed. The downtown park in particular was the biggest shock to me. I saw all the before and after pictures. That was your project alone, wasn’t it? Your vision?”
He felt the tension slowly leaving her body. She did love her work, another connection he could make with her if she just would let him. He hadn’t realized until he was around her how much he liked plants and trees. It was the leopard in him, needing to climb, needing the camouflage around him.
“I underbid that project for the city, but I really wanted to do it,” Flambé admitted. “I wanted a place for everyone of all ages to be able to go. Somewhere peaceful.”
“I think you managed it beautifully and it seems easy to maintain.”
“I tried. The other project I really enjoyed was the Golden Dragon Restaurant. They have such a beautiful piece of property to work with and the owner just let me do what I felt was best. Most owners have a million ideas and they don’t have a clue what types of plants work with their soil or terrain. I was able to give him a small fall tumbling over rocks into a small stream that feeds a koi pond. The gardens are gorgeous and grew up fast. I wanted the trees to be colorful, and Japanese maples fill that bill, especially dwarf maples, but the sun is too hot here for them.”