Lida came to me and sniffed my belly before curling up at Ranger’s feet, an assessment that always made Nash feel better.
I caught his eye across the room. He held one of River’s old guitars, strumming softly while Rubi sang and used Cam’s head as a bongo drum. His smile blinded me, and it was the best thing I’d seen all day. How Locke was napping through it, I had no idea.
The sofa shifted.
Viktor. He’d come to perch on the arm, giving me space.
I rolled my eyes and tugged him into a proper seat. “Where’s your brother?”
“He went to clean up. Has been a long day for him.”
I didn’t have the first clue where Jakov might’ve travelled from to get here. His tan said it might’ve been Viktor’s fabled island, but I knew better than to ask. So I went with the obvious instead. “Your brother’s a smokeshow.”
Viktor grinned. “Yours are not difficult to look at.”
“Oi.”
Ranger reached around me and poked Viktor.
Viktor laughed and I sensed another gaze on us.
Alexei. He seemed to like it when Viktor was happy. Or maybe his eyes were smiling because he lounged against the wall with Saint’s head in his lap, the most relaxed I’d seen either of them all day. Either way, for a moment so simple, it was one I’d never forget.
It grew late enough that the dads started talking about taking the kids home.
Locke carried Hope to the car.
Ivy demanded Jakov carry her.
He took his cue from Folk and obliged.
By then, Cam and Rubi had passed out drunk and he came back inside to catch me with a marker in my hands, considering what to draw on their faces.
“Viktor would draw a cock on me.”
I pursed my lips, considering. “I did that last year.”
“This is an annual thing?”
“Christmas is a new concept for you?”
“Like this?” Jakov took in the carnage around us, then crouched to greet Lida as she followed him inside, his love for her as clear as Viktor’s. “No. My family never had this much fun whatever time of year it was.”
“What about your family now?”
“I am grateful they exist.”
Okay. I was beginning to like this man beyond his dark eyes and chiselled good looks. “Viktor calls you Jake. Do you prefer it to Jakov?”
Jakov regarded me with a slow nod. “Is what my mother called me.”
I didn’t get the chance to ask if she was still alive. Nash and Locke came back inside, and I saw the moment I laid eyes on Locke that he’d snapped into full daddy mode.
Time to go. All of us were sober enough to drive, but Locke took the wheel and chauffeured us home. The stairs were a bitch, but the promise of my bed, and the front seat of whatever naughtiness I could talk my boys into kept me going. Too pregnant to fuck, but a gold-star voyeur to the bone.
The innuendo made me grin. I hauled one of my pilfered shirts over my head and settled on the bed, watching as Locke and Nash moved through the flat, checking locks and security cameras, shedding clothes as they went.
Nash was bare chested by the time he joined me in the bedroom. He’d lost his jeans too and caught me looking. “You want something, babe?”