40. Wren
WREN
Viktor watched me intensely, like he was holding his breath.
This big, strong man was on his knees in front of me. Holding my hand like it was a treasure he never wanted to harm. Laying his heart on the line in front of his brothers and cousins despite the concept that none of them ever wanted to be emotional like this.
His public proposal was exactly what I’d been hoping for. This was literally the secret fantasy I couldn’t shrug off.
Viktor Volkov was expressing his love for me.
“Wren?” he asked.
I didn’t realize that I was being so slow to speak. Yet, with the pressure of everyone’s stares on me as they were all quiet in this important meeting about grave threats and real concerns, I couldn’t stay suspended in shock like this for long.
I didn’t want to.
“Yes.” I smiled as he exhaled in relief.
As if I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him!
He lunged up to snare me in a kiss, pressing his mouth to mine without a shred of modesty or caring about this being a private intimacy instead of a grand display of over-the-top affection.
I laughed lightly at the pressure of his warm lips against mine.
Brushing back and forth. Opening them up and darting his tongue inside.
Without breaking the seal, I smiled against him and brought my hand up to cup the back of his head to hold him close.
His signature ponytail wasn’t in right now, and I relished how I could slip my fingers up into his silky hair and secure him right where I wanted him, right where I needed him.
At last, before I’d feel the urgency of missing air, he reared back and gazed at me like it was just the two of us in this room. When he locked his glittering brown stare on me like that, it seemed like the rest of the world never could matter much.
Only us.
This love.
“I love you,” I whispered, keeping my lips so close to his that our breath mingled.
He kissed me once more, like he just couldn’t help himself.
“The ring,” Nikolai prompted with a laugh. “Don’t forget the ring.”
I grinned, almost embarrassed that they were all watching, but I was too over the moon and happy to be ashamed. All of them were my family now too. My brothers-in-law, cousins-in-law, and sisters-in-law.
I wasn’t only going to marry Viktor. I was being welcomed into an entire family.
My heart raced as I admired the ring, marveling at the perfect fit of the emerald and diamond piece of jewelry that sparkled and caught the light.
Finding a man I’d want to marry and start a family with had always seemed like a backup idea to pursuing the career I’d always dreamed of having, but now I saw how backward that was.
I would have the best life now, with Viktor, and also have time for a career.
Congratulations went around, but as we collectively realized the business part of the meeting was over, we all trailed out of the room.
Viktor held my hand, leading me toward what seemed to be an unused study.
Alone now, I grinned at him again, so giddy and full of love that I could hardly contain it in my heart.
“What took you so long?” I teased.
“Oh, I should have kidnapped you sooner?” he asked, hugging me close.
Maybe it was strange, but between us, the fact that he’d kidnapped me would always be part of our running inside joke.
Both of us mutually sarcastic—as a defense mechanism to the uglier side of life and the violence that was sometimes necessary to complement it.
“I wanted to wait to propose,” he admitted honestly, smiling down at me like I was the world’s greatest gift.
“We have such a bright future ahead of us,” I told him. “A baby. Our home…”
He nodded. “But there will be hardships, too.”
“Of course, there will be.” Peace would be a fleeting, fluid thing for me now, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
So long as I was with him and part of this family, I had my purpose at last. It wasn’t to chase down criminals my bosses told me to focus on.
It was to be with this strong man and start a family while I helped them remove the threats against them.
“I planned to ask once we were home,” he said softly. “But when you said that about not living with me…” He growled, shaking his head.
I’d never tire of his possessiveness.
“I meant that as in we’d be living somewhere else while the house is worked on.” I knew better than to argue with him about how renovating was unnecessary on my behalf.
“We will live together,” he stated sternly.
I smiled. “We can have a long engagement, though,” I suggested. “Until more of this stuff to do with Gregori is over with.”
“That could take months.”
“Really? I feel like we’ve got to be closing in on him now.”
He smirked. “Yeah. That’s the one thing we don’t have. A location on him.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m not crazy about waiting to marry you.”
I laughed. “Yet you’d wait to propose?”
He shrugged. “It was driving me crazy. I wanted to ask you the second I got that ring out of the vault.”
“Well, a long engagement wouldn’t change anything between us.” I kissed him. “The end result will still be the same.”
He shook his head again. “Waiting until Gregori is caught and dead is too long of a wait. I don’t want to put our lives on hold because of him.” He seemed to struggle with a scowl but likely was determined to keep this conversation pleasant. Positive.
“I want you to be my wife sooner than later,” he added before dipping his head to kiss me deeply.
Before I could get carried away—which seemed too easy to let happen with what had to be a sudden increase of hormones from my pregnancy, if the last few days were any indication—I pulled back.
“Okay, then we do the opposite. Let’s elope.”
He grinned slowly. “Elope?”
I nodded, liking the idea more and more with how he gazed at me with so much love.
“You’d want to do that?”
“Yes. I’d like you to be my husband sooner than later.”
He kissed me softly. “But then you’ll miss not having a wedding and all the bells and whistles and pomp and—”
“All that matters is that I’ll have you.
” Now that the idea was getting in my head and sinking in, I couldn’t imagine what he was describing.
I hadn’t ever dreamed about a fantasy wedding and all those sorts of “milestone” things.
I didn’t have any family to consider and invite as guests to the ceremony.
I was just me.
Soon, it would be me with our baby.
“Let’s elope,” I stated.
He kissed me slowly and sighed against my lips. “Let’s elope,” he confirmed.
While he held me with his strong arms locked around me, I thought back to how different my life would be if not for that one fateful night.
“Can you imagine where we’d be if you hadn’t been lucky enough to catch me that night?”
He took my hand and led me out of the room. “I am lucky. Lucky to have you, Red.”
I exited the room with him, excited to go home to our house, to plan our elopement. On the way out, I couldn’t help but muse that if he hadn’t been there to follow me through that alley, I would have missed out on meeting him.
I would have missed out on falling in love with him.
I would have missed out on getting to know all the Volkovs.
I would have definitely missed out on having a chance to have this baby inside me.
And I definitely would have missed out on finding that purpose to do good, even with the bad.
Most of all, though, I wouldn’t have found this soul-deep love and connection that I would treasure and strengthen with the man I would call my husband, and missing out on that would’ve been the greatest tragedy of all.