Page 50 of My Crazy Killers
“Are all Russian women stupid, or is it just you three?” Wren asks, stepping closer. I follow her, ready to jump in if necessary, since all three women have at least six inches on Wren. But my money is still on my tiny flame.
“You care to say that again?” The first woman asks, turning to face her fully.
“I’ll say it again in Russian so you don’t misunderstand,”Wren says patronizingly.“Vy vse russkiye zhenshchiny takie tupye, ili eto tol’ko vy troye?”
The women curse at her in Russian while Wren grabs Sly's wrist and pulls him behind her, as if she’s protectinghim.
His wide eyes turn to me, as if he doesn’t know what to do, and Pete snorts, telling me he and Dex are now standing right behind me. “God, she’s adorable when she goes all firecracker,” Pete says with a sigh. I nod.Firecracker,that’s a good word to describe her right now. She looks ready to explode.
“We need to stop her before she pulls a knife on them,” Dex says quietly, and I nod, remembering how she protected me like that after we’d visited the auto shop. Sly seems to have the same idea because he wraps an arm around her waist from behind and pulls her back a couple of steps until she’s plastered to his front.
The women stop cursing and watch them, before their eyes flick to me. Then one of them literally spits on the ground before cursing in English, “Slut.”
“Nope. Not happening,” Pete mutters as he bends down and grabs a handful of snow. “I might not want to hit a woman, but snowballs are fair game,” he tosses one and nails the spitter right in the chest. She turns her glare at him right before she’s nailed in the face with a snowball, thrown by Dex this time.
Sly, realizing what’s going on, scoops Wren up and quickly moves her behind us. When he sets her on her feet, she immediately goes to work forming snowballs and tossing them at the women. I’m not sure why the women don’t throw any back, but they just stand there screeching, trying to bat our snowballs away like annoying mosquitoes.
I lift one up, ready to nail that piece of trash in the face for insulting Wren, but a giggle stops me in my tracks. Glancing down, I see her kneeling in the snow, Pete and Dex forming snowballs and dumping them into a pile for her faster than she can throw them, and they start to roll away.
I vaguely notice the women scurrying down the path, looking angry, but Wren’s attention has completely shifted. Pete tries to toss another snowball into her pile, but it hits her leg instead. “Hey!” she yells with a narrowed gaze, her lips tilted up in amusement. “You’re not supposed to hitme!” She picks up the snowball and tosses it back at him, hitting his leg.
His jaw drops open in mock outrage. “There!” she says proudly, wiping her mitts off on each other. “Now we’re even.”
Pete’s jaw snaps shut as a mischievous glint fills his eyes. Slowly, he bends down and starts pulling snow together to form a snowball. Seeing his intentions, I drop to a knee in front of her, giving him my back, which he hits squarely with a snowball.
She looks at me in surprise, then a smile that could melt the coldest of hearts covers her face. “You saved me! My hero!”
Lifting my hands, I quickly sign. “I’ll cover you. Get him.”
She grins, a little evilly, and grabs a snowball, leaning to the side to throw it at him. I can’t see if she hits him, but I think she misses because she frowns and grabs another one. I keep getting hit in the back as she attempts to hit him.
“You have to do better than that!” Pete taunts her.
A particularly hard one hits me in the back and rocks me toward her slightly. “Dex! You traitor!” she yells in disbelief.
“I’m giving you a bigger target to hit,” he calls back, sounding as if he genuinely believes he’s doing her a favor.
“Doesn’t seem to help,” Pete teases her. Wren literally growls in frustration before tossing the next three in quick succession.
Sly drops to a knee at our side, placing his hand over hers. “Look where you’re aiming and release just before your hand is in line with your target.”
She nods, a look of determination filling her face as she stands up and throws one over my bent head. I suck in a sharp breath when someone nails me with one in the back of the head, the icy snow instantly starting to melt and trail down my back.
I shiver, and two mitten-covered hands clasp my face and tilt it up. “Thank you for protecting me,” she says quietly before kissing me. The contrast between her warmth and the cold snow has me forgetting myself as I wrap my arms around her and lay her back in the snow, lowering myself over her.
“Jagger,” Sly says in warning. I reluctantly tear my lips from hers to glance up at him. He raises his eyebrows in question, then looks around.
Right, we’re in public.
I pull back and grab her hand, pulling her to her feet with me. I turn as a grinning Pete and Dex step up to us, their eyes glued to her, looking extremely snow-free.“Did she even hit you once?”I sign to them, and they grin, slowly shaking their heads.
“I totally hit Pete in the leg!” Wren says in defense.
“Of course you did. Your aim is getting much better, baby,” Dex says, swinging his arm around her neck and leading her back to the path.
I move to follow, my eyes watching our surroundings as I listen to them banter back and forth. She is pretty remarkable like that. She’s been kidnapped, beaten, and is stuck in a foreign country, with the only way home being taking down the biggest mafia leader in the world, and yet she still has a smile on her face and an eagerness to enjoy herself.
The light she carries is infectious. She makes me want to spend every moment of every day at her side in the chance that I might soak up some of the warmth. I’m not a good man, but she makes me want to be.
