Page 119 of Walking Red Flag

He’d saved me, and I couldn’t dream up a better man.

I always mean what I say, even if I don’t mean to say it out loud.

—Cutter to Milena

CUTTER

I came inside, sweat dripping from every inch of my skin, and found my wife at the window.

“Watching me?” I drawled.

She raised a brow. “If there’s ever a time that I don’t watch you chop wood up outside with an axe, you should probably make sure I don’t have a brain tumor or something.”

This woman.

I grinned. “I’m gonna go shower.”

She licked her lips. “You do that.”

My hand brushed her hip as I passed, and I tugged on the tiny belt loop.

Her “hey” made me smile, and while she was distracted I snatched a fish stick off the plate in front of her—one that was likely for our kid—and popped it into my mouth.

I immediately did the hee-hoo-hee-hoo thing people do when they eat something incredibly way too hot.

She caught my face in her hands, brought my open mouth down to hers, then blew in it.

I closed my teeth around the food to keep myself from spewing it in her face, then started to laugh.

“That was new.” I chuckled after swallowing the still-piping-hot fish stick.

“I’m sorry, I panicked.” She blushed. “Those were like fresh out of the air fryer!”

I pulled her into my arms, careful of her plate of fish sticks, and said, “It turned me on.”

She rolled her eyes, uncaring of the sweat that was now covering her, and said, “It doesn’t take much, hubby.”

I pressed a kiss to her nose, then pulled away.

She rolled her eyes at the sweat left behind, but didn’t react more than that.

It was likely one of the cleaner things on her body right now.

With three kids under five, one of which was an infant, bodily fluids were her jam.

I headed up the stairs of our home—we’d decided to stay in the home that Shasha built for her, but added onto it—and stopped in the doorway of my daughter’s room.

She was playing with the toy kitchen that I’d made her for her third birthday.

“Where is it?” she asked, I’m guessing, herself.

Or possibly her bear.

It was definitely possible she was talking to the bear.

The bear that we’d gotten her the day that she was born, and she carried with her everywhere.

She bent down and opened the “oven” door and said, “Ah-ha!”

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