"Telnyashka"
Nikolai perched on an ammunition crate, shirtless and battered, a fresh cut splitting his left eyebrow where Price's rifle stock had clipped him during the extraction. He looked like a wolf that had lost a fight with a bear, grinning, bloody, and entirely too pleased with himself.
"You are insufferable," Katya muttered, but there was no heat in her voice.
She stood between his knees, swallowed by his telnyashka—the white-and-navy striped undershirt he’d tossed her when they stumbled in from the rain. It hung to mid-thigh, sleeves rolled back three times to free her hands, collar slipping off one shoulder to reveal scar tissue. She looked small in it, delicate almost, if one didn’t know that the hands holding the suture needle had killed three men before breakfast.
"Hold still," she commanded.
"I am holding still." He reached for her immediately, his big hands spanning her waist through the cotton, thumbs tracing the stripes. "You are the one shaking, malen'kaya."
"It is cold."
"It is July in Eastern Europe. You are nervous because you want me." He leaned in, a soft, tired fondness in his eyes. "Admit it. You stole my shirt to smell like me."
"I stole your shirt because mine was soaked in blood."
"My blood. Very romantic." He pressed his uninjured cheek to her sternum and breathed deep. "You smell like gunpowder and soap. And me. My soap. The cheap stuff from the PX."
"You are impossible." She threaded the needle, but her free hand found the back of his head, fingers weaving through his hair, brief and possessive.
"Impossibly handsome. Impossibly brave." He pecked her collarbone, the hollow of her throat, the line of her jaw. They were quick, hungry kisses that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with needing to feel her alive after nearly dying tonight. "My little Sova. My pocket-sized assassin."
"I am not pocket-sized."
"You fit here." He demonstrated by cupping her hips, fingers touching at the small of her back. "See? I could fold you up, put you in my cargo pocket, take you out when I need stitches or other things."
He squeezed her tighter. He kissed her shoulder through the cotton, then her ear, then the corner of her mouth.
Katya gripped his chin, forcing his head back to access the wound. "If you move, I will sew your mouth shut."
""But you know I’ve never been good at following rules."
She started the first stitch. The needle pierced and pulled. He hissed, not from pain, but because it gave him an excuse to pull her flush between his knees. His arms wrapped around her thighs, locking her in place, his face pressed against her stomach like a drowning man clinging to the only solid thing in the world.
"You are being clingy," she said, but she didn’t stop him. Her fingers stroked his hair.
"I took a brick for Price. A brick, Katya. I am traumatized. I need comfort." He nuzzled at the cotton, then lower, kissing her navel through the fabric, then the skin just below where the shirt had ridden up. "Cuddle me, wife. I am an old bear who needs his Sova."
"You are forty-six, not eighty."
"Forty-six is ancient in this business. I have earned the right to be clingy." He looked up at her, one eye swelling shut, the other bright and warm. "Besides, you like it. You are not stabbing me."
"I am literally stitching your face."
"But you are not stabbing me. That means you like it." He pecked her wrist, the one holding the needle. "You like my hands on you. You like wearing my clothes. You like that I am alive."
She tied off the second stitch, precise despite his palms sliding up her back, tracing her spine through the thin cotton, mapping her like territory he intended to keep. "You are making this difficult."
