Jonah laughed. “You know you’re making my mother’s year right now, don’t you? The amount of those you’ve put away? They’re the only part of this spread she ever makes herself.”
“They are good,” Sacha said with his mouthful. “She has every right to be proud of them.”
“Are you going to open your present?” Lily asked. “It’s not much, and I only had Jonah’s vague descriptions of you to go on when I chose it.”
Sacha wiped his mouth and considered the small package Lily had presented him with after dinner. His only contribution to the pile of gifts under the tree had been the case of Dom Pérignon they’d picked up on the way here, and he felt bad that Lily had thought to buy him a gift. “You did not have to get me anything.”
Lily slid over the smooth arm of the chair, landing square on top of Sacha, her small frame the perfect bundle of flesh and bone. “I actually didn’t. It’s something of mine I wanted you to have. Open it.”
Curious, Sacha unwrapped the package. Beneath the gold and red paper, he found a fabric bag not unlike the one that had carried the leather bracelet Jonah had given him before Christmas. Inside was another bracelet made of gunmetal titanium.
“It’s magnetic,” Lily explained. “They help with my migraines.”
Sacha held the bracelet up to the light. It was plain, and yet boldly beautiful. “How did you know they might help with mine?”
“I told her,” Jonah said. “Yesterday, when you were in the shower. Sorry. She asked me how you were and I’m not a good liar.”
“I would not want you to be.”
Jonah was pulled away before he could answer, yanked onto the floor to play with the pack of wild English children who adored him. He was the fun uncle, and Sacha could’ve watched him with them all day. Maybe he would, if Jonah could not escape the dog pile he was now beneath.
“You love him, don’t you?”
Sacha blinked. Lost in watching Jonah, he’d almost forgotten Lily sitting in his lap as if they’d been friends their whole lives, like her and Jonah. “Why do you ask me that?”
“Because I’m nosy,” she said. “I see how you look at him and it’s so bloody lovely it almost makes me want a lover all of my own.”
“Only almost?”
“Yes. Men are trash. Or maybe I’m just spoilt by having Jonah as my best friend. No one ever matches up to him.”
“And they will not,” Sacha said absently, slipping the bracelet onto his wrist beside the one from Jonah. “He is special.”
“Yes, he is. You know, it’s funny…this fake relationship you had. It never felt fake to me. I always knew you’d be here today.”
“Did you?”
Lily nodded. “I think you did too.”
“Hmm. I think you might be right.”
Lily treated him to a megawatt smile, and lounged against him, her eyes drifting closed. Sacha’s eyes were heavy too, but the tiredness hanging over him was the good kind, fuelled by twenty-four hours and counting of good food, nice people, and unlimited access to the only soul on earth Sacha had ever considered wanting forever.
It was as if he’d woken up in another world. One that made his bones warm and his face ache from smiling. Jonah lifted his smallest niece high above his head, spinning her around, and Sacha absorbed her exhilaration as though it was his own. At some point they’d go back to the city and to the lives that had brought them together. Sacha couldn’t predict their future, but he was not afraid.
Jonah was joy, and Sacha wanted it all.
Later, after more food and alcohol, Jonah stole Sacha away from Lily and hustled him outside.
Sacha laughed. “This is the first time you have forced me to put clothes on, no?”
“It’s cold.” Jonah draped a scarf around Sacha’s neck. “So shut up.”
“You said that to me last night.”
“I was talking to myself, actually. I’m not used to containing myself with your cock inside me.”
Sacha let him have that one. Fucking quietly so someone’s mother would not hear was new for him too, but he had no complaints. How could he?
They left the house and took a slow walk around the grounds of Jonah’s parents’ country estate. The house was huge, but without the ostentatiousness Sacha had expected. It was cosy, warm, and weathered enough that there was nothing grand or obnoxious about it. The grounds were wild too, punctuated by orchards and enormous oak trees.
Sacha loved it. “It is nice here. I don’t know why your parents would ever come to the city.”
“Work, mainly,” Jonah said. “But they’re doing less of that these days. It won’t be long before they only drive in for parties.”
“I do not understand that either.”
“Maybe they like canapés too.”
“Maybe.” Sacha kicked a pine cone. “I’ve never had a bad one from your mother.”
Jonah laughed, like he had so many times since they’d woken up that morning, wrapped up in each other in a four-poster bed overlooking the mystical land they were walking now. “Tell her that and she’ll start planning our wedding.”
“There are worse things mothers can do, luchik.”
“Okay, it’s time.” Jonah stopped walking, his hand in Sacha’s forcing him to do the same. “You need to tell me what that means before I google it and misinterpret whatever it tells me.”
“Google what?”
“Luchik. For all I know, you’re calling me an idiot twelve times a day.”
“I am not.”
“So what are you calling me?”
Sacha found Jonah’s hands and clasped them tight in his own. Despite the brisk chill in the frosty air, Jonah was warm, heating Sacha from the inside out. “It is not a direct translation, but to me it means sun ray, as in you are mine.”
“Your sun ray?”
“Yes, or ray of sunshine, whichever, it does not matter. It is what you are to me, and you have always been, despite that we met under the moonlight, yes?”
“If you can call a broken-down lift moonlight, then yes.” Jonah’s grin was broad, and his eyes shone. “But whatever. I love it. And I’m glad I didn’t know until now. You know you said it to me the night we met?”
“Did I?”
“Yes. When you rescued me from William Ratner.”
Sacha bristled. That name would never cease to make him murderous. “Yes, well I meant it then, and I mean it now. I know I am not easy sometimes, but I will try to be better, I promise.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Oh, I do, because I cannot promise that I will always succeed.”
“No one’s perfect, Ivanov.”
“Is that what you would call me if you married me?”
“Maybe. It’s not as kinky to call you by my own name.”
“I would take your name. I have no attachment to my own.”
“That’s sweet.” Jonah wound his arms tight around Sacha in a hug that pressed them together in all the right ways. Around them, it began to snow, light, English snowflakes that would not settle and yet still brought life to a standstill. They were fairy dust settling in Jonah’s hair, and Sacha watched them pile on top of one another, spellbound, until Jonah nuzzled his neck. “What are you thinking so hard about?”