Uncle Aleksei Series

Chapter23

When our amusement dies down, a serious look crosses Aleksei’s face. “Georgina, I need you to know. These men I handled for your father and in Russia…they are not good people. I would die before letting a single one of them cross your shadow.”

My fingertips trace his mouth, his cheekbones. “I trust you.”

Intensity radiates from his gray eyes. “My God, I love you, little angel.”

Dread twists in my chest. “I love you, too.” Perceptive as ever when it comes to my moods and emotions, Aleksei gives me an assessing look, so I search for another topic. Something to explain my sad tone. As it turns out, there is something that has been on my mind, and this is the perfect opportunity to discuss it. “Will you do something for me, please?”

“Tell me.”

I run the arch of my foot up and down his calf, my fingers playing with his chest hair. Between us, his erection thickens, his breath accelerating. “While you’re in the office today, will you call my father and explain that we’re together now?” His body stiffens, but I press on. “I know he hasn’t been there for me, Aleksei. Raising me has been left entirely to you…” I lower my voice to a whisper. “My real daddy.”

“Georgina,” he groans. “Say it again.”

Our tongues meet and lick. “You’re my real daddy,” I murmur. “But…I don’t want to hide us from him. I want the whole world to know. Especially my father.”

His stubbornness tries to surface, but he visibly fights it off. “Very well.”

“Really?”

“Da.” He studies me. “When I asked, instead of demanded, that you marry me, I found that things went much smoother. Perhaps I am learning to compromise.”

Tell him. Tell him you still want to attend college. He hasn’t cancelled it yet. The words won’t emerge, though. Because while Aleksei is starting to compromise on some small things, I’m skeptical that he will agree to me being away from him full time, every day. With strangers. Unknowns. In a nutshell, he would lose his shit. No. I have to stick to the plan.

Having completed all my other phone calls, I can no longer put off the final one.

I do not want to do this distasteful thing.

Perhaps Georgina believes I am merely a possessive beast when it comes to her. So possessive that I would steal her away from her own father, just so I can be the only male in her life. And while that is most certainly true, there is more to it than that.

When Georgina was much younger, I spent many nights pacing the hallway outside her bedroom, wishing to comfort her as she sobbed on the other side of the door, missing her mother. I was not capable of holding her in my arms yet, though. I was too hardened, then. Still recovering from the brutal life I’d lived in Russia. To have the angel in my arms at a time when I was so raw? I couldn’t be certain that I wouldn’t feast on the offering she presented. So sweet, so pure. The opposite of everything I’d ever known.

Her cries would torture me in those early days, make me tear at my hair. I would call her father and explain his daughter needed to be reassured. And often I would find him consoling himself with women or alcohol. He never came home. Never.

So I learned. I taught myself breathing exercises so I could let Georgina sob in my arms without doing something to break my vow. Some nights, I even slept on the floor beside her bed, talking her through bad dreams, all while being tortured with bare thighs, her smooth, little bottom as she tossed and turned. By the time she turned sixteen and regularly began sneaking into my room during thunderstorms, I’d built up enough strength to withstand the fierce, consuming need to possess her. Soon, I would tell myself.

Bottom line, it has been Georgina and me for five years. We are one. I’m not sure what kind of father David was before I arrived, but he behaved like an irresponsible piece of shit when his daughter needed him. I will not forgive him for that. And I feel no guilt in making her my wife without his knowledge or consent.

Georgina has wished him to be informed, however. It will make her pleased with me. So it will be done. Because it seems at age thirty – five, I can still learn new tricks.