Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
If there was ever hope he would let me go, it’s gone now, burned to ash by the ferocious need that consumes us both.
Demolished by the fate that chained us together long ago.
Chapter 19
Alexei
By the time I’ve cleaned up the wreckage in the kitchen, Alina is asleep on the couch in the living room, curled up under a throw in comfortable-looking sweats. Her open laptop sits on the floor next to her.
She must’ve started working on the game before exhaustion caught up with her. My Alinyonok is still far from regaining her full strength.
Quietly, I approach and stop next to her, self-loathing battling with primal satisfaction as I take in her kiss-swollen lips and the fresh whisker burns marring her porcelain skin alongside yesterday’s hickey. In repose, her beauty is angelic, so pure it hurts, and the signs of my defilement of her are as much of a perverse turn-on as they are a cause of regret.
She’s mine. All mine.
She admitted it. Told me she wants to stay.
And I, like the fucking animal I am, lost control and took her again.
Right there on the kitchen counter.
My only consolation is that I was gentle afterward. In the shower we took together to clean up, I was able to focus on her and only her, bringing her to another orgasm with my lips and tongue, washing her without giving in to the temptation to bury myself in her slick, tight flesh.
Though she didn’t complain about it this morning, I know she must be sore after yesterday.
And I fucking took her again today.
I drag in a breath and curl my hand into a fist to prevent myself from reaching for her. As much as I want to inspect every inch of her skin to make sure the hickey and the whisker burns are the worst of it, I don’t want to wake her. Above all, she needs to rest and heal, to let her body recover from the ordeal it’s endured.
She fought a brutal battle with cancer, and she won—and I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure she never has to fight another one. I will oversee her diet, hire the best personal trainers and yoga instructors, purge our environment of any and all toxins, and generally go batshit crazy to keep her healthy and well.
And, crucially, not pregnant.
I again didn’t wear a condom in the kitchen, so even though the timing is in our favor, I will call her doctors and ask if it’s safe for Alina to take a morning-after pill. And going forward, I will stash condoms in every drawer and wall nook, all over the shower and on the fucking ceiling, so I’ll hopefully remember to grab one the next time I lose my head around my wife. And if I keep forgetting, I’ll get a fucking vasectomy.
In fact, I might as well sign up for one now given how little self-control I have.
I watch her for another moment, drinking in everything about her, and then I go to the bedroom so I can call Alina’s doctor about the morning-after pill. Afterward, I’ll reach out to my doctor about scheduling a vasectomy. Before I can place the first call, however, my phone screen lights up with an incoming videocall request.
It’s Katya, my father’s hospice nurse.
My chest ices over.
This is it.
He’s dead.
It’s over.
Steeling myself, I swipe to accept the call—only to regret it instantly.
As soon as the video fills my screen, Katya’s broad mien disappears, replaced by his face.
His gaunt, aged-by-three-decades-in-three-months, but unmistakably alive face.
I move to disconnect, but my father is already speaking.
“Alexei…” His voice is an agonized rasp. It’s shocking he can say anything at all given that the cancer has spread to his vocal cords as well as just about every organ in his body. “Please, son… listen to me. Let me explain.”
Despite myself, I hesitate, my finger hovering over the disconnect button. There’s nothing he can say, no explanation he can give to heal the Grand Canyon-sized rift that formed between us the moment I read Ksenia’s diary and realized my father was even more of a monster to his family than to his enemies. Yet I still fucking hesitate, my stomach roiling as I stare at the screen, struck by what cancer has done to the strong, brutal man who’d loomed so large in my childhood and early adolescent years, by the way it has laid waste to him, diminishing him to this skeletal, dying creature anyone would pity.
Once upon a time, I feared this man.
I respected him.
I even fucking loved him despite the mixture of neglect and iron-fisted discipline that had been his parenting style.
Maybe a part of me is still stuck in that mode because instead of hanging up like I should, I move my finger to the edge of my phone and let him speak.