AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have my pride, Zenya. I wasn’t going to sit on my hands and wait for your stubborn bastard of a father to forgive me. I’ve been making my own money. Earning loyalty from my own people.” Anger flashes over his handsome face. He went on living without me, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Now all that I have, I offer to you. You’re the one in charge of the Belyaevs now.”
“I’m not. It’s still Dad.”
He shakes his head. “You’re the one who’s holding this family together. All I want is to help the one who’s leading the Belyaevs, just as I always have.”
“Dad is…” I start to say, and then trail off and close my mouth. There’s no point lying to Uncle Kristian. I hope with all my heart that Dad pulls through this latest round of cancer, but meanwhile, I am the one holding things together, and I need support from someone who knows what he’s doing.
“What do you want in exchange for helping me?”
Uncle Kristian gives me a long look through his lashes. He looks sly, like a fox. “Me? I don’t want anything. I’m your family. Your muscle. Your protector. You say it, and I’ll do it. Whatever you want, whatever you need.”
“You want nothing from me?”
He reaches for his coffee with a smile. “I’m just happy to be home with my family. My life has been unbearable without you.”
He’s only telling me half of the truth. I can feel it. I twitch open his jacket and look at the label stitched to the lining. “Pining for us in Prada. How you must have been suffering.”
He chuckles darkly. “I have standards to keep up.” Then he takes my hand and his expression grows serious. “I know you, princess. You’re a hard worker and you’re making sure everyone and everything is taken care of before you take care of yourself. Someone needs to look out for you, and that’s my job.”
I flex my nails so they dig into the fleshy base of his thumb. They look good poking into his flesh. He seems to like the sight of it as well.
I lift my eyes to his. “Just so you know, last night, I would have got out of that warehouse alive, injured foot and all.”
“Of course you would have.” His gaze falls to my mouth. Slowly, he drops his head closer to mine. “But you have to admit, it was much more fun my way.”
The kitchen is hushed and the air between us grows hot and heavy. Uncle Kristian is so close that a lock of his hair brushes my forehead.
“I kissed you once, two years ago, and I don’t think you even remember,” he murmurs.
I didn’t, at first. Then a week later when I was staring at the jacaranda in the back garden and thinking about the day he left, a jolt went through me. He kissed my lips. He’d never kissed me on the lips before.
I went over that kiss again and again in my mind in the months that followed, trying to fathom what it meant. He’d been distraught at me crying and wanted to comfort me? He’d simply missed and had been trying to kiss my cheek?
But it hadn’t been either of those things. He meant to kiss me, and he wanted me to understand from that kiss that he wanted me. He was asking me to wait for him.
I lift my hand and touch his lips with my finger. “I was crying and you said,I promise I’ll be back.”
Uncle Kristian groans and takes my face in his hands. “You do remember.”
My heart is thundering. He lowers his head and brushes his lips softly against mine. A question. He pulls back and looks into my eyes for the answer.
I feel like I’m drunk as I slide my palms up the muscles of his chest.
Uncle Kristian stands up and grasps me around the waist, perching me on the table. He moves between my thighs and wraps my legs around his hips.
He captures my jaw in his hand and whispers urgently, “Open your mouth for me.”
Gripping his waist with both hands, I lick my lips and part them.
“Fuck, princess,” he groans, and his lips ghost over mine once more. Not quite a kiss. A sweet torment that makes us both breathe harder and harder. “You’re delicious.”
I search his face and feel how fast his heart is beating beneath my hands. “You’re serious about this?”
“You think I’ve been playing with you?”
I shake my head helplessly. “This is so insane that I thought it had to be a twisted game.”
“Let me tell you a secret. When it comes to you, I’m never playing.”
