Page 18 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

CHAPTER TWELVE

RUBY

I’m distracted and trying to find my seatbelt when I hear Axel’s greeting.

“This is my brother, Grant. And Grant, this is Ruby Jones, my spying paralegal. She knows my name and way too much about us; don’t kill her.”

I glance up at two mountains of muscle, towering before me.

“Ms. Jones.” Grant nods.

“Oh my god,” I murmur, “you’re Reacher’s twin. Like the hot, huge Alan version, not the sad Tom one. Tom needs to stick to Mission: Impossible because you’re impossibly huge.”

Axel laughs coldly. “Are you done eye-fucking my brother, Ms. Jones?”

“It’s a fact, not eye-fucking.”

“I like her.” Grant grins, taking a seat across the aisle from me in the private jet Axel insisted we take. “She’s a very factual woman.”

But Axel smolders, settling into his seat facing mine.

I’ve really messed up his plans with my daring one.

This morning, I snuck out earlier than usual for my run, and when I got back, Axel was livid that he missed chasing me. He didn’t speak to me all morning. Then he got a call and suddenly said he had a lunch meeting.

“Who are we meeting with?”

“ You’re staying here while I’m gone.”

“Um, the only pussy you can order around here is that one.” I stood in his kitchen and nodded toward Sparky, enjoying her Fancy Feast.

He clenched his jaw. “You’ll stay here, pack for our trip, and wait until I get back.”

“You know,” I chomped on a banana, “I already know you can be a dickhead, so you don’t have to open your mouth and prove it.” His nostrils flared. “At least tell me where you’re going in case hell freezes over, and I run after you.”

“Delta’s.”

“The fancy sex store?”

At first, I was jealous, taunted by an irrational fear that he was meeting Alena Allen there.

Why do I keep getting these weird vibes on them?

Then I realized that one of Axel’s hundred ex-Bratva brothers works there, so it had to have been mafia shit.

“Good,” I chirped. “Get me a sexy blonde wig, some fake tattoos, a lipstick vibrator, and whatever you think would float a boss fucking his secretary’s boat.”

He shoved his gun into his holster. “Your plan is fucking crazy.”

“My plan will work if you commit to your role. Just consider it your chance to help me win a ‘Best Orgasm’ Oscar.”

“You’re not coming for that man’s camera,” he barked.

“Yes, Martin Scorsese, I’m aware. If you direct me right, I’ll act like I’m coming for you. I’ll even let you keep the golden statue. ”

“Listen to me.” Axel stalked my way, shocking me with how tenderly his finger lifted my chin.

“I’ll never let you be exposed like that.

I’m not talking about the sex; I’m talking about the sextortion.

Even in disguise or whatever the hell game we play today, I won’t let you get hurt.

I will kill for you, Ruby, but digital files don’t die. ”

“Between the two of us,” my heart pounded at his threat, at his tender touch, “we can make it work.”

Make what work?

Whatever this is, boiling hot between us?

Or my risky plan to help Nick and Zar?

I still don’t know when the jet takes off on our short flight to some private airstrip in the Georgia mountains.

“I’ve created a fake marriage license,” Grant informs me, clicking across his laptop.

“Since you booked the place with your credit card—rookie mistake, by the way—he’ll know your real name.

But I’m creating a fake life for you. Fake address.

Fake job. You’re now the secretary for Carson Stewart and?—”

“The idiot lawyer who chases ambulances?” I’m insulted.

“He deserves it,” Axel grumbles. “He really does fuck around on his wife, and it’s about time he’s caught.”

“It looks like the camera the owner used to film Nick and Zar…” Grant studies his screen, “is positioned directly across from the bed. So be aware of it as you two…”

Grant advises us while I sit stunned, admiring him.

He’s beefy and tatted like Axel and his other brothers, and he seems smart like them, too. The only difference is the proud gold band gleaming on Grant’s thick, inked wedding finger.

It’s his only jewelry, like he’s proud of his marriage, and I realize…

The other woman .

The other queen in the room during the taboo initiation must’ve been Grant’s wife.

Because Wren is Sire’s wife. Zar is Nick’s partner.

That hot daddy Nash always fights with Axel about Nash loving some woman named Vale.

There was another brother, the bouncer from Delta’s, who looks like Grant’s twin, who was there, too, but I don’t remember seeing a ring on him.

And I’ve heard Axel say his brother Loch is marrying Alena. Their wedding is soon.

Though it still digs at the back of my mind, sensing there’s more between Axel and Alena, as well.

What in the escaped Bratva hell?

This world I spied on, that I’m now trapped in, feels like a salacious soap opera cast with dangerously hot AF, inked men and their badass queens.

Oh, and don’t forget the whole Bratva-prince part.

Oh, and don’t forget their baller mom, either. Whoever she is.

Wait! That’s one, two, three … six? Or seven brothers? Seven Bratva princes? But Axel said his mother had six sons, and there were six men in Wren’s initiation. I mean, six kings. But I’m counting seven total?

So, who was missing that night?

Jeez, I’m so confused and dying to ask Axel, but he said Grant thinks I’m just his paralegal.

“Don’t let him know our secret , ” he warned.

“Our secret ?” I scoffed in his fancy Jaguar on the way to the private airport. “Okay, Victoria, we’re not a secret.”

“Do you have to argue with everything I say?”

“I’m practicing for the Supreme Court.”

“Practice supreme silence.”

“God,” I huffed, “when you’re a dickhead, you make it hard to like you.”

“No, Wildfire, you make my dickhead hard, and…” he wi nked, “you don’t have to like it to want it. Not everyone has good taste.”

“Taste my ass.”

Yep, I served that up like a high set in volleyball, and Axel spiked the point with a sexy smirk. “If you want my tongue licking your ass, Wildfire, all you gotta do is moan for it.”

He made me squirm in my car seat.

I think I preferred him not flirting with me to him attacking my senses like a frontal assault on my clitoris, so I changed the subject.

“Why can’t all of your brothers know about me?” I half believed, “Are you ashamed of me?”

“No, I’m protecting you.” He kept watching his speed. “We don’t let anyone into our world because once you’re in, it’s deadly and there’s no getting out.”

“But you said I’m already in . You suffer the delusion that you own me now.”

“I own your protection. It’s my responsibility because I stalked you, so you spied on me. So, yeah, I fucked that one up, and here we are…” He took the exit to the private airport. “But you’re not in . No one’s in unless they’re born into our world or initiated.”

“Oh, you mean the gangbang.”

“It’s NOT a gangbang,” he clipped. “Say it again, and you’ll get a spanking.”

I laughed. “Like you could catch me, Christian Grey.”

“Like you’re Flo-Jo.” He laughed, too. “I’ll catch you when you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Forget what? That you’re into primal play?”

“Yeah, that ,” he mumbled.

Axel was focused on driving but acting odd, and I don’t forget shit. I remember everything I’ve overheard, every tease he’s revealed.

“Why do you have to initiate a queen?” I probed. “Why can’t you just trust a woman?”

“Because trust doesn’t mean shit when a knife is held to your mother’s throat. Or you take a brutal beating for your brother. Only blood or a deep bond will die for someone else.”

I turned to him, watching pain twist his gorgeous face. “Is that what happened to you?”

“A lot of shit happened to me. It happened to all of us, but we escaped because we fought back together. And we keep fighting for others because it has to be for a reason. If you give your pain a cause, it can’t kill you. It only makes you stronger.”

“Is that why you help trafficking victims or women like Ms. Alonso, who can’t afford you? Because they’re your cause?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, shit, now your origin story makes it hard to hate you.”

He grinned.

“But don’t worry. You’ll pull a dickhead move soon enough, and I’ll remember you’re Satan’s shitstain.”

He laughed. “You’re really obsessed with my dickhead, aren’t you?”

I blushed. “It really likes my leggings, doesn’t it?”

Did he blush, too? It was tough to say because Axel’s so tan and changed the subject.

“By the way, in my meeting today at Delta’s,” he shared, “I met with the owner, Stacey, and her husband, Ford. Their daughter is being bribed by this asshole. She’s a young woman, a basketball player about to be drafted for the WNBA.

She rented a beach house with her girlfriend, and now she’s being bribed, too .

“So, don’t let this go to your wildfire head, but…” He looked at me with sincerity, with respect. “Thank you, Ruby. We’re not just helping Nick today. This is a cause. We’re helping others, too.”

I turn from admiring Grant to find Axel admiring me the same way he did in his car, and I swear the man’s intense stare is an ocular orgasm. All heat and ice rousing my senses.

“Time to get ready before we land.” He gestures toward the back. “Your bags and disguise are in the bedroom.”

My nipples get hard. I’m aroused, closing the door to the small bedroom in the back of the jet to slip on the role-play clothes Axel bought for me.

He’s wearing his typical black suit and starched white shirt, like a boss, while he chose an elegant wrap dress, lacy bra, and panties for me. I think these red-soled high heels are worth a fortune, too, while I note how every luxe item he bought is blush pink.

It’s the same color as my running leggings yesterday, which he splattered with his groan, and it heats my core.

I’m not afraid of this role-play because it’s real. I want to give Axel an erotic show. I want the power over him. I want to see how much he wants me, too.