Page 33 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AXEL

“How long do we have?” I murmur, kissing Ruby’s neck, then the tender spot under her ear.

“An hour.” She giggles, tickled by my touch. “That’s not long enough, and I need to shower.”

“I needed to feed you lunch first.” I wedge her against the kitchen table, wanting to spank her again. “And now…”

“And now I’m packed and ready, and you’re getting me all hot in the biscuit,” she sighs at my seduction. “But my sisters will be here soon, and I need to check on our kittens, then get ready. I can’t fly to Greece with fuck hair.”

“We didn’t fuck, Wildfire.” I grind into her, hard. “Not yet.”

“But we did everything else and didn’t sleep, and I’m not complaining, but you don’t know my sister Rose. She’ll drag me for looking high-key smashed and run through.”

I nuzzle my forehead to hers. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Yours,” she sighs. “I look like you made me yours.”

“You’ll wear much more of me when you’re truly mine.”

“Speaking of…” She glides her hands up my naked abs, making my cock hang heavy for her touch under my black pajama bottoms. “I’m wearing a lot of little dried Axel’s on my tits right now, so your queen needs a shower and?—”

The buzz from the button at my front gate startles us.

“Are your sisters early?”

“Never,” she replies.

“Who the fuck?” I mutter, aiming for my phone on the counter. When I open the security app, checking the camera on my front gate … dread twists the pit of my stomach.

“Who is it?” Ruby asks.

“Alena.”

I feel sick. I haven’t had a chance to tell Ruby yet, and I don’t know why she’s here.

“Does she normally stop by?”

I hear it in Ruby’s voice, the doubt I’m giving her, the trust I’m gambling with.

“No,” I answer honestly. “She never does, so something must be wrong.”

“Oh, then let her in.” She sounds relieved. “Make sure she’s okay.”

I press the button to open my gate before I set my phone down and turn, cupping Ruby’s cheeks.

Softly, I kiss her before I insist, “Go check on our kittens, then shower, and I’ll speak with her outside.

I’m sure it’s wedding drama. Her father’s probably pissing her off, and she needs me to intervene. ”

Ruby takes my next kiss, then rushes upstairs while I open my front door and meet Alena in my courtyard.

Violet wisteria drips from the oak, dappling the noon sun above, while a lion’s head wall fountain gurgles, filling my Koi pond.

Alena’s eyes shock open at my exposure. At my socked feet, mussed hair, half-naked body and semi-hard cock in my pajamas.

“Oh shit,” she gulps. “I’m sorry. I totally interrupted something, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry. It’s a not-fucking trend,” I huff a laugh. “What’s wrong?”

“Look. I’d never intrude on your life, but… You’re a groomsman in my wedding.”

“So, I’ve been told. Nash scheduled the fittings for our suits in a few days.”

“But you can’t be a groomsman in my wedding.” Alena’s tawny ponytail sways with the adamant shake of her head. “How can I stand beside Loch with you and my dad standing with him? It’s like rubbing a lie in his face.”

Here I go again, weaving lies to hold our lives together.

“Nash said he offered to be your fiancé’s best man since his brothers can’t do it,” I repeat the plan Nash, Loch, and I devised. It’s how we can witness Alena’s wedding without her knowing everything. “And as your godfather, Nash asked me to be a groomsman, and I can’t turn my best friend down.”

“But it’s all weird,” Alena protests. “Loch said he has five brothers, and I haven’t even met them yet, but he doesn’t want to pick one over the other to be his best man, so he asked my dad for the honor? And my godfather, too? You. I swear, Loch is so trusting. He has no idea about…”

She trails off, upset.

“About us,” I murmur.

I feel the weight of Ruby watching us from her bedroom window. I feel the burden of so many years and this suffocating secret. I see the tears brimming in Alena’s brown eyes; she hates hurting Loch.

Tears from any queen kill me, and I need to be free, as does Alena. I will kill for her honor, but I’m tired of lying for it. I’m tired of lying to my baby brother. I heard his first cry when he was born.

“Tell him if you need to.”

Alena’s mouth drops open, shocked by my permission.

“I don’t want you to lie to your husband. If you need to tell him about me, do it, and I’ll take it like a man.”

Because I need to be a man and tell Ruby. I need to tell her about Alena, about Katya, too. I need Ruby to trust that just as she has a past, I have one, too. But I want a future with her, and it starts now.

“What do you think he’ll say?”

“Alena,” I sigh, “I don’t know. Like you said, some men only want a future with the woman they love, so they don’t care about her past. But some men are jealous.

They focus on her past and risk their future.

” Yes, I’m saying what I need to hear. “I can’t tell you what your fiancé will do.

But you love him, and that means he’s a good man. It’ll work out.”

But … I swallow the rocks in my throat … my baby brother will never speak to me again.

And my best friend? I’ll lose Nash . I’ll lose the one man who always understood me.

My brothers love me, and I love them. But only Nash knows the inescapable responsibility of family. He’s a father. I’m the heir. He always understood the pressure on me because he felt it, too.

“Do you think every wife tells her husband everything they did before their wedding?” Alena wonders. “Did Katya tell you?”

Come to think of it, I knew very little about Katya.

She was a blonde hurricane who blew through my life and destroyed my hope. Before her, I was a romantic. I believed in love, vows, and trust. I lost that piece of myself until I heard Ruby laugh for the first time .

Of course, it wasn’t with me. It was with Helen, at me .

I sat in my office and overheard Ruby at her desk, laughing. I had just lectured her for thirty minutes about using commas and their effects on statutes. So, she told Helen, “Mr. Cummings can comma here and kiss my ass.”

Ruby made me laugh at myself. She made my heart lighter. It’s as if she found it, bruised and cold, and picked it up, and she’s held it in her hand ever since.

“No,” I answer Alena. “Katya didn’t tell me about her past, and I didn’t ask. Honestly, I didn’t care.”

“Because you weren’t jealous?”

“No, because I wasn’t possessive over her.”

Ruby’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted to possess. Not for control. For protection. For hope of a future with her.

“Loch’s possessive over me, and I like it,” Alena reasons aloud.

“One time, we went to the sex club, and I wore a lace bondage hood so Ms. Faye wouldn’t recognize me, and it was hot; how Loch wanted to have me …

you know … in front of others. But he wasn’t jealous.

He was showing me off. How I belonged to him and… ”

Yep, that sounds like my blood, baby brother, and everything I don’t need to know about Nash’s daughter. And if my mother, who’s like Alena’s grandmother, had caught Loch, her son, getting kinky with Alena at her club? My baby brother would be missing a pair of balls.

Sneaky fucker.

I’m kind of proud of him.

“Sorry,” she winces. “TMI, but … I get it. I get the difference between jealousy and possessiveness.”

“It’s okay. I get it, too.”

Because that’s how I feel about Ruby.

Do I want to fuck her in front of my brothers? Yes, that’s my kink, my primal, possessive streak. Ruby’s mine, and I want to prove my dominance. No one else can have her. It’s in my DNA.

Do I want to offer her to another brother, to another king, so she can fully be my queen, o ur queen?

Never.

But—

“I’ll wait to tell him … after the wedding,” Alena decides. “I know Loch has secrets to tell me, too. I can sense it. Besides, it’s not a crime; I had sex before him. No big deal.”

“Um, I am a very big deal.”

I can’t help it. I need to make us laugh, and Alena does, pointing to my front door. “Tell your paralegal I said hello.”

“How did you?—”

“Michael,” Alena smiles, “it’s obvious you’re in love with her. And I’m happy for you. It’s about time.”

“It is?”

“Does she have a name?”

“Ruby.”

“That’s so pretty.”

Yeah, I love the sound on my lips, too.

Glancing up at her window, I see her silhouette dart away. She couldn’t hear us over the gurgling fountain, and all she just saw was me, talking to my goddaughter while I realized how much I’ve fallen so madly in love with her. With Ruby.

With Alena? She’s free to tell Loch. I won’t ask her to lie anymore. If she waits until after their wedding, it’s her choice.

Either way, once Loch and Nash find out, I’ll lose my brothers, my family.

But once I tell Ruby, will I lose her?

Fuck, how can I make her understand this? That yes, I’m secretly Alena’s second king but Ruby’s my queen.

“I’d better get going. I’m going to be late for a fitting.” Alena adjusts her ponytail. “And again, sorry if I crashed your morning. It won’t happen again. ”

Rising on her tip-toes, she pecks my cheek and turns to leave, just as she did after our night together, except I left because Alena begged me to. She never wanted me to stay.

But Ruby?

I turn toward my front door and don’t want her ever to leave.