Page 47 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

Yes, it’s why I massage Ruby’s feet. It’s not a fetish. It’s love. Her feet are perfect with no marks of pain, and that’s how every inch of her body will remain.

Touch my queen, and you’ve taken your last breath.

“She loves me, too.” I want Mom to know, “Ruby likes shining my shoes, and she bought me six pairs of these.” I lift the hem of my dress pants.

“Are those…” Mom trails off, laughing.

“Dickhead socks!” Ruby chirps. “I got him a pair in every color.”

Yeah, Ruby took my soul with these. She understands why I won’t let her see my feet, so she makes sure my shoes are spiffy and my socks are well … cocky.

Fuck, I love her.

“As I said,” Mom brags, “if she ain’t the jam to your jelly, no woman is.”

“She is,” I say. “And I really want to get this over with and take her home.” And fuck her all night. “So, what’s next?”

“Alright then.” Mom hands her cigar to a guard. “I’m going to need your help.”

Oh, fuck.

“Mine?”

“No. Hers.” Mom turns to Ruby. “Have you used a feather tickler before?”

“Uh…” Ruby stammers, nervously looking at me. “ No? ”

Mom laughs. “Okay. Good. You’re a pro. So, when I tell you to, tickle my captive’s dick and?—”

“The fuck she will!” I bark.

“You tried it your way.” Mom’s calm. “He’s hamstrung, remember? And it didn’t work. And I don’t have time to go around my ass to get to my elbow. He’s someone’s sub, and I know how to break him. To get this intel.”

What just happened to my life?

The love of my life, my future wife, is about to help my mother, a famous dominatrix apparently, use BDSM pleasure to torture intel out of my half-brother?

This is a Freudian hell.

I’m just glad Nash isn’t here for this. Or Sire. Or Grant. Hell, any of my brothers. I’ll never live this down.

Then again.

Maybe this is the only way to find out if one sold us out.

“Prepare yourself,” Mom warns. “I’ve held him captive for almost three weeks with no relief.”

I arch a brow. “Relief?”

“Don’t make me paint a picture.”

Oh, but Mom just did. She hasn’t let him come in three weeks. I’d almost feel sorry for him if I didn’t pity myself more for knowing it.

“Does he have a name?” Ruby asks.

“That’s the only intel I have so far,” Mom shares. “Roman Kholodov. That’s his name.”

With her signal, a guard opens the heavy metal door. Instantly, I’m hit with the smell of sandalwood incense and notice that the harsh overhead fluorescent lights are off. They’re replaced by candles glowing around the room and floor lamps in the corners.

I know what she’s doing.

She’s relaxing our captive. Seducing him.

We enter the room, and I keep my face emotionless, noting how she’s added a pillow and blankets to his iron bed. How she’s taken him out of his humiliating position on the floor. With the help of her guards, she’s strapped him, naked, to a padded Saint Andrew’s Cross propped against the wall.

“We have guests, my toy,” Mom tells him, aiming for her table of whips and gear while Ruby stands dutifully by my side, across the room from him.

But Ruby doesn’t seem afraid. Hell no, she’s fascinated, and I fight the roll of my eyes .

“Oh my God,” she mutters to me. “It’s genetic.”

She means that . His big, erect dick, jutting before him. I can’t avoid it, and she’s right. Size runs in the family.

“Greet them,” Mom commands him.

“Yes, Domina,” he answers, proudly standing spread-eagled with his ankles and wrists bound to the X cross. “Good … evening, ” he guesses the time of day, looking me dead in the eye.

“I told my guests,” Mom picks up a leather flogger and a feather tickler, “what a bad toy you’ve been. How I play with you, yet you still won’t please me with answers.”

For minutes, she flogs him, one lash after another across his bare thighs, leaving angry welts behind. But he doesn’t cry out in pain. His lips part with euphoria. Though his muscles tense at her stinging flogs, his face is relaxed, his smile satisfied by her torture.

He loves this.

And why do I get the feeling…

He’s falling in love with my mom.

I’d be disgusted if my mother hadn’t raised me as an open-minded adult. I don’t judge kinks, and I want this intel.

“I’m not pleased, my toy. You like my pain too much,” Mom scolds him. “You like them seeing your discipline, don’t you? How you can’t be broken. So what if…” She crooks her finger at Ruby. “We break you in the softest way?”

On cue, Ruby approaches my mom, and every muscle in my body tenses. Though our captive is bound, if he escapes. If he lays a hand on her or my mom, I’ll slice his neck open and pour salt down his throat.

“This is my princess,” Mom says of Ruby. “Isn’t she beautiful? I’m training her, and you’re going to like it too much, how her feathers feel.”

She hands the tickler to Ruby, who glances back at me for permission, and I nod .

Fuck it. I trust Ruby, and my mom knows what she’s doing. And I want to know how Roman Kholodov found us.

“Show him, my princess,” Mom speaks regally to Ruby. “Show him how a woman can break a strong man like him with a feather.”

It’s the last thing a man like him wants. Me, too.

With a wicked grin, Ruby tickles red feathers under the shaft of his soaring cock and he groans, his left thigh suddenly shaking.

“Please, Domina,” he begs, dropping his head. “Don’t make me.”

“But we can’t make you, can we?” Mom gestures to Ruby to do it more. “We can’t cut you or beat it out of you, so what if we show you how easily you can be broken by the simple touch from a woman?”

Inspired, Ruby barely dusts the feathers over the swollen head of his cock, making Roman grunt and me snarl, “Come on my woman and I’ll cut it off.”

Fuck, I’m going to punish her tonight for this and we’ll both love it.

Then again, Ruby’s never looked more beautiful to me. Ruling like my mother. Ruthless in her protection for us. No matter what it takes, feathers or fights, Ruby would start a war for us.

“I think he’s going to come, my queen.” Ruby taunts him, dusting his tip. “He can’t fight us. He’s too weak. He’s dripping for us.”

“No…” Roman huffs. “Not like this. Please, Domina.” He lifts his desperate eyes to my mom. “You know how I want it. How I want to serve you.”

Unfortunately, I do.

The strapons on my mom’s gear table leave nothing to the imagination, and I wonder if I shampoo with Clorox if I can bleach the image from my mind .

“Then tell me,” Mom coaxes. “Be my good toy, and I’ll play with you. I’ll give you what you need. Tell me how you found us, or my princess will make you come, and you won’t get to lick my heels.”

With huffing breath, he stares at her, his brows bent for her. He’s fighting it, but then Ruby starts tickling his balls, and his other thigh shakes, too.

“Please, Domina,” he begs.

“Tell us,” Mom commands. “Or come.”

“ Yeba? ,” he groans in Russian. Fuck is what it means and what he’s desperate for.

“Tell us,” Mom urges. “How did you find me?”

Stepping so close that her leather dress brushes his naked flesh, she whispers something in his ear. A promise to fuck him, I’m sure, and he groans, tossing his chin up.

“Your son,” he heaves.

“Who?” I growl, demanding a name, and fearing it, too.

Please don’t say Lyov, Nikifor, Jasha, o r any of my brothers’ Russian names. It will destroy me.

“Yours.” Roman lifts his glare my way. “ Your son.”

Ruby stops, shocked like me. She steps back while I step toward him.

“What did you just say?” I demand.

“You have a son,” Roman confesses. “With your Katya. She was my wife before she was yours, and that’s how I found you.”

When everything you know explodes, it’s silent. Chaos claims your mind while the fragments of your life fall into new places. You stand numb in its destruction.

I can’t even feel my heart pounding in my chest. I can’t see. Tears blur my vision. I’m blind. All my senses leave me, while my mind can only focus on…

My son?

I have …

A son.

“Don’t do that.” The smacking sound of Ruby slapping his face brings me back. “Don’t lie and hurt him like that.” She’s crying. She’s defending me.

“I’m not lying,” Roman insists, his cock deflating at the heavy truth in the room.

I glance at my mom, and she’s in shock, too, shaking her head.

But then it hits me: the primal instinct. “Where is he?” I sneer. “Where’s my son?”

“In Moscow,” he answers. “With her and our father. They’re married now. He took her from me and sent her to you. To get pregnant by you and then return to him. To give him his true heir.”

It makes so much sense, I feel sick, worrying, “Is he okay? My son? Does he hurt him?”

With tears biting at my eyes, it’s my only thought. I’m a little boy again, remembering my father’s abuse, and all I don’t want to imagine is my son being hurt, too.

“No.” Roman sags against his cross. “He treats him like a princess, not his prince. Not like we were raised. Our father is weak with age and disease. He dotes on his grandson. At least,” he exhales, “the last time I saw him.”

“What’s his name?” Mom clenches her teeth. “What is my grandson’s name?”

Roman looks at me, answering, “Lev. His name is Lev.”

“Lion,” I mutter, though my heart pounds. “Of course, he named him lion .”

“But how?” Ruby questions, “How did Katya find Axel?”

“I don’t know.” Roman tugs at his wrists. It strikes me how he barely speaks with an accent. “Just…” He yanks at his chains again. “I hate him as much as you do. Just let me sit down and explain.”

Mom looks at me, and I pull the gun from my back holster. “Wildfire,” I order her, “step back.” I keep my aim on him, not wanting Ruby near while my mom unfastens the buckles and leather straps restraining Roman.

“Sit.” She points to his bed, and limping with a bandage on the back of his thigh, he obeys.

“Tell us everything from the beginning,” The Queen demands, “or today is your last.”