Page 59 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

RUBY

“What are you doing here?”

I glance around the bedroom, my eyes shocked by the vases brimming with lilacs, irises, hydrangeas. Every purple flower you can imagine. They’re everywhere.

Even lilac petals blanket the bed.

“I couldn’t leave you alone on a night like this,” Axel answers. “I meant it. I’m proud of you. I want to celebrate you.”

“Okay… But… But…” I stammer, smiling. “You could just buy a cake or something.”

“And what would it say?” He beams, rising in his dark suit. “Marry me, Ruby Jones? Be my queen, Ruby Jones?” He reaches me, his hand cupping my cheek. “Please trust me again, Ruby Jones. There’s so much I need to ask you.”

I blink back tears. “I do trust you.”

“I need to earn it,” he says. “You gave me something no man has ever had. Your heart. Now, I want to give you something no woman has ever had.”

I don’t know what he means as he shrugs off his black jacket. Unbuttoning his white shirt, he commands me softly, “Please, sit on the bed.”

Flutters hit my heart. Those beautiful butterflies only Axel can give me. They alight in my chest as I sit on a blanket of flower petals.

After he peels off his shirt, letting me admire the spectacle of his inked body, Axel leans over and unlaces his shiny, Italian shoes. Toeing them off, I watch silently as he stares at me and takes off his pants.

Standing in his black boxer briefs and usual black socks, he’s always a breathtaking sight. If it’s not his stunning, muscular body that has me in awe, it’s his sexy face or his mesmerizing eyes, their ice burning bright tonight.

But he’s not hard. Not like he usually is when he takes off his pants for me.

“I don’t know quite how to do this,” he says. “I’ve never done it.” I’m confused, watching him sit beside me on the bed. “I guess… Um… Let me…”

He maneuvers around me, such that he’s sitting in the center of the bed and I’m on the edge, turning toward him, not knowing what he’s doing until he reaches for his socks.

And that’s when I notice.

His hands are shaking.

It makes my heart start to beat so hard.

“Axel, you don’t have to?—”

“Yes, I do.” He tugs a sock down. “I want to give you something I’ve never trusted anyone to have. This side of me…”

He pulls off his sock, revealing a wicked web of scars over the top of his foot. Like white faded ropes, they wrap around to his soles, where flesh-toned gashes and deep lacerations long since healed, crisscross his flesh.

It hurts just looking at them. My senses. My heart. My soul .

“He liked to use a razor blade,” he shares. “One cut a week. He started the night of my seventh birthday, and this is what made me wet my bed.”

Oh my god.

All I can imagine is Axel, what a beautiful little boy he must have been. Innocent and with big blue eyes. Eyes that cried in fear of his father. Fear that turned into rage. Rage that became revenge, hardening his warm blue eyes into ice.

I know that journey, too.

The coldness.

Sometimes, to survive abuse, you have to stop feeling anything for a while.

But now, I’ve never heard Axel’s voice so choked. I’ve never seen his hands shake while he pulls off his other sock, revealing more scars he’s hidden for years.

I wipe at my tears.

They won’t stop spilling down my cheeks.

“My mother was the last person to see this. Once we escaped him, I never looked back. I put this part of me away, and I couldn’t even find him. Not for years.”

He takes my hand and places it on his right foot.

His skin, like everywhere else, is hard, warm silk, inked and stretched tight over muscles, but on his feet, it’s soft, almost tender, and so marred to the touch.

“I didn’t feel my heart again until I met you, Ruby.” He presses my hand to his flesh. He lets me see the tears brimming in his eyes. They’re not ice. They’re warm and looking at me. “Please trust; there’s no woman, ever, who can touch me like you do.”

I choke back a sob. For his sake. For his pride, I won’t do it. I swallow the lump in my throat and say, “I love you.” I lean down and kiss his foot, one then the other. “I trust you and I love you, too. Always. ”

This is why he rubs my feet. He cherishes how they’re unmarked. How I have no scars on my skin, and I trust Axel will die to keep it that way.

He pulls me to lie down in his arms, my cheek against his chest. I can hear his heart pounding under his flesh. I touch it. I kiss it. I catch my breath while he catches his.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“Don’t,” he whispers back. “Don’t apologize for him.”

“I’m apologizing for me.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“I’ve been distant.”

“I understand why.”

“But I’ve made you wait.”

“I’d wait forever for you.”

When he holds me this tight. When he’s shown me everything. When I trust Axel more than any man, I smile against his skin.

“Liar,” I softly tease.

He chuckles. “Okay. I waited until I couldn’t. Until I had to chase you tonight.”

“And you caught me.”

“Every damn time.” He lingers his hand down my back. “It’s what we do, Wildfire.” He kisses my hair, his voice getting husky. “And you know chasing you is my kink.”

“So now what?”

“So now we can lie here and listen to dozens of men fucking,” he says, rolling on top of me. “Or I can make you scream louder than them.”

“I vote number two. I mean, the second one. Not shit. But you and me fucking and?—”

He smiles, nuzzling his nose to mine. “I want to do something first.”

“So you did buy me a cake. ”

“Not quite.”

He climbs off the bed, aiming for his jacket on the chair. When he reaches into the inside pocket, my heart starts racing.

“Are you about to?—”

“So impatient.” He grins, pulling out the blue velvet ring box.

I chew my lips, forcing myself to shut up. To not ruin this as he lowers to one knee by the edge of the bed. I sit up and let him take my hand, but it’s burning inside me.

I have to investigate. I have to ask.

“Are you about to propose to me in your boxer briefs?”

He smirks. “I can take them off if that makes it more romantic.”

I consider it.

But he’s the impatient one now. “You’re lucky. I was tempted to put this ring on the one I already wear for you.”

“On your penis piercing?”

“Hmm, but then you’d be too distracted by that ring to see this one.”

He cracks open the box, and I gasp.

It’s the most unusual, precious sparkling stone I’ve ever seen, set on a thin gold band.

“It’s a rare antique, Russian Alexandrite gem, rarer than a diamond and circa nineteen hundred,” he explains.

“It changes color from blue like your eyes to purple like your favorite color, and under certain, rare light, it’s the most beautiful ruby…

” He pauses, gazing up at me. “Like my wife, if you would please marry me, Ruby Jones.”

“Yes.” I nod. I cry. I let him slide the ring on my shaking finger. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

He cups my wet jaw, pulling my lips to his for a kiss…

But of course, I have to investigate .

“Does this mean you’ll make me your queen, too?”

When Axel smirks, he makes the Devil swoon and God nervous. He makes grown men shake in terror and me tremble with excitement when he teases, “So impatient.”