Page 97 of Axel

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 Ilikeit,” 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 Idon’tneed 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 Iwant 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, ourqueen?

Never.

But—

“I’ll wait to tell him …afterthe 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.”

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