Chapter 40

FORTY

brAXTON

A ella is sobbing and fighting me the entire way down to the basement. I saw red when she walked into the shop on her own two feet, not injured, unaware of what had been going on in my world. Unaffected.

"Braxton!" she shrieks when I drop her onto the bench. I flip her onto her stomach and begin tying her down. But when I get to her hands, bending over to where my face is so near hers, too close to hers, I pause. I can't help it. I can't help but feel the pull she has over me.

It's as if I've been living in hell for days, and she's Persephone, who has come to bring new life to my underworld. She's come to release me from misery, and I want to let her. I want to give over to her, sink into her.

But I can't. She left me. She abandoned me when it mattered most; I can't overlook that.

"Brax," she whines as I hover near her face, my cock hardening by the second. "I'm so sorry." Her whispered words have me closing my eyes, letting them sink into me.

But they're not enough.

"I love you," she says, her breath fanning over me as she leans as close as possible.

My logical brain says someone who loved me wouldn't have done what she did. Wouldn't have left me alone in that doctor's office. Wouldn't have had Miles on his bike in the pouring rain to plead with her to return. We fucking need her.

She's become the goddamn sun we rotate around, and part of me wonders if she's realized the same. Suppose she's coming into her power and is learning how to wield it. The other half of me wonders if she's been lying this entire time.

If she's been a wolf in sheep's clothing, luring us to our eventual doom with her pretty words and chaste touches.

"You don't love either of us," I grit out. When my eyes open, I take in the pain etched into her face. It's true and deep, and I can't turn away. "You wouldn't have left me if you did."

"I can explain. Please," she begs, and I straighten up, moving behind her to rip open her leggings to let her supple ass fall out of them.

For a moment, I pretend the world is right. That she hadn't done me wrong. Leaning down, I press my cheek into her ass, rubbing over the planes of her silky skin with my face, breathing her in. I can smell her arousal as one can smell the rain on the thickening air before a storm, and it makes me painfully hard behind my jeans .

Turning my face, I open my mouth wide and let my teeth sink into the flesh of her right ass cheek. Deep. Until I taste blood filling my mouth.

Her cry is half pained and half a moan. This is the part of her that makes her think she loves us. The part who comes alive when she's with us. But she wouldn't have left me. I keep reminding myself to stay grounded because as she presses back into my face, her cloth-covered pussy brushes my face, and I nearly lose all self-control. My hand itches to reach up and shove her thong aside, and my tongue aches to taste her.

Because one taste of her will make the world right again.

Unfortunately, she can't be given a reward. So instead, I angle my head to the side and let my teeth sink through the cloth surrounding her cunt, my bite eliciting noises from her I've never heard from another human being before. It feeds the dark side of me.

When I stand back up, I can't help but watch her writhe. Even when there's nothing to grind against for friction, she still moves back and forth, praying I'll give her what she needs.

But I won't.

Because she left me wanton.

"You left me. I needed you." I get out, my hand gripping my cock and tugging. I'm incapable of stopping, either. I need it. I have to.

"I didn't mean to. I forgot about the appointment, Brax. Please, I'm so sorry. It was too much. It was all too fucking much!"

That stops my tugs, and my arms fall to my sides. " We told you that this life wasn't for everyone. We fucking warned you! You made us think you wanted this. Wanted us!"

I lose myself, stepping forward and connecting my hand with her ass as hard as I can. The ripples of her cry and the sting on my hand move through me like a Band-Aid to my fucking battered soul. It dampens the overstimulation writhing beneath my skin. Because pain overrides all else, it always has been that way for me. It's why I crave it when I'm lost.

Now, I'm surely and truly lost.

"I want you! Fuck, I want you both so much," she whimpers, and the tone of her voice makes me close my eyes and moan. Her words have so much truth; I don't feel otherwise. But yet, it makes little sense. Why did she fucking leave? Why did she stay away?

Even though I tried to stay calm for Miles, I knew deep down something was wrong. I just thought she needed time, as any sane person would after being thrust into the world where Miles and I lived.

"Then why?" I ask, backhanding her left ass cheek and watching the flesh dance for me as the sting invades my body from the strike.

"Your mother is alive!" she screams out, and I hear when she breaks into tears.

It takes everything that I have not to pull her off the bench.

I move in front of her, crouching to come face to face. "What do you mean my mother is alive?"

Her tears fall like the steady Oregon rain, and I fight the need to wipe them away. "I was called into Dad's office, and I was sure he knew I broke into it for you guys. But when I got in there, there was a woman. She looked so much like Miles, Brax. That's when they told me he's been hiding her all this time. That she was alive this entire time broke something in me. I'm sorry, it did. I didn't know how to tell you because even though they asked me not to tell you two, I knew I had to. I couldn't live in a world where you two thought she was still missing or dead. I just couldn't. But to tell you? To be the one who changes everything between the three of us… I was scared, Brax. I completely spaced on the date. I didn't mean to leave you alone. I'm so sorry," she sobs. She can barely breathe through how violently she's crying, and yet I can't reach for her to comfort her because the weight of her words is so goddamn heavy.

"She's alive? She left us? Or did your piece of shit father take her?"

She shakes her head, gaining some control of her emotions. "She said your father, Miles's father, was going to kill her if she stayed. Mine saved her. I think…" She swallows. "I think they're together."

I look down, trying to forget all the times we'd had to hide from our father in some recessed corner of the house when he was in a drunken rage. The years after he'd gone to prison for beating a man to death at Zeke's had been the most extraordinary years of our fucking lives.

But it's not something we talk about.

"She didn't want us to know? Still?" I ask, looking back up.

She shakes her head, minor sniffles still wracking her body. Her face is puffy, and the urge to kiss her senseless is one I don't quite understand. Even though my brain tells me she acted irrationally, I don't care. I fucking love her more than anything she could ever do wrong. None of it makes sense to me.

"I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know what he'd do when I told you. But then, he burst into my house and said that Miles had been taken, and I forgot about everything. I had to get to you. I knew you'd be mad; I did. I expected it, but I didn't know I forgot the appointment, Brax. I'm so fucking sorry."

My hand instinctively reaches up and comforts her, giving her something to latch onto. She closes her eyes and nuzzles into my touch, tears trekking down her cheeks.

"I needed you. You've become something I not only crave but need. I don't think this room is my safe space anymore. While it's comfortable, you've become part of my safety, Aella. My brain doesn't understand it yet, and I don't know that it ever will. But even when things are hard, I need you to fight them with me. For me."

Her eyes open, her blue pools glistening with emotion. "I will. I can do that."

It feels as if, at this moment, the fog lifts. Something has shifted back into place in my life, and I'm whole again. I stand, freeing my dick from my jeans. "But that doesn't mean you're not in trouble for leaving me stranded without you, Bambi."

Her eyes look up at me as I shove myself into her mouth. She can't fight, but I don't think she would. Her hot mouth closes around me as I thrust shallowly into it, trying to get used to the feel of her as I fuck her.

"You can't go unpunished," I grit out, my hands slinking into her hair and gripping tight.

She nods on my cock, closing her eyes and letting the feel of me invading her mouth loom.

"Open those pretty eyes for me, Bambi. I need to look into them while I fill your fucking mouth."

For a moment, a few minutes strung together, we're suspended in a space that only she and I will ever be in together. The world beyond the basement walls, with its red lights and calming tones, doesn't exist. Only she and I do.

I shove deeper, feeling her gag reflex convulse for me. "Good girl," I murmur, doing it over and over, the feel of her clamping on the head of me so fucking addictive. Watching my dick disappear inside her mouth is the most beautiful thing in the world. "Take that dick like a good fucking girl, that a girl," I hiss, pushing deeper still. "Fuck, you're my good girl, aren't you?"

She doesn't nod. She can't. I've got her tightly in my grasp, fucking her face without a care in the world. But her eyes give me my answers.

Yes. Yes, she is.

"I'm going to use this mouth, fill it to the brim with my cum, and then I'm going to leave you here to think about what you did. Do you understand me?"

Her pupils flare in the red lights of the room.

"Goddamnit, I bet you're so fucking wet for me, aren't you, Bambi? So needy and ready for me to sink my fat cock inside you. But you won't get rewarded tonight. You didn't earn it… Shit…"

As if she knows what I like, she shoves forward and gags on me, but my cock slides even further as she continues to bob and give aid.

"Here it comes, my dirty little slut, drink down every fucking drop," I grit out, teeth clenched.

My body stiffens, my pelvis thrust forward as my cock pulses out ropes of cum that slide down her throat. Aella works to swallow, knowing how much it'll turn me on when she looks up at me with clean lips. Not a drop wasted.

After the last throes of orgasm leave me, I'm still hard for her, and I want nothing more than just to give over and fuck her senseless. But then Kylo comes barreling down the stairs. He takes in the scene before him momentarily. I'm still in Aella's mouth, my hands gripping her tousled hair, and her ass is on full display in her ruined leggings.

He clears his throat, making eye contact with me instead of looking elsewhere. "We think we found where they've taken Miles."

I pull out of Aella's mouth with a hiss, my eyes growing heavy-lidded, and Kylo turns around, clearing his throat again.

I crouch down before her, capturing her lips with mine. I can't help but to give her something. As much as I'm still upset, I fucking need it, too. "I'll be back, Bambi. Don't go anywhere."

"How do we know this isn't bullshit information? This place looks well abandoned," Blaze says as we approach an abandoned hospital. We'd gotten intel from someone in town that Miles was here.

A good samaritan we'd helped had seen a suspicious van coming and going from where she drank her coffee on her porch. When we told our network of spiders in town, she felt she had to tell someone.

"We don't. But we have to try. He's been gone too long. Who knows how bad his injuries are? We have to get him back," I tell them.

Kylo loads the last bullet into his gun and nods as we fan out.

"Stay quiet on the comms unless you find something," I tell them, and no one says a thing. It's all the confirmation I need.

I push into the broken front door. The room is littered with paper, and the walls are peeling from disuse. The front desk looks like something out of a horror film, and I can almost see a woman sitting behind it, waiting for anyone to come in.

The room splits off from the desk to the right and the left, and I stop, looking both ways and pointing my rifle down at them in case I need to use it.

I don't know which is a good option, but I see an open door at the end of the hall to the left, so I turn that way, slowly creeping down the hall. I monitor my back while I do so.

"Second floor is clear," I hear, and no one replies. Keep moving.

"The third floor is clear," Blaze says in a hushed tone.

"Make your way downstairs," I tell them as I approach the door. It seems to lead into some sub-basement. I click the light on my helmet, slowly descending and listening for signs of life.

There are none.

Not until I reach the bottom and hear someone shout an alert that they've been invaded.

I turn, shooting two Jackals one after the other, the first in his forehead, the second in his chest.

"Basement, now! I found the fun!" I tell the boys and hear feet behind me as Blaze takes up my six.

"What the fuck, man? All this over his fucking sister?" Kylo asks as we move down the hall, encountering man after man.

I think of the drugs and the things I'd found that didn't lead me to any conclusions that this kind of action was needed. It doesn't line up. But if I know Miles, his smart mouth has gotten us answers. Even if he's been tortured.

"I found him!" Kylo says from ahead, having moved to scout out the hall before us.

My heart skips two beats before I burst into action, keeping my rifle trained high and rushing into the room Kylo is standing on the precipice of as if frozen .

When I reach it, I know why.

Miles is hanging from four meat hooks in the middle of what looks like a body cooler. His feet are dangling, and his body looks lifeless. I forget my weapon, dropping it to hang around my shoulders and neck. I know they've secured the door if someone happens down the hall.

"Miles?!" I shout, lifting his lolled head and slapping it a few times.

If there ever was a moment in my life where the world felt like it was caving in on itself, this is it.

"Don't you fucking leave me, Miles! I'll follow you to hell and beat your goddamned ass!" Tears make their way to the edges of my eyes as he finally comes around, his one eye that's not swollen lifting open slightly.

"Brax," he manages. His lips are cracked and bleeding. His breathing is ragged at best.

He's fucking dying.

I tug him to me, forgetting the amount of pain he must be in, and he howls, reminding me.

"Help me get him down!" I command, and Kylo and Blaze move to lift him as I slowly and painstakingly remove the hooks from inside his flesh.

When we're finally in our van, me in the back with Miles laid in my lap, I let the weight of the day crash over me as I sob for the brother who became a lover—the one who was my first love—the first human to treat me as if I was more than garbage.

Even though he's back in my arms, I don't know that he'll stay there.

Love is a funny thing for someone like me. It's a concept that sometimes I can't riddle out with any of my logic and intrinsic thinking. It's irrational at its core.

But maybe that's the beauty of it—the irrationality. Love's raw and untamed power makes us feel slightly out of control and freer.

Maybe that's what makes it unique.