Page 197 of Doubts & Fears

Ivan stepped into the room, concern etched into his face. A tremor laced my voice as the words spilled out, each syllable carrying a thousand-pound bag of brutal truth.

“Someone fucking whipped her. Hard enough to leave marks.”

I was seething and had to take deep breaths to calm myself. By saying the words aloud, I’d given them life. The reality of someone hurting my girl to that extent was a gut punch. And I stood before my brothers with my anger, fear, and heart exposed.

Confusion etched Alek’s face as he wrestled with what I’d said. “Wait, what? Who?”

A searing ache pulsed within me as I reflected on the look in her eyes only moments before. The way her voice broke when she asked me not to leave.

“Kinsley. I haven’t had a chance to speak with you yet, but Sebastian called me today to talk about her soft and hard limits.”

“Sebastian? Nik, what are you talking about?” Alek asked, confused.

“Yes, apparently, Kinsley has been sneaking into the playroom and calling Sebastian.” I rubbed my head, trying to grasp at the fragments of the unthinkable.

“Excuse me?” Ivan demanded, anger seeping into his voice.

“Not like that. She’s solid for her Kings. She apparently asked him for advice on how to get Alek past third base, and then today,fuck. She wanted his thoughts on what we might like and how that might conflict with her soft and hard limits.”

“Okay, how does that have anything to do with someone whipping her? Did she say that?” Alek asked, eyeing me closely.

He grabbed my shoulders; I could only look at him in disbelief. My mind was running a thousand miles ahead of itself, and I wasn’t articulating what I needed to. God, I felt sick.

“Why would she ask Sebastian?” Ivan asked, sounding hurt. I ignored his question, not that I had an answer, anyway.

Taking a deep breath, re-centering myself, I said, “Kinsley and I were talking. I asked her who taught her how to suck dick. She refused to answer.”

“Yeah, I asked too, and she didn’t answer me either.” Alek frowned.

“Fisting is out,” I mumbled as I remembered that part of the conversation with Bash.

Ivan’s eyes widened in sheer bewilderment. His mouth was slightly agape, and his brows furrowed. “Wait, what?” He was struggling to follow me.

“Yeah, Kinsley was being her normal sassy ass, so I spanked her, which we all know she likes, but not the point. I was rubbing her back, and goddamn it, she has marks on her back. Three of them.”

“Nik, you need to take a breath and slow down for a minute. You aren’t making sense,” Alek said. In an attempt to ground me, he clutched my shoulders and shook me with a firm grip.

A rush of air filled my lungs as I drew in a deep breath, and then I told them what Sebastian and I had discussed.

“She asked Bash today specifically about a few different things. One of those was a Gorean slave whip, in conjunction with the wordMaster. Although I don’t think the marks were left by one of those. He also said she had issues with gags, or at least from what he could read from her body language and face.”

Ivan’s face paled. “Fuck, the two things she said make her freeze.”

I nodded, my stomach in knots, leaving me unsteady. “I don’t know why I’ve never noticed the marks before tonight, but when I asked her how she got them, she got that look in her eyes.”

A sense of unease grew, my thoughts diminishing any sense of clarity I needed to have in this moment. “They’re old scars, guys. I need a minute. Fuck me. I wonder if that sick bastard whipped her as a child.” I doubled over.

“We need to tell Marcel,” Ivan said, taking out his phone. He dialed, putting it on speakerphone.

“Ivan,” Marcel said sleepily. “It’s fucking four in the morning, Brother?”

“It’s Kinsley.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice laced with genuine concern for her well-being.

Sensing the urgency, we proceeded to come clean with him and fill him in on how we’d taken our relationships further and about the scars on her back. I flinched as Alek spoke. Each word was like lighter fluid on a powder keg, and Marcel was waiting for him to shut up so he could light the match and watch the explosion.

The sounds of a deep, exasperated sigh punctuated the weighty silence that followed Alek’s last words. With a sharp edge to his biting words, he conveyed exactly how disappointed and frustrated he was.

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