Axel's Pup (20 page)

Right on cue, the door swung open and Griz stepped inside.

He grinned when he saw Bayden behind the bar. Axel met his gaze and knew that all the humour dancing in Griz’s eyes was directed at him rather than Bayden.

“So, are you back there because you’re his bartender or his boyfriend?”

“Bartender,” Bayden said.

Griz shook his head. “If I ever needed any extra proof you’re an idiot,” he told Axel.

Axel looked across at Bayden just in time to see his expression go completely blank. “It’s a compliment, pup. A cack handed one, but still.”

Bayden glanced toward him.

“He’s means he thinks you’re hot, not that you’ll do a bad job behind the bar.”

Bayden shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. Axel turned his attention to Griz, he seemed to be fooled by the act—and he wasn’t as foolish as he liked to let people think he was.

Griz took a seat at the bar. “Beer.”

Bayden didn’t blink. He got the non-alcoholic beer and set the bottle down in front of Griz without a word. He marked it down on Griz’s tab. “And one for you,” Griz added.

Bayden looked across at Axel.

The pub landlord in Axel perked up and pointed out he’d damn near double his takings if he allowed Bayden to let all the men who drank there to hit on him by buying him drinks.

No. Dom outranked landlord every time, and the possessiveness he felt toward Bayden wasn’t going away any time soon. “No alcohol when you’re on the clock, and soft drinks are free while you’re working, so there’s no need.”

Bayden nodded his acceptance. Griz chuckled, obviously guessing how Axel felt about letting Bayden even accept a drink off another man. Axel ignored him.

It was as if every gay and bi man in the county had somehow guessed that there would be a new bartender working that night and decided to turn up to check him out. Bikers and leather-guys came out of the woodwork.

Axel kept half an ear on Bayden’s conversations and half an eye on whether he was keeping on top of his duties, but his intentions of babysitting the boy through his first shift were obliterated within the first half an hour. There was more than enough work to keep two bartenders fully occupied right up until the end of the night.

Axel sighed with relief as he ushered the last straggler out through the door. When he went back into the main bar room, Bayden was…gone.

Axel had come out from behind the bar a couple of times, but the furthest Bayden had moved all night was from one end of the bar to the other. Axel frowned. The boy couldn’t have vanished into thin air.

A noise from deeper into the pub led Axel towards the gents. Stopping in the entrance, he leaned against the door jab. He’d thought that Bayden might be a bartending first for him in a lot of ways, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be the first employee who didn’t have to be reminded that cleaning the gents fell within their list of duties.

Axel smiled. Bayden really hadn’t liked being accused of thinking himself above bar work. His determination to wipe that idea from Axel’s mind was palpable. As if sensing that he was being watched, Bayden tensed. He looked over his shoulder, paused and waited for Axel to speak first.

“How do you think it went?”

“It’s your pub, you should decide how it went,” Bayden said.

“Then it went fine,” Axel said.

Bayden studied him very carefully for several seconds before he nodded his apparent willingness to believe that, against all Bayden’s obvious expectations, Axel was indeed satisfied with his work. “I’ll finish up here and get going, unless there’s anything else you want me to do tonight?”

There were so many things Axel wanted Bayden to do. None of them involved his duties as a bartender.

“Finish in here while I cash up. There’s pizza up in the flat. It won’t take long to be ready.”

Bayden shook his head.

“Not a pizza fan?”

Bayden sighed. “Why do you keep feeding me?”

Because it was the only way I can be sure you’re eating.
“Why do you always have a problem sharing a meal with me?”

Bayden dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful.”

“Noted,” Axel allowed.

Bayden was silent for a few seconds. “I do like pizza.”

Half an hour later, as they sat down at the kitchen table Axel was willing to believe that Bayden liked pizza a lot. His manners were perfect, but there was no denying that he ate quicker than a man who was just a bit peckish. Whatever he’d spent the thousand pounds he’d won the previous week on, it hadn’t been food.

“You should plan on eating here either during or after every shift,” Axel said.

Bayden glanced up but made no comment.

When the last slice of pizza disappeared, Axel took Bayden’s first day’s wages out of his pocket and handed them across the table.

Bayden looked at the money for several seconds. “Will you be insulted if I offer you money for the food?”

“Yes—very,” Axel said. “And you shouldn’t insult your boss on your first day—it creates a very bad impression.”

Bayden looked at the money. “Would you say the same if I was human?”

“Yes,” Axel said, with complete honesty. A sub was a sub whatever his species, and any chance Axel had had of lying to himself about certain facts had died a long time ago.

I’ll do whatever you want for free.

Bayden had offered him a form of submission. It wasn’t what Axel was used to receiving off human subs, but it was submission. Bayden already acted like his sub in a lot of ways, and whether they were screwing or not, Axel was going to take care of his sub by whatever means necessary.

“You look worried.”

“I’m fine.” Bayden glanced up. His mother was studying him carefully from just inside her front door. “Really. Everything’s fine.” It had been almost four weeks since he did his first shift at the pub. If it was all going to hit the fan, it would almost certainly have happened by now. It finally felt safe to share the information that had been burning a hole in his mind for almost a month. “I got a job.”

A worried little frown creased his mother’s forehead. Her grip on the edge of the door tightened a fraction. “What kind of job?”

“It’s in a pub, working behind the bar. It pays really well.”

His mother’s concern didn’t fade. Bayden pushed his hands into his pockets, wondering if it would have been better if he’d continued to keep everything to himself, but it was too late now. “Axel, the guy who owns the pub, he’s a good man. He pays me the same as he paid the last guy who worked there—and Matt was human.”

If anything, his mother’s frown deepened. She stepped outside, pulled the door closed in her wake, and took a seat on the wall.

“It’s regular money,” Bayden pointed out, sitting down next to her.

“Just for bar work?” she asked, carefully.

Bayden looked down. “Yeah, just for that.”

“He doesn’t expect—”

Bayden shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.” The possibility that he would expect anything else from his bartender had been pure wishful thinking on Bayden’s part. “Axel’s not like other humans. You don’t need to worry.”

“I met a man who seemed different when I was about your age,” she said, softly. “It’s the humans who seem different that are the most dangerous.”

The need to defend Axel boiled up inside Bayden, but he bit the words back. She didn’t need anything extra to worry about.

“You have to keep your guard up, little one,” she whispered to him. “Kind words don’t always come from kind people. And, just because someone tells you they want you to serve men drinks, that doesn’t mean they’ll never want you to do other things for those men.”

Sooner or later, every wolf ends up getting paid to either fuck or fight, the important thing is to make sure you choose who you take money off.
Bayden closed his eyes. He’d heard the warning so many times, sometimes put far more gently than others, but still.

“I decide who I fight, who I do anything with—Axel has no say in any of that.” It was true. And, if Bayden had managed to avoid taking bets on anything other than fights since he started working at The Dragon’s Lair, then that was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with him caring what Axel would think if he saw him taking a bet that might involve anything else.

Bayden pushed his hands deeper into his pockets as he did his damnedest to avoid thinking about how soon that good opinion might come to an end. For the first time, he didn’t want to ask, he wanted to pretend that not asking, that not knowing, gave him the option of not having to deal with reality.

“How is he?”

When three seconds passed without an answer, Bayden knew that she was trying to work out a response that didn’t require either an outright lie or an admission that it was time to summon the doctor again.

“You should call him out.” Bayden met her gaze. “There’s no reason not to.” If the rent money he’d slipped into her pocket when they hugged hello went on doctor’s fees, there’d be plenty to replace it by the time the rent was actually due. There were still plenty of guys at The Dragon’s Lair who’d be happy to fight him with even the gentlest of prompts.

Bayden pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll drop in again before Friday.”

His mother kissed his cheek and sent him on his way with the same warnings she always issued, but she looked even more concerned than usual.

Bayden hadn’t realised that he looked anything other than entirely expressionless, until he got to the pub for his shift and Axel’s eyes narrowed.

“How’s your grandfather?”

Bayden hung up his jacket. Keeping his back to Axel, he washed his hands in the sink behind the bar. “He’s fine.”

Axel’s hand came to rest on Bayden’s shoulder as he was drying his hands. He tugged Bayden around to face him.

They stood close together. Bayden had to tilt his head right back to look him in the eye.

Axel didn’t repeat the question, he just did that thing where he remained perfectly still and patiently waited for Bayden to give in.

“I don’t think he’s any worse,” he offered.

Axel touched his lips to Bayden’s temple in one of those almost kisses that made Bayden even more desperate to be kissed properly, and not on the damn temple. It was all he could do to keep back a whimper.

“If you need time off to spend with him, or to help out your mother, tell me, and we’ll work something out.”

Bayden shook his head. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince any more. Then, a horrible thought occurred to him. He looked up. “Is everything fine?” he blurted out. “I mean with,” he gestured vaguely toward the bar.

Axel frowned, as if the question didn’t make any sense to him.

Bayden looked down. He was making a fool of himself. “I should get to work.”

Axel put his hand on the bar, blocking his way.

Damn! “You said before that I’m on a month’s trial,” Bayden reminded him, scrubbing every scrap of emotion from his voice.

“And it’s been almost a month,” Axel said, musingly. “How do you think it’s gone?”

Bayden shrugged.

Axel stroked Bayden’s cheek with his knuckle. “It’s gone very well. Best bartender I’ve ever employed.”

Bayden was in no mood to be laughed at. He tried to step back, but there was nowhere to go.

Axel caught hold of his chin. “You work a damn sight harder than anyone I’ve ever employed. You don’t moan about any of it. You don’t need me to check up on you every five minutes. It’s not an insult for me to tell you that you’re doing a good job.” There was no doubting his honesty.

Unsure what to say, Bayden looked down, but he didn’t try to turn his face away from Axel’s touch.

“Go on,” Axel finally allowed. He stepped to one side and let him pass.

Bayden kept his eyes down and all his attention on his work for the best part of his shift before he risked glancing in Axel’s direction. Axel smiled when their eyes met. It was impossible for Bayden to know if Axel had just chanced to look his way or if Axel’s attention had been on him the whole time. It felt suspiciously like it was the latter.

Bayden smiled to himself. It was even easier to remember that Axel wasn’t like other humans when Axel was right there and inclined to smile at him.

It was a busy night, just like it always was when the back rooms were going to be open to the public later on. Bayden turned to the next customer.

“You’re a shifter!” The guy took a step back from the bar, as if he expected Bayden to bite him.

“Wolf shifter,” Bayden confirmed, for far from the first time that month. He looked the guy up and down, he wasn’t someone who’d want to fight. “What do you want to drink?”

The man was still staring at him in horror. “Since when do they allow dogs in here?”

“A wolf’s not a dog,” Bayden pointed out, with forced politeness.
A dog is nowhere near as dangerous as a wolf, would you like me to demonstrate…
He pushed his annoyance aside. “Are you going to order a drink?”

“Not if you’re serving it!”

“Is there a problem?” Axel stepped up next to Bayden.

“I’m not drinking anything
that
serves. It’s unhygienic.”

“What?” Axel bit out.

It wasn’t anything Bayden hadn’t heard before, but Axel hadn’t heard it. Bayden glanced up at Axel and felt his own anger climb just as quickly as that in Axel’s scent.

“I don’t care if it’s some sort of tame bitch, y—”

A low growl stopped the guy mid-word. It halted the conversations around him as humans recognised it as a sound that evolution had taught them meant trouble. They all froze.

The sound continued to reverberate in the back of Bayden’s throat until Axel put his hand on his shoulder.

The guy on the other side of the bar remembered how to breathe. “A fucking animal serving behind the bar.” He glanced in the general direction of the back rooms. “God, you don’t let it play here, do you? It’s little better than bestiality. You can’t—”

“If you think shifters are animals, you don’t know anything about them. And if you think you can tell me what I can and can’t do, you don’t know what kind of pub this is,” Axel cut in.