Authors: Kim Dare
“I don’t think any of you know a damn thing about rabies, OCD or shifters.” Axel sighed.
“Maybe not, but I was right when I said I know you. You got Hale to believe he could beat cancer—twice. You put me back on the wagon dozens of times before I finally got with the programme. Hell, you even convinced Drac to get out of the closet and I thought that would take a crowbar. Once you decide to consider someone family, there’s no point betting against you fixing whatever the hell is wrong with them—even if it’s rabies.”
Axel didn’t deny it, but he wasn’t inclined to sit around listening to it. He stood up.
“Give it up,” Griz said. “You won’t stop until you’ve put a collar on the boy, and you know it. Hell—you haven’t even looked at another sub since Bayden walked in here, not even Evan.”
Axel managed to bring a face to mind with some effort. Recently recruited regular, blond, quiet, a blatant lifestyle sub and way out of his depth. Prettier than Bayden, but nowhere near as interesting. “Evan’s—”
“Settling in quite nicely without your help,” Griz cut in.
“I was going to say he’s far more your type than mine,” Axel said, with a laugh.
He went back behind the bar. Bayden seemed especially focused on his work and disinclined to meet Axel’s gaze that evening. It didn’t feel like a good sign.
Finally, their shift ended. Axel and Bayden were both free to get out from behind the bar. And now, Axel had the privilege of watching Bayden do God knew what with a whole string of guys, while he just stood around and watched. Hell, it wasn’t even as if he could do a scene of his own. Even if he could have taken his eyes off Bayden for long enough to get laid, Axel doubted he could have got it up knowing what Bayden might be doing in one of the other rooms.
As things were, Bayden was nothing if not consistent. He never approached anyone. He never suggested a bet. Men came to him, not the other way around. It was one of the nights when the back rooms were open to some of the regulars. Bayden had barely rounded the edge of the bar before someone damn near leapfrogged another man to get at him.
Axel wasn’t far away, but the only word he caught was bet.
Bayden shook his head. Axel didn’t hear what Bayden said, but the guy who’d offered him the bet went away alone. Bayden had obviously said no. Sirens went off inside Axel’s head.
Less than a minute passed before someone else approached Bayden. Another shake of the head. Bayden moved slowly through the crowd in the main bar room but he didn’t head toward the back rooms. He turned down guy after guy.
Axel kept him in sight. It was going to be the calm before the storm. It was all going to hit the fan. He tensed, trying to work out how things could actually get worse than they’d been for the last two weeks. There hadn’t actually been much hard core S&M thrown Bayden’s way. Most of the guys who approached him had been novices just looking for rough sex or the thrill of knowing they were topping a shifter. If Bayden was looking for something harsher now—
Bayden glanced toward Axel. That was different too. Bayden didn’t usually look in his direction—in fact he’d always made a point of pretending Axel didn’t exist whenever he went on one of his gambling sprees. Axel waited, wondering if Bayden was going to approach him, but no. Bayden lurked on the other side of the bar room.
A few minutes passed. Bayden looked in his direction again. Their eyes met, Bayden lowered his gaze. A little while later, the same. Eye contact and a lowered gaze. It looked almost like flirtation.
Axel thought back to what Bayden had tried to explain to him before. A wolf didn’t approach a more dominant wolf—that wasn’t the way it worked for shifters. It wasn’t a rule, it was instinct.
Axel pushed himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against. He stopped just outside Bayden’s personal space, stared down at him and simply waited to see what the hell was going to happen next.
“You said I could ask questions about what would happen if…” Bayden pushed his hands deep into his pockets.
“Questions because you’re curious, or questions because you’ve decided you want to submit to me?”
Bayden focused on a point around Axel’s right collarbone. “I’m not just curious.”
Axel’s pulse doubled. “Is there anything that would stop you submitting to me from tonight?” he asked, far more calmly than he felt.
Bayden shook his head. He met Axel’s gaze and, even though nothing past that had been agreed, there was something different in the atmosphere. The admission had altered things. Bayden looked ready for anything from a right hook to an order to get down on his knees for the entire club.
It wasn’t their busiest night. The only crowds were in the back rooms. Axel spotted an empty table in the quietest corner of the bar room. As he led Bayden across to it, Axel caught Drac’s gaze.
There were plenty of club guys in. They could keep an eye on everything while he was occupied. The way Drac grinned made it clear he’d got the message. Axel wouldn’t be disturbed unless someone died or the pub caught fire.
At the table, Axel studied Bayden carefully, but it was as hard as ever to get a read on him. Bayden had taken his hands out of his pockets when he sat down. Each hand rested motionlessly on the seat to either side of Bayden’s legs, as if he was trying not to fidget.
“You said you have questions.”
Bayden nodded. “You don’t want anyone who is submitting to you to take bets?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
Bayden stared down at the table for several seconds. “What if you decided some bets and he decided other ones?”
Axel narrowed his gaze. “Which bets do you want to keep control of?”
“The fights. If you’re willing to let me keep taking bets on fights, then I’ll—” Bayden took a deep breath. “Then you can decide what I do about everything else.”
Axel was aware that close scrutiny could go in both directions. Bayden wasn’t trying to be difficult, he was doing his damnedest to bend as far as he could.
“You won’t take any bet that looks even vaguely like a scene?” Axel checked.
“Not while I’m submitting to you, not unless you tell me to take it.”
It would be a cold day in hell before Axel did that, but he swallowed those words, not wanting to make it sound like he was throwing the offer back in Bayden’s face.
“That would work,” Axel said.
Bayden gave a jerky nod.
“Why is it so important to you?” Axel asked.
It took a long time for Bayden to put his answer into words. “It’s not something a human should decide for a wolf.”
Axel stroked his fingers down Bayden’s cheek. He was so serious. The answer seemed to explain everything in Bayden’s eyes. It explained exactly nothing to Axel.
“Next question,” Axel ordered.
“My mother’s used to me dropping by a couple of times a week.”
And Bayden obviously hadn’t wasted the last fortnight. He’d been working out exactly what handing over complete control to another man could affect.
Axel hadn’t wasted his time either. He had very definite plans for Bayden. “While you’re submitting to me, you’ll live here.” It was a statement, not a suggestion. “If you want to go out, you’ll ask me, and wait for permission to do that. You won’t get permission to be away overnight, and I won’t guarantee you’ll always get permission to go wherever you want in the day, either. But if it’s to do with your family then asking permission will be a formality—you’ll be allowed to visit them as often as you want.”
Axel waited for him to protest at effectively being grounded. He had his arguments ready and was very willing to make them. But, no. Apparently Bayden was fine with that. He nodded as if it was nothing more than what he’d expected.
Axel smiled. In some ways, wolves were wonderful. “Next question.”
“What happens to my bike?”
And in some ways wolves were as unpredictable as hell. “What are you worried about happening to it?”
“If you don’t want me to ride it, I won’t. But no one else can ride it, and I won’t ride pillion.” He studied Axel carefully as he spoke.
“Because you don’t like what some men call the pillion seat?” Axel guessed.
Bayden tensed. Even thinking the word bitch seat seemed to push him close to the edge. He nodded, sharply. “I won’t ride pillion.”
During the last two weeks Axel had plenty of time to imagine every scenario he might put Bayden in. “What about being a passenger in my car?”
“That’s fine.”
“Then we can agree. Although, I’ve no intention of banning you from riding your bike. You’ll go on the club runs the same as usual, and ride most other places you get permission to go.”
Bayden blinked, as if surprised, but he seemed pleased with the decision.
“What else?” Axel asked.
“That’s it.”
Axel smiled. Bayden really was a curious mixture of experience and naivety. “That was a cue for you to tell me the rest of your limits.” He waited to find out which of his plans for Bayden might have to be modified, but Bayden just frowned.
“I don’t have any limits.”
You just stated three.
No, it wasn’t worth risking their tentative negotiations just for the pleasure of adding one more word to their joint dictionary. Axel let the fact that limits didn’t only apply to overtly kinky and sexual things slide for the moment. “Everyone has limits. Doms and subs. There’s no shame in them. Most people have lots when they start out, some drop away over time, but a few stick forever.”
“Wolves don’t have limits.” Bayden seemed to genuinely believe that. He tilted his head to one side and seemed to think deeply for a moment. “If more dominant humans have limits, you have them.”
“Doms usually phrase their limits as rules. And, if anything, they have far more of them than subs.”
Bayden’s confusion disappeared. Rules were apparently a far more positive thing in his mind. He leaned forward in the chair. “What are the rules?”
Axel shook his head. “We’re discussing your limits.”
“I don’t have any,” he repeated.
Axel studied him for a few seconds. “We’ll say that you don’t have enough experience to know what your limits are,” he decided. “When we run into one, you’ll say your safe word, and we’ll work it out then.”
Bayden leaned back in his chair as if Axel had slapped him. “I didn’t ask for a safe word.”
Axel raised an eyebrow. “You’re not playing without one.”
Bayden opened his mouth, then hesitated. “Is that a rule?”
“Yes. And refusing to have a safe word isn’t a reasonable limit.”
Bayden paused for a moment. “Will you tell me the other rules?”
Axel relented. “A few of the main ones, yes.” He wasn’t going to throw twenty at him in the first few minutes. “If I ask you a question, I expect you to answer it honestly. If I give you an order that’s within your limits, I expect you to follow it to the best of your ability. If there’s a problem, I expect you to tell me about it—that includes saying your safe word if you need to, and telling me about any new limits you discover.”
Bayden looked up at the last point.
“Remember what I said about the differences between a scene and a bet—we’re on the same side. There’s no winner and loser. Saying a safe word doesn’t mean you failed, it means you’re letting me know something important.”
Bayden didn’t look enthusiastic, but he nodded that he’d heard.
“I expect you to commit to this,” Axel warned him. “You can’t go through the motions and treat it like something you need to survive. So, if I catch you trying to treat anything we do together like a bet, if I think you’re trying to hold back and hide something from me, I’ll call you on it.” The idea of finally being able to do that—of having the right to do that, sang through Axel’s veins making him lightheaded with pleasure.
Bayden nodded again. And that was it. It was finally happening. All the plans and theories Axel had been working on were actually going to see the light. He was never going to have to watch another man lay hand on Bayden. This was going to happen.
Axel stroked his fingers through Bayden’s hair, pushing it back from his face. “Good boy.”
Bayden met his eyes for a moment, but he seemed willing to accept both Axel’s touch and his praise as good things.
Axel glanced at his watch. It was close enough to closing time. He didn’t have the patience to wait any longer. He left Bayden sitting at the table when he went up to the bar and rang the bell for last orders.
Aeons passed, but eventually, the last of the paying customers were gone. After the noise everyone had made on the way out, the room felt eerily quiet.
Axel turned to Bayden. “Six weeks, starting now.”
Bayden dipped his head once in acknowledgement. His whole body was knotted with tension, but with that one gesture, he’d made Axel’s world a very different and much better place.
Axel relaxed for what felt like the first time in several consecutive lifetimes. For the next six weeks, Bayden was his, and it was time to put some of those plans he’d made into action. It was time to find out what sort of submissive Bayden really was.
* * * * *
Bayden took a deep breath. Other men’s scents still lingered in the air, but they were fading. Axel’s scent remained strong and it contained more lust than Bayden ever remembered.
Axel’s attitude had changed. He was always confident. His body language was always full of authority. Now, there seemed to be an extra layer of dominance there, or perhaps it was more like there was a hidden layer being revealed, one that Axel usually kept covered up under a polite veneer, but which he was suddenly allowing to show through.
He was also more relaxed than Bayden had ever seen him.
Bayden swallowed.
This was no different to what he’d done in the past, not really. There was no need to be nervous just because it was Axel who’d be giving him the orders. Bayden had no doubt he could take whatever it was Axel was into. Silence stretched out between them, until Bayden found himself searching for something to break the hush—anything.
Inspiration arrived with the fact that Axel hadn’t disappeared to lock the pub’s front door the way he usually did. “Do you want me to lock up?”