Authors: Kim Dare
Bayden nodded. He still didn’t speak, he just waited for an order. Entirely naked with his hair damp from his shower, he was gorgeous. He was also completely unselfconscious—not in a vain way, or even in a sexual way. It seemed like it didn’t occur to him to be ashamed of his body.
If it was a lupine trait, Axel was entirely in favour of it. He smiled to himself as he ran his gaze over Bayden from top to toe. Somehow, he was pretty sure this was one wet Sunday when he wouldn’t get bored.
Axel pulled his attention back up to Bayden’s face. Bayden had been watching him intently, but he looked away when their eyes met.
“Come here.”
Bayden stopped eighteen inches away from Axel. He didn’t offer his lips up for a kiss good morning. He seemed to make a point of staring straight ahead. His hands remained at his sides.
Axel slid one arm around him and pulled him closer. Bayden still didn’t look up. Axel tucked a knuckle under his chin. Once Bayden’s head was tilted back, Axel took his hand away. Bayden kept his head in that position, offering his lips up to be kissed.
For a moment, he met Axel’s gaze. He looked so uncertain about everything, just like the previous night. Axel’s cock jerked at the memory of Bayden’s lips wrapped around his shaft. He made him wait a few seconds, but when he finally kissed him, he didn’t tease.
Bayden remained tense, completely controlling his every response to the kiss. It was far too close to the way he acted during his bets. Axel nipped Bayden’s bottom lip. Bayden didn’t react to that; Axel didn’t expect him to.
Axel kissed the non-existent injury better. There was nothing subtle about the move. He made it completely obvious what he was doing. As soon as Axel offered that touch of comfort, Bayden’s breathing sped up. He leaned more firmly against Axel’s body. Even if Bayden wasn’t ready to admit it, there was something about a dom who took care of him that snuck past all his defences.
The boy needed someone to look after him more badly than anyone Axel had ever met. Axel deepened the kiss. Bayden gently sucked the tip of Axel’s tongue and let out a needy little whimper. By the time Axel lifted his head, he knew Bayden was mentally in the moment.
Bayden swallowed. He looked down, but he didn’t pull away. He jumped as, right on cue, the dinger sounded on the cooker. He peered up at Axel, as if he was looking to him for both reassurance and safety.
Axel smiled at the idea—that was far more to his taste than a boy who was afraid to get within a foot of him.
Bayden remained exactly where he was until Axel handed him his breakfast.
The kiss seemed to have shaken Bayden. It had also turned him on. He was hard and ready to play, and he made no attempt to hide his erection as he sat at the table. He seemed as comfortable with that as with his nudity.
Time to get him comfortable with something else.
“I know you think I’m more dominant than you. I know you respect that. I’m not going to think you’re challenging me if you come into my space,” Axel said.
“Yes, sir.” It was an acknowledgement that he’d heard him, nothing more.
“I want you to work on it.”
Bayden glanced up at him, his eyes so serious.
“Don’t ride roughshod over your instincts, don’t pretend to be human. But I want you to work out a way you can get closer to me without feeling like you’re challenging me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy.” Axel kissed him, very briefly. “Once you’re dressed, I’ll drive you to your place so you can pick up your things.”
Bayden’s fork clattered against his plate. “You don’t need to do that, sir.”
“Oh?”
“I can ride there. It won’t take me long, sir.”
“Do you think I’ll slow you down?” Axel asked, amused.
Bayden shook his head. “But you don’t need to. I didn’t ask you to, sir.”
“I haven’t accused you of doing anything wrong.” His breakfast finished, Axel sat back in his chair and settled himself for the duration. “Any particular reason you don’t want me to drive you?”
“You said yourself that it’s horrible weather, sir.”
“To ride, yes. We’ll be taking my car. Unless the roof has sprung a leak overnight, I don’t imagine either of us will get too damp.”
“Maybe—” Bayden looked up and seemed to realise that, while Axel had no problem with listening to any arguments he wanted to put forward, he had no intention of altering his plans unless Bayden anteed up properly.
Bayden looked down, obviously out of his depth.
It was one of those times when rescuing him was acceptable. “Yesterday, when they told you that I expected you to let them all screw you, did it occur to you to tell me that was a limit for you?”
Bayden shook his head. “It’s not a limit. I don’t have any limits, sir.”
And this was as good a moment as any to deal with that kind of bull. “You have three options,” Axel told him.
Bayden nodded that he’d heard.
“You can suck it up and deal with the decision I’ve made.”
Bayden tensed.
“You can tell me why you don’t like the idea of me going to your place and ask me to change my mind. Depending on the explanation, I might do that, or I might stick with my original decision—in which case you end up with the first option by default.”
Bayden failed to look any more enthusiastic about that prospect.
“Or, you can tell me that you’re setting me visiting your place as a limit. In which case, I’ll respect that, and you’ll be allowed to go on your own.”
Bayden stared down at his hand. It had furled into a tight fist. He frowned and relaxed his fingers with obvious effort. The idea of Axel visiting his place seemed to scare him more than being passed around an entire club full of men. Was that because he was embarrassed about where he lived since he moved into his own place? Or was that it—the law said he should have moved out, but he hadn’t? That would be something he’d want to hide, something he’d never let anyone find out unless he was sure he could trust them. It made sense.
“Reasonable,” Bayden blurted out. “You said I’m allowed to have reasonable limits.”
Axel turned the matter over in his head. If he still lived at home, taking Axel there would mean introducing him to his family as well as showing him where he lived. It was too soon to demand that. “Until we renegotiate at the end of the trial, it’s reasonable,” he decided.
Bayden let out the breath he’d been holding.
“You still need to choose one of the options,” Axel reminded him.
“You said…”
“I gave you the options and answered your questions about them.”
Bayden ground his teeth together.
Axel waited.
His choice was obvious. It would be so easy to step in and rescue him again, but Axel remained silent and let Bayden struggle. He was going to learn how to set limits. Axel was past the point of caring what the particular limit was. Bayden was going to learn how to negotiate a scene and damn well set limits above and beyond the,
make sure no one gets killed
, limits that the club set.
Bayden glanced up at him again, his gaze full of emotion.
Axel still forced himself to wait him out.
“You going to my place. It’s a limit,” Bayden whispered. He told the table rather than Axel, and he looked ready to leap off his chair and retreat at a moment’s notice.
“Good boy.”
Bayden’s jaw twitched as if he were clamping his teeth together more firmly than ever.
“I’m the one who decides what constitutes good behaviour in this household,” Axel said. “Not you.”
Confusion flashed across Bayden’s face.
“I’m not sarcastic about important things,” Axel told him. “If I say you did something good, I mean it.”
Bayden didn’t look down, he kept his gaze on Axel’s face, trying to read him.
“Learning how to set limits is good,” Axel repeated.
“Do I need to apologise, sir?”
Axel shook his head. He stood up. “You can go to your place to collect your things. If you want to call in and see your family, there’s time for you to do that too. I need to pick up some things in town. When you’re done, you can meet me back here for lunch.”
Axel reached into one of the kitchen drawers, fished out his spare backdoor key and tossed it to Bayden.
Bayden frowned at it as if he’d never seen a key before. “Sir?”
“If you get back before me, let yourself in.”
Bayden’s frown deepened. He seemed to be about to say something, then he checked himself. He nodded and put the key on his key ring.
Guilty that he didn’t trust Axel to know where he lived, but Axel trusted him with a key? Uncertain about how any arrangement longer than a hook up should work? Axel let the matter slip away but, two hours later, when he drove back into the yard at the rear of the pub, he realised that might have been a tactical error on his part.
* * * * *
When Bayden heard Axel’s car, he straightened up from where he’d been crouched down alongside his bike. The rain had eased off. It no longer pounded on the flat roof of the lock-up.
Axel parked his car near the back entrance to the pub and got out. He didn’t look pleased. “You were supposed to let yourself in.”
“I haven’t been back that long, sir.”
Axel glanced past him. Bayden followed his line of sight. Water had dripped off both his leathers and his bike, both were now dry. Damn.
Axel shook his head at him, but he seemed bemused rather than offended. “Did you get everything you wanted from your place?”
Bayden held up his backpack.
“That’s all you wanted to fetch?”
Bayden glanced at the bag, would a rich boy have brought more? “Wolves travel light.” He shrugged, as if he’d had lots of options and chosen that one on purpose.
“Well, not this time.” Axel opened the car boot. “Lock up. You can help me carry.”
Bayden locked his bike away in record time, slung his back pack over his shoulder and hurried across to take some of the shopping bags from Axel.
It took two trips each to take everything upstairs to the flat’s kitchen. Axel must have spent more on food in one trip than Bayden would have spent in the whole six weeks he was living there.
Bayden paused, staring down into one of the bags. He hadn’t spent much on food at all since he started working at the Dragon. He hadn’t needed to. Axel had been feeding him for weeks—it must have cost him a fortune already.
“Bayden?”
Bayden jerked his head up.
“You were in your own world.”
“Sorry, sir.” He washed his hands at the sink as Axel started to take food out of the bags. Axel had never invited him to handle food, but most of it seemed to be wrapped. “Is there anything I can do?”
Axel nodded to the closest bag. “Go ahead.”
As they put the food away, a companionable silence fell over them, broken only by Axel’s occasional instructions on where different things were supposed to be stored. It was nice—like working behind the bar with him, but without having to deal with any customers.
“Catch.”
Bayden turned to Axel, hands out ready to receive one of the less fragile things that needed to be put away on his side of the kitchen. Something grey, fluffy and blatantly inedible flew toward him.
“Try it on.”
Bayden turned the soft, knitted fabric around until it became obvious it was a sweater. He frowned at the jumper. It was grey wool with a black fleck running through it. It had a tag on it, but price label had been removed. It was obviously far too small for Axel. “Sir?”
“Try it on,” Axel repeated.
“Why?”
“Because I told you to. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
Yes, it was. Bayden took off his jacket. He carefully pulled the sweater over his head and smoothed it into place over his vest. It was soft against his bare arms. He looked back to Axel.
Axel nodded his approval. “It suits you.” He went back to unpacking as if that was the end of the matter and no further explanation was needed.
Bayden studied Axel carefully, trying to work out what was going on. Had he given himself away somehow? His heart raced at the possibility. Did Axel think he expected him to—?
“If you want to know something, ask,” Axel said. “Staring at me across the kitchen won’t get you any answers.”
“I can afford to buy my own clothes, sir.”
“I don’t doubt it.” It sounded like he meant that.
“I don’t need…” Bayden hesitated. The jumper was nice. And Axel had picked it for him. And Axel said it suited him. It was an indulgence, but maybe just this once… He reached into the back pocket of his jeans. “How much do I owe you for—?”
“It’s a present,” Axel cut in. “That means I’ll be very offended if you try to pay for it.”
“You don’t need to give me presents, sir.”
“A wolf wouldn’t?” Axel asked.
“I’ll do whatever you want without you…”
Axel put down the tins he’d just taken out of a bag. “It’s not payment, pup. It’s a gift. It’s different.” He stroked Bayden’s hair back from his face. “You’ve got a couple of options.”
“It’s not a limit, sir,” Bayden rushed out.
Axel ignored that. “You can think of it as a human thing—maybe it’s something that doesn’t make sense to a wolf, but humans are weird, you have to make allowances.”
Axel didn’t seem insulted, Bayden still shook his head very quickly. “I didn’t say that, sir.”
“Or you could decide that the only thing I’ve given you is an order.”
Bayden looked up. Orders were good. From the look in Axel’s eye, Bayden was pretty sure Axel knew he thought that.
“I’m telling you to wear something that it pleases me to see you wear,” Axel went on. “That’s all. You’re just doing something that will please me. There’s nothing worrying about that, is there?”
Bayden looked down at the jumper. It was nice. It wrapped around him, warm and comforting, like a memory of Axel’s touch that would linger even when Axel wasn’t in the room.
“Tell me what the problem is.” That was definitely an order.
Bayden hesitated, not sure if it was wise to tempt fate.
“The truth,” Axel reminded him.
“It’s not the kind of thing that humans usually want to see a wolf wear, sir,” he said cautiously.
Axel ran his hand down Bayden’s sleeve. “It makes you look warm and comfortable. It makes you look as if I’m taking good care of you.”