Authors: Kim Dare
“You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?” She came closer still. Completely confident, her body language all dominance. In a strange way, she reminded him of Axel. She had the same attitude, the same mannerisms. A few steps closer and he realised there was something familiar in her scent.
He’d smelled it before—very faint, clinging to some of the boxes in the back of one of the less frequently used lock-ups.
She stepped straight into Bayden’s space and reached out to him. Unsure what to do, Bayden froze.
If she was an intruder, she should obviously be chased off, but he doubted an intruder would be quite so relaxed. He leaned away from her touch.
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” She stroked his neck. “Where’s your collar, darling?”
Bayden tried to pull back, but she didn’t seem to be able to get the hint.
“Sally?” Axel didn’t sound angry that she was there, or that Bayden hadn’t got rid of her. Bayden leaned to one side and looked around the woman. Axel didn’t look angry either.
Sally straightened up when she spotted Axel in the doorway at the back of the pub. “Axe! You didn’t tell me you were getting a dog. He’s gorgeous.”
Axel looked from Sally to Bayden and back again. He chuckled and shook his head. “Go on in, Bayden. I’ll lock up and we’ll follow you up in a few minutes.”
Bayden skirted around the woman and hurried inside. He could hear Axel talking to her as he went, but he was too full of his own thoughts to be able to eavesdrop properly.
Axel always left the doors open when Bayden was shifted. He had a clear path as he rushed up the stairs and through the flat into the bedroom. He switched back just as he reached the door to the en-suite.
His hands were filthy after padding around as paws for the last hour or two, happily tagging along behind Axel wherever he went. He quickly washed his hands and face and headed back into the bedroom to get clean clothes out of his drawer. It wasn’t cold, but temperature wasn’t the important thing—he added the jumper Axel had bought him and smoothed it into place.
Two pairs of footsteps on the stairs let him know that Axel and the woman—Sally—were on their way up.
Bayden hesitated just inside the bedroom door. Axel and Sally knew each other. They were both alphas. Maybe he should stay in there out of the way.
“Come on out when you’re ready, pup.” The order solved that conundrum. Bayden squared his shoulders and stepped out of the bedroom.
“You talk to that dog as if he’s…” Sally trailed off as she turned to face Bayden. In his human shape he was able to take in a few extra details. She was taller than him, but shorter than Axel. Her hair was long and blond but wound up and pinned to the back of her head. She was wearing a blue business suit and heels.
Her eyes narrowed as their gazes met and she realised what he was. “Bloody hell.”
“Sally, meet Bayden.” Axel still had that faint touch of amusement in his voice. He liked that Sally was shocked.
Sally stepped straight into Bayden’s space and reached out to smooth his hair, just as she had when he was in wolf form—just as Axel did all the time.
It was just as obvious in human form as it had been in wolf form. She was an alpha. Bayden took a step back.
“Give him some space, Sal.” The humour had disappeared from Axel’s voice, but she didn’t seem to realise that Axel’s order really hadn’t been a suggestion. She looked over her shoulder at Axel. “He’s gorgeous!” She didn’t take her hand out of his hair.
“It’s not polite to stroke people without an invitation,” Axel pointed out.
She turned her attention back to Bayden. There was nothing in her scent that indicated her interest in him was anything other than curiosity, but she was an alpha and she was in his space.
Bayden took a step back and respectfully retreated, making it very clear he accepted that she was more dominant than him, but that he wasn’t interested in her being dominant over him. She let him go. Bayden moved to where Axel stood. As tempting as it was to go into his space, he didn’t quite dare. Axel solved the problem for him by sliding his arm around him and tugging him closer.
Sally raised an eyebrow. “So, is he bi or are you that besotted you’ve forgotten he doesn’t swing in my direction?”
Axel sighed. “Bayden, meet Salome Carmichael. My sister—and proof that I did something really bad in a previous life and God is still punishing me for it.”
Sally laughed and strolled into the kitchen as if she had the right to wander through Axel’s territory however she pleased. “He loves me really, Bayden.”
She was right. Axel was really pleased she was there.
“Shall I start getting things ready for this evening, s—” He mentally cursed.
“You can call him sir,” Sally said, opening the fridge. “I know he’s kinky. Do you have any food, Axe? I’m starving.”
“You can call me whatever you prefer while Sally’s here,” Axel said, moving Sally pointedly away from the fridge and nudging her into one of the chairs by the kitchen table. “And there’s no need for you to leave the room.”
“You can’t leave,” Sally agreed. “I want to know everything about you!”
It was all Bayden could do to stop the instinct to step back toward the door.
“Grab some coffee and take a seat,” Axel ordered.
He hadn’t even had time to do that before Sally turned her attention back to him. “So, you’re a shifter?”
“Wow, you’re quick, Sal. What was your first clue?” Axel asked, over his shoulder as he took three steaks out of the fridge.
She completely ignored him in favour of staring at Bayden.
“Wolf shifter,” he agreed.
Age. Job. Bike. Bloody hell—the woman asked even more questions than Axel!
* * * * *
Sisters had their uses, Axel had to admit that. As he joined Sally and Bayden at the table, he’d never felt quite so tolerant of his sister’s tendency to bombard any new acquaintance with dozens of questions with no regard for their privacy or inclination to be cross examined.
“What about your family?”
“They live on the other side of the city.” Bayden’s expression was as hard to read as ever, but his tone of voice was overtly deferential. There were no clipped one word answers here. The guys in the pub might be dismissed with an old-fashioned look, but it seemed Bayden had been brought up to be respectful to women—even women who had to be pissing him off with their impromptu interrogation.
“Brothers and sisters?”
Bayden shook his head. “I don’t have any.”
“Lucky you,” Axel murmured. Sally completely ignored him. Axel smiled, not the least bit surprised.
“What about parents?” she asked.
Bayden hesitated.
“She’s not asking if you have parents, she’s asking whether or not they have a problem with you dating men,” Axel translated.
Bayden shook his head. “Wolves don’t care about that.”
“Good. So, what do your parents do?”
Bayden gave the question considerable thought as he delicately ate another piece of steak. “My mother used to work with the Danville Project,” he finally offered.
“That’s the wolf charity, right?” Sally said.
“It’s not a charity, it’s an organisation.” For the first time since Sally arrived, Bayden’s voice had an edge to it.
Sally’s legal training hadn’t been wasted. She noticed the change. She seemed to realise why, too.
“An organisation for…” Axel prompted, not impressed at being the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
“They help female wolves who want to move into a different line of work, sir.”
“To move out of prostitution,” Sally specified. “Mum’s church did a fundraising thing for them, when they were her cause of the moment. I wonder if they met.”
Bayden shook his head. “My mother did background stuff. She wasn’t involved in fundraising or anything like that.”
“It’s a good cause,” Sally said. “I remember mum saying how common it was for shifter women to end up doing sex work.”
Bayden tensed up. The change was small. He was obviously clinging to the idea of appearing respectful at all costs, but he was also a wolf who’d taken a lot of financial bets on things that involved sex.
His reaction was subtle enough for Sally to keep going, entirely unaware. “The statistics are crazy and—”
“Sal?” Axel cut in.
“What?” She looked from him to Bayden and back again.
“Pick another topic. There’s a good girl.” There was nothing subtle about his tone. She got his message loud and clear.
“What about your father?” she asked.
“He’s dead.” There was no emotion in Bayden’s voice. It was scarily close to the way he sounded in a bet, everything blocked out. As changes of topic went, it wasn’t an improvement.
“I’m sorry,” Sally offered.
Bayden said nothing.
“So it’s just you and your mum?” she asked.
“And my grandfather. I don’t live with them.” And it was important to make that clear, so no one could accuse them of breaking the law.
Axel straightened up in his chair. That was it. Everyone’s curiosity had been indulged quite far enough for one day. “That ends the question and answer part of your visit,” Axel said.
Sally sighed dramatically and turned to Bayden. “He’s just saying that so you don’t get the chance to ask me anything about all the embarrassing skeletons in his closet.”
“I have nothing to hide. My skeletons all came out when I did,” Axel shot back, with a shrug.
“So Bayden knows that all this is just for show?” She waved her hand at one of his tattoos. “Catholic choir boy trying to look all bad and scary and failing miserably.”
Axel laughed and leaned back in his chair. “God, it’s been too long, Sal.”
She nodded and sipped her drink.
“Where was it this time?”
“Last stop Texas, next stop Ukraine,” she said.
“Sal’s a lawyer—she travels a lot for work,” Axel told Bayden. “She only ever passes through here every couple of months.”
Sally nodded seriously. “Which means I’m almost as far into my mother’s black books as Axe is. I should be settled down with a nice Catholic boy and raising a couple of kids. Which reminds me—Beka’s got another one on the way.”
Bayden glanced toward Axel for another translation. “Our sister. There’s six of us altogether. Four boys, two girls. I’m the youngest, then Sal. Then there’s three boys—Josiah, Lazarus and Ishmael. Rebekah’s the oldest.”
Bayden seemed to have relaxed now that the conversation had moved away from him. He smiled shyly as their eyes met, as if pleased that Axel was willing to bring him in on family gossip. Maybe that was it. Maybe the way to get Bayden to share his secrets was that obvious.
Axel smiled back at him. Yes, sisters did have their uses. As he walked Sally out to her car an hour later, he loved her more than ever.
“He’s adorable.”
“Yes.” Even if it wasn’t a word he was going to use out loud about anyone or anything, he couldn’t deny it.
“The one thing I hate about having a gay brother,” she said, leaning against the side of her car. “You have much better luck with men than I do.”
“So that’s why you’re really here. You’ve got rid of your latest, so I regain the honour of driving you back and forth to the airport.”
“You can’t expect me to leave Cherry in the airport car park!” She stroked her fingers down one sleek line of her bright red Ferrari as she spoke.
“Anyone who names their car deserves whatever happens to it.”
“From the man who’d sell his soul rather than get a scratch on one of his bikes…”
Axel laughed. “That’s different.”
She reached up and hugged him. “I’ll let you know when the flight’s confirmed.”
“Sure.”
“You should keep him,” she glanced up toward the flat as she stepped back and opened her car door. “Seriously, I like this one.”
Axel shook his head at her as she drove away, but she was right about Bayden being a sub worth keeping.
Back in his flat, he found Bayden just finishing clearing up after dinner. He looked over his shoulder as Axel walked in.
“I’m sorry I barked at her when she got here, sir. I—”
“Hush.” Axel stepped up behind him and pressed a kiss against his temple. “She deserves to be barked at.” Sliding his arms around Bayden’s waist he encouraged Bayden to lean back against him. “What did you think of her?”
He hesitated, obviously surprised by the question. “She’s very nice, sir.”
Axel smiled. He’d have probably said the same if she’d been a serial killer.
“You get on better with her than you do with the other Dragons.”
“We both know who the more dominant wolf is, sir. That makes everything simpler.”
“A female wolf is automatically less dominant?” Axel asked.
Bayden frowned. “I didn’t say she was less dominant than me, sir.”
Axel ran through the events that day in his mind, trying to remember the tiny clues. She’d got in his space and Bayden had… He’d been polite. He’d lowered his eyes. He’d backed away at the first opportunity. He’d done exactly what he’d said he’d do when approached by a more dominant man who he didn’t want to screw.
“You came back to me,” Axel remembered. He turned Bayden around in his arms so they stood face to face. “Because…” He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to think like a wolf. “You were making it clear that, even if she’s more dominant than you, you’re already submitting to someone else?”
Bayden nodded rapidly, obviously impressed.
Axel was quite impressed with himself too. He was finally getting the hang of the lupine dictionary. “That’s why you get on better with Evan and the other lifestyle subs than you do with the doms or the other Dragons.”
Evan treated Bayden like a dom. And Bayden was, if not chatty, then always kind to him. The cheap shots and sarcasm were for the doms who tried to lord it over Bayden—who didn’t realise he saw himself as more dominant than them. Axel nodded slowly to himself. There was only one anomaly left to discover.
“And you like Hale less than anyone else because?”
Bayden tensed. “Wolves don’t have a problem with cops, sir. Cops have a problem with wolves.”
Axel met Bayden’s eyes. “He has no interest in enforcing anti-pack laws, pup.”