Axel's Pup (8 page)

There was only one choice he could really make. “I’ll stay with my bike.”

“That’s fine. I’ll help you inside and get your bike stowed away.”

Bayden shook his head. “No. I’ll do it.”

“Bollocks.”

Bayden looked down at his fist. Even in the less than perfect car park light, his knuckles were visibly white. “I’ll do it.”

Axel sighed and shook his head. “Stubborn little bugger, aren’t you?”

Bayden bit back an instinct to apologise. “It’s my bike, not yours.”

“You can tag along and keep an eye on what I’m doing, but that’s it—don’t argue.” Axel picked up Bayden’s clothes and handed them to him, but he didn’t give up the keys when he stepped past Bayden. In seconds, he had control of Bayden’s bike and was pushing it around the back of the pub.

Bayden walked alongside. Being out in the cold air should have cleared his head more than it had. He wasn’t sure how much of the lingering dizziness was from the whipping, and how much came from it being too long since he’d eaten.

When they reached the row of garages around the back of the pub, Axel unlocked one. The metal shutters were loud and overpowered the music still playing inside the pub. Axel rolled Bayden’s bike inside. Taking Bayden’s helmet off him, he set that with the bike. All Bayden could do then was watch, trying not to feel too helpless, as Axel pulled down the shutters and locked his bike away.

Finally, Axel gave Bayden’s keys back to him. Bayden gripped them so tightly the metal bit into his palm. Axel fiddled with the big ring of keys he carried—there had to be twenty on there. He took one off the ring and offered it to Bayden.

“That’s the key for this lock-up.” He nodded to the shutters. “I’ve got a spare somewhere, but I’m damned if I can remember where, so don’t lose it.”

For some reason, it sounded like Axel wanted to make him feel better about it all. “Thank you.”

Axel let out another one of those pissed off huffs. “You should worry less about your bike and more about your own hide.”

“Wolves heal. Bikes don’t.”

Axel shook his head. “You’re consistent, I’ll give you that. Your priorities are seriously buggered up, but you are consistent about them. Come on. Inside.” He put his hand on Bayden’s shoulder as they turned toward the building, as if he thought he needed steadying.

Rather than stop in the kitchen at the back of the pub the way Bayden expected, Axel unlocked a door on the far side of the kitchen and marched Bayden up a flight of stairs.

The music from the pub seeped up to them, but it was muted. The pub, and the men in it, felt very far away.

Axel’s scent clung to the space upstairs. It was very clear, un-muddied by other men’s scents. No one else spent much time there. This was his private space, his home. Bayden didn’t get much of a chance to look at the first room they passed through. Axel brought them to a stop in another kitchen.

Axel pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and turned it around. “Sit down. Face the back of the chair. I’ll get something to put on your back.”

“I’m fine.” Bayden shuffled his feet and ignored the pain in his back as best he could.

Axel folded his arms. “You mean you’re scared that it will sting the same way the cream I put on your lip did?” It was halfway between teasing and a challenge.

Bayden hesitated, but there didn’t seem to be any way to protest without contesting Axel’s dominance all over again.

He straddled the chair. Resting his forearms on the back of it allowed him to take some of the strain off his back and breathe a little easier.

As Axel moved around the room getting whatever it was he wanted to put on his back, thoughts ran more clearly through Bayden’s head.

“Thank you,” he blurted out.

“For what—standing around watching you get whipped by that arsehole?”

“No, for counting.” He looked down. “I lost count.”

Axel let out a bitter laugh. “You’d have been better off if you’d stopped when I reached four rather than forty.”

There was nothing Bayden could say to that.

“Was it worth it?” Axel asked after a few moments.

“Yes,” Bayden whispered. To prove to humans that wolves couldn’t be broken so easily—yes. Even if it had only been for the three hundred pounds—yes, that would have been worth it on its own.

Three hundred pounds. That was three fights if he could find men who wanted to bet against him, and they were harder to come by the more often he won. Fifteen back alley blowjobs if no one wanted him to prove a point. A whipping was easy money by comparison—even if it didn’t feel like it at that particular moment.

“Really?” Axel asked. He moved another chair and sat down behind Bayden.

“There are worse things to have to do,” Bayden whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

Axel’s scent changed.

It took Bayden a second to realise why. If it was a choice between anger and pity, he’d rather have anger. “I’ve taken bets which are much crazier than this,” he rushed out. “Lots of them.”

Axel’s scent didn’t change. “Are you in debt, is that why you’re scrabbling for money?”

Bayden straightened up. He winced as his back protested and stilled. If he tried to move again, he was pretty sure he was going to throw up. “The money’s not the point.”

“Are you using?”

Anger flared up inside Bayden. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up onto his feet, willing his body not to betray him.

Axel’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Sit down,” he ordered. “If you don’t want to answer a question, you can just tell me to sod off. You don’t need to make a dramatic exit.”

Bayden subsided onto the chair. He stared down at his forearms as thoughts raced around in his head. He still couldn’t think entirely clearly, couldn’t pin down any one idea. Did Axel think about wolves the same way as all the other humans did? Probably. He probably wasn’t any different to any other human.

It was probably a lost cause, but as he felt Axel’s fingers moving gently against his back, cleaning his wounds for no other reason than he’d decided that it was right that someone should do that, Bayden couldn’t help but hope. “They’re wrong,” he whispered.

“Who are?”

“The humans who say wolves are all drunks and junkies,” Bayden told the back of the chair. “They’re wrong. We don’t do that.”

Axel moved some sort of damp cloth across his back. “And it really narks you when someone jumps to that conclusion,” he finished for him.

“We don’t do that,” Bayden repeated.

“Like a religious thing?”

Bayden hesitated, tempted to say yes, but no. There were enough lies between them already, and it wasn’t as if he was giving up information that could be easily used against him. “Alcohol doesn’t work on us. Neither do human drugs.”

“They don’t affect you at all?”

“Once a guy bet me I couldn’t down a bottle of vodka. It made me a bit sleepy.” He thought back to that night. “It didn’t taste very nice. Beats the hell out of me why anyone would drink it if it wasn’t a bet.”

* * * * *

Axel chuckled at the obviously genuine bemusement in Bayden’s voice, but his expression turned serious again as he returned his attention to Bayden’s flogged back.

Richards had thrown all his strength into it. He’d raised welts. The fact he’d switched hands and purposely crossed his strokes only made it worse. The skin was broken so many times. Each wound was small. There was no question of any of them needing stitches. Masochists had received harsher treatment in the pub and thrived on it, but it wasn’t the same.

“Fights and vodka are one thing, but you were a fool to take this bet.”

Bayden said nothing. Axel waited, wondering if Bayden was silent because he was mad or because he was in too much pain to answer.

Axel was doing his best to be gentle, but it still must have hurt like hell. Bayden hadn’t complained once; he hadn’t even flinched. Axel held back a sigh. He shouldn’t have baited him. Silly little fool probably thought he had a point to prove about that too.

“It was worth it,” Bayden said.

Axel wasn’t sure if it was the pain from the wounds, but it sounded suspiciously like Bayden was reminding himself of that as much as anything. “Why? What made it worth it?”

Bayden was quiet for a long time. Axel started to think that he wasn’t going to answer, but finally he did.

“It’s no different than a fight. Humans think they can break us—proving they can’t is always worth it.”

“What?”

“Humans have always thought that if they whip us, or screw us, or whatever, they can put us in our place and prove that they’re better than us. They’re wrong.”

Axel frowned at the back of Bayden’s head, unable to think of a single thing to say.

“He threw the best he had at me, and the worst it was, was boring.”

A couple of puzzle pieces fell into place. “And just in case you didn’t prove that well enough during the whipping, you had to shoot him down at the end?”

Bayden’s shoulders twitched as if he started to shrug, then remembered why that was a bad idea. “Humans aren’t always quick on the uptake. Just not showing them respect isn’t enough.”

“Richards definitely doesn’t deserve anyone’s respect,” Axel said. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking all human doms are equally clueless.”

“I don’t think you’re clueless,” Bayden said. His voice was steady. Any pain was well hidden. “I think you’re a hypocrite.”

Axel raised an eyebrow at the back of Bayden’s head. “Oh?”

“The way you’re acting, anyone would think you’d never whipped a guy.”

Axel straightened up in his seat. “Not for a bet, I haven’t.”

“You’ve been thinking about doing something like this to me ever since we met,” Bayden said, with easy confidence.

“Yes.” Axel had no intention of lying about it. “I wanted to screw you the moment I saw you. I’ve wanted to turn you over my knee ever since you took that first stupid bet.”

“You can if you want to.”

“Let me guess, you’ll bet that you can take it?” Axel asked, with forced calm.

Bayden was silent for several seconds.

Axel held his breath.

“No bet,” Bayden finally whispered. “But, I—”

Axel waited, but that seemed to be all Bayden intended to offer up. “But you what?”

“But nothing,” Bayden said. “You can, if you want to. Either, or both.”

Axel ran his gaze over Bayden’s back. The wounds were clean. None of them were bleeding. Time would be the only thing that helped them further. He moved his chair around so he could see Bayden’s face. “But you what?” he repeated.

Bayden stared at the table for a long time.

“I’m a damn sight more bloody minded than you. You can stall, but you won’t win a standoff with me.”

Bayden ground his teeth together. He closed his eyes. Axel was reasonably sure he’d just been cursed back several generations. “You can if you want to,” Bayden repeated. “But I might be able to make it better for you if you wanted to wait until tomorrow.”

“You really think I’d start a scene now?” Axel asked, far from impressed.

Bayden frowned. “I wasn’t insulting you.”

He seemed to believe that. Axel studied him for a second. It seemed more like it hadn’t occurred to Bayden that a man would have to be a bastard to want him to play in that state.

“You forgot to mention that you’d be more likely to enjoy yourself if you weren’t in agony,” Axel pointed out.

Bayden’s frown deepened. “That’s not why I said it.”

“Whether or not you’d enjoy a scene isn’t important?” Axel asked.

Bayden shook his head, dismissing the whole topic. “It’s not about me.”

“Oh?”

Bayden glanced up. He looked confused, as if he really didn’t understand why Axel wasn’t instantly agreeing with him.

“Have you ever played when it wasn’t for a bet?” Axel asked, suspiciously.

Bayden said nothing, but his silence was quite eloquent enough.

Axel got up. “It’s time you went to bed.”

He showed him to the spare bedroom. Bayden seemed a fraction steadier on his feet as he walked across the flat. He made no comment on anything as he stepped into the room.

“There’s an en suite through there.”

Bayden hesitated. “Can I use the shower?”

Axel shook his head. Maybe Bayden wasn’t thinking so clearly after all. “You don’t want water against your back.”

“Okay.”

Axel found himself lingering in the room, not sure Bayden should be left on his own. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Bayden to sleep in his room with him.

Bayden would go along with it. But, hell, he’d go along with it if Axel wanted to screw him too. What Bayden would go along with wasn’t a reliable indication of acceptable behaviour.

Axel pushed Bayden’s hair back off his face. “My room’s next door. Shout if you need anything.”

Bayden dipped his head once in acknowledgement. All Axel could do then was walk away before he ended up sticking around to tuck the boy in.

On the way to his own room, Axel glanced at the door leading down to the pub, but he didn’t go downstairs. He needed to be there if Bayden needed him. The other Dragons were quite capable of keeping things under control and locking up at the end of the night.

Shutting his bedroom door, Axel closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The image of Richards’ cat landing on Bayden’s back rushed to greet him. He was sure it would be stuck to the inside of his eyelids for months.

Just to prove a wolf could take it…

Axel wasn’t sure if the boy needed a babysitter or a psychiatrist. He busied himself with stripping down and getting into bed, but the little voice in the back of his mind was as persistent as the image of Bayden being whipped by another man.

Forget a babysitter or a psychiatrist, what Bayden really needed was a good dom.

Axel jerked from sound asleep to completely awake. It was impossible to open the roller doors on any of the lock-ups without creating one hell of a racket. They were as good as a burglar alarm. Jeans tugged hurriedly on, he raced down the backstairs, buttoning his fly as he went. His brain had barely managed to catch up with his body by the time he reached the backdoor.