Page 30 of Xerxes Ascendant
“There. You took that well.”
Hissing out his distress through clenched teeth, Akira wearily raised his head to find Kyle watching him with a pleased, predatory smile.
“Well,” Akira grunted, letting it fall again so he could glower at the carpet without being caught, eyes half-lidded from pain and wariness. Fucking Dominants.
Kyle hummed. He reached out to trail a finger under his chin and force it up. “You hurt so prettily, Epsilon. Are you sure you don’t want more of it?”
“Want. Please no, Sir. I don’t like this kind of pain.”
“I know you don’t,” agreed Kyle easily.
Akira didn’t understand the point that was being made. He may not have been fond of it, atall,but electricity wasn’t one of his limits...unless Kyle was hoping to make it into one, to remind him of how he’d fucked up with Tyler?
Or did Kyle just want to make him suffer in a way he knew wouldn’t be enjoyed?
Akira heaved out a long breath, knowing it would be easy to twist this scene to his own advantage in turn. Kyle wouldn’t walk away while he held the responsibilities of a Dominant: Akira could unload onto his captive audience everything that he needed to say to him. Plead for forgiveness while Kyle had no choice but to listen…or abandon a submissive he owed a duty of care to.
But that would be dishonest. Manipulative. And Akira had vowed to put that part of him aside, at least when it came to Kyle Randall. The rest of Xerxes could go fuck itself, but he would not let any more walls form between the two of them.
So he stayed silent.
“We’re going to work through the House’s outstanding client requests together,” Kyle declared as he pulled his runepad from his pocket. He angled it so both of them could see the screen at once, reminding Akira of the night they’d spent watching vids in Kyle’s old apartment. Despite having lost his fortune and almost being killed more than once, that had been undoubtedly one of the best nights of his life.
A soft tsk was all the warning Akira received before the prod found his ribs. It dragged an agonised, surprised shout from his lips.
Another painful shock, the forceful jolt extending for longer this time as Kyle brutally held the electrodes continuously against his skin for an additional agonising second. The intensity of it felt like he was being burned from the inside out.
“No, please...”
“Hush,” Kyle soothed.
Akira gave himself over to it: to the pain, to Sir’s complete dominion over his body, to the sensation that overwhelmed him.
Groaning and shuddering, he yanked helplessly at the restraints binding his arms behind his back. Kyle just lounged on the sofa and looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Something you’d like to say?”
“We’re. Work,” Akira panted out. “Sorry, Sir. I was...”
“Distracted again,” Kyle finished for him. He leaned forward and gave his cheek a gentle tap while Akira was still busy checking his words. “Focus, pet. Use that clever mind of yours.”
He must have noticed Akira’s wild panic, for he chuckled.
“The Akira Miyasaki I know is capable of doing a dozen things at once. This shouldn’t pose any problem at all for you.”
Akira latched onto those words and fiercely clung to them, using both the compliment and the challenge to fuel his determination to please his Sir.
Kyle believed he could do it, so hecould.
And with that resolve came realisation. His Dom wasn’t being cruel: he had chosen a type of punishment Akira didn’t revel in, so that it would be anactualpunishment. Something for Akira to work to avoid rather than deliberately invoke by being a horny bastard who hadn’t allowed himself to come in weeks. Sir wanted his submissive to succeed.
Akira bit down on the affection that bubbled up unbidden inside him. The fact that Kyle knew him so well to have catalogued all his likes and dislikes, to have understood amongst Akira’s vast array of kinks what he genuinely enjoyed and didn’t, and tousethat so perfectly to help ground him…
“Thank you, Sir.”
Kyle’s lips twisted into a knowing smile and he ruffled a hand lightly through his sub’s hair. Akira leaned into the touch gratefully, closing his eyes. “Shall we start?”
“Was, whether,” Akira offered a few minutes later after their brief discussion about the first of the client bookings, and was rewarded with generous praise and another caress from Sir that had him grinning like a fool. He kept his face turned to the floor to keep it hidden.
The second matter was an offer to hire Sanjay to conduct a rigging session at the client’s own residence. An easy declination.
