Page 33 of Xerxes Ascendant
“Watch your mouth, pet,” Kyle warned in a low purr, enjoying the way it made Akira’s pupils dilate. His long, low note of half-hearted protest was almost a whine. “Or I’ll do it for you.”
He let the threat stand, abruptly letting go and watching Akira struggle to loosen the tie from his throat. He looked disgruntled but also aroused, and that deliciously hot combination made Kyle want to forget about their responsibilities and spend the night thoroughly exploring Akira’s pain threshold.
By the stars, it was almost too easy to fall back into what they’d had. What was stopping them, anyway?
...just Kyle’s damaged heart and the fractures left in it by this captivating liar of a man. The memory of that hurt was enough to have him turning away.
“Have a good night, Master. Thank you for your help with Tyler.”
And then they parted, and Akira was gone, and Kyle was thrust into his many duties as manager. It meant fixing the various problems and disputes that arose during the night – and over the past two weeks, because whatever Epsilon had been doing, it certainly hadn’t beenmanagingthings – with a combination of charm, luck, and duct tape, greeting and sending off each satisfied client, and taking the time to check in with all of the staff. The men had retired to their rooms with their post-lunch appointments when Tyler called Kyle down to the House’s foyer.
“There’s someone asking to see you and only you,” he’d said. Expecting one of his drop-in clients, Kyle injected a flirty, almost filthy twist to his hips as he descended the stairs, but stopped dead at the sight of Miles Mackenroth slouching against the front desk, looking surly and dirty.
Kyle straightened. He’d made the offer of a job with sincerity but hadn’t expected it to be accepted so soon, especially knowing how prideful the man could be.
“Sir?” Tyler asked hesitantly, glancing back and forth between the two of them. Their new receptionist’s expression was too mild for him to have recognised their guest, but the smell and state of Miles was clearly making Tyler uncomfortable about having him inside the House.
Miles Mackenroth had done horrible things. But he was also a person, and he needed help. Who would Kyle be if he turned him away?
“Shower first, I think,” Kyle said firmly before Miles could speak, latching onto the man’s wrist and dragging him towards the stairs. The Upper spat various curses at him under his breath but made no effort to pull free, begrudgingly letting Kyle escorthim to the first-floor staff showers and shove him under a warm spray.
“My clothes!” Miles hissed at him, finally shaking off Kyle’s hold as the shower drenched him from head to foot. Dirt blackened the water as it sluiced out from beneath his shoes and meandered towards the drain.
“Are unsalvageable,” Kyle declared, trying not to breathe in the stench. “Get yourself cleaned up and I’ll find you something to wear.”
He kept his eyes averted when he returned, holding out his own used but clean clothes and letting them be snatched thanklessly from his arms. Then he moved a few paces away, keeping the partition wall between them as he waited for Miles to dress.
When the Upper emerged a few minutes later with wet hair and freshly scrubbed skin – wearing a Mötley Crüe t-shirt and a wholly undeserved scowl aimed down at it – Kyle winced. Without the layer of grime obscuring his features, it was clear Miles had been in a fight. Bruises formed an ugly cluster on the left side of his face and neck, his bottom lip was split and starting to scab, and one eye was noticeably more swollen than the other.
But his knuckles...Kyle cast an assessing glance downwards. His knuckles were undamaged.
Not a fight, then. Abeating.
Miles wrapped his arms around himself, which made him look even more vulnerable.
“I don’t wanna...” he croaked, and then scowled and started again. “I don’t want to have to do really rough stuff. I know I don’t have any right to ask when I tried to do that shit to you, Randall, but...please. Please don’t make me.”
Kyle peered back up at the other man’s fearful face, frowning. “What do you consider to be ‘really rough stuff’? Like...toilets?”
Miles visibly paled. “Oh,fuck. I can’t do this.”
He lunged for the door but his bare feet slipped on the wet tiles and he went flying. Kyle caught him by the upper arm, one-handed, before he could land on his face and mess it up even more.
“Do you want a job, or do you want to leave?”
Kyle wasn’t going to force anyone into employment. Slavery – what Miles had attempted to do to him, come to think of it – was utterly deplorable, and there were tens of thousands of Xerxians who would readily take any work they could get.
There was a short, sharp sob. “I...want it. I really need the credits.”
Kyle softened his voice. “You got mugged, didn’t you?” His guess was confirmed when the Upper slumped against Kyle as if even bearing his own weight had become too much, his head bowed in shame. “They took everything I gave you?”
“Fuckers.”
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed, setting him back on his feet. “There’s some good people in this city, but also some shitty ones. I’m sorry.”
He should have expected that Miles would have made an easy target: drunk, easily identifiable from his clothes as an Upper out of his depth on Lower Xerxes, and waving around a runepad full of credits. But muggings weren’t always accompanied by violence, at least no more than the threat of it. He wondered if Miles had bravely resisted their demands to unlock the device and give them access to the credits, or if the blows to his face had been merely the result of boredom or Lower Xerxian resentment.
“Follow me,” said Kyle, and then, “leave them,” when Miles glanced at the pile of his filthy, wet clothes on the floor. He led the subdued man to the supply room on the third floor and shoved a mop into his hands. “Thirteen credits an hour, 9pm to6am each night. An hour for lunch, and up to two smoke breaks to be taken out of sight of the clients. What do you say?”
