Page 47 of Xerxes Ascendant
“It’s more-”
“And you’restillnot getting me off?”
“Pet,” Kyle said firmly, clamping a hand over his mouth. “Firstly, you can take his wages out of mine so there’s no financial impact on the House. Secondly, we’re reinstating the rule where only I decide when you get to come.”
With a dramatic huff, Akira let his head fall onto Kyle’s shoulder. “It was never un-instated,” he complained into his shirt with an uncharacteristic petulance clearly caused by whatever sexual frustration was plaguing him tonight. “I’m fucking desperate.”
Wait,what?
“Are you...are you saying you haven’t…?”
Akira lifted his head. His brown eyes were soulful and expressive.
“I haven’t come since you last allowed me to. You said I could only do so with your permission.”
Panic engulfed him at the confession. “Akira, that was weeks ago! We weren’t even...our relationship, whatever it was, clearly wasn’t continuing!”
“Sir controls my pleasure,” Akira told him dutifully, cocking his head as if he didn’t understand. But he was the damn Master of a House: he knew perfectly well the significance of a consensual dynamic. He’d chosen to abide by the order, to denyhimself forweeks, for a boyfriend and Dominant who might never have been that again?
“You idiotic, frustrating, stubborn prick of a sub,” Kyle growled, wrapping his arms around Akira and hugging him tightly. He sniffled into the shoulder of his silk waistcoat. “You’re also incredible.”
He sensed Akira perk up in his embrace, but the man was wise enough not to voice the request to come again. If he had, Kyle would have denied him for a month.
He forced himself to finally let go, deliberately keeping his hands from all the places that he knew would make his boyfriend pant and gasp. “The last three of weeks of chastity were your choice,” said Kyle. “Now is mine.”
Akira whined with disappointment.
“Hush. When I do let you come, it will be all the sweeter,” Kyle said, as both a promise and a threat. He straightened out Akira’s shirt collar and then hesitated as he noticed shadows moving behind him.
“I...think there might be someone over there.”
Akira glanced over his shoulder and swore softly. “It’s the same group of Carrions again.”
“What?How?”
“We need to move,” he said, slipping from Kyle’s lap and tugging him urgently to his feet.
It looked like they were going on the run again.
We need to double our efforts on the reunification work. Acknowledge there are other priorities to balance, but progress in bringing the two halves of the city back together is now substantially behind target.
Let’s each take a fresh look at our allocations this week, flag any hurdles, and continue to coordinate closely. The more aligned we are on this, the faster we move.
-Internal Coterie memo
CHAPTER 14
Akira
They’d long since left Level B behind them, seeking refuge on the grimier streets of Xerxes’ Level D. The Carrions had pursued them there too, despite Akira’s confidence that they wouldn’t be able to follow the twisty, unpredictable route he’d led Kyle along to get there – or the nerve-wracking three-storey climb down an out-of-service elevator shaft. When they’d fled to a warehousing district two sectors over and within minutes spotted the same hulking silhouettes of their insistent pursuers despiteknowingthey had shaken them, the suspicion that something was wrong had crystallised into a certainty.
“Keep watch,” Akira ordered Kyle, waving a passcard impatiently over the sensor beside the door. “Let me know when you see our friends.”
He didn’t bother with anif.They both knew it had become awhen, and being relentlessly chased across the city had exhausted Kyle of any remaining will or optimism to argue that fact. When they’d both put their extensive knowledge of the city’s hiding places and shortcuts to use only to be miraculously found again and again, it was difficult to believe the Carrions wouldn’t show up here too.
And Akira didn’t want Kyle venturing inside the building where the Coterie met. It was warded after hours, the same as House Epsilon, and while Akira’s own presence here was allowed – as evidenced by his all-hours access passcard – he didn’t know how the runes would react to a non-Master, even if the door lock had been properly disarmed.
Fishing out the two thin strips of metal that he kept hidden in a seam of his trousers, Akira got to work on the locked cabinet in the foyer.
