Page 50 of Xerxes Ascendant
Instead, he’d saved Akira’s life.
Just like he had done every day for the past five years, but this time in the more tangible and less poetic way of diverting a bullet that had been meant for Akira’s head.
That was why the echoes of his gunshot had been so strange. The Carrion had fired a second bullet immediately after Akira’s, evidently recognising the threat he now posed with a loaded weapon, and would have surely shot him dead on the ground if Kyle hadn’t interfered.
How could his boyfriend endear and frustrate in such equal and enormous measures? Akira’s heart was already bursting with the fullness of emotion he felt for Kyle, none of it uncomplicated.
The alley fell silent.
“Please let go,” Kyle urged his opponent, glancing around as if looking for moral support with his plea. Oh, the loveable fool, wasting his energy onpleases.
“You fucking moron,” the Carrion with the steel knuckledusters said disgustedly. He strode forward, ripped Kyleaway from his comrade with a single, casual hand on his shoulder – a movement that appeared effortless but had the result of tossing the tall and broad-shouldered blonde into the waiting arms of another two men – and then before Akira could blink, had torn the weapon out of his hands and shot the lead Carrion in the head with his own gun.
Another roar of noise. Another body slumping heavily to the ground, only unlike those Akira had felled, this one didn’t proceed to rise or groan in pain.
“Disobeyed orders,” was all that was offered by way of justification by his murderer.
The gun was promptly turned on Akira, who gave a lazy sneer. He was still lying on the ground where he’d been thrown and stomped on, but was now propped up on one elbow with his other arm steadily training his own weapon on the man in turn. Not the most dignified position he’d been in, but admittedly not the most degrading, either.
“You just showed your hand,” Akira pointed out. He spoke slowly and with simple words, in case this one was as dumb as he looked. “If you’d kill one of your own for risking my head, you sure as starlight aren’t going to shoot me yourself.”
“No,” the man agreed. He took fresh aim at Kyle. “But I could shoothim.”
No.
Kyle was struggling frantically to free himself from his captors, but he was held too tightly. The two Carrions who had hold of him showed no fear at being accidentally injured...and that likely meant the threat to put a bullet in him was a bluff.
But not one Akira was prepared to call. Not when it was something more precious than life itself at stake.
So he put up no resistance as his gun was pried from his hand, or when he was forcibly rolled onto his front so his hands could be cuffed behind him.
He watched helplessly as a sackcloth hood was pulled down over Kyle’s head a moment before Akira was subjected to similar rough treatment. The sack was deftly tied around his neck to prevent him from seeing beneath it or working it off with his shoulders.
It left him in darkness, interspersed by muted patches of weak light, but it was the subsequent constraint around his ankles that irritated Akira the most. He heard the sticky creaking of tape being ripped off its roll, felt the corresponding pressure as his feet were bound tightly together, and seethed against the humiliation of being gracelessly thrown over someone’s shoulder.
Trussed, helpless, and carried away at another’s mercy. Enticingly erotic in different circumstances – namely, ones where it was Kyle taking such delicious liberties with him – but Akira raged with each second the indignity continued. Blood rushed to his unelevated head and induced a dizzy kind of haze, and his neck began to ache from how he had to crane it to stop the sackcloth getting trapped against his nose and mouth.
Carving out air for himself became Akira’s entire focus, the steady rocking gait of the man carrying him and the low voices of the other Carrions fading into background nuisances.
At one point he heard a feminine giggle and the tinkle of crockery as they passed by a café opening for breakfast trade. Akira didn’t bother to call out for help. This was Xerxes, and the optimism of intervention from passers-by was a waste of energy: even if someone took objection to the sight of two more victims being carted off by the gangs, the most they’d offer was a sympathetic shrug.
They were on their own.
Then the world spun once more as Akira was shrugged off the Carrion’s shoulder and tossed down into what felt and smelled like the footwell of a car. A heavy weight landed beside him,bringing with it the clean, inviting scent of Kyle. Akira was secretly pleased when the pair of them were carelessly shoved closer to each other to make room for the Carrions boarding the vehicle, the blonde’s body pressed reassuringly against his.
“Master?” Kyle murmured in soft query.
His voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of the car. They must have been positioned head to foot.
“Quiet,” one of their captors grunted, and Akira felt the echoed impact in his own body as Kyle was kicked or hit. His man let out a small, startled noise of pain.
“Fucking do that again,” Akira growled at them all with sincere promise, “and I’ll tell your boss whatever she needs to hear to take your heads. That you tried to kill us against her orders, that we saw you make a deal with the XGF...I don’t care what bullshit I have to spout if it sees your corpses tossed down to the Earth. Understand me?”
No one responded. He glared at the murky fabric an inch from his eyes, tugging angrily at the handcuffs and itching to be able to protect his man with more than bravado.
He only settled when he felt the rough texture of what must have been Kyle’s own sackcloth hood against Akira’s ankle.
Kyle didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. Akira felt every one of the little scratchy nuzzles on his skin like the peppering of urgent kisses, and the message they conveyed.
