Page 76 of Xerxes Ascendant
“I’m not calling the police on you, Miyasaki. If you’re going to end your days being anyone’s bitch, it’smine.”
He paced closer, the knife raised high. Fool. There was nothing he could inflict on Akira’s body that would hurt him more than what he’d been doing to Kyle.
“First, I’m going to take your dumb brute of a boyfriend in front of you,” Mackenroth promised Akira with a soft hiss, jerking his head in Kyle’s direction without looking at him.“Then I’m going to let any of my men who want to get their cock wet have a go with him, and you’re going to watch that too. And if Randall survives the night, then we’ll do it all over again until he doesn’t.”
Akira didn’t look at Kyle. If he did, he’d lose it, he knew. Loseeverything.
“As for you, Master-fucking-Epsilon,” Mackenroth drawled in Akira’s face, satisfaction dripping from his very pores, “you’re going to die in the same way you spent your miserable, pointless life: on your hands and knees with something shoved up your loose and overserviced asshole. We’ll start with things that fit,” he added, admiring the handle of the knife meaningfully before rotating it to jab the ancient blade up against Akira’s throat, “and then move onto things that don’t. That sound good to you?”
Akira didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to, for the way he batted the knife from his neck and grabbed Mackenroth was response enough. He had him bent over his own desk, the man’s arms twisted forcefully behind his back, before the mayor realised what had happened and began to struggle in earnest.
“No! Let go of me! You’ll get your fucking hands off me, you filthy slut!”
Akira merely tightened his hold, causing a flurry of further curses and demands from the man he now held captive. How many times had Mackenroth pinned others down like this, ignoring their screams and pleas as he took from them what he believed he was owed?
“But...but the stasis runes!” the mayor protested indignantly when the threat-laden expletives ceased pouring from his mouth. “You shouldn’t have been able to escape them!”
“We disabled the runes before we even entered the room,” Kyle remarked, getting to his feet and brushing glass from his clothes. Akira would not have bothered with indulging the snake so, yet when he saw the irritation flash across Mackenroth’sface where it was being crushed against the desk, he realised his boyfriend was not offering the explanation as a kindness. A man like Benedict Mackenroth – and Akira himself – got off on controlling each situation he stepped into, but Kyle was deliberately stripping that away from him. “We were never trapped.”
It had taken immense effort to hold on until the guards had been dismissed; when Akira and Kyle had first devised their plan to get the mayor alone and close enough to subdue, they’d believed its limitation would be in the energy required to maintain the pretence of physical stillness. Muscles tired and nerves reacted, Akira had reminded them both, which meant they didn’t have long before a limb inevitably weakened or visibly moved. And it was why Kyle had apparently decided to lie down for his little piece of theatre, staging a fall into the glass cabinet.
What Akira hadn’t realised was how much the deceit would test him mentally. Forced to remain motionless while Mackenroth toyed with andhurt Kyle...still bearing the memory and the fury of it, Akira grabbed the knife that had clattered to the surface of the desk and delivered two swift cuts to Benedict’s arm.
Blood bloomed from the pair of slashes in the mayor’s shirt in mimicry of the marks he’d dared to leave on Kyle. Mackenroth thrashed against him and opened his mouth to howl.
“Uh-huh,” said Kyle, appearing at Akira’s side and wrapping his hand firmly over that vindictive mouth to stifle the scream. Akira felt a twinge of what could have been envy, but Kyle’s solid, warm presence at his back eased him back to rationality. And even the joy of being manhandled and silenced by Sir would not have been worth being looked at with such disgust, for Kyle was displaying none of his usual easy-going temperament as he jerked the mayor’s tie free from his neck and gagged him with it.
Akira watched the swift exchange with growing arousal. He had a...call it aprofessional appreciationfor such displays, and seeing Kyle effortlessly silence the most powerful man alive was a definite turn on.
Kyle’s own mouth quirked and he pressed a chaste kiss to Akira’s forehead. “You’re drooling, sweetheart.”
“Mmm,” Akira eloquently agreed.
Kyle chuckled and then undid Akira’s tie too, letting his fingers linger indulgently for a moment on the skin of his throat before he slid it free. And then he wrapped the length of black fabric around Mackenroth’s straining hands to bind them tightly behind his back. “You happy with that?”
“Not really,” Akira said. Benedict Mackenroth was too slippery for him to be satisfied with anything less than stuffing the man into an iron box to be dropped off Xerxes into the deepest of Earth’s oceans, but the austere office wasn’t exactly flush with things they could use to keep him restrained. Two repurposed ties would have to do.
And Kyle was very good at tying knots.
“Now you’re going to get us out of here,” Kyle told Mackenroth as Akira hauled the mayor upright by his collar. Pale eyes flashed with hatred and humiliation above the gag.
Kyle leaned over the desk, wincing from the dual shallow cuts on his arm, and reached for the runepad that had been set in the wooden surface. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Akira, his gaze twinkling in mischief. “Would you like to do the honours?”
“No. Proceed,” Akira said graciously, although grace had less to do with it than the splendid view he was being given of his boyfriend stretched out over the expensive furniture. Tight leather perfectly framed his ass, leaving nothing to the imagination, and the way Kyle’s t-shirt rose above his hips showed off a delectable line of taut skin that he wanted to spend hours exploring with his mouth.
Kyle’s index finger circled dramatically through the air before coming down on the runepad’s screen.
“Yes, sir?” A woman’s voice filled the office, her tone that careful balance of professional and sultry that Akira knew she’d spent hours practising. He’d had his own staff do the same.
There was a polite pause, and then she spoke again. “What can I help with, Mr. Mackenroth?”
“Oh, there are just too many things!” Kyle responded excitedly. He slid further onto the desk so he was sprawled on his stomach, his feet kicking back and forth through the air and his attention fixed intently on the runepad. “As your mayor, I would like to make a few decrees that must be implementedimmediately. First, everyone who has more food than they need must share it with those who don’t. Secondly, cats must be protected and snuggled at all costs. Medical care will be freely available, and...” Kyle paused, cocking his head as if in deep thought. “I’m to be formally referred to as The Big Dickhead from now on. Did you get all that?”
To give the secretary credit, she only took a few seconds to recover. “I’m going to have to ask you to depart the mayoral office now, sir,” she told him coolly. “The police are on their way.”
“You know,departing the mayoral officeis exactly what I feel like doing,” Kyle drawled at the runepad. He rolled over onto his back and tucked his hands behind his head in an exquisite image of insolent indulgence. “So if you really want to help, you can deactivate all that wasteful magic and return the building to the ground where it is supposed to be, so that me, my sexy Master, and The Big Dickhead can all stroll on out.”
“I’m not-”
