Axel's Pup (43 page)

Bayden stepped toward the bar, only to pause as if unsure of his welcome.

“Okay, pup?”

Bayden came closer. When he was near enough, Axel reached out and pulled him into his space by his belt loops. The kiss was a statement of pure possession—Axel didn’t try to pretend otherwise. Bayden was his, and neither Granger nor anyone else was going to lay a hand on him.

Murmuring his approval, Bayden leaned into Axel’s body. It almost felt like he was trusting Axel to support him. Axel had never wanted to tug another man down onto the floor behind the bar so badly, but he forced himself to pull back. Bayden ran his tongue over his bottom lip as if trying to catch the tail end of a kiss that had already ended.

He glanced up at Axel, wary and hopeful in equal measure. It would be so easy to order him onto his knees.

Axel ran his finger down Bayden’s throat, trying to remind himself why neither of them was going to get laid until after the penance was finished, and failing.

Without any warning, Bayden tensed.

“Pup?”

Bayden said nothing, he just stared at the books on the bar.

“Hale gave them to me.”

Bayden swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed against Axel’s touch, but he obviously wasn’t thinking about deep throating.

“Anything you want to say?”

“Nothing, sir.” All hint of the wolf who’d leaned into Axel’s touch was gone. “Is there anything you want me to do?” It was the closest to passive aggressive as Axel had ever heard him sound.

If Axel had known what prompted it, it would have been fascinating. With no idea what was wrong, it was just annoying. “Nothing for now.”

Bayden didn’t seem to know how to get out of Axel’s space without an order.

“I’m going to go up to the flat and read. You can do whatever you want for an hour or two,” Axel offered.

Bayden quickly retreated.

“If I want to find you, you’ll be…” Axel prompted, when Bayden was halfway out of the room.

“With my bike in the lock-up, sir.”

Axel nodded his dismissal. Once he was settled comfortably in his flat, it didn’t take Axel long to get a basic idea of the first book’s contents.

The anti-pack laws were actually quite simple. Anything that would allow wolves to live in any sort of community, or even maintain any real contact with an extended family was systematically outlawed. A lone wolf was tolerable, but a pack was a threat that humans couldn’t allow. Wolves had to be kept weak, they had to be kept isolated. Humanity had to keep them down. Even the pack names had been banned.

Axel frowned. He’d always had the vague idea that wolves all kept the surname Wolf as some sort of statement of species pride. It had never occurred to him that it was illegal for them to use any other surname. The old pack names had died because humans had hunted each one down and slaughtered it.

Axel shook his head. Bayden Wolf. Kincade Wolf. They could be father and son, part of the same pack line, or no relation at all. No one would be able to tell from their names.

He moved onto another section of the book. It was soon obvious that while werewolves had to obey every human law, and dozens of extra ones, they had no redress under the law. It was ridiculously easy for a wolf to be a criminal, but the possibility of one being a victim hadn’t even been considered.

Hale was right. Nothing Granger had done to Bayden had been illegal. Nothing the guy who’d choked him halfway to death had been against the law either. The man with a knife could have stabbed him without worrying the cops would be on his tail. Axel could put a gun to Bayden’s head and pull the trigger, and he wouldn’t have broken a single law.

Axel ran a hand down his face as he tried to re-imagine his life if he’d been born a wolf. Memories of family gatherings flittered through his mind. They wouldn’t have happened.

His stomach turned over at the idea of losing all those people who’d once been such a huge part of his life, not because he was gay, not because they didn’t want to know him anymore, but because humans said so—because having more than two adults under the same roof, even for a few seconds, invited a man like Granger to swoop in and make his life a living hell.

How many times would he have been pulled over? How many fights would he have had to take? How many ‘fines’ would he have paid to guys like Granger? What would he have done to pay the rent?

Axel rubbed at the back of his neck as he instinctively headed for the lock-ups to check on Bayden.

Bayden was crouched down alongside his bike. He got up when he sensed Axel’s approached.

“You don’t have to stop on my account,” Axel said.

Bayden turned his back on him, but he didn’t resume his work.

It took every scrap of his patience, but Axel waited him out.

“You won’t find any I’ve broken,” Bayden said.

“What?”

“You can go cover to cover—you won’t find an anti-pack law I don’t obey to the letter.”

Axel caught hold of Bayden’s arm and spun him around. Anger shone bright in Bayden’s gaze, but there was pain there too—so much pain. “What if I ordered you to break one?” Axel demanded.

Bayden’s eyes opened very wide. “You wouldn’t!”

“If I don’t know what they are, I can’t avoid it, can I?”

Bayden held his gaze, studying him very carefully. “That’s why you wanted to know?”

“Yes, and you have a new order to follow. If I give you a command which involves you breaking any of those laws, I want you to tell me, straight away.”

Bayden hesitated.

“Can you do that?” Axel pushed.

“Yes, sir.”

Axel let go of his arm. Bayden didn’t retreat, but he looked down. “I should have spoken more respectfully, sir.”

“I’ll take the truth in a stroppy tone over a lie any day.” Axel ran his gaze over Bayden’s bike. It was perfect. Bayden had it damn near sparkling.
Filthy creatures.
Axel took a deep breath and leaned against the lock-up’s wall.

Axel thought back to Bayden’s bedsit. Cheap clothes. Barely enough food to survive. Bike worth a fortune.

“You said your father used to ride that bike?”

“Yes, sir.” Bayden moved back to kneel on the other side of it.

“You also said it was a gift from your grandfather,” Axel pointed out. “Is either story true?”

Bayden jerked his head up. “I didn’t steal it.”

“It never occurred to me that you had.”

Bayden looked down. It was obviously something that had occurred to a lot of other people.

Axel moved around the bike to stand at Bayden’s side. He ran his fingers through Bayden’s hair, encouraging him to look up. The confusion in his eyes tore at Axel.

He crouched down. “You’re not in trouble. Forget about what other people have thought, forget about what you might have said in the past. None of that matters. Just tell me about the bike—the truth. You can do that.”

* * * * *

You can do that.
Axel sounded so confident. Bayden wished he felt the same way.

Axel slid his hand down to rest on the back of Bayden’s neck. His hand was warm against his skin. It felt good there. Axel’s touch always felt good.

He wasn’t like other humans.

“Years ago, before my father was born, my grandfather had a bike just like this,” Bayden whispered.

Axel sat on the floor next to him and nodded encouragingly.

“They trashed it,” Bayden whispered.

“They?”

“Humans.”

Axel didn’t pull away, he didn’t stand up for humans. He slid his hand up and down Bayden’s back, caressing him thought his vest.

“Humans don’t like seeing a wolf riding this kind of bike now. Fifty years ago, things were so much worse,” Bayden kept his tone hushed, as if that somehow made it okay to say it all in front of a human. “They made him watch them while they trashed it. That bike was everything to him. Seeing what they did to it, it broke something in him.” Bayden took a deep breath. “When my father was old enough to earn real money in fights, he started looking for a bike that was the same make and model. He finally found this one. But…” Bayden swallowed down a rush of emotion. “My dad thought having the replacement would heal something in my grandfather.”

“It didn’t work?” Axel asked.

Bayden shook his head. “Some things don’t heal. My granddad couldn’t bring himself to ride this one. Even now, he can barely look at it.”

Axel stroked his fingers through Bayden’s hair, very gently.

“My dad thought that letting humans put him off riding a bike like this was letting humans win, so he kept it and rode it himself.” Bayden could damn near see him sitting astride it as he spoke, but the image of his father straddling it, so proud, so confident, didn’t last. The picture faded away leaving a huge empty space in its wake. “He made my mother and my grandfather promise that if anything happened to him, they’d keep the bike for me until I was old enough to ride it. My grandfather put it out of sight, but when I turned twenty-one, he gave it to me.”

“It must have been tempting to sell it when times were tough,” Axel said.

 “I’d rather die.” It was stupid to tell a human that, to tell Axel the easiest way to hurt him, but his desire for Axel to understand how important it was overrode everything else. “My dad wanted me to ride it. He said it was a mark of progress. His father couldn’t ride it, but his son would. It was important to him.”

Axel stroked his hair back from his face.

Bayden studied the bike through narrowed eyes. “My father died young, but sometimes I think he packed more life into his existence than most wolves who’ve lived four times as long. That’s what I remember most about him—how alive he was. He was so alive, especially when he was riding his bike…” Bayden cleared his throat. “And he wasn’t afraid of anyone. A lot of wolves are.”

“Afraid of humans?” Axel suggested.

Bayden nodded. “My grandfather’s afraid of them. My dad hated them. My mother just wants nothing to do with them—she’s even talking about taking a residential place at the Denville project so she’ll have as little to do with humans as possible.”

“What about you?”

“Depends on the human. You’re not all the same.” Bayden stared at the ground between his knees and the bike. “There are ones like Granger who I hate. And there are ones like Richards that I don’t want anything to do with,” Bayden said, weighing each word very carefully.

“And ones you’re afraid of?” Axel prompted.

Bayden closed his eyes. Never admit fear. Never let the humans know they’ve got to you. The truth. “You.”

“Me?” Axel repeated, blankly. “You’re afraid of me?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t hurt you, pup.”

Bayden looked down. “I’m not afraid you’ll whip me, or any of that. That’s never bothered me.” He let out a short laugh that had no humour in it. God, if that was all it was. He closed his eyes. “My mother was right—it’s the humans who seem different that are the most dangerous of all.”

Axel touched his cheek and made him turn to face him. “Pup?”

“I’ll do anything for you, sir,” Bayden whispered. “That’s what makes you dangerous. Other humans can’t hurt me. I’d never give them the chance. But you… I’d be a fool not to be afraid of you.”

Axel pressed a kiss against his temple. Sliding his arm properly around Bayden’s shoulders, he tugged him into his arms. He pressed another kiss to the top of Bayden’s head and rested his face against his hair.

Bayden leaned into him, unable to even pretend he didn’t need Axel’s arms around him.

“Good boy,” Axel whispered to him. “Good pup.”

Any second, Bayden knew that Axel would pull away. He tried to be ready for it, but minutes passed and it didn’t happen. Axel stayed right there, just holding on to him.

Gradually, Bayden relaxed against him.

“That’s right, pup. I’ve got you.”

Turning his head, Bayden buried his face in Axel’s neck.

For a long time, they sat in silence but, no matter how wonderful that was, it couldn’t last forever.

“Before, when you were hooking up with wolves, was it always a onetime thing, or was there someone in particular?” Axel asked.

Bayden shook his head, too relieved that the conversation had moved away from his family to worry about where it might be heading instead.

“When was the last time you hooked up with a wolf?”

“Last summer, sir.”

“The one when we met?”

Bayden shook his head. “Summer last year. Since then, I haven’t really had time. I mean, I didn’t want…”

“That was around the time you started taking bets on things that weren’t fights?” Axel guessed.

Bayden nodded.

Axel leaned back so they could look each other in the eye, but Bayden wasn’t inclined to hold his gaze. He stared down at the cloth in his hand instead. “Most of the time, I didn’t have any trouble picking up enough fights to cover everything. But…”

Axel didn’t say a word. The minutes ticked past. Bayden reached out and wiped the cloth over the already pristine black paintwork, but it was one of those times when Axel had decided that Bayden was the one who had to speak next.

He had to say something. It had to be the truth. He frowned as he tried to find a version of the truth that didn’t give away too much, which didn’t leave him too vulnerable in front of a man who already had more power to hurt him than any human should be allowed to have.

Axel settled his hand on Bayden’s abs, just above the top button of his jeans. That was it. He just left his hand there. If he’d grabbed his arse or his cock, it would have made sense. If Axel’s hand had been shaped into a fist ready to deliver a sucker punch, it would have been easier.

Bayden glanced up at him.

It had to be the truth and, for the man who’d watched him take bets on sex while he hated every second of it, it had to be the complete truth.

“It had been raining forever,” Bayden whispered. “Humans don’t like fighting in the rain.”

Axel still didn’t say anything.

“It finally stopped raining the day before the rent was due. There was a pub in the city—I’d picked up lots of fights in the alley behind it in the past. Some of the guys there made huge bets. I thought there was a chance.”

Bayden swallowed.