“Make me understand,” he whispered.
It was as much a plea as it was a command, yet Akira would obey him in either form.
Anything Kyle wanted, he’d get. Including Akira’s soul laid bare for him to lacerate and judge.
“Where do I start?” he asked, and while he hadn’t meant to voice the thought out loud, Kyle barely paused before offering more of that steady guidance which was keeping him from spiralling.
“At the beginning.”
Akira exhaled.The beginning.
“I was twelve years old when I first started working the streets,” he began. Kyle shifted uncomfortably against him, but Akira shook his head before the blonde could speak. He wasn’t looking for pity. “My first time was down on Level F, when I agreed to bend over in some filthy alley in exchange for a hot meal. My aching stomach paled in comparison to the subsequent ache in my ass, but I reasoned at least the latter wouldn’t kill me.”
Akira tasted hot bile, as he always did when he dredged up memories of that time. A dead mother, a heartless city, and a boy willing to do whatever it took to survive.
“So, I returned to him the next night, and the next. The fourth time, I dared to ask for credits and the sick fuck handed them straight over, too intent on sinking himself into the child who had quickly learned to make all the right noises and move in all the right ways.”
“By thestars,Akira!”
Kyle’s hand tightened angrily on his shoulder and Akira pulled the strength from it to continue.
“I turned my body into a business. I didn’t just sell myself; Isoldmyself. While the others hung out on street corners, I was talking my way into clubs like this one.” He jerked his head around at the building behind him without looking at it. “Built myself a client base. Offered optional extras. Even had a waitlist, or at least that’s what I told clients to make them want me more. Pay more.”
Get on with it, Akira,he chided himself.
But this wasn’t just a story about Sarah and Robby. It was about him, and everything that Kyle had asked him over the years and Akira had unfalteringly deflected. Now he was offering it all to him.
“There was this particular man,” Akira said quietly. “He always asked me to go back to his apartment with him when we were done. Offered more credits, pleaded with me, threatened a hundred terrible things would happen to me if I didn’t…but even at that age, I knew that was a surefire way to end up dead or someone’s sex slave. And I may have been giving it up, but I wasn’t giving it up forfree.”
He heard the indignation in his voice, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
“One night, he decided to stop asking.”
“That’s good,” declared Kyle. He had visibly perked up at what he apparently believed was a positive turn to the story, onlydeflating when Akira raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. “Oh. You mean he…oh.Notgood.”
How this gorgeous man had survived twenty-three years living in such naïve optimism would always be a mystery to Akira. And another reason why he was determined to keep Kyle in his life, for the stars only knew what would happen to him without Akira’s protection.
An emotionally-distant whore might not be the stereotypical guardian angel, but Akira was sure as hell going to do the job better than anyone else. Forget golden harps and angelic innocence: he had a killer’s instinct, over a decade’s training in wado-ryu karate, and a sheer bloody-mindedness when it came to Kyle Jacob Randall.
“I was being dragged up a flight of stairs into a building I knew I’d never be leaving again, my mouth gagged and my wrists tied,” Akira recalled, “when this tiny slip of a girl appears above him and smacks my client unconscious with a wrench. She saved my life.”
He allowed himself a small smile. The memory was a fond one: of seeing Sarah standing at the top of those steps, hands planted on her hips and looking impossibly fierce. Her hair was a mess – something she had in common with Kyle, although at least she had the excuse of being homeless at the time – and her clothes unwashed and torn, but he’d thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life. Akira had followed her around like a doting puppy for months afterwards, immeasurably grateful…and more so that Sarah had never grown tired of him and his sharp-tongued defensiveness, like his mother clearly had.
“We shared everything with each other from that point forward,” Akira continued. “Food, shelter, credits for medicine when one of us got sick. Sarah gave me something to livefor beyond survival. And one cold night, we shared something more.”
He let out a long breath. It felt strange to be talking about this with Kyle, but it was also long overdue.
“By then, I’d been in the skin trade for years, but that was the first time sex felt…fun for me. Enjoyable. Wanted.” He gave a hollow laugh. “But we were both young and stupid and couldn’t afford runed dog tags. Some of my clients had insisted on using condoms, although no one had ever bothered to explain to me what they were for.”
Kyle stared at him. His mouth had dropped open in horror but in what was surely a first, he seemed unable to speak.
“When Roberta was born, it was simultaneously the most wonderful and terrifying thing that had ever happened to me,” Akira breathed with reverence, almost shaking from the sheer emotion of it. “This…precious little life in my arms, and we were her entireworld. Sarah and I, we owed Robby everything. And we swore she would have it, no matter what it took.
“Of course, that’s when things went to shit,” Akira said roughly. “The XGF wanted me to run favours for them. I refused. So they held me down and made me watch while they shattered both of Sarah’s legs.”
Kyle’s breath hitched into a sharp, sympathetic whine.
“One of the gang members was holding Robby. She still has a...”
