8. Kyle

CHAPTER 8

Kyle

A fter sorting out an argument between two of the employees and tending to a sore wrist caused by some rough play earlier in the night, their lunch break was over and Kyle's next appointment had arrived. He stretched, cracking his neck to release the stress of the last hour, and pushed open the door to his usual room.

A man he didn't recognise was sitting on the edge of the freshly made bed with a leather submissive harness hanging loosely between his fingers.

So this was his other new client of the night. He had curly dark hair whose natural bounce was stifled by copious amounts of gel slicking it back, a suit of similar quality tailoring as Epsilon's, and shoes that looked too clean for him to have arrived here on foot. An Upper, then, rich and bored, or else looking for the satisfaction of desires he couldn't quench on the shiny, clean streets of Xerxes' surface level.

But the man sat confidently and at ease, not bothering to stand when Kyle entered and showing none of the nerves that first-timers to the brothels – like Danny – usually wore: that jittery, wide-eyed anticipation that so easily devolved into terror if not handled correctly. Instead, the client watched Kyle saunter closer with undisguised arousal, his gaze searing and intent.

Kyle nodded in greeting and scanned the room, noticing a few things out of place. The client must have spent the time before his arrival going through the drawers of equipment and pulling out what interested him – a permitted act, but unusual for someone so new to the House – for there were enough instruments and toys audaciously laid out on top of the low cupboard at the back of the room to make it clear that this was one kinky submissive.

Kyle's pulse raced with excitement.

"John?" he asked.

The man didn't react to the name, but that wasn't surprising. He'd written the unimaginative moniker ‘John Smith' on his form, something commonly done by clients to shield their real identity from the debauchery of what they wished to indulge in down here on Level E.

Kyle seated himself on the bed beside him and lay a hand on his knee. Sensing the client's displeasure at that from the way he stiffened, Kyle pulled back and nodded at the harness in the man's hands. "Do you want to put that on now, or would you prefer we talk first?"

"No," the client said shortly. Pale eyes flashed with excitement and he thrust it towards Kyle. "It's for you to wear."

Eyeing the web of leather straps and buckles more closely, Kyle wondered if he'd been mistaken. But no, it had the fastenings at the back – requiring the Dom to put it on and take it off the sub – rather than the front. And none of the Dominant harnesses they had in the House had a collar strap with D-rings embedded into it to allow the wearer to be chained up.

John gestured at the array of other implements behind them with a sneer. "It's all for you, you disgusting little whore."

Kyle gave the client a polite smile. "My apologies, there must have been a mistake. The House's front desk recorded your request for a Dominant." He stood. "I'll have a submissive sent up to you immediately, and we'll arrange for a credit discount on your next visit."

But the client latched sharp fingers around his wrist and joined him on his feet. "No mistake. I want a Dominant." There was a wildness to his expression, the same manic excitement that infected some people who walked through the front door at the thought of finally getting what they craved. "Someone I can break. Someone I can make into my cum-hungry slut."

He slapped Kyle hard across the face, who staggered backwards at the unexpected impact.

Kyle was not a small man and might have been able to pull away from the second blow – a sharp punch to his gut – had John not still been holding onto his arm. Instead, he doubled up with the strike and the client took advantage of his breathless state to knock him the rest of the way down to the floor.

"Stop-"

Kyle gasped in surprise, winded when the client then dropped his full weight onto him. He ground Kyle's face into the floor and pinned his hands.

"Lick it," he ordered, fingers twisted painfully in Kyle's hair to keep him in place. "Show me how you will service me once I decide you deserve the honour, bitch."

Kyle was not licking the fucking floor. It was mopped each night, but this was still Level E. Cleanliness was not exactly high on the list of priorities, not this deep into the depravity of the city.

"Stop this," he said again, making sure to clearly enunciate the words. "Red. Stop."

"I don't give a fuck," his client retorted dismissively. He shifted his position on his back, the hardness digging into Kyle's spine making it very clear how much this was turning the other man on, and shoved two fingers into his mouth. Kyle choked on the taste of piss and cigarettes.

Cleanliness was clearly not a priority to him either. Was it so hard to wash your hands before stuffing them inside someone? The House's staff ensured they showered between each client, and Kyle sometimes wished that it was a condition of entry for those entering by way of the front door as well.

"Gag on it, cocksucker," the client hissed in his ear, his weight quelling Kyle's attempts to buck him off. "You'll get those nice and wet if you don't want me fucking you raw."

Kyle looked up into the corner of the room where one of the cameras patiently watched, and gave an exaggerated wink in its direction.

"How does it feel?" snarled his client, shoving his fingers deeper until they nudged insistently at the back of his throat. Kyle had eliminated his gag reflex a long time ago, but it was still extremely unpleasant. "Someone like you, brought low. A power-hungry whore who likes to give it," – he pressed closer and whispered in Kyle's ear – "unable to stop me from making him take it , over and over-"

And then Kyle heard the door fly open with enough force that it smashed into the wall, accompanied by the cold and authoritative tone of Master Epsilon.

"Release him this instant."

The client's weight was abruptly lifted from his back and the fingers were wrenched from his mouth. Kyle swallowed to rid himself of the man's lingering taste.

"How dare you! I was assured that I would not be disturbed!"

"That is correct," Epsilon affirmed. "If things were progressing as they should. However, my employee called an end to your session."

Kyle rolled over onto his back and found pale, hateful eyes glaring down at him.

"The whore didn't do anything," the client snapped. "We'd barely begun."

"It was evidently not a comfortable situation for Kyle," Epsilon said, patient in a way Kyle could never be, not with pricks like this one. "As someone who is an exclusive Dominant, he perhaps did not appreciate what you were-"

"Then he's perfect," said the other man snidely, "and exactly what I want. May I continue or should I expect more of these interruptions?"

Pushing himself to his feet, Kyle rotated his jaw, still feeling the heat of the slap and the roughness of the man's fingers invading his mouth. "Exactly what you want?"

"Silence," John snapped without bothering to look at him. "You will not speak unless you're spoken to."

Apparently he believed they were still in a scene. Kyle just shrugged and folded his arms.

"A Dominant that you can force submission from," the Master murmured, catching on and nodding. "If you'd like to return tomorrow night, we have a switch on staff that I believe you'd find more appropriate than Kyle."

The client spoke before Kyle could. "I don't want a switch. I want a Dom."

"Ah. Then perhaps I can make a referral to-"

"He breached a red," Kyle said.

Epsilon's face flashed with fury.

Despite the acting range that would have been required of him as a whore, outside of scenes his boss generally alternated between only two settings. There was the serious professional: cool and collected, occasionally amused, but with not a strand of hair out of place. And then there was the ‘fuck around and find out' expression, which meant you better be running or on your knees before him in the next five seconds or your life wouldn't be worth living.

Yet Kyle's favourite times were when Epsilon lost all of that careful composure: with his mouth slack, his eyes glazed, blissed out in post-orgasm ecstasy. But that was private.

Kyle wasn't stupid enough to think he was the only person to have brought Master Epsilon to climax – he handled each staff member's initial training, sometimes scened with the others to help perfect a particular technique, but still, Kyle felt...

Well, he wasn't quite sure what he felt, only that he'd never seen the absolutely disarmed, vulnerable look on Epsilon's face other than when Kyle had personally put it there. He seemed like he enjoyed himself with the others – of course he did, for faking interest was rule number one of sex work – but there was something special about the complete loss of any pretence in the ‘you've rocked my world and I don't know which way is up' expression he wore when Kyle took him over the edge. A specialness born from pure conceit and imagination on Kyle's part, undoubtedly, but it was a fantasy he was willing to indulge if only for the warm squishiness that pummelled his insides at the idea.

"In that case, you will leave," Epsilon told John, rage marring his perfect features. His hands had quietly clenched into fists at his sides. "You are no longer welcome here nor at any of the Coterie Houses."

"But I didn't even hear him say it!" protested the client, spittle flying from his mouth as he snarled out the words.

"Bullshit," Kyle muttered, and the man threw him a disgusted glare.

"Did I give you permission to speak, bitch?"

"No, sir. Sorry, sir," Kyle shot back immediately, but the sarcasm seemed to fly right over the client's head because his expression turned immensely satisfied. Epsilon and Kyle shared a wry look.

"We were just messing around," the client said. He offered Epsilon a wide grin; the kind that was sweet and placating and convincingly genuine. He turned out to be exceptionally handsome when he smiled, and perhaps a lesser man might have caved.

Epsilon could never be called lesser.

"You don't mess around with safe words," the Master responded, clearly unimpressed. "It was clearly explained to you when you arrived what would happen if you failed to comply with a called red."

"That's...that's not...the little slut is lying!"

But the client's voice was high-pitched with his own falsehood. He'd heard Kyle, and he'd ignored him, despite the rules that were set out for all clients on each visit.

"Out," Epsilon said coldly. He stepped to the side and sliced his hand through the air; a quick, efficient gesture towards the door. "Before I call the police and have you arrested for trespassing."

He wouldn't. Or if he did, the cops wouldn't come. Or if they did, they'd be more interested in House Epsilon's staff than the client. There were a hundred reasons why the threat was empty, but the simple way in which he said it must have convinced the other man, because he backed up a step.

"Do you have any idea who I am?" the client demanded, his face starting to turn red.

"I really don't care, Miles," said Epsilon.

The name meant nothing to Kyle. An old client of the House, perhaps?

Miles blinked. "You know my brother will-"

"If you will not leave my premises voluntarily, you will leave them forcibly." Epsilon's tone was cutting. Uncompromising. He was letting loose his full bastard side, looking as coolly unflustered as ever.

The other man seethed. With a final hatred-filled glare at Kyle, Miles made his way to the door and out into the corridor, muttering under his breath.

Master Epsilon held up a finger to Kyle, elegantly expressive with minimal movement, and mouthed at him to wait.

Kyle took the opportunity to straighten his clothes and swill water around his mouth from the basin in the corner. Epsilon returned from seeing the now ex-client out of the House just as Kyle was drying his face.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm sorry," Kyle said with a sigh, scuffing a foot into the floor. When standing, it looked pretty darn clean. "I shouldn't have called it so soon. I could probably have handled it."

Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.

Truer words had never been spoken. Well, sung.

"Kyle, you've only called two reds in the five years you've been here, and the other was under my hand," said Epsilon, and Kyle glanced up at him, surprised. He'd kept count? "Clearly you couldn't, and you knew it."

"I lost you a client."

"Yes," he confirmed and Kyle swallowed, tasting bile. "But if he'd broken you, I'd have lost all of your clients."

Master Epsilon crossed the room in two brisk strides and wrapped an arm around him. Kyle resisted the urge to burrow his face in his neck.

"I'd have lost you ."

Miles hadn't come close to breaking him, but those four words nearly did.

"Don't you have work to do?" Kyle asked, trying to mimic the tone of Epsilon's usual professional distance as he pushed them apart and turned away to hide the way his eyes were beginning to sting.

"I do," Epsilon agreed, just as dispassionately. "As do you."

"I'll take a shift on the cameras until my next client arrives."

The Master didn't reply to that, although his presence vanished from Kyle's shoulder. A few seconds later, Kyle heard the door snick shut.

"Fuck you," he told the floor.

"If you like," said Epsilon.