by J. R. Ward
There were so many when it came to this honorable male who was standing dead still before him.
Finally, there was only one step left before his bare chest hit Blay’s.
Qhuinn’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
In the thick silence that followed, Blay’s mouth parted…but not in surprise. More like he couldn’t breathe.
Reminding himself not to be a world-revolves-around-me asshole, Qhuinn brought it back to what was happening between Blay and Saxton.
“I don’t want that for you,” he said, his eyes roaming around that face. “You’ve suffered enough, and I know you love him. I’m sorry….I’m so sorry….”
Blay just stood in front of him, his expression frozen, his eyes darting around as if they couldn’t light on anything. But he didn’t pull back, jerk away, storm off. He stayed…right where he was.
“I’m sorry.”
Qhuinn watched from a vast distance as his own hand reached out and touched Blay’s face, the fingertips running over the five o’clock shadow. “I’m sorry.”
Oh, God, to touch him. To feel the warmth of his skin, to inhale his clean, masculine scent.
“I’m sorry.”
What the fuck was he doing? Man…too late to answer that—he was reaching forward with his other hand and putting the palm on that heavy shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
Oh, God, he was drawing Blay in, pulling that body up against his own. “I’m sorry.”
He moved one of his hands to the nape of Blay’s neck and pushed it deep into the thick hair that curled under there. “I’m sorry.”
Blay was stiff, that spine straight as an arrow, his arms remaining around his tight belly. But after a moment, almost as if he were confused by his own reaction, the male began to lean in, that weight shifting subtly at first, and then more so.
With a quick jerk, Qhuinn wrapped his arms around the single most important person in his life. It was not Layla, although he felt a pang at that denial. It was not John, or his king. It wasn’t the Brothers.
This male was his reason for everything.
And even though it killed him that Blay was in love with someone else, he’d fucking take this. It had been too long since he’d touched the guy…and never like this.
“I’m sorry.”
Palming the back of Blay’s head, he urged the male closer to him, tucking that face into his own neck. “I’m sorry.”
As Blay went with it, Qhuinn shuddered, turning his own face inward, breathing in fully, pulling all of the sensations deep into his brain so he could remember this forever. And while his palm rubbed up and down, soothing that muscled back, he did what he could to make amends for so much more than his cousin’s infidelity. “I’m sorry—”
With a quick shift, Blay shook his head. Shook himself free. Pushed back.
Pushed away.
Qhuinn’s shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because…”
In that moment, as their eyes met, Qhuinn knew it was time. He’d blown so much with Blay; there had been so many missteps and deliberate misunderstandings, so many years, so many denials—all on his part. He’d pussied out for so long, but that was over.
As he opened his mouth to speak the three words on his tongue, Blay’s eyes grew hard. “I don’t need your help, okay? I can take care of myself.”
Pound. Pound. Pound.
His heart was thumping so loud, he wondered if it was going to explode.
“You’re going to stay with him,” Qhuinn said numbly. “You’re going to—”
“You don’t pull that shit with Saxton—not ever again. Swear to it.”
Even though it killed him, Qhuinn was powerless to deny the guy anything. “Okay.” He lifted his palms. “Hands off.”
Blay nodded, the deal sealed.
“I just want to help you,” Qhuinn said. “That’s all.”
“You can’t,” Blay countered.
God, even though they were once again at odds, he craved more contact—and abruptly, he saw the pathway to exactly that. Tricky proposition, but at least there was some internal logic to it.
His arms lifted, his hands seeking, finding, latching on. Blay’s shoulders. Blay’s neck.
Sex surged in him, hardening his cock, making him pant. “But I can help you.”
“How?”
Qhuinn edged in close, bringing his mouth right to Blay’s ear. Then he deliberately put his bare chest against Blay’s. “Use me.”
“What?”
“Teach him a lesson.” Qhuinn tightened his hold and tilted Blay’s head back. “Pay him back the right way. With me.”
To make things crystal clear, Qhuinn extended his tongue and ran it up the side of Blay’s throat.
The hiss in response was loud as a curse.
Blay punched into him, shoving him back. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Qhuinn cupped his heavy, hard sex. “I want you. And I’ll take you any way I can—even if it’s only to get back at my cousin.”
Blay’s expression played table tennis between utter disbelief and epic anger.
“You fucking asshole! You turn me down for years, and then all of a sudden do a one-eighty? What the fuck is wrong with you!”
With his free hand, Qhuinn played with one of his nipple rings—and focused on what was doing at Blay’s hip level: Underneath that robe, the male became fully erect, that terry cloth no match for the likes of that kind of hard-on.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind! What the fuck!?”
Usually Blay didn’t curse or raise his voice. It was a turn-on to see him lose it.
Locking his eyes on his friend’s, Qhuinn slowly sank down onto his knees. “Let me take care of that—”
“What?”
He leaned forward and tugged at the bottom of the robe, pulling it toward him. “Come here. Let me show you how I do.”
Blay grabbed the tie that kept the two halves together, and yanked it tighter. “What the hell are you doing?”
God, the fact that he was on his knees, begging, seemed only appropriate. “I want to be with you. I don’t give a shit why—just let me be with you—”
“After all this time? What’s changed?”
“Everything.”
“You’re with Layla—”
“No. I’ll say it however many times you need to hear it—I’m not with her.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“One time. I was with her once, and just like I told you, it was only because I want a family and so does she. One time, Blay, and never again.”
Blay’s head fell back, his eyes closing as if someone were driving spikes under his fingernails. “Don’t do this to me, for God’s sake, you can’t do this—” As his voice gave out, the anguish was a sad insight into all the problems Qhuinn had caused. “Why now? Maybe it’s you who wants to get back at Saxton—”
“Fuck my cousin, it’s got nothing to do with him for me. If you were alone, I’d still be right on this carpet, on my knees, wanting to be with you. If you were mated to a female, if you were dating someone all casual and shit, if you were in a million different places in life…I’d still be right here. Begging you for something, anything—one time, if that’s all you’ve got.”
Qhuinn reached out again, going under the robe, stroking a strong, muscled leg—and when Blay stepped back again, he knew he was losing the battle.
Shit, he was going to lose this chance if he didn’t—
“Look, Blay, I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my life, but I’ve always kept it real. I almost died tonight—and that sets a male straight. Up there in that airplane, looking over the dark night, I didn’t think I was going to make it. Everything got clear for me. I want to be with you because of that.”
Actually, he’d known a fuck of a lot sooner, waaaaaaaay before the Cessna situation, but he was hoping the explanation made sense to Blay.
; Maybe it did. In response, the guy weaved on his feet, as if he were going to give in—or leave. There was no telling which one it was.
Qhuinn rushed to get more words out. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted so much time—and if you don’t want to be with me, I get it. I’ll back off—I’ll live with the consequences. But for the love of God, if there’s a chance—for whatever reason on your side—revenge, curiosity…hell, even if you’ll let me fuck you just once and never, ever again, for the sole reason of driving a stake through my heart? I’ll take it. I’ll take you…any way I can get you.”
He reached out a third time, snaking his hand around the back of Blay’s leg. Stroking. Pleading. “I don’t care what it costs me….”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Looming over Qhuinn, Blay was preternaturally aware of everything around him: the feel of Qhuinn’s hand on the back of his thigh, the way the hem of the robe brushed against his calf, the scent of sex thickening the air.
In so many ways, he had wanted this his whole life—or at least ever since he’d survived his transition and had any sexual impulse at all. This moment was the culmination of countless daydreams and innumerable fantasies, his secret desire made manifest.
And it was honest: Qhuinn’s mismatched eyes were without shadows—or doubts. The male was not only speaking the God’s honest as he knew it in his heart; he was at peace with laying himself vulnerable like this.
Blay closed his lids briefly. This submission was the opposite of everything that defined Qhuinn as a male. He never surrendered—not his principles, not his weapons, never, ever himself. Then again, the turnaround did make some kind of sense. Facing death did tend to be followed by a come-to-Jesus chaser….
The trouble was, he had a feeling this wasn’t going to last. This “eye-opener” was undoubtedly tied to that plane ride, but as with a heart attack victim resuming his piss-poor diet soon afterward, the “revelation” probably didn’t have a long shelf life. Yeah, Qhuinn meant what he was saying in this heady moment—there was no doubting that. It was hard to believe it was permanent, however.
Qhuinn was who he was. And soon enough, after the shock wore off—maybe at nightfall, maybe next week, maybe a month from now—he was going to go back to his closed-off, hands-off, distant self.
Decision made, Blay reopened his lids and bent down. As their faces got closer, Qhuinn’s lips parted, the fuller, lower one pursing as if he were already trying out the taste of what he wanted—and liking it.
Fuck. The fighter was so magnificent, his powerful bare chest glowing in the lamplight, his skin carrying a sheen of arousal, his pierced nipples rising and falling to the driving beat of his heated blood.
Blay ran his hand down the corded muscles of the arm that linked them, from the heavy thickness of the shoulder to the bulge of the biceps and the cut curl of the triceps.
He removed the palm from his thigh.
And stepped away.
Qhuinn paled to the point of going gray.
In the silence, Blay didn’t say a word. He couldn’t—his voice was gone.
On sloppy, loose legs, he scrambled for the way out, his hand flapping around the doorknob until it gathered enough coordination to open up the exit. Walking out, he couldn’t have said whether he slammed the door or shut it quietly.
He didn’t make it far. Barely three feet toward his room, he collapsed back against the smooth, cool wall of the hallway.
Panting. He was panting.
And all that effort wasn’t doing any good. The suffocation in his chest was getting worse, and abruptly his vision was replaced by black-and-white checkerboard squares.
Figuring he was about to pass out, he sank down onto his haunches and put his head between his knees. In the recesses of his mind, he prayed that the hall stayed empty. This was not the kind of thing he wanted to explain to anyone: outside of Qhuinn’s room, hard-on obvious, body shaking like he had his own personal earthquake going on.
“Jesus Christ…”
I almost died tonight—that sets a male straight. Up there in that airplane, looking over the dark night, I didn’t think I was going to make it. Everything got clear for me.
“No,” Blay said out loud. “No…”
Putting his head in his hands, he tried to breathe calmly, think rationally, act reasonably. He couldn’t afford to go any deeper in this—
Those heated, glossy, mismatched eyes had been the stuff of legend.
“No,” he hissed.
As his voice resonated inside his own skull, he resolved to listen to himself. No further. This would go no further.
He’d long ago lost his heart to that male.
There was no reason to lose his soul, too.
An hour later, maybe two, maybe six, Qhuinn lay naked between cool sheets, staring up in the dark at a ceiling he could not see.
Was this horrible, aching pain what Blay had felt? Like, after that showdown in his parents’ basement—when Qhuinn had been prepared to leave Caldwell, and made it clear that there were gonna be no ties between them anymore? Or maybe after that time they’d kissed in the clinic, and Qhuinn had refused to go any further? Or following that final collision when they had nearly come together, right before Blay’s first date with Saxton?
So damn hollow.
Like this room, really: Without illumination, and essentially empty, just four walls and a ceiling. Or a bag of skin and a skeleton, as it were.
Shifting his hand up, he put it over his beating heart just to reassure himself he still had one.
Man, fate had a way of teaching you things you needed to know, even if you weren’t aware the lesson was required until it had been served to you: He’d spent way too much time wrapped up in himself and his defect and his failure to his family and society. Such a tangled fucking mess he’d been for so long, and Blay, because he’d cared, had been sucked into the vortex.
But when had he ever supported his best friend? What had he ever really done for the guy?
Blay had been right to leave this room. Too little, too late, wasn’t that the saying? And it wasn’t like Qhuinn was offering any kind of winner. Underneath the surface, he was no more stable, really. No more at peace.
Nope, he deserved this—
The slice of light was lemon yellow, and it cut through the black field of his vision as if the blindness were cloth and the beam a sharp knife.
A figure slipped into his room silently, and shut the door.
By the scent, he knew who it was.
Qhuinn’s heart began to thunder as he shot upright off the pillows. “Blay…?”
There was the softest of rustling, a robe being dropped from the shoulders of a tall male. And then, moments later, the mattress depressed as a great, vital weight got up upon it.
Qhuinn reached through the darkness with unerring accuracy, his hands finding the sides of Blay’s neck sure as if they had been led by sight.
No talking. He was afraid that words would cheat him of this miracle.
Lifting his mouth, he pulled Blay down to his own, and when those velvet lips were in range, he kissed them with a desperation that was returned. All at once, the pent-up past was released in a fury, and as he tasted blood, he didn’t know whose fangs had scored what.
Who the fuck cared.
On a hard yank, he laid Blay down and then he rolled over on top of the other male, spreading those thighs and pushing himself between them until his hard cock came up against Blay’s….
They both groaned.
Dizzy from all the naked skin, Qhuinn began pumping his hips up and back, the friction of their sexes and their hot flesh magnifying the wet heat of their mouths. Frenzy, everywhere, hurry, hurry, hurry—holy fucking shit, there was too much hunger to make any sense of where his hands were, or what he was rubbing against, or— for fuck’s sake, there was too much skin to touch, too much hair to pull, too much…
Qhuinn came hard, his balls going tight, his erection kicking between them, his come going everywhere.
&
nbsp; Didn’t slow him down in the slightest.
With a quick jerk, he broke away from the mouth he could have spent the next hundred years working, and shoved himself down Blay’s chest. The muscles he came across were nothing like the human guys’ he’d fucked—this was a vampire, a fighter, a soldier who had trained heavily and worked his flesh into a condition that was not just useful, but downright deadly. And holy hell was that a turn-on—but more than that, though, this was Blay; it was finally, after all these years…
Blay.
Qhuinn dragged his fangs down abdominals that were rock tight, and the scent of himself on Blay’s skin was a marking that he knew he’d done on purpose.
That dark spice was going other places, too.
He groaned when his hands found Blay’s cock, and as he circled the hard column, the guy arched up sharply, a curse cutting through the room, much in the same way the light had just moments before.
Qhuinn licked his lips, stood Blay’s sex up, and let the head of that thick, blunt cock part his mouth. Sucking down deep, he took it to its base, opening his throat wide, swallowing everything. In response, Blay’s hips shot up, and rough hands bit into his hair, forcing his head even farther down until he couldn’t get any breath to his lungs—and who the fuck needed oxygen, anyway?
Digging his hands under Blay’s ass, he tilted that pelvis and started going up and down, his neck straining under the punishing rhythm, his shoulders bunching and releasing as he followed through on exactly what he’d been offering before Blay had left.
He wasn’t stopping with this, though.
Nope.
This was just the beginning.
TWENTY-EIGHT
As Blay jacked back against the pillows on Qhuinn’s bed, his head nearly snapped off his spine. Everything was out of control, but he wouldn’t have slowed things down in the slightest: With his hips pumping up and down, his cock was pushing in and sucking out of Qhuinn’s mouth—
Thank God the lights were off.
The sensations alone were too much to handle—adding a visual? He wouldn’t be able to—