by J. R. Ward
Blay thought about the way the male had looked as they’d turned over the Hummer: powerful, masculine…erotic.
This was not happening.
He was not, in fact, sitting here, eyeing Qhuinn like this—
Images filtered in from years past, turning his brain into a television screen. He saw Qhuinn bending over a human woman who had been laid out ass up on the edge of a flat table, his hips pumping as he fucked her, his hands locked onto her hips to hold her in place. He hadn’t had a shirt on at the time, and his shoulders had been tight, as they were now.
Hard body being used well.
There were so many pictures like that, with Qhuinn in different positions with different people, male and female. In the beginning, right after their transitions, there had been such a feeling of excitement as the two of them had gone on the hunt together—or rather, Qhuinn had gone trolling and Blay had taken whatever had been brought back. So much sex with so many people—although at that point, Blay had stuck only with the females.
Maybe because he’d known they were safe, that they didn’t “count” in so many ways.
So uncomplicated in the beginning. But sometime along the way, things had started to shift—and he’d begun to realize that as he watched Qhuinn with the randoms, he was picturing himself under that body, receiving what the guy was so good at giving. After a time, it hadn’t been some stranger’s mouth on Qhuinn’s cock; it was his own. And when those orgasms came, and they always did, he was the one taking them in. It was his hands on Qhuinn’s body, and his lips locked hard, and his legs that were spread.
And that had fucked everything up.
Shit, he could remember staying awake during the day and staring at his ceiling, telling himself that when they were yet again at the club, in those bathrooms, or wherever it went down, he wouldn’t do that anymore. But each time they went out, it was like an addict being offered the precise flavor of pill he needed.
Then there had been those two kisses—the first one down the hall from here, in the clinic’s examination room. And he’d had to beg for it. And then their second up in his bedroom, just before he’d gone out with Saxton for the first time.
He’d had to beg for that, too.
Abruptly, Blay gave up pretending that he was actually pumping iron and put his hands down on his thighs.
He told himself to leave. Just get the fuck off the seat and walk out before Qhuinn moved to the next thing and his cover was blown.
Instead, he found his eyes back on those shoulders and that spine, on the tight waist and tighter ass, on those muscular legs.
Maybe it was the alcohol. The afterburn of that argument in the flatbed. The whole sex-with-Layla thing…
But at the moment, he was sexed up. Hard as stone. Ready for it.
Blay looked down his chest to the front of his loose shorts—and felt like shooting himself in the head.
Oh, Jesus, he needed to get out of here right now.
* * *
As Qhuinn continued set after set of pull-ups, his hands were numb, and he felt like his biceps were being peeled from his bones with dull knives—and that was just mindless chatter in comparison to his shoulders. They were the real problem. Someone clearly had come up from behind, put varnish stripper across them, and then buffed them with an industrial sander.
No idea how many reps he’d done. No clue how many miles he’d run. No count of the sit-ups, squats, or lunges.
He just knew he was going to keep going.
Goal: total exhaustion. He wanted to pass out the moment he went upstairs and got horizontal on his bed.
Dropping from the bar, he put his hands on his hips, lowered his head, and breathed heavily. His right shoulder immediately seized up, but that was his dominant side, so he expected it. To loosen the knot of muscles, he swept his arm around in a big circle as he turned—
Qhuinn froze.
On the other side of the blue mats, Blay was on the machine closest to the door, sitting as still as the weights he was not lifting.
The expression on his face was volcanic. But he wasn’t mad.
No, he wasn’t.
He had a hard-on big enough to see from across the room. Maybe across the state.
Qhuinn opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.
In the end, he decided this was a prime example of how life never failed to surprise. Of all the situations he thought they would ever be in? This was not it. Not after…well, everything.
He pulled his earphones off and let them hang from his neck, the pounding beat downshifting from concert-roar to impotent little hiss.
Is that for me? he wanted to ask.
For a split second, he thought it might be, but then how arrogant was that? The guy had just finished giving a speech about how the two of them were nothing but hourly wagers working side by side on vats of trans fat. Then Blay shows up with an arousal the size of a crowbar—and the first thing to come to his mind was it could, possibly, maybe, sort of, kind of…be for him?
What a prick he was.
And PS, what the hell would he do if he suddenly found himself in a parallel universe, with Blay pulling a hey-how-’bouta in that department?
Of course he wanted the guy.
For fuck’s sake, he’d always wanted him—to the point where he had to wonder how much of that pushing-away thing that he’d done “for Blay’s benefit” hadn’t really been for his own.
Pondering that one, he noticed the glass down by the guy’s feet. Ah, alcohol was involved—he sincerely doubted the dark inch in that squat glass was Coca-Cola.
Shit, for all he knew, Saxton had just texted him a crotch shot and a half, and that was the cause of all that erection.
And wasn’t that a deflator.
Your cousin is giving me what I need all day long, every day.
“You got something else to say to me?” Qhuinn asked harshly.
Blay shook his head back and forth once.
Qhuinn frowned. Blay was not a hothead—never had been, and that was part of the reason that, for the longest time, they’d been so tight. Balance and all that crap. At the moment, however, the guy seemed like he was a thin inch from losing it.
Trouble in paradise between the happy couple?
Nah, they were too good together.
“Okay.” Man, the idea of hanging around here while Blay amped up for another session with Saxton the Magnificent was untenable. “I’ll see you later.”
As he walked by, he felt Blay’s eyes on him—but they weren’t on the level of his face. At least, it didn’t seem like it.
What the fuck was going on here?
Pushing out into the hall, he paused to double-check that the concrete walls weren’t melting and that he didn’t suddenly have fish for hands or something. Neither were true, but a trippy sense of unreality dogged him as he went down to the locker room. A shower was mandatory; he was covered in sweat, and as much as the doggen loved a good mess, he wasn’t about to give them more work just because he’d tried to kill himself in the gym—
Hard. Aroused. Ready for sex.
As that image of Blay battered around the inside of his skull, he closed his eyes, and then hit the door into the land of tile and water fixtures. He intended to go over to the showers directly, but ended up stalling out in the front half of the room, where the lockers were stacked in orderly rows and the benches ran down the middle of the aisles.
Parking it, he unlaced his Nikes, kicked them off, and peeled his socks free.
Totally fucking aroused.
Blay had been out of his mind for it.
For some reason, Qhuinn’s last two sexual encounters popped into his head. There had been that redheaded guy at the Iron Mask—the one he’d seduced and fucked in the bathroom. He’d picked the random out of the crowd for that one defining physical characteristic, and naturally the sesh had done nothing extraordinary for him. Then again, it had been like wanting Herradura, and putting ginger ale down your throat.
A
nd then there had been the stuff with Layla—which had been nothing but a physically demanding job, like digging a trench or building a wall….
God, he felt like a louse for thinking like that—and he meant no disrespect to the Chosen. But at least it was fairly clear she was of a similar mind.
That was it for the last year. Just those two.
Nearly twelve months of nothing, and he hadn’t been jerking off, either. He just wasn’t interested in anything, like his balls had gone into hibernation.
Funny, right after his transition he’d banged anything with two legs and a beating heart, and as he struggled to remember some of those many faces—God knew he hadn’t bothered to get names a lot of the time—an uncomfortable feeling tightened his gut.
All that anonymous, nameless, faceless fucking…in front of Blay. Always with the guy, come to think of it. At the time, it had felt like a buddy/buddy kind of situation, but now he wondered.
Yeah, screw that. He knew what it had been about.
He was such a pussy, wasn’t he.
Getting to his feet, he stripped naked and let his wifebeater and his b-ball shorts flop onto the bench in a wet mess. Walking to the shower room, he picked one of the showerheads at random, cranked the thing on, and stepped under the spray. The water was nut-shrinking cold, but he didn’t care. He faced the onslaught, shutting his lids and opening his mouth.
That redhead in the club almost a year ago? When he’d been seducing the guy into the loo, it had been Blay in his mind the whole time.
It was Blay who’d he’d pushed back against the sink and kissed hard. Blay’s cock he’d sucked off, and Blay’s body he’d taken from behind and—
“For the love…” he groaned.
From out of nowhere, the image of his old friend sitting on the machine just now, his knees wide, his cock straining against the oh-so-thin material of those shorts entered his mind and shot down his spine, going straight between his legs. With a curse, he sagged and had to put a hand out on the slick tile.
“Oh…fuck…”
Leaning in, he rested his forehead on his arm and tried to concentrate on the feel of the water hitting the nape of his neck.
Not even close.
All he was aware of was the heartbeat in his cock.
Well, that and a ringing fantasy of him dropping to his knees and pressing in between Blay’s open thighs, licking his way into that mouth…while burrowing under the waistband of those shorts and starting to give the guy a hand job he would never fucking forget.
Among so many other things.
Turning around to face away from the spray, Qhuinn pushed his hands into his hair, sluicing it back, arching his spine.
He could feel his cock sticking straight out from his hips, begging for attention.
But he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Blay deserved better than that somehow—yeah, it didn’t make sense, but it just felt nasty to be jerking off in the shower over the guy’s arousal about someone else.
Hell, the guy’s partner.
Qhuinn’s own cousin, for chrissakes.
As his erection just hung out there, unfazed by that logic, he knew it was going to be a long frickin’ day.
ELEVEN
Blay dropped his head with a curse as the weight room door eased shut. And of course, from that vantage point, all he could see was his cock.
Which did not help.
Shifting his eyes back up, he stared across at the chin-up bar, and knew he had to do something. Sitting here half-drunk with a party in his pants was hardly a position he wanted to get caught in. If a Brother like Rhage walked in on this? Blay would be hearing about it for the rest of his natural life. Besides, he was in his workout gear, surrounded by equipment, so he might as well get busy, pump some iron, and hope that Mr. Happy sank into a depression from lack of attention.
Good plan.
Really.
Yup.
When he glanced at the clock sometime later, he realized fifteen minutes had passed and he was no closer to constructive, repetitive motion, unless you counted breathing.
His erection had a suggestion for that kind of goal.
And his palm was immediately on board, going between his legs, finding that hard—
Blay burst up from the seat and went for the door. Enough with the bullshit—he was going to hit the loo in the locker room in the hope of cycling some of the alcohol out of his system. Then he was going to get on a treadmill and sweat the rest of the booze out.
After which it was time to head to bed—where, if he needed an outlet of the erotic variety, he was going to find it in the appropriate place.
The first sign that his new plan might have taken him only farther into the weeds came as he pushed his way into locker-landia: the sound of running water meant someone was doing the soap-and-shampoo thing. He was so focused on kicking himself in the butt, however, he didn’t bother with any extrapolations.
Which would have made him stop, turn around, and find another toilet ASAP.
Instead, he went past the lockers and did his business. It wasn’t until he was washing his hands that the math started to add up.
Of its own volition, his head cranked around in the direction of the showers.
You need to leave, he told himself.
As he turned off the faucet, the subtle squeak seemed loud as a scream, and he refused to look at himself in the mirrors. He didn’t want to see what was in his eyes.
Go back to the door. Just go back to the door. Just—
The failure of his body to follow that simple command was not merely an exercise of physical rebellion. It was, tragically, his pattern.
And he would regret it later.
At the moment, however, when he made the choice to walk over, and duck around the tiled wall of the shower room, when he kept himself mostly hidden, when he spied on a male he shouldn’t have…the mad rush of emotion was so achingly familiar, it was a suit of clothes tailor-fitted to his madness.
Qhuinn was facing into the showerhead he was standing under, one hand braced against the slick wall, his dark head bowed under the spray. Water ran over his shoulders and down the acres of supple skin that covered his powerful back…and then flowed onto his magnificent ass…and went ever farther, past those long, strong legs.
In the last year, the fighter had filled out quite a bit. Qhuinn had been big after his transition, and had gotten even larger during those first few months of intense eating. But it had been a while since Blay had seen the male without his clothes on…and man, the punishing gym routines he’d been putting himself through showed in all that hard-cut muscle—
Abruptly Qhuinn shifted his position, pivoting around, tilting his head back, sluicing the water through his dark hair, that incredible body arching.
He’d kept his PA.
And holy shit, he was aroused—
An orgasm immediately threatened the head of Blay’s cock, his balls getting tight as fists.
Wheeling around, he left the locker room like he was shot out of a cannon, punching through the door, jumping out into the corridor.
“Oh, shit…fucking…goddamn…fuck…”
Walking as fast as he could, he tried to get that image out of his head, reminding himself that he had a lover, that he’d moved on from all this, that you could self-destruct over the same thing only so many times and then you were done.
When none of that worked, he replayed the speech he’d given to Qhuinn in the tow truck—
Where the hell was the office?
Stopping short, he looked around. Oh, fantastic. He’d gone in the opposite direction from what he’d intended, and was now down past the clinic and into the classroom part of the training center.
Miles from the entrance to the tunnel.
“…laceration that deep. But he wouldn’t have it.”
Manny Manello’s deep voice preceded the man walking out into the corridor from the main examination room. A second later, Doc Jane made an appearance right b
ehind him, an open chart in her hand, her fingertip tracing down a page.
Blay ducked through the first door he came to—
And ran right into a wall of blackness. Patting around for a light switch, because he was too scattered to turn any bulbs on mentally, he found one, flipped it, and blinded himself.
“Ow!”
The sharp shooter that rocketed from his shin to his brain told him he’d walked into something large.
Ah, a desk.
He was in one of the mini-offices that satellited the classrooms, and that was good news. With the training program still suspended because of the raids, there was no one down here, and no one likely to think of a reason to be in this empty little room.
He could have some privacy for a while—and that was a blessing. God knew he wasn’t going to try to make it to the mansion now. With his luck he’d run into Qhuinn, and the last thing he needed was to be anywhere near the guy.
Going behind the desk, he sat down in the cushy office chair and brought his legs up, stretching them across the flat top that should have had a computer, a plant, and a holder full of pens on it. Instead, it was barren, although not dust-covered. Fritz would never stand for that even in an unused space.
Rubbing at the sore spot on the front of his calf, it was clear that he was going to have one hell of a black-and-blue mark. But at least the pain distracted him from what had driven him down here.
That didn’t last, though.
As he tilted the chair back and closed his eyes, his brain returned to the locker room.
Was the torture never going to end, he thought.
And, God, his cock was pounding.
Considering his choices, he willed the lights off, closed his eyes, and ordered his brain to shut up and go to sleep. If he could just catch a few down here for an hour or two, he’d wake up sober, flaccid, and ready to face people again.
Now, this was a good plan, and it was also the perfect environment. Dark, a little cool, super-quiet in the way only facilities underground were.
Shimmying his body even deeper into the chair, he crossed his arms over his chest and got ready for the REM train to pull into his station.