Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (100 page)

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 behind 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.

When that didn’t work, he started to imagine all kinds of “off” situations, like vacuums unplugged

from the wall, and fires extinguished with water, and TV screens going black….

Qhuinn had looked so eminently fuckable like that, his slick, smooth body carved with muscle, his

sex so thick and proud. All that water would have made him both slippery and hot…and, dearest

Virgin Scribe, Blay would have given almost anything to walk over the tile, get down on his knees,

and take that sex into his mouth, feeling that blunt head with its piercing stroke over his tongue as he went up and down—

The disgusted noise he made echoed around, sounding louder than it probably had been.

Opening his eyes, he tried to clear any fantasies that involved sucking out of his mind. But all the pitch-black didn’t help; it just formed the perfect screen to keep projecting on.

Cursing, he gave that yoga thing a shot, where you relaxed the tension in each and every part of the body, starting with the perma-twist between his eyebrows, then the rigid ropes that ran from his

shoulders up to the base of his skull. His chest was tight, too, his pecs contracted for no good reason, his biceps digging into his upper arms.

Next, he was supposed to focus on his abs and then his butt and his thighs, his knees and calves…

his this-little-piggy-went-homes.

He didn’t make it that far.

Then again, trying to talk his arousal into any kind of malleability would have required powers of

persuasion that his half-drunk brain didn’t possess.

Unfortunately, there was only one sure-fire way of getting rid of Mr. Happy. And in the dark, by

himself, with the umbrella of no-one-will-ever-know protecting the moment, why shouldn’t he just

work the damn thing, drain the burn, and pass out? It was no different from waking up at the fall of night with an erection—because God knew there was no emotional anything involved. And he was

under the influence, right? So that was another pass.

He wasn’t cheating on Saxton, he told himself. He wasn’t
with
Qhuinn—and Saxton
was
the one he wanted….

For a while, he continued to argue the pros and cons, but eventually his hand made the decision

for him. Before he knew it, his palm was burrowing under his loose waistband and—

The hiss he let out when he gripped himself was like a gunshot in the silence, and so was the

groan of the chair as the thrust of his hips pushed his shoulders into the leather padding. Hot and hard, thick and long, his cock was begging for attention—but the angle was all wrong, and there was no

room for stroking in the damn shorts.

For some reason, the idea of stripping from the waist down made him feel dirty, but his sense of

propriety went into the shitter pretty fast when all he could do was squeeze. Lifting his ass, he swept the shorts off…and then realized he was going to need something to clean up the mess with.

The shirt came off next.

Naked in the dark, sprawled out long from the chair and to the desktop, he gave himself over,

spreading his thighs, pumping up and down. The friction made his eyes roll back in his head, made

him bite his lower lip—God, the sensations were so strong, flowing through his body—

Fuck.

Qhuinn was in his mind, Qhuinn was in his mouth…Qhuinn was inside of him, the two of them

moving together—

This was wrong.

He froze. Just stopped dead. “Shit.”

Blay released his cock, even though the mere process of letting the betrayal go made him grit his

molars.

Opening his eyes, he stared into the darkness. The sound of his breath punching in and out of his

chest made him curse again. So did his pounding need for an orgasm—which he refused to give in to.

He was
not
going to take this any further—

From out of nowhere, that image of Qhuinn arched under the falling spray slammed into his brain,

taking over everything. Against his higher reasoning, and his loyalty, and his sense of fairness…his body went into instant overload, the orgasm shooting out of his cock before he could stop it, before he could tell it no, that wasn’t right…before he could say, Not again. Never again.

Oh, God. The sweet, stabbing sensation repeated over and over until he wondered if it was ever

going to end—even though he didn’t help things along.

This physical reaction might be outside of his control. His response to it was not.

When he finally stilled, his breath was harsh and the coolness across the bare skin of his chest

suggested he’d broken out in a sweat…and as his body recovered from the rush, his awareness

returned—and his deflating erection was like a barometer of his mood.

Reaching forward, he patted over the desk until he found his shirt; then he wadded it up and

pressed the thing into the juncture of his thighs.

The rest of the mess he was in was not going to be so easy to clean up.

Across town, on the eighteenth floor of the Commodore, Trez sat in a sleek steel-and-leather chair

that faced a wall of windows overlooking the Hudson River. The noonday sun was shining down

from a crystal clear, chrome-like sky, everything ten times brighter because of the fresh snow that had fallen overnight on the shores.

“I know you’re there,” he said dryly, taking a sip from his coffee mug.

When there was no reply, he spun his chair around on its swival base. Sure enough, iAm had

come in from his bedroom and was sitting on the couch, iPad on his lap, forefinger striping across the screen. He would be reading the
New York Times
online edition, of course; he did that every morning when they got up.

“Well,” Trez bit out. “Go on.”

The only response he got was one of iAm’s brows lifting. For, like, a split second.

The smug bastard wouldn’t even look over. “Must be a fascinating article. What’s it about?

Recalcitrant brothers?”

Trez passed some time nursing his hot coffee. “iAm. Seriously. This is bullshit.”

After a moment, his brother’s dark stare lifted. The eyes that met his were, as always, completely

uncluttered of emotion and doubt and all the messy stuff that mere mortals struggled with. iAm was

preternaturally sensible…rather in the way of a cobra: watchful, intelligent, ready to strike, but

unwilling to waste the power until it was needed.

“What,” Trez ground out.

“It’s redundant to tell you what you already know.”

“Humor me.” He took another draw off the rim of the mug, and wondered why the hell he was

volunteering for this. “Go on.”

iAm’s lips pursed the way they did when he was considering his response. Then he flopped the

red cover of the iPad down, each of the four sections landing like footsteps across the screen. He then put the thing aside, uncrossed his leg, and leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees. The

guy’s biceps were so thick, the sleeves of his shirt looked like they were going to split wide.

“Your sex life is out of control.” As Trez rolled his eyes, his brother kept on talking. “You are

fucking three or four women a night, sometimes more. It’s not about feeding, so don’t waste either of our time by excusing it in that fashion. You are compromising the professional standards of—”

“I run liquor and prostitutes. Don’t you think that’s a little highbrow—”

iAm picked up the iPad and waved it back and forth. “Should I go back to reading?”

“I’m just saying—”

“You asked me to speak. If this is a problem, the solution is not to get defensive because you

don’t like what you hear. The answer is to not invite me to talk.”

Trez ground his teeth. See, this was the issue with his fucking brother. Too goddamn reasonable.

Bursting up, he stalked across the open living room. The kitchen was like everything else in the