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Which told him more than anything else that there was nothing to be done.

Qhuinn hung his head and held her hand.

It had started with the pair of them.

It was ending with the pair of them.

“I think I’d like to go to sleep,” Layla said as she squeezed his palm. “You look as if you need some, too.”

He eyed the chaise lounge across the way.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Layla murmured.

“Where else do you think I would be?”

A quick mental picture of Blay holding his arms wide flashed through his mind. What a fantasy, though.

Don’t you touch me like that.

Qhuinn shook the thoughts out of his head. “I’ll sleep over there.”

“You can’t stay in here for seven nights straight.”

“I’ll say it again. Where else would I be—”

“Qhuinn.” Her voice got strident. “You have a job out there. And you heard Havers. This is just going to take as long as it does, and it’s probably going to be a while. I’m not in any danger of bleeding out, and frankly, I feel as though I have to be strong in front of you, and I do not have the energy for that. Please come and check in, yes, do. But I will go mad if you camp out here until I stop with all this.”

Quiet despair.

That was all Qhuinn had as he sat there on the edge of that bed, holding Layla’s hand.

He got up to leave shortly thereafter. She was right, of course. She needed to rest as much as she could, and really, aside from staring at her and making her feel like a freak, there was nothing he could do.

“I’m never far.”

“I know that.” She brought his fist to her lips, and he was shocked by how cold they were. “You have been…more than I could have asked for.”

“Nah. There’s nothing that I’ve—”

“You have done what is right and proper. Always.”

That was a matter of opinion. “Listen, I’ve got my phone with me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours just to look in on you. If you’re asleep, I won’t disturb you.”

“Thank you.”

Qhuinn nodded and sidestepped over to the door. He had heard once that you were not supposed to show your back to a Chosen, and he figured the display of protocol couldn’t hurt.

Closing the door behind him, he leaned back against it. The only person he wanted to see was the one guy in the house who had no interest in—

“What’s going on?”

Blay’s voice was such a shock that he figured he’d imagined it. Except then the male himself stepped into the doorway of the second-floor sitting room. As if he’d been waiting there all along.

Qhuinn rubbed his eyes and then started walking, his body seeking out the very thing he had been praying for.

“She’s losing it,” Qhuinn heard himself say in a dead voice.

Blay murmured something in return, but it didn’t register.

Funny, the miscarriage hadn’t seemed real until this moment. Not until he told Blay.

“I’m sorry?” Qhuinn said, aware that the guy seemed to be waiting for an answer.

“Is there anything I can do?”

So funny. Qhuinn had always felt as though he’d come out of his mother’s womb an adult. Then again, there had never been any cootchie-coo crap for him, no darling-little-boy stuff, no hugs when he hurt himself, no coddling when he was frightened. As a result, whether it was character or the way he’d been brought up, he’d never regressed. Nothing to go back to there.

Yet it was in the voice of a child that he said, “Make it stop?”

As if Blay alone had the power to work a miracle.

And then…the male did.

Blay extended his arms wide, offering the only haven Qhuinn had ever known.

“Make it stop?”

Blay’s body started to shake as Qhuinn uttered those words: After all these years, he’d seen the guy in a lot of moods and in a lot of circumstances. Never like this, though. Never…so completely and utterly ruined.

Never like a child, lost.

In spite of his need to keep really and truly far away from any emotional anything, his arms opened of their own accord.

As Qhuinn stepped in against him, the fighter’s body seemed smaller and frailer than it actually was. And the arms that wound around Blay’s waist simply lay against him as if there were no strength in the muscles.

Blay held them both up.

And he expected Qhuinn to pull back quickly. Usually, the guy couldn’t handle any kind of intense connection other than a sexual one for longer than a second and a half.

Qhuinn didn’t. He seemed prepared to stand in the doorway to the sitting room forever.

“Come here,” Blay said, drawing the male inside and shutting the door. “Over on the couch.”

Qhuinn followed behind, shitkickers shuffling instead of marching.

When they got to the sofa, they sat down facing each other, their knees touching. As Blay looked over, the resonant sadness touched him so deeply, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking that black hair—

Abruptly, Qhuinn curled in against him, just collapsed, that body folding in half and all but pouring into Blay’s lap.

There was a part of Blay that recognized this was dangerous territory. Sex was one thing—and hard enough to handle, fuck him very much. This quiet space? Was potentially devastating.

Which was precisely why he’d gotten the hell out of that bedroom the day before.

The difference tonight, however, was that he was in control of this. Qhuinn was the one seeking comfort, and Blay could withdraw it or give it depending on how he felt: Being relied on was something altogether different from receiving—or needing.

Blay was good with being relied on. There was a kind of safety in it—a certainty, a control. It was not the same as falling into the abyss. And hell, if anyone would know that, it was him. God knew he’d spent years down there.

“I would do anything to change this,” Blay said while stroking Qhuinn’s back. “I hate that you’re going through…”

Oh, words were so damned useless.

They stayed that way for the longest time, the quiet of the room forming a kind of cocoon. Periodically, the antique clock on the mantel chimed, and then after a long while, the shutters began to descend over the windows.

“I wish there was something I could do,” Blay said as the steel panels locked into place with a chunk.

“You probably have to go.”

Blay let that one stand. The truth was not something he wanted to share: Wild horses, loaded guns, crowbars, fire hoses, trampling elephants…even an order from the king himself could not have pulled him away.

And there was a part of him that got angry over that. Not at Qhuinn, but at his own heart. The trouble was, you couldn’t argue with your nature—and he was learning that. In the breakup with Saxton. In coming out to his mom. In this moment here.

Qhuinn groaned as he lifted his torso up, and then scrubbed his face. When he dropped his hands, his cheeks were red and so were his eyes, but not because he was crying.

Undoubtedly his decade’s allotment of tears had come out the night before as he’d wept in relief that he’d saved a father’s life.

Had he known that Layla wasn’t doing well then?

“You know what the hardest thing is?” Qhuinn asked, sounding more like himself.

“What?” God knew there was a lot to choose from.

“I’ve seen the young.”

The fine hairs on the back of Blay’s neck tingled. “What are you talking about.”

“The night the Honor Guard came for me, and I almost died—remember?”

Blay coughed a little, the memory as raw and vivid as something that had happened an hour ago. And yet Qhuinn’s voice was even and calm, like he was referencing an evening out at a club or something. “Ah, yeah. I remember.”

I gave you CPR at the side of the goddamn road, he thought.

“I went up to the Fade—” Qhuinn frowned. “Are you okay?”

Oh, sure, doing great. “Sorry. Keep going.”

“I went up there. I mean, it was like…what you hear about. The white.” Qhuinn scrubbed his face again. “So white. Everywhere. There was a door, and I went up to it—I knew if I turned the knob I was going in, and I was never coming out. I reached for the thing…and that’s when I saw her. In the door.”

“Layla,” Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.

“My daughter.”

Blay’s breath caught. “Your…”

Qhuinn looked over. “She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes—” He touched next to his own. “—they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her—and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl.”

“Jesus.”

“I was wrong, though.” He rubbed his face a third time. “I was totally fucking wrong—and I really wish I hadn’t gone down this path. Biggest regret of my life—well, second-biggest, actually.”

Blay had to wonder what the hell could be worse than where the guy was at.

What can I do? Blay wondered to himself.

Qhuinn’s eyes searched his face. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Apparently he’d spoken out loud. “Yeah, I do.”

Qhuinn’s dagger hand reached out and cupped the side of Blay’s jaw. “You sure?”

The vibe instantly shifted. The tragedy was still very much with them, but that powerful sexual undertow came back between one heartbeat and the next.

Qhuinn’s stare started to burn, his lids dropping low. “I need…an anchor right now. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Blay’s body responded instantly, his blood spiking to the boiling point, his cock thickening, growing long.

“Let me kiss you.” Qhuinn groaned as he leaned in. “I know I don’t deserve it, but please…it’s what you can do for me. Let me feel you….”

Qhuinn’s mouth brushed his own. Came back for more. Lingered.

“I’ll beg for it.” More with the caress of those devastating lips. “If that’s what it takes. I don’t give a fuck, I’ll beg….”

Somehow, that wasn’t going to be necessary.

Blay allowed his head to get tilted so there was more room to maneuver, Qhuinn’s hand on his face both gentle and in command. And then there was more of the mouth-on-mouth, slow, drugging, inexorable.

“Let me inside you again, Blay….”

THIRTY-NINE

Assail got home about half an hour before dawn. Parking his Range Rover in the garage, he had to wait until the door went down to get out.

He had always considered himself an intellectual—and not in the glymera sense of the word, where one sat tall with self-importance and pontificated about literature, philosophy, or spiritual matters. It was more that there was little in life he could not apply his reasoning to and understand in its totality.

What in the hell had that woman done at Benloise’s?

Clearly, she was a professional, with both the proper equipment and know-how, and a practiced approach to infiltration. He also suspected she’d either gotten plans to the house or had been in there previously. So efficient. So decisive. And he was qualified to judge: He’d followed her the whole time she’d been inside, ghosting through the window she’d opened, sticking to the shadows.

Tracking her from behind.

But this he did not understand: What kind of thief went to the trouble of breaking into a secured house, finding a safe, burning it open, and discovering plenty of portable wealth to lift…but didn’t take anything? Because he’d seen full well what she’d had access to; as soon as she’d left the study, he’d hung back, freed the shelving section as she had done, and used his own penlight to glance in the safe.

Just to find out what, if anything, she’d left behind.

When he’d come back out into the house proper, avoiding any pools of light, he’d watched as she’d stood for a moment in the front hall, hands on her hips, head rotating slowly, as if she were considering her options.

And then she’d gone over to what had to be a Degas…and pivoted the statue only an inch or so to the left.

It made no sense.

Now, it was possible that she’d gone into the safe looking for something specific that was not in fact there. A ring, a bauble, a necklace. A computer chip, a SanDisk, a document like a last will and testament or an insurance policy. But the delay in the hall had not been characteristic of her previous alacrity…and then she’d moved the statue?

The only explanation was that it had to be a deliberate violation of Benloise’s property.

The problem was, when it came to vendettas against inanimate objects, it was hard to find much significance in her actions. Knock the statue over, then. Take the damn thing. Spray-paint it with obscenities. Beat it with a crowbar so it was ruined. But a minuscule turn that was barely noticeable?

The only conclusion he could draw was that it was a kind of message. And he didn’t like that at all.

It suggested she might know Benloise personally.

Assail opened the driver’s-side door—

“Oh, God,” he hissed, recoiling.

“We were wondering how long you were going to stay in there.”

As the dry voice drifted over, Assail got out and looked around the five-car garage in distaste. The stench was somewhere between three-day-old roadkill, spoiled mayonnaise, and denatured cheap perfume.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked the cousins, who were standing in the doorway from the mudroom.

Thank the Scribe Virgin, they came forward and closed the way into the house—or that hideous smell was going to flood the interior.

“It’s your drug dealers. Well, part of them, at any rate.”

What. The. Hell.

Assail’s long strides took him in the direction Ehric was pointing to—the far corner, where there were three dark green plastic bags thrown in a heap without care. Getting down on his haunches, he loosened the yellow tie of one, yanked apart the neck, and…

Met the sightless eyes of a human male he recognized.

The still-animated head had been severed cleanly from the spine about three inches below the jawline, and had oriented itself so that it could look out of its loosey-goosey coffin. The dark hair and ruddy skin were marked with black, glossy blood, and if the smell had been bad over by the car, up close and personal it made his eyes water and his throat tighten in protest.

Not that he cared.

He opened the other two bags and, using the Hefty plastic as a skin barrier, rolled the other heads into the same position.

Then he sat back and stared at the three of them, watching those mouths gape impotently for air.

“Tell me what happened,” he said darkly.

“We showed up at the prearranged meeting place.”

“Skating rink, waterfront park, or under the bridge.”

“The bridge. We arrived”—Ehric motioned to his twin, who stood silent and watchful beside him—“on time with the product. About five minutes later, the three of them showed up.”

“As lessers. ”

“They had the money. They were ready to make the transaction.”

Assail whipped his head around. “They didn’t come to attack you?”

“No, but we didn’t figure that out until it was too late.” Ehric shrugged. “They were slayers who came out of nowhere. We didn’t know how many of them there were, and we were not taking any chances. It wasn’t until we searched the bodies, and found the correct amount of money, that we realized they’d just come to do the deal.”

Lessers in the trade? This was a new one. “Did you stab the bodies?”

“We took the heads and hid what was left. The money was in a backpack on that one on the left, and naturally, we brought the cash home.”

“Phones?”

“Got them.”

Assail started to slide a cigar out, but then didn’t want to waste the taste. Reclosing the bags, he rose up from the carnage. “You are certain they were not aggressive?”

“They were ill-equipped to defend themselves.”

“Being badly armed does not mean they weren’t there to kill you.”

“Why bring the money?”

“They could have been dealing elsewhere.”

“As I said, it was in the correct amount and not one penny more.”

Abruptly, Assail motioned for them all to proceed into the house, and oh, the relief that came with clean air. With the screens slowly descending over all the glass, and the coming dawn getting shut out, he went to the wine bar, retrieved a double magnum of Bouchard Père et Fils, Montrachet, 2006 and popped the cork.

“Care to join me?”

“But of course.”

At the circular table in the kitchen, he sat down with three glasses and the bottle. Pouring the trio, he shared the chardonnay with his two associates.

He didn’t offer the cousins any of his Cubans. Too valuable.

Fortunately, cigarettes made an appearance and then they all sat together, smoking and taking hits of bliss off the knife edge of his Baccarat.

“No aggression from those slayers,” he murmured, leaning his head back and puffing upward, the blue smoke rising above his head.

“And the exact amount.”

After a long moment, he returned his eyes to level. “Is it possible the Lessening Society is looking to get into my business?”

Xcor sat in candlelight, alone.

The warehouse was quiet, his soldiers yet to come home, no humans or Shadows or anything walking above him. The air was cold; same with the concrete beneath him. Darkness was all around, except for the shallow pool of golden illumination he sat at the outer rim of.

Some thought in the back of his mind pointed out that it was getting dangerously close to dawn. There was something else, too, something he should have remembered.

But there was no chance of anything getting through his haze.

With his eyes focused on the single flame before him, he replayed the night over and over again.

To say that he had found the Brotherhood’s location was mayhap a stretch of the truth—but not a total fallacy. He’d been following that Mercedes out into the countryside incremental mile by incremental mile, with no real plan of what he could or should do when it stopped…when from out of nowhere, the signal of his blood in his Chosen’s body had not just been lost, but wildly redirected—sure as a ball thrown against a wall sharply changed its trajectory.

Confused, he had scrambled about, dematerializing this way, that way, up and back—as all the while, a strange feeling of dread came over him, like his skin was an antenna for danger and it was warning of imminent harm. Backing off, he had found himself at the base of a mountain, the contours of which registered, even in the bright, clear moonlight, as fuzzy, indistinct, unclear.

This had to be where they stayed.

Mayhap up at the top. Mayhap down the far side.

There was no other explanation—after all, the Brotherhood lived with the king to protect him…so undoubtedly, they would take precautions the likes of which no one else would, and perhaps have at their disposal technologies as well as mystical provisions that were otherwise unavailable.

Frantic, he had circled the vicinity, going around the base of that mountain a number of times, sensing nothing but the refraction of her signal and that strange dread. His ultimate conclusion was that she had to be somewhere in that vast, thick acreage: He would have sensed her traveling beyond it, in any direction, if she had come out on another side, and it seemed reasonable to assume that if she had gone to her sacred temple, upon some alternate plane of existence, or—Fates forbid—died, the resonant echoing of himself would have disappeared.

His Chosen was there somewhere.

Returning to the warehouse, to the present, to where he was now, Xcor rubbed his palms back and forth slowly, the rasping of the calluses rising up into the quiet. Over on the left, on the edge of the candlelight, his weapons were laid out one by one, the daggers, the guns, and his beloved scythe carefully arranged next to the messy pile of outer clothing he’d removed as soon as he’d chosen this particular spot on the floor.

He focused upon his scythe and waited for her to talk to him: She often did that, her blood-thirsty ways in lockstep with the aggression that flowed in his veins and defined his thoughts and motivated his actions.

He waited for her to tell him to attack the Brotherhood where they lay. Where their females were. Where their young slept.

The silence was worrisome.

Indeed, his arrival in the New World had been predicated upon a desire to gain power, and the biggest, boldest expression of that drive was overthrowing the throne—so, naturally, that was the course he had chosen. And he was making headway. The assassination attempt in the fall, which had without a doubt put death sentences upon his and his soldiers’ heads, had been a tactical move that had very nearly finished the whole war before it had gotten started. And his ongoing efforts with Elan and the glymera were promoting his agenda and shoring up his support in and among the aristocracy.

But what he had learned this night…

Fates, nearly a year’s worth of work and sacrifice and planning and fighting paled in comparison to what he had discovered this night.

If his hunch was correct—and how could it not be?—all he had to do was marshal his soldiers and begin a siege as soon as night fell. The battle would be epic, and the Brotherhood and First Family’s home permanently compromised no matter the outcome.

It would be a conflict for the history books—after all, the last time the royal homestead had been hit had been when Wrath’s sire and mahmen had been slaughtered before his transition.

History repeating itself.

And he and his soldiers had a serious advantage that those slayers back then had not possessed: The Brotherhood now had several bonded members. In fact, he believed they were all bonded—and that was going to split those males’ attentions and loyalties as nothing else could. Although their primary directive as the personal guard of the king was to protect Wrath, their very cores would be torn, and even the strongest fighter with the best of weapons could be weakened if his priorities were in two places.

Moreover, if Xcor or one of his males could get hold of even one of those shellans, the Brotherhood would fold—because the other thing that was true of them was that the pain of their Brothers was agony of their own.

One female of any of theirs would be all that was required, the ultimate weapon.

He knew it in his soul.

Sitting in the candlelight, Xcor rubbed his dagger hand against his other palm, back and forth, back and forth.

One female.

That was all he needed.

And he would be able to claim not only his own mate…but the throne.

FORTY

Qhuinn knew he’d put Blay in a totally unfair position.

Talk about pity fucks. But oh, God…looking into those blue eyes, those goddamn bottomless blue eyes that were open to him in the way they’d once been…it was all he could think about. And yeah, technically it was sex in terms of where he wanted his various body parts—well, one specifically. There was so much more to it than that, though.

He couldn’t put it into words; he just wasn’t that good working with syllables. But his desire for the connection was why he’d gone in for the kiss. He’d wanted to show Blay what he meant, what he needed, why this was important: His whole world felt like it was crashing and burning, and the loss that was happening just one door down the hall was going to hurt for a very long time.

Yet being with Blay, feeling the heat, making that contact, was like a promise of healing. Even if it lasted only as long as they were in this room together, he would take it, and hold it dear…and relive the memory when he needed to.

“Please,” he whispered.

Except he didn’t give the guy a chance to reply. His tongue snaked out and licked at that mouth, slipping inside, taking over.

And Blay’s answer was in the way he allowed himself to get pushed back into the cushions of the couch.

Qhuinn had two vague thoughts: One, the door was only closed, not locked—and he took care of that by willing the brass bolt into place. His second oh-hey-now was that they couldn’t trash the place. Going H-bomb all over his bedroom was one thing. This sitting room was public property, and done up all nice, with silk throw pillows and fancy-dancy drapes, and a whole lot of stuff that looked easily rippable, crushable, and, God forbid, stainable.

Besides, he had already wrecked his Hummer, torn up the garden, and then blendered his bedroom. So his Destructor quota had been waaaaaay reached for this calendar year…

Naturally, the most reasonable solution to not giving Fritz more to worry about was a quick trip down the hall to his own place, but as Blay’s talented hands shot around to the front of Qhuinn’s hips and started working his fly, he tossed that bright idea right into the shitter.

“Oh, God, touch me,” he groaned, thrusting his pelvis forward.

He was just going to have to be neat and tidy about this.

Assuming that was possible.

When Blay’s palm shoved into his leathers, Qhuinn’s body went into an arch, his torso bowing back as he started to get worked. The angle was kind of wrong, so there wasn’t a lot of friction, and his balls were getting pinched to fuck in the crotch of his pants, but holy hell, he didn’t care. The fact that it was Blay was enough for him.

Man, after how many years of blow jobs, hand jobs, and jerking off, this felt like the first time anyone had ever touched him.

He needed to return the favor.

Snapping into action, he threw his chest forward, bringing their faces close. Man, he loved the look in those blue eyes as Blay stared up at him, hot, wild, glowing.

Willing.

Qhuinn grabbed on hard and brought their mouths together, grinding against those lips, shooting his tongue out, taking like a crazy—

“Wait, wait.” Blay yanked back. “We’re going to break the couch.”

“Wha…?” The guy was apparently talking English, but damned if he could translate. “Couch?”

And then he realized that he’d pushed Blay so far back into the arm, the thing was starting to bend out. Which was what more than five hundred pounds of sex would do to a piece of furniture.

“Oh, shit, sorry.”

He was starting to retreat when Blay took control—and Qhuinn abruptly found himself off the sofa and onto the floor on his back, his legs shoved together, his leathers being yanked down to his ankles.

Perfect. Fucking. Idea.

Thanks to the fact that he went commando, his cock was all about the airtime, thick and straining as it popped out and lay, aching and swollen, upon his belly. Reaching down, he gave it a couple of strokes as Blay ripped off the shitkickers that blocked the way and tossed them aside. Pants were the next good-bye, and as God was his witness, Qhuinn had never been so glad to see a pair of leathers flying over a shoulder in his life.

And then Blay got to work.

Qhuinn had to shut his eyes as he felt his thighs get parted and a pair of fighter’s hands drag up the inside of his legs. He immediately let go of his erection—after all, why have his palm in the way when Blay’s could—

It wasn’t the guy’s hands that gripped him.

It was the warm, wet mouth Qhuinn had just kissed the hell out of.

For a split second, as the suction grabbed onto his head and shaft, he had a ball-shrinking thought that Saxton had taught Blay how to do this—his fucking cousin had done this to the guy, and had this done to him—

Stop it, he told himself. Whatever the history or the lessons learned, his erection was the one getting the attention at the moment. So fuck that shit.

To make sure that was clear, he forced his lids open. Fucking…hell…

Blay’s head was going up and down over his hips, his fist holding the base of Qhuinn’s cock, his other hand working his balls. But then, like he’d been waiting for eye contact, the guy pulled up to the top, popped the head free, and licked his lips.

“Wouldn’t want you making a mess in this nice room,” Blay drawled.

And then he extended the tip of his tongue to flick Qhuinn’s PA, the pink flesh teasing at the gunmetal gray hoop and ball—

“Fuck, I’m coming right now,” Qhuinn barked, a tremendous release boiling up. “I’m—”

He was powerless to stop things, any more than someone who’d jumped off a cliff could decide, like ten yards into the free fall, to pull back.

Except he didn’t want to put the brakes on.

And he didn’t.

With a mighty roar—that most certainly was heard elsewhere—Qhuinn’s spine jacked off the floor, his ass going tight, his balls exploding, his arousal kicking hard in Blay’s mouth. And it wasn’t just his sex that was affected. The release coursed throughout his whole body, shimmering energy surging through him as he dug his fingers into the rug he was on, and gritted his teeth…and came like a wild animal.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14