Blay groaned and closed his eyes. “What are you doing to me—”
“What I’d like to be doing to you, is more the point.” That hand, that talented hand, went for a stroll down Blay’s torso. “I’ll be quick about it and it’ll feel good for you, I’ll make sure of that.”
Well, duh, the male always did. The guy’s jaw was double jointed—
As Blay felt his own arousal get cupped through his fine slacks, he tottered on his feet—and sure, at least this time the wobble was not from terror. But it was not from relief, either. There was an operation looming, and that knife was still STICKING STRAIGHT UP out of Qhuinn’s pancreas.
Or whatever anatomy was playing pincushion.
“Gimme just a taste,” Qhuinn growled. “Come on, just a taste . . .”
Blay swayed so badly he had to catch himself on the gurney’s edge. “This isn’t the time—”
“Oh, I think it is.” That hand went for the zipper. “Tell me to open wide for you, Blay. Tell me you’re going to fill my mouth up. Tell me you’re going to stretch my lips and—”
The door swung open and Blay jumped back so far, so fast, he slammed into the wall, rattling the framed Claude Monet poster that added a slice of color to all the clinical stainless steel and tile. The good news? Ehlena, the clinic’s nurse, was busy rolling in a piece of equipment so she missed all the rearranging. On both his and Qhuinn’s part.
“—just need a quick EKG,” she was saying. “Won’t take a moment.”
Qhuinn’s voice dropped to a whisper as he looked up at Blay. “Six minutes. Still enough time. And my heart’s doing a-okay, so we can tell her to go.”
Blay glared at the fool. “You are out of your mind.”
“I could be out of my pants if you let me.”
“Ehlena?” Blay said.
“Yes?”
As Qhuinn got all kinds of hopeful, Blay crossed his arms over his chest. “Can you hook that thing up to his skull? I think that’s the area on him we need to check first.”
Qhuinn’s beautiful lips mouthed: Party pooper.
Ehlena laughed. “I’m not going to ask.”
“You’re a smart female,” Blay muttered.
As the nurse started affixing pads to various pulse points, he went still as reality sunk in. Fear, ever a tenacious interloper, made him focus on his mate with such intensity that it felt as though he was seeing that which was intimately familiar for the first time: The teardrop tattoo that had been colored in in purple when Qhuinn had been relieved of his ahstrux nohtrum position for John Matthew. Those incredible eyes, one like a piece of jade, the other like a Ceylon sapphire. The slashing brows that could fluctuate from aggression to flirtation in a second. The piercings in the ears, all gunmetal, the hoops running up from the lobe. The piercings elsewhere, winking in the bright light. The black hair that was cut in an asymmetric flop at the moment, part of it colored grape Kool-Aid. The thick neck, the heavy pecs, the rippled arms and broad shoulders.
The sacred scar of the Black Dagger Brotherhood right over the heart.
It was a helluva package. And yet as unforgettable as it was . . . the inside of the male was even more beautiful: The loyalty. The love. The soul that shone with such inner purity.
“I love you,” Blay said quietly. “More than the first moment I saw you and less than I will as the sun sets tomorrow.”
Ehlena hesitated with the tangle of colorful wires. “Would you guys like a moment?”
“Oh, no, we’re good.” Clearing his throat, Blay motioned her to come closer. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have started babbling—”
Qhuinn grabbed Blay’s arm. In a rare moment of feeling, the male said, “Yes, you should have. You should always tell me what you need me to hear.”
Tears, unexpected and embarrassing, sprung to Blay’s eyes, making it seem like he was looking through antique glass. In a flash of paranoia, he blinked them away. What if these were their last moments together and he wasted them on blurry vision?
“I love you, too,” Qhuinn said softly. “And I’m going to be just fine. I promise.”
After everything Blay’s true love had been through—from the way his parents had hated and shamed him when he’d been growing up, to the Honor Guard beating by his own blooded brother and three others, to the acting out and acting in of it all after his transition—it was rare for emotion to come through that facade of resolve and strength. As a result, when Qhuinn’s feelings were shown, they had a way of stopping the whole world. Blay never questioned his mate’s love, and he didn’t require the constant expression of it. He wasn’t needy like that. But oh, God, when he did see Qhuinn’s heart, it was like the sun coming out on a rainy day.
He had to stop and savor the warmth.
In the back of his mind, he heard Bitty’s voice: So you’re not properly mated?
Blay leaned down and kissed his mate. “In all the ways that matter.”
“What?” Qhuinn asked.
“Nothing.” Blay looked across Qhuinn’s bare chest at Ehlena. “I’ll get out of your way.”
The female in scrubs smiled. “We’re going to take excellent care of him. I swear it.”
Up at the mansion, Zsadist whispered down the Hall of Statues, heavy shitkickers silent over the Persian runner, big body moving through the still, lemon-scented air without a rustle, breathing even and inaudible as he passed by the Greco-Roman warriors that had been carved out of marble by human hands long dead and gone. All the stealth was not something he cultivated and not anything that was required given the safety and security of his home. But he had moved in the shadows as a shadow ever since his twin had gotten him out of Hell. He never liked to call attention to himself if he didn’t need to, whether it was traveling through a house, standing in a room, or sitting in a chair.
When you had had attention forced on you, when your body had been taken against your will, when you had been a toy used and abused at the whims of a malicious other, calendar nights could put the distance of an era between you and your nightmare, and geographic miles could likewise reinforce the difference between the there-and-then and the here-andnow, but you never lost your adaptive behavior. Like the slave bands tattooed around his neck and his wrists, and the S-shaped scar that intersected his face, and the way he preferred to be invisible even outside of hostility, his marble had been carved in a certain way. And as with the statues he currently walked by, his evolution was as irreversible and structural as their forever-frozen poses.
A millennium from now, the statues would still be as they were—and so he would ever be as he was. His artist was dead, too. He knew this because he had killed her and slept beside her skull for a century . . . and yet there had been a corner turned for him, an unexpected fresh start that had eased him in ways that even he was coming to trust.
Love had done more than turn his black eyes back to yellow.
Yet he still walked in silence.
Stopping in front of one of the lineup of bedroom suites, he went to knock—
The door opened sharply, and on the other side, the Chosen Layla was dressed in jeans and a SUNY Caldwell sweatshirt, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her glowing beauty the kind of thing that didn’t need makeup or fancy clothes for enhancement.