Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

  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 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 condo: modern, airy, and uncluttered. Which meant that as he poured himself some more caffeine, he could see his brother in his peripheral vision.

  Man, sometimes he hated this place: Unless he was in his bedroom with the door shut, he couldn’t get a break from those damn eyeballs.

  “Am I reading or talking?” iAm said calmly, like he didn’t care either way.

  Man, Trez desperately wanted to tell the guy to shove his nose back into the Times, but that was like a defeat.

  “G’head.” Trez went back to his chair and settled in for more ass kicking.

  “You’re not behaving in a professional manner.”

  “You eat your own food at Sal’s.”

  “My linguine with clam sauce doesn’t require a restraining order when I decide the next night I want the Fra Diavolo.”

  Good point. And somehow, that made him feel nearly violent.

  “I know what you’re doing,” iAm said steadily. “And why.”

  “You’re not a virgin, of course you do—”

  “I know what they sent you.”

  Trez froze. “How.”

  “When you didn’t respond, I received a phone call.”

  Trez pushed the rug with his foot and turned himself around to face
the river. Shit. He figured he’d clear the air with this, you know, give his brother a little bitch session so that the two of them could go back to being normal—usually they were close as skin to bone, and the relationship was as fundamental as that to him.

  He could handle just about anything except friction with his brother.

  Unfortunately, the problems that had gotten alluded to over there were about the only thing in that “just about anything.”

  “Ignoring it will not make it go away, Trez.”

  This was said with a certain gentleness of tone—like the guy felt bad for him.

  As Trez looked out over the river, he imagined that he was at his club, with humans all around and cash trading hands and the women who worked there doing their thing in the back. Nice. Normal. In control and comfortable.

  “You have responsibilities.”

  Trez tightened his grip on his mug. “I didn’t volunteer for them.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He spun around so fast, hot coffee went flying and landed on his thigh. He ignored the sting. “It should. It fucking should. I’m not some inanimate object that can be given to somebody. That whole thing is bullshit.”

  “Some would find it an honor.”

  “Well, I don’t. I’m not getting mated to that female. I don’t care who she is or who set it up or how ‘important’ it is to the s’Hisbe.”

  Trez braced himself for a barrage of oh-yeah-you-do. Instead, his brother looked sad, as if he wouldn’t have wanted the curse, either.

  “I’ll say it again, Trez. This is not just magically going to disappear. And trying to fuck your way out of it? That’s not only futile, it’s potentially dangerous.”

  Trez rubbed his face. “The women are just humans. They don’t matter.” He turned back to the river again. “And frankly, if I don’t do something, I’m going to go insane. A couple of orgasms has to be better than that, right?”

  As silence resumed, he knew his brother disagreed with him. But proof positive that his life was in the shitter was the fact that the conversation dried up at that point.

  iAm apparently wasn’t into kicking a guy when he was down.