by J. R. Ward
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.
Whatever. He didn’t care what was expected of him—he was not going back and being condemned to a life of service.
He didn’t care if it was to the queen’s daughter.
TWELVE
It was late in the afternoon when Wrath hit the wall. He was at his desk, ass on his father’s throne, fingers running over a report written in Braille, when all of a sudden he couldn’t take one more damn word of text.
Shoving the papers aside, he cursed and ripped his wraparounds off his face. Just as he was about to throw them at a wall, a muzzle kicked his elbow.
Putting an arm around his golden retriever, he tightened his hand on the soft fur that grew along the dog’s flanks. “You always know, don’t you.”
George burrowed in deep, pressing his chest into Wrath’s leg—which was the cue that someone wanted to be up and over.
Wrath leaned down and gathered all ninety pounds up in his arms. As he settled the four paws, lion’s mane, and flowing tail so that everything fit, he supposed it was a good thing he was so fucking tall. Big thighs offered a bigger lap.
And the act of stroking all that fur calmed him, even though it didn’t ease his mind.
His father had been a great king, capable of withstanding countless hours of ceremony, endless nights filled with the drafting of proclamations and summonses, whole months and years of protocol and tradition. And that was before you layered on the perennial stream of bitching that came at you from every corner: letters, phone calls, e-mails—although of course the latters hadn’t been an issue in his pop’s era.
Wrath had been a fighter once. A damn good one.
Putting his hand up, he felt along the side of his neck, to the place where that bullet had entered him—
The knock on the door was sharp and to the point, a demand more than a respectful request for entrance.
“Come in, V,” he called out.
The astringent witch-hazel scent that preceded the Brother was a clear tip-off that somebody was feeling pissy. And sure enough, that deep voice had a nasty edge.
“I finally finished the ballistic testing. Damn fragments always take forever.”
“And?” Wrath prompted.
“It’s a one hundred percent match.” As Vishous sat down in the chair across the desk, the thing creaked under the weight. “We got ’em.”
Wrath exhaled, some of the impotent buzz draining from his brain.
“Good.” He ran his palm from the top of George’s boxy head down to his ribs. “This is our ammunition, then.”
“Yup. What was going to happen anyway is now nice and legal.”
The Brotherhood had known all along who had been on the trigger of the shot that had nearly killed him back in the fall—and the duty of picking off the Band of Bastards one by one was something they were looking at as so much more than a sacred duty to the race.
“Listen, I gotta be honest, true?”
“When are you not?” Wrath drawled.
“Why the hell are you tying our hands?”
“Didn’t know I was.”
“With Tohr.”
Wrath repositioned George so that the blood supply to his left leg wasn’t completely cut off by the dog’s weight. “He asked for the proclamation.”
“We all have a right to take out Xcor. That asshole is the prize we all want. It shouldn’t be restricted to just him.”
“He asked.”
“It makes it more difficult to kill the bastard. What if one of us finds him out there and Tohr isn’t with us?”
“Then you bring him in.” There was a long, tense silence. “Do you hear me, V. You bring that piece of shit in, and let Tohr do his duty.”
“The goal is to eliminate the Band of Bastards.”
“And how’s that keeping you from the job?” When there was no reply, Wrath shook his head. “Tohr was in that van with me, my brother. He saved my life. Without him…”
As the sentence drifted, V cursed softly—like he was running the math on that memory, and coming to the conclusion that the Brother who had had to cut a plastic tube free of his CamelBak and performed a tracheotomy on his king in a moving vehicle miles away from any medical help might have sliiiiiiiightly more right to kill the perp.
Wrath smiled a little. “Tell you what—just because I’m nice guy, I’ll promise you all a crack at him before Tohr kills the motherfucker with his bare hands. Deal?”
V laughed. “That does take the sting off of it.”
The knock that interrupted them was quiet and respectful—a couple of soft taps that seemed to suggest whoever it was would be happy to be blown off, content to wait, and hoping for an immediate audience all at the same time.
“Yeah,” Wrath called out.
Expensive cologne announced his solicitor’s arrival: Saxton always smelled good, and that fit his persona. From what Wrath remembered, in addition to the guy’s great
education and the quality of his thinking, he dressed in the fashion of a well-bred son of the glymera. I.e., perfectly.
Not that Wrath had seen it recently.
He put his wraparounds on in a quick surge. It was one thing to be exposed in front of V; not going to happen in front of the young, efficient male who was coming through the door—no matter how much Sax was trusted and consulted.
“What have you got for me?” Wrath said as George’s tail brushed back and forth in greeting.
There was a long pause. “Mayhap I should come back?”
“You can say anything in front of my brother.”
Another long pause, during which V was probably eyeing the attorney like he wanted to take a chunk out of his fancy, pretty-boy ass for suggesting there was an information divide that needed to be respected.
“Even if it’s about the Brotherhood?” Saxton said levelly.
Wrath could practically feel V’s icy eyes swing around. And sure enough, the brother bit out, “What about us.”
When Saxton remained silent, Wrath clued into what it was. “Can you give us a minute, V?”
“Are you fucking me?”
Wrath picked up George and put him down on the floor. “I just need five minutes.”
“Fine. Have fun with it, my lord,” V spat as he got to his feet. “Fuckin’ A.”
A moment later, the door slammed shut.
Saxton cleared his throat. “I could have come back.”
“If I’d wanted that, I would have told you to. Talk to me.”
A deep breath was taken and let out, as if the civilian was staring at that exit and wondering if V’s pissed-off departure might just cause him to wake up dead later on in the day. “Ah…the audit of the Old Laws is complete, and I can provide you with a comprehensive listing of all sections that require amendment, along with proposed rewording, and a timeline on which the changes could be made if—”
“Yes or no. That’s all I care about.”
Going by the whisper-soft sound of loafers treading an Aubusson, Wrath extrapolated that his lawyer was going for a little walkabout. From memory, he pictured the study, with its pale blue walls and its curlicue molding and all the flimsy, antique French furniture.
