“You’re my mother. You’re not a guest. Listen, what’s happened?”
The other female stood up. “May we go now?”
Man, that grid was totally closed off. Battened down. Draped in self-protection. As if she’d been attacked, somehow.
Now was clearly not the time to push.
“Ah, yeah. Sure. We can go.” Xhex shoved herself off the desk. “Do you want to check in with Tohr before you leave?”
“No.”
Xhex waited for some kind of explanation after that, but none came. Which told her plenty.
“What did he do,
Autumn lifted her chin, her dignity making her more beautiful than ever. “He told me what he thought of me. Quite succinctly. So at this point, I do believe he and I have nothing more to say to each other.”
Xhex narrowed her eyes, anger curling up in her gut.
“Shall we?” her mother said.
“Yeah… sure…”
But she was going to find out what the fuck had gone down; that was for certain.
SIXTY-THREE
After the shutters rose from their sills, and night whisked away all the light from the sky, Blay left the billiards room, intending to check in with Saxton in the library and then go up to shower for First Meal.
He didn’t make it much farther than the trunk of the mosaic apple tree in the foyer.
Stopping dead, he glanced down at his hips. A pounding erection had punched out of him, the arousal as unexpected as it was demanding.
What the… looking upward, he wondered who else had gone into her needing. It was the only explanation.
“You may not want the answer to that.”
Glancing over, he found Saxton standing in the archway of the library. “Who.”
But he knew. He fucking knew it.
Saxton swept his elegant hand behind himself. “Won’t you come and have a drink with me in my office?”
The male was aroused as well, the slacks of his fine herringbone suit pulled out of shape at the fly—except his face didn’t match the erection. He was grim.
“Come,” he repeated, motioning with his hand again. “Please.”
Blay’s feet went to work, taking him into the chaotic mess that the library had been in since Sax had been given his “assignment.” Whatever it was.
As Blay stepped inside, he heard the double doors click into place behind him, and searched his mind for something to say.
Nothing. He had… nothing. Especially as up above his head, on the ornate ceiling with its plaster molding, a muffled thumping started to sound out.
Even the crystals on the chandelier twinkled, as if the force of the sex was being transmitted through the floor joists.
Layla was in her needing. Qhuinn was servicing her—
“Here, drink this.”
Blay took whatever was offered and threw it back like his gut was on fire and the shit was water. The effect was the opposite of any extinguishing, though. The brandy burned its way down and landed in a ball of heat.
“Refill?” Saxton said.
When he nodded, the snifter disappeared and came back much heavier. After he sucked back number two, he said, “I’m surprised…”
At how awful this felt. He’d thought all the ties between him and Qhuinn had been severed. Ha. He should have known better.
He refused to finish the thought out loud, however.
“… that you can handle this disorder,” he tacked on.
Saxton went over to the bar and poured himself his own tipple. “The detritus is necessary, I’m afraid.”
As Blay walked over to the desk, he circled his brandy in his palm to warm it, and tried to talk in a sensible way. “I’m surprised you’re not doing this more on the computers.”
Saxton discreetly covered his work with yet another leather-bound volume. “The inefficiency of taking notes by hand gives me time to think.”
“I’m surprised you need it—your first instinct is always right.”
“You’re surprised about a lot of things right now.”
Only one, really. “Just making conversation.”
“But of course.”
Eventually, he looked over at his lover. Saxton had settled on a silk couch across the way, his legs crossed at the knee, his red silk socks peeking from beneath his precisely pressed cuffs, his Ferragamo loafers gleaming from regular polishing. He was every bit as refined and expensive as the antique he was perched on, a perfectly elegant male from a perfectly appointed bloodline with perfect taste and style.
He was everything anyone could want—
As that fucking chandelier twinkled overhead, Blay said roughly, “I’m still in love with him.”
Saxton dropped his eyes and brushed at the top of his thigh, as if there might have been a tiny piece of lint there. “I know. You thought you weren’t?”
As if that were rather stupid of him.
“I’m so fucking tired of it. I really am.”
“That I believe.”
“I’m so fucking…” God, those sounds, that muted pounding, that audible confirmation of what he had been ignoring for the past year—
On a sudden wave of violence, he pitched the brandy snifter at the marble fireplace, shattering the thing.
“Fuck!
Wheeling around, he went blindly for the doors, tripping over books, messing up the piles, nearly knocking himself over on the coffee table.
Saxton got there first, blocking the way out with his body.
Blay’s eyes locked onto the male’s face. “Get out of my way. Right now. You don’t want to be around me.”
“Is that not for me to decide.”
Blay shifted his focus to those lips he knew so well. “Don’t push me.”
“Or. What.”
As his chest started to pump, Blay realized the guy knew precisely what he was courting. Or at least thought he did. But something had come unhinged; maybe it was the needing, maybe it was… Shit, he didn’t know, and he really didn’t care.
“If you don’t get the fuck out of my way, I’m going to bend you over that desk of yours—”
“Prove it.”
Wrong thing to say. In the wrong tone. At the wrong time.
Blay let out a roar that rattled the diamond-paned windows. Then he grabbed his lover by the back of the head and all but threw Saxton across the room. As the male caught himself on that desk, papers went flying, the confetti of yellow legal pads and computer printouts falling like snow.
