From out of a dark room that was not his own, Blay stepped onto the terrace. He was wearing a black silk dressing robe and was in bare feet, his hair wet from the shower.
There were bite marks on his neck.
He stopped as Qhuinn stood up from the balustrade.
“Oh... hey,” Blay said, and immediately glanced back as if making sure the door he’d come through was shut.
Saxton was in there, Qhuinn thought. Sleeping on sheets they’d messed up royally.
“I was just going back inside,” Qhuinn said, jabbing over his shoulder with his thumb. “It’s too cold to be out here for long.”
Blay crossed his arms over his chest and looked out over the view. “Yes. It’s chilly.”
After a moment, the guy stepped over toward the balustrade and the scent of his soap burrowed into Qhuinn’s nose.
Neither of them moved.
Before he left, Qhuinn cleared his throat and threw himself off a bridge: “Was it okay. Did he treat you right?”
God, his voice was hoarse.
Blay took a deep breath. Then nodded. “Yeah. It was good. It was... right.”
Qhuinn’s eyes shifted away from his buddy—and just happened to measure the distance down to the stone patio below. Hmm... doing a swan dive onto all that slate might just get the images of those two out of his head.
Of course, it would also turn his brain into scrambled eggs, but really, was that such a bad thing?
Saxton and Blay... Blay and Saxton...
Shit, he’d been quiet awhile. “I’m glad. I want you to be... happy.”
Blay didn’t comment on that, but instead murmured, “He was grateful, by the way. For what you did. Thought it was a little overkill, but... he said you always were secretly chivalrous.”
Oh, yeah. Totally. That shit was his middle name, riiiiiight.
Wonder what the guy would think if he knew Qhuinn wanted to drag him out of the house by all that gorgeous blond hair. Maybe stretch him flat on the pea gravel by the fountain and run him over with the Hummer a couple of times.
Actually, no, gravel wasn’t the right surface. Better to drive the Hummer right into the foyer and do it there. You wanted something really hard beneath the body—like you would if you were pounding a cutlet on a cutting board.
He’s your cousin, for godsakes, a small voice in him pointed out.
And...? the larger half of him countered.
Before he totally freaked out and rocked a multiple personality disorder, he stepped back from the balustrade—and the whole homicidal thing. “Well, I’d better go. I’m heading out with John and Xhex.”
“I’ll be down in ten minutes. Just need to change.”
As Qhuinn looked at his best friend’s handsome face, he felt as if he’d never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been.
All that came to him was...
“Okay,” Qhuinn said. “See you down at First Meal.”
“Okay.”
Qhuinn got his ass in gear and walked over to the door to his room. As he slid his grip around the cold brass handle, his voice rang out of his throat, loud and clear: “Blay.”
“Yeah?”
“You take care of yourself.”
Now Blay’s voice was hoarse to the point of cracking. “Yeah. You, too.”
Because of course, “take care of you” was what Qhuinn always said when he was letting someone go.
He went back inside and shut the door. Moving mechanically, he got the holsters for his daggers and his guns and picked up his leather jacket.
Funny, he could barely remember losing his virginity. He recalled the female, of course, but the experience hadn’t made any kind of indelible impression. Neither had the orgasms he’d given and gotten since. Just a lot of fun, lot of sweaty gasping, lot of targets identified and realized.
Nothing but fucking that was easily forgotten.
Heading down to the foyer, though, he realized he was going to remember Blay’s first for the rest of his life. The two of them had been drifting apart for some time, but now... the fragile cord that had been the last of their connection, that dwindling tie, had been cut.
Too bad the freedom seemed like a prison instead of a horizon.
As his boots hit the mosaic floor at the bottom of the stairs, John Mellencamp’s old-school, Bic-lighter anthem echoed in his head—and though he’d always liked the song okay, he’d never truly understood what it meant.
Kind of wished that were still the case.
In John’s bathroom, Xhex stood under the hot water, her arms over her chest, her feet planted on either side of the drain, the water hitting her in the back of the head before blanketing her shoulders and flowing down her spine.
John’s tattoo...
Goddamn...
He’d done it as a memorial to her—putting her name in his skin so she’d be with him always. After all, there was nothing more permanent than that—hell, that was why in the mating ceremony males got their backs carved up: Rings could get lost. Documents could be shredded or burned or misplaced. But it wasn’t like you didn’t take your epidermis with you everywhere you went.
Man, she’d never really cared two shits about those females in the dresses with their hair so long and pretty and the makeup all over their pusses and the gentle nature crap. If anything, those trappings of femininity had seemed like a declaration of weakness. But now, for a quiet moment, she found herself envying the silk and perfume set. What pride they must take in knowing that their males carried their commitment around on their bodies for every night they were alive.
John would be a wonderful
Jesus... when he did mate, what the hell was he going to do about that tattoo? Put his female’s name under it?
Right, Xhex was not psyched at having top billing on his shoulders for the rest of his life. Really. Not at all. Because that would make her a selfish bitch, wouldn’t it.
Oh, wait, that had pretty much been her theme song.
Forcing herself out of the shower, she toweled off and traded all the toasty warm, humid air in the bath for the cold smack of the stuff in the bedroom.
She stopped just past the doorjamb. Across the way, the duvet had been straightened with a casual hand, what had been messy now pulled up sort of into place.
Her cilices were at the base of the mattress. And unlike the covers, they had been arranged with care, the links smoothed out, the two lengths lined up together.
She walked over and ran a fingertip down the barbed metal. John had kept them for her—and instinct told her he would have held on to them even if she had never come back.
Helluva legacy to leave behind.
And if she was staying in the house for the night, she would have put them on. Instead, she drew her leathers on without them, pulled on her muscle shirt, and gathered up her weapons and her jacket.
Thanks to her having played lawn sculpture under the showerhead, she’d missed First Meal so she went directly to the meeting in Wrath’s study. All of the Brotherhood as well as John and his boys were jammed into the
