On the other side of the blue mats, Blay was on the machine closest to the door, sitting as still as the weights he was not lifting.
The expression on his face was volcanic. But he wasn’t mad.
No, he wasn’t.
He had a hard-on big enough to see from across the room. Maybe across the state.
Qhuinn opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.
In the end, he decided this was a prime example of how life never failed to surprise. Of all the situations he thought they would ever be in? This was not it. Not after…well, everything.
He pulled his earphones off and let them hang from his neck, the pounding beat downshifting from concert-roar to impotent little hiss.
Is that for me? he wanted to ask.
For a split second, he thought it might be, but then how arrogant was that? The guy had just finished giving a speech about how the two of them were nothing but hourly wagers working side by side on vats of trans fat. Then Blay shows up with an arousal the size of a crowbar—and the first thing to come to his mind was it could, possibly, maybe, sort of, kind of…be for him?
What a prick he was.
And PS, what the hell would he do if he suddenly found himself in a parallel universe, with Blay pulling a hey-how-’bouta in that department?
Of course he wanted the guy.
For fuck’s sake, he’d always wanted him—to the point where he had to wonder how much of that pushing-away thing that he’d done “for Blay’s benefit” hadn’t really been for his own.
Pondering that one, he noticed the glass down by the guy’s feet. Ah, alcohol was involved—he sincerely doubted the dark inch in that squat glass was Coca-Cola.
Shit, for all he knew, Saxton had just texted him a crotch shot and a half, and that was the cause of all that erection.
And wasn’t that a deflator.
Your cousin is giving me what I need all day long, every day.
“You got something else to say to me?” Qhuinn asked harshly.
Blay shook his head back and forth once.
Qhuinn frowned. Blay was not a hothead—never had been, and that was part of the reason that, for the longest time, they’d been so tight. Balance and all that crap. At the moment, however, the guy seemed like he was a thin inch from losing it.
Trouble in paradise between the happy couple?
Nah, they were too good together.
“Okay.” Man, the idea of hanging around here while Blay amped up for another session with Saxton the Magnificent was untenable. “I’ll see you later.”
As he walked by, he felt Blay’s eyes on him—but they weren’t on the level of his face. At least, it didn’t seem like it.
What the fuck was going on here?
Pushing out into the hall, he paused to double-check that the concrete walls weren’t melting and that he didn’t suddenly have fish for hands or something. Neither were true, but a trippy sense of unreality dogged him as he went down to the locker room. A shower was mandatory; he was covered in sweat, and as much as the doggen loved a good mess, he wasn’t about to give them more work just because he’d tried to kill himself in the gym—
Hard. Aroused. Ready for sex.
As that image of Blay battered around the inside of his skull, he closed his eyes, and then hit the door into the land of tile and water fixtures. He intended to go over to the showers directly, but ended up stalling out in the front half of the room, where the lockers were stacked in orderly rows and the benches ran down the middle of the aisles.
Parking it, he unlaced his Nikes, kicked them off, and peeled his socks free.
Totally fucking aroused.
Blay had been out of his mind for it.
For some reason, Qhuinn’s last two sexual encounters popped into his head. There had been that redheaded guy at the Iron Mask—the one he’d seduced and fucked in the bathroom. He’d picked the random out of the crowd for that one defining physical characteristic, and naturally the sesh had done nothing extraordinary for him. Then again, it had been like wanting Herradura, and putting ginger ale down your throat.
And then there had been the stuff with Layla—which had been nothing but a physically demanding job, like digging a trench or building a wall….
God, he felt like a louse for thinking like that—and he meant no disrespect to the Chosen. But at least it was fairly clear she was of a similar mind.
That was it for the last year. Just those two.
Nearly twelve months of nothing, and he hadn’t been jerking off, either. He just wasn’t interested in anything, like his balls had gone into hibernation.
Funny, right after his transition he’d banged anything with two legs and a beating heart, and as he struggled to remember some of those many faces—God knew he hadn’t bothered to get names a lot of the time—an uncomfortable feeling tightened his gut.
All that anonymous, nameless, faceless fucking…in front of Blay. Always with the guy, come to think of it. At the time, it had felt like a buddy/buddy kind of situation, but now he wondered.
Yeah, screw that. He knew what it had been about.
He was such a pussy, wasn’t he.
Getting to his feet, he stripped naked and let his wifebeater and his b-ball shorts flop onto the bench in a wet mess. Walking to the shower room, he picked one of the showerheads at random, cranked the thing on, and stepped under the spray. The water was nut-shrinking cold, but he didn’t care. He faced the onslaught, shutting his lids and opening his mouth.
That redhead in the club almost a year ago? When he’d been seducing the guy into the loo, it had been Blay in his mind the whole time.
It was Blay who’d he’d pushed back against the sink and kissed hard. Blay’s cock he’d sucked off, and Blay’s body he’d taken from behind and—
“For the love…” he groaned.
From out of nowhere, the image of his old friend sitting on the machine just now, his knees wide, his cock straining against the oh-so-thin material of those shorts entered his mind and shot down his spine, going straight between his legs. With a curse, he sagged and had to put a hand out on the slick tile.
“Oh…fuck…”
Leaning in, he rested his forehead on his arm and tried to concentrate on the feel of the water hitting the nape of his neck.
Not even close.
All he was aware of was the heartbeat in his cock.
Well, that and a ringing fantasy of him dropping to his knees and pressing in between Blay’s open thighs, licking his way into that mouth…while burrowing under the waistband of those shorts and starting to give the guy a hand job he would never fucking forget.
Among so many other things.
Turning around to face away from the spray, Qhuinn pushed his hands into his hair, sluicing it back, arching his spine.
He could feel his cock sticking straight out from his hips, begging for attention.
But he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Blay deserved better than that somehow—yeah, it didn’t make sense, but it just felt nasty to be jerking off in the shower over the guy’s arousal about someone else.
Hell, the guy’s partner.
Qhuinn’s own cousin, for chrissakes.
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.