“Is there anything I can do?”
So funny. Qhuinn had always felt as though he’d come out of his mother’s womb an adult. Then again, there had never been any cootchie-coo crap for him, no darling-little-boy stuff, no hugs when he hurt himself, no coddling when he was frightened. As a result, whether it was character or the way he’d been brought up, he’d never regressed. Nothing to go back to there.
Yet it was in the voice of a child that he said, “Make it stop?”
As if Blay alone had the power to work a miracle.
And then…the male did.
Blay extended his arms wide, offering the only haven Qhuinn had ever known.
“Make it stop?”
Blay’s body started to shake as Qhuinn uttered those words: After all these years, he’d seen the guy in a lot of moods and in a lot of circumstances. Never like this, though. Never…so completely and utterly ruined.
Never like a child, lost.
In spite of his need to keep really and truly far away from any emotional anything, his arms opened of their own accord.
As Qhuinn stepped in against him, the fighter’s body seemed smaller and frailer than it actually was. And the arms that wound around Blay’s waist simply lay against him as if there were no strength in the muscles.
Blay held them both up.
And he expected Qhuinn to pull back quickly. Usually, the guy couldn’t handle any kind of intense connection other than a sexual one for longer than a second and a half.
Qhuinn didn’t. He seemed prepared to stand in the doorway to the sitting room forever.
“Come here,” Blay said, drawing the male inside and shutting the door. “Over on the couch.”
Qhuinn followed behind, shitkickers shuffling instead of marching.
When they got to the sofa, they sat down facing each other, their knees touching. As Blay looked over, the resonant sadness touched him so deeply, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking that black hair— Abruptly, Qhuinn curled in against him, just collapsed, that body folding in half and all but pouring into Blay’s lap.
There was a part of Blay that recognized this was dangerous territory. Sex was one thing—and hard enough to handle, fuck him very much. This quiet space? Was potentially devastating.
Which was precisely why he’d gotten the hell out of that bedroom the day before.
The difference tonight, however, was that he was in control of this. Qhuinn was the one seeking comfort, and Blay could withdraw it or give it depending on how he felt: Being relied on was something altogether different from receiving—or needing.
Blay was good with being relied on. There was a kind of safety in it—a certainty, a control. It was not the same as falling into the abyss. And hell, if anyone would know that, it was him. God knew he’d spent years down there.
“I would do anything to change this,” Blay said while stroking Qhuinn’s back. “I hate that you’re going through…”
Oh, words were so damned useless.
They stayed that way for the longest time, the quiet of the room forming a kind of cocoon. Periodically, the antique clock on the mantel chimed, and then after a long while, the shutters began to descend over the windows.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Blay said as the steel panels locked into place with a chunk.
“You probably have to go.”
Blay let that one stand. The truth was not something he wanted to share: Wild horses, loaded guns, crowbars, fire hoses, trampling elephants…even an order from the king himself could not have pulled him away.
And there was a part of him that got angry over that. Not at Qhuinn, but at his own heart. The trouble was, you couldn’t argue with your nature—and he was learning that. In the breakup with Saxton. In coming out to his mom. In this moment here.
Qhuinn groaned as he lifted his torso up, and then scrubbed his face. When he dropped his hands, his cheeks were red and so were his eyes, but not because he was crying.
Undoubtedly his decade’s allotment of tears had come out the night before as he’d wept in relief that he’d saved a father’s life.
Had he known that Layla wasn’t doing well then?
“You know what the hardest thing is?” Qhuinn asked, sounding more like himself.
“What?” God knew there was a lot to choose from.
“I’ve seen the young.”
The fine hairs on the back of Blay’s neck tingled. “What are you talking about.”
“The night the Honor Guard came for me, and I almost died—remember?”
Blay coughed a little, the memory as raw and vivid as something that had happened an hour ago. And yet Qhuinn’s voice was even and calm, like he was referencing an evening out at a club or something. “Ah, yeah. I remember.”
I gave you CPR at the side of the goddamn road, he thought.
“I went up to the Fade—” Qhuinn frowned. “Are you okay?”
Oh, sure, doing great. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“I went up there. I mean, it was like…what you hear about. The white.” Qhuinn scrubbed his face again. “So white. Everywhere. There was a door, and I went up to it—I knew if I turned the knob I was going in, and I was never coming out. I reached for the thing…and that’s when I saw her. In the door.”
“Layla,” Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.
“My daughter.”
Blay’s breath caught. “Your…”
Qhuinn looked over. “She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes—” He touched next to his own. “—they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her—and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl.”
“Jesus.”
“I was wrong, though.” He rubbed his face a third time. “I was totally fucking wrong—and I really wish I hadn’t gone down this path. Biggest regret of my life—well, second-biggest, actually.”
Blay had to wonder what the hell could be worse than where the guy was at.
What can I do? Blay wondered to himself.
Qhuinn’s eyes searched his face. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Apparently he’d spoken out loud. “Yeah, I do.”
Qhuinn’s dagger hand reached out and cupped the side of Blay’s jaw. “You sure?”
The vibe instantly shifted. The tragedy was still very much with them, but that powerful sexual undertow came back between one heartbeat and the next.
Qhuinn’s stare started to burn, his lids dropping low. “I need…an anchor right now. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Blay’s body responded instantly, his blood spiking to the boiling point, his cock thickening, growing long.
“Let me kiss you.” Qhuinn groaned as he leaned in. “I know I don’t deserve it, but please…it’s what you can do for me. Let me feel you….”
Qhuinn’s mouth brushed his own. Came back for more. Lingered.
“I’ll beg for it.” More with the caress of those devastating lips. “If that’s what it takes. I don’t give a fuck, I’ll beg….”
Somehow, that wasn’t going to be necessary.
Blay allowed his head to get tilted so there was more room to maneuver, Qhuinn’s hand on his face both gentle and in command. And then there was more of the mouth-on-mouth, slow, drugging, inexorable.
“Let me inside you again, Blay….”
THIRTY-NINE
Assail got home about half an hour before dawn. Parking his Range Rover in the garage, he had to wait until the door went down to get out.
He had always considered himself an intellectual—and not in the glymera sense of the word, where one sat tall with self-importance and pontificated about literature, philosophy, or spiritual matters. It was more that there was little in life he could not apply his reasoning to and understand in its totality.