Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last by J.R. Ward Page A

Payne’s
hellren
. He didn’t give a crap about much at the moment.
    Manello’s mouth started to move and Blay passed the time watching the man’s lips form and release syllables. A moment later, a good-bye of some sort was exchanged, and then Blay was alone with the door again.
    It seemed like a planker move to just stand there, and he’d told the good doctor he was going in. And besides, there were, what, twenty-five machines in the room? Plus barbells and free weights. Treadmills. StairMasters, ellipticals…plenty to go around.
    I’m not in love with Layla.
    With a curse, Blay pushed his way in and braced himself for an awkward oh-hey-it’s-you. Except Qhuinn didn’t even notice the arrival. Instead of going with the overhead music, the guy was wearing headphones that went all around his ears, and he’d moved over to the chin-up bar so he was facing away, into the concrete wall.
    Blay stayed as far back as possible, hopping on a random machine—pecs. Whatever.
    After putting down his glass and adjusting the pin on the stack of weights, he settled onto the padded seat, gripped the double handles, and started pushing out from his chest.
    All he had to look at was Qhuinn.
    Or maybe that was more because his eyes refused to go anywhere else.
    The male was wearing a black wifebeater that put those tremendous shoulders of his on full display…and the muscles along them flexed up hard as he reached the apex of the pull, the ridges and contours those of a fighter…not a lawyer—
    Blay stopped himself right there.
    It was unfair to the point of nausea to make any comparison like that, ever. After the past year or so, he knew Saxton’s body nearly as well as his own, and the male was beautifully built, so lean and elegant—
    Qhuinn ground out another lift, the weight of his heavy lower body straining the strength in those arms and that torso. And, thanks to his exertions, sweat had broken out all over his skin, making him glow under the lights.
    The tattoo on the back of his neck shifted as he released and descended to hang from his grip, and then it was up again. And down. And up.
    Blay thought about the way the male had looked as they’d turned over the Hummer: powerful, masculine…erotic.
    This was not happening.
    He was not, in fact, sitting here, eyeing Qhuinn like this—
    Images filtered in from years past, turning his brain into a television screen. He saw Qhuinn bending over a human woman who had been laid out ass up on the edge of a flat table, his hips pumping as he fucked her, his hands locked onto her hips to hold her in place. He hadn’t had a shirt on at the time, and his shoulders had been tight, as they were now.
    Hard body being used well.
    There were so many pictures like that, with Qhuinn in different positions with different people, male and female. In the beginning, right after their transitions, there had been such a feeling of excitement as the two of them had gone on the hunt together—or rather, Qhuinn had gone trolling and Blay had taken whatever had been brought back.So much sex with so many people—although at that point, Blay had stuck only with the females.
    Maybe because he’d known they were safe, that they didn’t “count” in so many ways.
    So uncomplicated in the beginning. But sometime along the way, things had started to shift—and he’d begun to realize that as he watched Qhuinn with the randoms, he was picturing himself under that body, receiving what the guy was so good at giving. After a time, it hadn’t been some stranger’s mouth on Qhuinn’s cock; it was his own. And when those orgasms came, and they always did, he was the one taking them in. It was his hands on Qhuinn’s body, and his lips locked hard, and his legs that were spread.
    And that had fucked everything up.
    Shit, he could remember staying awake during the day and staring at his ceiling, telling himself that when they were yet again at the club, in those bathrooms, or wherever it went down, he