Well, that wasn’t possible. No one forced Qhuinn to do anything.
And yeah, sure, there were a lot of good reasons for the way he was. His family treating him like a curse. The glymera looking down on him. Him having been rootless all his life. But whatever the stressors, at the end of the day, the male was going to run from anything that was too complicated, or required something from him.
Probably the only thing that could change that was a young.
So no matter what he said now, there was no doubt he was in love with Layla, but having been through the needing with her, and now waiting for the results, he was losing his mind from worry and pulling away from her.
And therefore standing here at the side of the road, blabbering about things that made no damned sense.
“I wish you both the very best,” Blay said, his heart hammering in his chest. “I honestly do. I really hope this works out well for both of you.”
In the tense quiet, Blay pulled himself out of the hole he’d once again fallen into, clawing his way back to the surface, away from the painful, burning agony at the center of his soul.
“Now, can we get in the truck and finish our job?” he said evenly.
Qhuinn’s hands lifted briefly to his face. Then he ducked his head, shoved those bleeding knuckles into the pockets of his leathers, and started back for the flatbed.
“Yeah. Let’s do that.”
SIX
“Oh, my God, I’m going to come—I’m going to come—”
Farther south, in downtown Caldwell, in the parking lot behind the Iron Mask, Trez Latimer was happy to hear the newsflash—and not surprised. But nobody else in the tricounty area needed the update.
As he worked himself in and out of the very willing participant underneath his body, he shut her up by kissing her hard, his tongue entering that hot mouth, all that unnecessary commentary getting cut off.
The car they were in was cramped and smelled like the woman’s perfume: sweet and spicy and cheap—shit, next time he was going to pick a volunteer with an SUV or, better yet, a Mercedes S550 with some proper space in the back.
Clearly, this Nissan product had not been built to house two seventy-five fucking the brains out of a half-naked dental assistant. Or had she been a paralegal?
He couldn’t remember.
And he had more immediate issues to worry about. With an abrupt shift, he broke off the liplock because the closer he got to his own release, the farther his fangs extended from his upper jaw—and he didn’t want to nick her by mistake: The taste of fresh blood would pitch him right over another more dangerous kind of edge, and he wasn’t sure that feeding from her was a good idea—
Scratch that.
It was a bad idea. And not because she was just a human.
Someone was watching them.
Lifting his head, he looked out of the backseat window. As a Shadow, his eyes were three to four times more perceptive than those of a normal vampire, and he was easily able to penetrate the darkness.
Yup, someone was popcorn-and-Milk-Dudding it from over on the left by the staff entrance.
Time to wrap this up.
Immediately he took control, reaching in between their bodies, finding the woman’s sex, and teasing her up as he continued to penetrate her, making her come so hard she jacked her head back and slammed it into the door.
No orgasm for him.
But whatever. Somebody loitering around took this fun-and-games quickie into different territory, and that meant he had to cut the crap. Even if he didn’t get off.
He had a number of enemies thanks to his various associations.
And then there were…complications…that were all his own.
“Oh, my fucking God—”
Going by the explosive exhale, all that torquing, and those pulses that gripped Trez’s thick cock, the dental assistant–paralegal–vet tech was having a rocking good time. He, however, had already pulled out of this nonsense mentally and might as well have been stalking out of the car, gunning for that—
It was a female. Yeah, whoever it was was definitely of feminine derivation—
Trez frowned as he realized who it was.
Shit.
Then again, at least it wasn’t a lesser. A symphath. A drug dealer he needed to take care of. A rival pimp with an opinion. A vampire who was out of line. iAm, his brother—
But nah. Just a harmless woman, and too bad there was no going back to his slice of bliss. Mood was ruined.
The dental assistant/paralegal/vet tech/hairdresser was panting like she’d tried to put a fireman hold on a piano. “That was…amazing…that…was…”
Trez pulled out and tucked his cock back behind his fly. Chances were good he was going to have a case of neon balls in a half hour, but he’d deal with that when it came.