Lover At Last(29)

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 wouldn’t do that anymore. But each time they went out, it was like an addict being offered the precise flavor of pill he needed.

Then there had been those two kisses—the first one down the hall from here, in the clinic’s examination room. And he’d had to beg for it. And then their second up in his bedroom, just before he’d gone out with Saxton for the first time.

He’d had to beg for that, too.

Abruptly, Blay gave up pretending that he was actually pumping iron and put his hands down on his thighs.

He told himself to leave. Just get the fuck off the seat and walk out before Qhuinn moved to the next thing and his cover was blown.

Instead, he found his eyes back on those shoulders and that spine, on the tight waist and tighter ass, on those muscular legs.

Maybe it was the alcohol. The afterburn of that argument in the flatbed. The whole sex-with-Layla thing…

But at the moment, he was sexed up. Hard as stone. Ready for it.

Blay looked down his chest to the front of his loose shorts—and felt like shooting himself in the head.

Oh, Jesus, he needed to get out of here right now.



As Qhuinn continued set after set of pull-ups, his hands were numb, and he felt like his biceps were being peeled from his bones with dull knives—and that was just mindless chatter in comparison to his shoulders. They were the real problem. Someone clearly had come up from behind, put varnish stripper across them, and then buffed them with an industrial sander.

No idea how many reps he’d done. No clue how many miles he’d run. No count of the sit-ups, squats, or lunges.

He just knew he was going to keep going.

Goal: total exhaustion. He wanted to pass out the moment he went upstairs and got horizontal on his bed.

Dropping from the bar, he put his hands on his hips, lowered his head, and breathed heavily. His right shoulder immediately seized up, but that was his dominant side, so he expected it. To loosen the knot of muscles, he swept his arm around in a big circle as he turned—

Qhuinn froze.

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?