Feeling like he'd been punched in the head, Qhuinn ran the cold water in the sink and splashed his face with the shit until his cheeks tingled and the tip of his nose started to go numb. As he toweled off, he thought back to that tat shop, to the bump and grind he'd had with the receptionist there.
The curtain that had separated the two of them from the rest of the place had been thin enough so that with his mismatched, but highly functional eyes, he'd been able to see everything that was going on on the far side. Everyone, too. So that when that chick had been on her knees in front of him and he'd turned his head, he'd looked out . . . and seen Blay.
The wet mouth he'd been drilling into abruptly morphed from some stranger's to his best friend's and that shift had cranked up the sex from servicing a generic need to something incendiary.
Something important.
Something raw and erotic and lose-your-soul right.
Which was why Qhuinn had pulled her up and spun her around and taken her from behind. Except as he'd pounded into his fantasy, he'd realized that Blay was watching him . . . and that had changed everything. He'd abruptly had to remind himself who he was fucking--which was why he'd pulled the girl's head up to his and forced himself to stare into her eyes.
He hadn't orgasmed.
As she'd come hard, he'd faked it--the truth was his erection had started to fade the instant he'd looked into her face. The only saving grace had been that she clearly hadn't known the difference, having been wet enough for the two of them--and besides, he'd fronted like a pro, laying it on thick like he was all satisfied and shit afterward.
But it had been a total lie.
How many people had he fucked like that in his lifetime, all wham-bamforget-I-ever-met-ya? Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds--and this was even though he'd been on the sex ride for only a year and a half. Thing was, though, those late nights at ZeroSum, picking up three and four chicks at a clip, could get you into those big numbers fast.
Of course, a lot of those sessions had been with Blay, he and his buddy balling the women together. The pair of them hadn't actually been with each other during those bathroom orgies at the club--but there had been a lot of watching. And wondering. And maybe a private hand job from time to time when the remembering got too vivid.
At least on Qhuinn's part.
That had all ended, though, when Blay had put the kibosh on it by realizing that he was gay and that he was in love with someone.
Qhuinn didn't approve of his choice. Not at all. Guy like Blaylock deserved somebody much, much better.
And it appeared he was heading down a road that would get him just that. Saxton was a male of worth. All the way around.
The fucker.
Looking up at the mirror over the sink, Qhuinn couldn't see a thing because it was totally dark in both the bathroom and the bedroom. And wasn't it just as well that he couldn't see his reflection.
Because he was living a lie, and in quiet moments like this he knew it with such conviction he got sick to his stomach.
His plans for the rest of his days . . . oh, his glorious plans.
Such perfectly "normal" future plans.
Involving a female of worth, not a long-term relationship with a male.
The thing was, males like him, males with something wrong with them . . . like, oh, say, one iris that was blue and another that was green . . . were despised in the aristocracy as evidence of a genetic failure. They were embarrassments to be hidden away, shameful secrets to be buried: He'd spent years watching his sister and his brother get elevated on pedestals while everyone who crossed his path performed evil-eye rituals to protect themselves.
His own father had hated him.
So it didn't take a therapist with a diploma on the wall to see that he just wanted to be "normal." And settling down with a female of worth, assuming he could find one who could stand to be mated to somebody with a genetic glitch in the system, was mission-critical to that happy little tag.
He knew if he got tangled up with Blay that wasn't going to happen.
Knew also that all it would take was one fuck and he was never going to leave the guy.
It wasn't that the Brothers didn't accept homosexuals. Hell, they were cool with it--Vishous had been with males and no one blinked an eye, or judged him, or cared. He was just their brother, V. And Qhuinn had crossed the line every now and again just for shits and giggles and they all knew about that and didn't give a crap.
The glymera cared, though.
And it galled him that he still gave a crap about those motherfuckers. With his family gone, and the nucleus of the race's aristocracy scattered around the East Coast, it wasn't as if he had any contact with that stick-up-the-ass crowd anymore. But he was a dog too well trained to be able to forget they existed.
He simply couldn't come out.
Ironic. His outside was all about the hard-core. Inside? He was straight-up pussy.