Lover Unbound(89)
John wanted to kick over the chair he'd been sitting on. And he almost did.
Instead, he used his hands to sign, Shit.
Blay took out a BlackBerry and dialed. "I'll just tell Qhuinn I'll come back and pick him up whenever he wants."
John waited and briefly imagined what Qhuinn was doing somewhere dim and semiprivate with one or both of those human women. At least he was having a good night.
"Yo, Qhuinn? Yeah, me and John are heading home. Wha—No, everything's cool. We just had a run-in with security… No, you don't have… No, everything's tight. No, really. Qhuinn, you don't have to stop—Hello?" Blay stared at his phone. "He's meeting us by the front door."
The two of them left the little room and weeded in and out of hot and sweaty humans until John felt rabid-claustrophobic—like he'd been buried alive and was breathing dirt.#p#分页标题#e#
When they finally made it to the front door, Qhuinn was standing to the left against the black wall. His hair was messed up, his shirttail was hanging out, his lips were red and a little swollen. Up close he smelled like perfume.
Two different kinds.
"You okay?" he asked John.
John didn't answer. He couldn't stand it that he'd ruined everyone's night and just kept walking to the door. Until he felt the weird calling again.
He paused with his hands on the push bar and looked over his shoulder. The head of security was there watching him with her smart eyes. She was, once again, in a bank of the shadows, a place he suspected she preferred.
A place he suspected she always used to her advantage.
As his body tingled from head to foot, he wanted to put his fist through the wall, through the door, through someone's upper lip. But he knew that wouldn't get him the satisfaction he craved. He doubted he had enough upper-body strength to punch through the sports section of a newspaper.
The realization naturally pissed him off even more.
He turned his back on her and walked out into the chilly night. As soon as Blay and Qhuinn joined him on the sidewalk, he signed, I'm going to wander around for a while. You can come with me if you like, but you're not going to talk me out of it. There is no way in hell I'm getting into a car and going home right now. Got it?
His friends nodded and let him lead the way, staying a couple feet behind him. Clearly, they knew he was a quarter of an inch away from losing it and needed the space.
As they went down Tenth Street, he heard them talking quietly, whispering about him, but he didn't give a shit. He was a bag of anger. Nothing more.
True to his weak nature, his march of independence didn't last long. Pretty damn quick, the March wind ate away the clothes Blay had let him borrow, and his headache got so bad he was gritting his teeth. He'd imagined he'd take his friends all the way to Caldwell's bridge and beyond, that his anger was so strong he would wear them out until they begged him to stop walking just before dawn.
Except, of course, his performance was grossly below expectation.
He stopped. Let's go back.
"Whatever you say, John." Qhuinn's mismatched eyes were impossibly kind. "Whatever you want to do."
They headed back for the car, which was parked in an open-air lot about two blocks from the club. As they came around the corner, he noticed that the building next to the lot was being worked on, its construction zone battened down for the night, tarps flapping in the wind, heavy equipment sleeping soundly. To John, it seemed desolate.
Then again, he could have been bathed in sunshine in a field of daisies and all he would have seen was shadows. There was no way the night could have been worse. No. Way.
They were a good fifty yards from the car when the sweet smell of baby powder floated over on the breeze. And a lesser stepped out from behind a bucket loader.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-one
Phury came to but didn't move. Which made sense, given the fact that one side of his face felt like it had been burned off. After a couple of deep breathers, he lifted a hand to the pounding ache. The bandages covered him from forehead to jaw. He probably looked like an extra on the set of ER.
He sat up slowly and his whole head throbbed, like a bicycle pump had been shoved up his nose and someone was working that bitch with a strong arm.
Felt good.
Shifting his feet off the gurney, he pondered the law of gravity and debated whether he had the strength to deal with it. He decided to give it a shot, and what do you know, he managed to weave his way to the door.#p#分页标题#e#
Two pairs of eyes flipped over to him, one diamond bright, the other forest green.
"Hi," he said.
V's woman came up to him, and her stare was all doctor-scan. "God, I can't believe how fast you heal. You shouldn't even be conscious, much less upright."