Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(5)
Author: J.R. Ward

"How’s it going?" Blay said on an exhale. "Your secret assignment, that is."

"Rather well. I’m almost finished."

"Does that mean you can finally tell me what it’s all been about?"

"You shall find out soon enough."

As the flapping of a shirt emanated from the walk-in, Blay turned his cigarette around and stared at the glowing tip. Saxton had been working on something top-secret for the king since the fall, and there had been no pillow talk about it – which was probably only one of the many reasons Wrath had made the male his private lawyer. Saxton had all the discretion of a bank vault.

Qhuinn, on the other hand, had never been able to keep a secret. From surprise parties to gossip to embarassing personal details like whether you’d gotten laid together by a cheap whore at –

"Blay?"

"I’m sorry, what?"

Saxton emerged, fully dressed in a tweed Ralph Lauren three-piecer. "I said, I’ll see you at Last Meal."

"Oh. Is it that late?"

"Yes. It is."

Guess they’d screwed their way through the first place setting of the day – which was how they’d rolled ever since…

God. He couldn’t even think about what had happened a mere week ago. Couldn’t even put into mental words how he felt about the one thing he’d never worried about coming to pass – right in front of his own eyes.

And he’d thought being rejected by Qhuinn was bad?

Watching the guy have a young with a female –

Shoot, he needed to respond to his lover, didn’t he. "Yes, absolutely. I’ll see you then."

There was a hesitation, and then Saxton came over and pressed a kiss to Blay’s lips. "You’re off rotation tonight?"

Blay nodded, holding the cigarette out of the way so the male’s beautiful clothes didn’t get burned. "I was going to read the New Yorker and maybe start From the Terrace."

Saxton smiled, clearly appreciating the appeal of both. "How I envy you. After I’m finished, I’m going to take a few nights off and just relax."

"Maybe we could go somewhere."

"Maybe we could."

The tight expression on that lovely face was quick and sad. Because Saxton knew that they weren’t going anywhere.

And not just because a Sandals all-inclusive was so not in their future.

"Be well," Saxton said, brushing his knuckle down Blay’s cheek.

Blay nuzzled that hand. "You, too."

A moment later the door opened and shut…and he was alone. Sitting on the messy bed, in the silence that seemed to crush him from all sides, he smoked his cigarette down to the filter, screwed it out in the ashtray, lit another.

Closing his eyes, he tried to remember the sound of Saxton moaning or the sight of the male’s back arching or the feel of skin on skin.

He could not.

And that was the root of the problem, wasn’t it.

"Let me get this straight," V drawled over the cell phone connection. "You lost your Hummer."

Qhuinn wanted to put his head through a plate-glass window. "Yeah. I did. So could you please – "

"How do you lose eight thousand pounds of vehicle?"

"That’s not important – "

"Well, actually, it is if you want me to access the GPS and tell you where to find the damn thing – which is why you’re calling, true? Or do you just think confession without detail is good for the soul or some shit."

Qhuinn gripped his phone hard. "Ileftthekeysinit."

"I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that."

Bullshit. "I left the keys in it."

"That was a dumb-ass move, son."

No. Fucking. Kidding. "So can you help me – "

"Just e-mailed you the link. One thing – when you recover the vehicle?"

"Yeah?"

"Check to see if the jackers took a moment to put the seat forward – you know, get comfortable and shit. Because they probably weren’t in a rush, what with having the keys." The sound of Vishous’s yukking it up was like getting paddled in the nuts with a car fender. "Listen, I gotta go. I need both hands to hold my gut as I laugh my ass off attcha. Later."

As the call went dead, Qhuinn took a moment to rein in the desire to throw the phone.

Yeah, ‘cuz losing that, too, was going to really help the situation.

Going into his Hotmail account, and wondering just how long it was going to take to live this one down, he got a bead on his frickin’ car.

"It’s heading west." He tilted the phone so John could see. "Let’s do this."

Dematerializing, Qhuinn was dimly aware that the level of his rage was disproportionate to the problem: As his molecules scattered, he was a lit fuse waiting to connect with some dy***ite – and it wasn’t just about him being a dumb-ass, or the missing car, or the fact that he was looking like an idiot to one of the males he respected most in the Brotherhood.

There was so much other shit.

Taking form on a rural road, he checked his phone again and waited for John to show up. When the fighter did, he recalibrated and they went farther west, closing in, cross-referencing the direction…until Qhuinn ghosted onto the precise strip of ice-covered asphalt his f**king Hummer was on.

About a hundred yards ahead of the vehicle.

Whatever SOB was behind the wheel was going sixty miles an hour in the snow, heading for a curve. What a…

Well, calling them stupid was exactly the kind of kettle-black thing the night had devolved into.

Let me shoot the wheels, John signed, like he knew a gun in Qhuinn’s hand was not the best idea.

Before the guy could up-and-out his forty, though, Qhuinn dematerialized…right onto the hood of the SUV.

He landed face-first into the windshield, his ass getting hit with the kind of breeze that turned him into a bug on all that glass. And then it was a case of oh-heeey-gurl-heeeey: Thanks to the glow from the dashboard, he caught the OMG! on the faces of the pair of guys in the front seat…and then his bright idea turned into goat f**k number two of the evening.

Instead of hitting the brakes, the driver wrenched the wheel, like he could maybe avoid what had already landed on the Hummer’s hood. The torque threw Qhuinn free, his body going weightless as he wrenched around in space to keep his eyes on his ride.

Turned out he was the lucky one.

As Hummers were designed and built for things other than aerodynamics and braking facility, the laws of physics grabbed onto all that top-heavy metal and rolled the shit. In the process, and in spite of the snow cover, metal met asphalt, and the high-pitched scream soprano’d out into night –

The thunderous impact of the SUV nailing some kind of solid object the size of a house cut off all that caterwauling. Qhuinn didn’t pay much attention to the crash, however, because he landed as well, the paved road smacking him on the shoulder and hip, his body doing its own version of greased pig down the snow-packed pavement –