Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(65)
Author: J.R. Ward

He feared it was a one-and-only.

Don’t you touch me like that.

Groaning, he rubbed at his head.

"It’s not about your eyes," Phury said.

"I’m sorry?"

Phury glanced into the backseat. "Hey, how we doing?" he asked the females. When Layla and Doc Jane answered in some sort of affirmative, he nodded. "Listen, I’m going to shut the partition for a sec, ‘kay? All good up here."

The Brother didn’t give them a chance to answer one way or another, and Qhuinn stiffened in his seat as the opaque shield rose up, cutting the sedan into two halves. He wasn’t going to run from any kind of confrontation, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to round two of this one – and if Phury was cutting the pair in the back off, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

"Your eyes are not the problem," the Brother said.

"Excuse me?"

Phury looked over. "My being pissed off about this has got nothing to do with any defect. Layla’s in love with you – "

"No, she’s not."

"See, you’re really pissing me off right now."

"Ask her."

"While she’s miscarrying your young?" the Brother snapped. "Yeah, I’ll do that."

As Qhuinn winced, Phury continued. "See, here’s the thing with you. You like living on the edge and being all wild – frankly, I think it helps you come to terms with the bullshit your family put you through. If you iconoclast everything? Nothing can hurt you. And believe it or not, I don’t have a problem with that. You do you, and get through your nights and your days any way you can. But as soon as you break the heart of an innocent – especially if she’s under my care? That’s when you and I have an issue."

Qhuinn looked out his window. First off, props to the big man over there. The idea that there was a judgment against Qhuinn based on his character instead of a genetic mutation he hadn’t volunteered for was a refreshing change. And hey, it wasn’t that he didn’t agree with the guy – at least not until about a year ago. Back before then? Hell, yeah, he’d been out of control on a lot of levels. But things had changed. He had changed.

Evidently, Blay becoming unavailable was the kind of boot in the balls he’d needed to finally grow the f**k up.

"I’m not like that anymore," he said.

"So you are in fact prepared to mate her?" When he didn’t reply, Phury shrugged. "And there you go. Bottom line – I’m responsible for her, legally and morally. I may not be behaving like the Primale in some respects, but the rest of the job description I take pretty goddamn seriously. The idea that you got her into this mess makes me sick to my stomach, and I find it very hard to believe that she didn’t do this to please you – you said you both wanted a young? Are you sure that it wasn’t just you, and she did it because she wanted to make you happy? That’s very much her way."

This was all presented as a rhetorical. And it wasn’t like Qhuinn could criticize the logic, even if it happened to be wrong. But as he dragged a hand through his hair, the fact that Layla was the one who had come to him was something he kept to himself. If Phury wanted to think it was all his fault, that was fine – he’d carry that load. Anything to take the pressure and attention off Layla.

Phury stared across the seats. "It wasn’t right, Qhuinn. That’s not what a real male does. And now look at the situation she’s in. You did this to her. You put her in the backseat of this car, and that’s just wrong."

Qhuinn squeezed his eyes shut. Well, wasn’t that going to be banging around the inside of his head for the next hundred years. Give or take.

As they started over the bridge and left the twinkling lights of downtown behind, he kept his godforsaken yap shut, and Phury fell silent as well.

Then again, the Brother had said it all, hadn’t he.

Chapter Thirty-three

Assail ended up further tracking his prey from behind the wheel of his Range Rover. Much cozier this way – and it wasn’t as if the woman’s location was an issue now: While he’d been waiting by the Audi for her to come off his property, he’d attached a tracking device to the underbelly of her side-view mirror.

His iPhone took care of the rest.

After she’d left his neighborhood in a rush – following his deliberate dematerialization from sight just to further destabilize her – she had crossed the river and headed around to the backside of the city, where the houses were small, packed in close to one another, and finished with aluminum siding.

As he trolled behind her, keeping at least two blocks between their vehicles, he regarded the brightly colored lights in the neighborhoods, the thousands of strands of twinklers strung among bushes and hanging from roof lips and boxing out windows and doorframes. But that wasn’t the half of it. Manger scenes placed prominently on tiny front lawns were spotlit, and there were also fat white snowmen with red scarves and blue pants that glowed from within.

In contrast to the seasonal accoutrements, he was willing to bet the Virgin Mary statues were permanent.

When her vehicle stopped and stayed that way, he closed in, parking four houses down and killing his lights. She didn’t get out of the car right away, and when she finally did, she wasn’t wearing the parka and tight ski pants she’d had on whilst spying on him. Instead, she had changed into a thick red sweater and a pair of jeans.

She’d let her hair down.

And the heavy, brunette weight reached below her shoulders, curling at the ends.

He growled in the darkness.

With quick, easy strides, she surmounted the four shallow concrete steps leading up to the modest entrance of the home. Propping open the screen door with its curlicue metalwork, she buttressed the thing with her hip, let herself in with a key, and closed things back up.

As a light came on downstairs, he watched her shape walk through the front room, the thin privacy drapes giving him only a sense of her movement, not any kind of clear view.

He thought of his own screens. It had taken him a long time to perfect that invention, and the Hudson River house had been perfect for piloting them. The barriers worked even better than he’d anticipated.

But she was smart enough to have picked up on the anomalies, and he wondered what the giveaway had been.

On the second floor, a light came on, as if someone who had been resting had stirred at her arrival.

His fangs pulsed. The idea that some human man was awaiting her in their mated bedroom made him want to establish his dominance – even though that didn’t make sense. After all, he was tracking her for his own self-protection, and nothing more.

Absolutely nothing more.

Just as his hand sought the car door handle, his phone rang. Good timing.

When he saw who it was, he frowned and put the cell up to his ear. "Two calls in such a short time. To what do I owe this honor?"