Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(78)
Author: J.R. Ward

"Layla," Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.

"My daughter."

Blay’s breath caught. "Your…"

Qhuinn looked over. "She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes – " He touched next to his own. " – they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her – and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl."

"Jesus."

"I was wrong, though." He rubbed his face a third time. "I was totally f**king wrong – and I really wish I hadn’t gone down this path. Biggest regret of my life – well, second-biggest, actually."

Blay had to wonder what the hell could be worse than where the guy was at.

What can I do? Blay wondered to himself.

Qhuinn’s eyes searched his face. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

Apparently he’d spoken out loud. "Yeah, I do."

Qhuinn’s dagger hand reached out and cupped the side of Blay’s jaw. "You sure?"

The vibe instantly shifted. The tragedy was still very much with them, but that powerful sexual undertow came back between one heartbeat and the next.

Qhuinn’s stare started to burn, his lids dropping low. "I need…an anchor right now. I don’t know how else to explain it."

Blay’s body responded instantly, his blood spiking to the boiling point, his c**k thickening, growing long.

"Let me kiss you." Qhuinn groaned as he leaned in. "I know I don’t deserve it, but please…it’s what you can do for me. Let me feel you…."

Qhuinn’s mouth brushed his own. Came back for more. Lingered.

"I’ll beg for it." More with the caress of those devastating lips. "If that’s what it takes. I don’t give a f**k, I’ll beg…."

Somehow, that wasn’t going to be necessary.

Blay allowed his head to get tilted so there was more room to maneuver, Qhuinn’s hand on his face both gentle and in command. And then there was more of the mouth-on-mouth, slow, drugging, inexorable.

"Let me inside you again, Blay…."

Chapter Thirty-nine

Assail got home about half an hour before dawn. Parking his Range Rover in the garage, he had to wait until the door went down to get out.

He had always considered himself an intellectual – and not in the glymera sense of the word, where one sat tall with self-importance and pontificated about literature, philosophy, or spiritual matters. It was more that there was little in life he could not apply his reasoning to and understand in its totality.

What in the hell had that woman done at Benloise’s?

Clearly, she was a professional, with both the proper equipment and know-how, and a practiced approach to infiltration. He also suspected she’d either gotten plans to the house or had been in there previously. So efficient. So decisive. And he was qualified to judge: He’d followed her the whole time she’d been inside, ghosting through the window she’d opened, sticking to the shadows.

Tracking her from behind.

But this he did not understand: What kind of thief went to the trouble of breaking into a secured house, finding a safe, burning it open, and discovering plenty of portable wealth to lift…but didn’t take anything? Because he’d seen full well what she’d had access to; as soon as she’d left the study, he’d hung back, freed the shelving section as she had done, and used his own penlight to glance in the safe.

Just to find out what, if anything, she’d left behind.

When he’d come back out into the house proper, avoiding any pools of light, he’d watched as she’d stood for a moment in the front hall, hands on her hips, head rotating slowly, as if she were considering her options.

And then she’d gone over to what had to be a Degas…and pivoted the statue only an inch or so to the left.

It made no sense.

Now, it was possible that she’d gone into the safe looking for something specific that was not in fact there. A ring, a bauble, a necklace. A computer chip, a SanDisk, a document like a last will and testament or an insurance policy. But the delay in the hall had not been characteristic of her previous alacrity…and then she’d moved the statue?

The only explanation was that it had to be a deliberate violation of Benloise’s property.

The problem was, when it came to vendettas against inanimate objects, it was hard to find much significance in her actions. Knock the statue over, then. Take the damn thing. Spray-paint it with obscenities. Beat it with a crowbar so it was ruined. But a minuscule turn that was barely noticeable?

The only conclusion he could draw was that it was a kind of message. And he didn’t like that at all.

It suggested she might know Benloise personally.

Assail opened the driver’s-side door –

"Oh, God," he hissed, recoiling.

"We were wondering how long you were going to stay in there."

As the dry voice drifted over, Assail got out and looked around the five-car garage in distaste. The stench was somewhere between three-day-old roadkill, spoiled mayonnaise, and denatured cheap perfume.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked the cousins, who were standing in the doorway from the mudroom.

Thank the Scribe Virgin, they came forward and closed the way into the house – or that hideous smell was going to flood the interior.

"It’s your drug dealers. Well, part of them, at any rate."

What. The. Hell.

Assail’s long strides took him in the direction Ehric was pointing to – the far corner, where there were three dark green plastic bags thrown in a heap without care. Getting down on his haunches, he loosened the yellow tie of one, yanked apart the neck, and…

Met the sightless eyes of a human male he recognized.

The still-animated head had been severed cleanly from the spine about three inches below the jawline, and had oriented itself so that it could look out of its loosey-goosey coffin. The dark hair and ruddy skin were marked with black, glossy blood, and if the smell had been bad over by the car, up close and personal it made his eyes water and his throat tighten in protest.

Not that he cared.

He opened the other two bags and, using the Hefty plastic as a skin barrier, rolled the other heads into the same position.

Then he sat back and stared at the three of them, watching those mouths gape impotently for air.

"Tell me what happened," he said darkly.

"We showed up at the prearranged meeting place."

"Skating rink, waterfront park, or under the bridge."