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“Nah. I don’t say that to anyone. They take me as I come. They can’t handle it, it’s their problem.”
Picking up a sterile pack of gauze, Qhui
Blay’s rib cage expanded and compressed. “Maybe because you don’t want another defect?”
Qhui
“You sure about that.”
“Look, if I cared what people thought, do you think I’d do what I do already?” He went around and blotted the slice on Blay’s chest, then tended to the wound on his shoulder. “Besides, my family’s dead. Who’ve I got to impress anymore?”
“Why were you so cruel?” Blay asked in a dignified voice. “Back in the tu
Qhui
Blay laughed for real, and the sound was nice. “You are so arrogant.”
“Duh. But it’s true, isn’t it.” Qhui
As he came back around in front, Blay lifted his head and his eyes. Their stares met, and Qhui
Rubbing his thumb gently back and forth, he whispered, “I want you with someone who’s going to be worthy of you.
Treat you right. Be only with you. I’m not that guy. Even if I settled with a female… shit, I tell myself I could be with just her, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe that.”
The yearning in the blue eyes staring up at him broke his heart. It totally did. And he couldn’t imagine what it was that Blay saw in him that made him so special.
“What is wrong with you,” he whispered, “that you care so much about me?”
Blay’s sad smile added about a million years to his age, lining his face with the kind of knowledge that came only after life kicked you in the nuts a number of times. “What is wrong with you that you can’t see why I would?”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Leave me if you want, but don’t do it for my own good. I’m not a child, and I don’t break easily, and what I feel is none of your goddamned business.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You weren’t. So promise me?”
Qhui
“You’re real to me.”
“Swear to it. Or I’m going to do that I-am-an-island bit again. I want you open to meeting someone you can really have.”
Blay’s hand crept up Qhui
“As long as you’re happy. Whatever makes you happy.”
As the tension eased between them, Qhui
“I suppose this is for the best,” Blay said into his shoulder. “You can’t cook.”
“See? I’m so not Prince Charming.”
Qhui
They pulled apart, looked into each other’s eyes… and something shifted. In the silence of the whole training center, in the vast privacy of the moment, something changed.
“Just once,” Blay said softly. “Do it just once. So I’ll know what it’s like.”
Qhui
“Yes.”
After a moment, Qhui
When Blay nodded, Qhui
Oh, it was sweet. Blay’s lips were incredibly sweet and soft.
The tongue probably wasn’t supposed to be part of it, but there was no helping that. Qhui
They could take this spark between them all the way home until they were both naked and Qhui
But things would never be the same after that, and that was what stopped him, in spite of the fact that he suddenly wanted exactly what Blay did. “You’re too important to me,” he said roughly. “You’re too good for the kind of sex I have.”
Blay’s eyes lingered on Qhui
As Qhui
Blay took a deep breath, then braced his arms against the gurney and seemed to try to collect himself. He laughed a little. “I can’t feel my feet or my hands.”
“I’d offer to rub them, but…”
Blay’s glance under his lashes was damned sexy. “You’d be tempted to rub something else of mine?”
Qhui
“Fine, fine. Be that way.” Blay reached over for the antiseptic, put some on his chest, then covered the wound with gauze, which he taped in place. “Will you take care of covering up the one in back?”
“Yeah.”
As he hit the raw patch with some gauze, Qhui
“One thing, though,” Qhui
“What?”
The voice that came out of his throat was unlike anything he’d ever heard from himself before. “If any guy breaks your heart or treats you like shit, I will bust him apart with my bare hands and leave his broken, bloody body for the sun.”
Blay’s laughter rumbled around the tiled walls. “Of course you will-”
“I’m dead fucking serious.”
Blay’s blue eyes shot over his shoulder.
“If there are any who dare to hurt you,” Qhui
At his great camp in the Adirondacks, Rehvenge was desperately trying to get warm. Bundled in a thick terry cloth robe, with a mink blanket over his body, he was stretched out on a couch a mere five feet from the flames of a crackling fire.
The room was among his favorites in the huge, barny house, its grumpy Victorian décor of garnet and gold and deep blue often suiting his mood. Fu
Rehv frowned and thought of his mother, who was staying at another of the family homes about a hundred and fifty miles away. She hadn’t recovered yet from Bella’s abduction. Probably never would. Even all these months later, she didn’t want to leave the country, although given the state of Caldwell, that wasn’t a bad thing.
She was going to die in the house she was in now, he thought. Likely within the next couple years. Old age was upon her, her biological clock starting to race to the finish line, her hair already having gone white.
“Got more wood,” Trez said as he came in with an arm-load of logs. The Moor went over to the fireplace, moved the screen out of the way, and stoked the blaze until it roared even brighter.