Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

the good news was that the sorry mess was finally over: Shutters were in place to keep out the sun. House was getting quiet.
    Time for a REM-sleep reboot.
    As he gingerly took his muscle shirt off and grunted at all the aches and pains, he realized he’d left his leather jacket and his weapons down in the clinic. Whatever. He had extras up here if he needed them during the day, and he could get his stuff brought up before First Meal.
    Going for the fly of his leathers, he—
    The door behind him exploded open with such force, it ricocheted off the wall—only to be caught on the rebound by the hard grip of one pissed-off motherfucker.
    Blay was rip-shit as he stood in the jambs, his body trembling with such rage that even Qhuinn, who had faced off with a lot of things in his life, went
whoa
.
    “What the
fuck
is wrong with you,” the male barked.
    Are you kidding me, Qhuinn thought. How could the guy not have recognized that foreign scent on his own lover?
    “I think you need to put that to my cousin.”
    As Blay marched forward, Qhuinn moved around the guy to—
    Blay snatched a grab and bared his fangs with a hiss. “Running?”
    In a quiet voice, Qhuinn said, “No. I’m shutting the damn door so no one else hears this.”
    “I don’t give a fuck!”
    Qhuinn thought of Layla down at the other end of the hall, trying to sleep. “Well, I do.”
    Qhuinn disengaged and shut them in together. Then before he could turn around, he had to close his eyes and take a little TO.
    “You disgust me,” Blay said.
    Qhuinn hung his head.
    “You need to get the fuck out of my life.” The bitterness in that familiar voice went straight into his heart. “You stay the
hell
out of my business!”
    Qhuinn looked over his shoulder. “You don’t even care that he was with someone else?”
    Blay’s mouth opened. Closed. Then those brows dropped low. “What?”
    Oh. Great.
    In the rush of everything, Blay had clearly not clued in to the whys.
    “What did you say?” Blay repeated.
    “You heard me.”
    When there was no reply, no cursing, nothing thrown in terms of punches or objects, Qhuinn turned around.
    After a moment, Blay crossed his arms, not around his chest, but his middle, as if he were vaguely nauseated.
    Qhuinn scrubbed his face and spoke in a broken voice. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry….I don’t want this for you.”
    Blay shook himself. “What…” Those blue eyes focused. “That’s why you attacked him?”
    Qhuinn took a step forward. “I’m sorry…I just…he came in through the door and I caught the scent, and I just lost it. I wasn’t even thinking.”
    Blay blinked, like maybe he was getting confronted with a foreign concept.
    “That’s why you…why the hell would you do that?”
    Qhuinn took another step forward, and then forced himself to stop—in spite of an almost overwhelming need to get close to the guy. And as Blay shook his head like he was having problems understanding all of it, Qhuinn didn’t mean to speak.
    But he did. “Do you remember down in the clinic, well over a year ago…” He pointed to the floor, like, in case the guy had forgotten where the training center was. “It was before you and Saxton first…” Right. No finishing that one, not if he wanted to keep down all that food he’d eaten. “Remember what I told you?”
    As Blay seemed confused, he helped the guy out. “I told you that if anyone ever hurt you, I would hunt them down and leave them for the sun?” Even he heard the way his voice dropped to a menacing growl. “Saxton hurt you tonight, so I did what I said I was going to do.”
    Blay rubbed his face with his hand. “Jesus…”
    “I told you what was going to happen. And if he does that again, I can’t promise you I won’t finish the job.”
    “Look, Qhuinn, you can’t…you can’t be doing that shit. You just can’t.”
    “Don’t you care? He was unfaithful. That’s not okay.”
    Blay exhaled long and slow, like he was tired of carrying a weight. “Just…don’t do that again.”
    Now Qhuinn was the one shaking his head. He didn’t get it. If he were in a relationship with Blay, and Blay stepped out on him? He’d never get over it.
    God, why hadn’t he taken advantage of what he’d been offered? He shouldn’t have run. He should have stayed put.
    Unbidden, his feet took another step forward. “I’m sorry….”
    All of a sudden, he was saying those words over and over again, repeating them with each footfall that