Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(139)

“Are you certain?”

“Abso, come here. Friends, remember?” He held out his hand, and when she got within range, he took her palm and urged her down into a sit.

“Sire? You’re still staring at me.”

Qhuinn searched her face and then trolled down her body. Green eyes . . .

So what about the damn eyes? It wasn’t like he’d never seen them before—

Green eyes . . .

He swallowed a curse. Christ, this was like having a song in your head that you could remember everything but the words to.

“Sire?”

“Qhuinn. Say it, please.”

“Qhuinn.”

He smiled a little. “Here, take what you need.”

As he lifted his wrist, he thought, Man, she was so damned thin, as she bent down and opened her mouth. Her fangs were long and very white, but delicate. Not like his. And her strike was as gentle and ladylike as the rest of her.

Which the traditionalist in him thought was only proper.

While she fed, he looked at her blond hair that was twisted into a complex weave, and her spare shoulders, and her pretty hands.

Green eyes.

“Christ.” When she made as if to pull out, he put his hand on the back of her neck and kept her at his wrist. “It’s okay. Foot cramp.”

More like brain cramp.

In frustration, he lifted his head and, in lieu of hitting the wall with it, rubbed his eyes. When he refocused, he was staring at the door . . .

. . . Layla had just come through.

Instantly, he was sucked back into the dream. But not about the beating or his brother. He saw himself standing at the entrance unto the Fade . . . standing in front of the white panels . . . standing with his hand out, about to reach for the knob.

Reality warped and pulled and went taffy-twisted until he didn’t know whether he was awake or asleep . . . or dead.

The swirl started to form in the center of the door, as if whatever it had been made of had liquefied to the consistency of milk. And from out of the tornadic center an image coalesced and came forward, more as a sound would carry than as if something visual would take shape.

It was the face of a young female.

A young female with blond hair and refined features . . . and pale green eyes.

She was staring out at him, holding his eyes sure as if she had captured his face in her small, pretty hands.

Then she blinked. And her irises changed color.

One became green and the other blue. Just like his.

“Sire!”

At first he was utterly confused—wondering why in the hell the young female had called him that. How did she know who he was?

“Qhuinn! Let me seal you up!”

He blinked. And discovered that he had thrown himself against the headboard, and in the process, he’d torn Layla’s fangs from his flesh and he was hemorrhaging all over the sheets.

“Let me—”

He strong-armed the Chosen back and sealed his own mouth on the wound. As he took care of himself, he couldn’t take his eyes off Layla.

It was waaaaay too easy to overlay that young female’s features on Layla’s face and find something so much deeper than similarity.

As his heart started pounding, he took a little time out to remind himself that he’d never done the prescient thing. Unlike V, he couldn’t see into the future.

Layla moved slowly as she got off the bed, like she didn’t want to spook him. “Shall I go get Jane? Or perhaps it would be best if I just left.”

Qhuinn opened his mouth . . . and found that nothing came out.

Wow. He’d never been in a car accident, but he imagined the curling dread he felt now was probably the way things went when you saw someone blow a stop sign and come gunning for your side door: You triangulated their direction and their speed against your own and came to the conclusion that impact was imminent.

Although he couldn’t imagine a world in which he got Layla pregnant.

“I have seen the future,” he said from a distance.

Layla’s hands lifted to her throat as if she were choking. “Is it bad?”

“It’s . . . not possible. At all.”

As he put his head in his palms, all he could see in the darkness was that face . . . the one that was part Layla’s and part his.

Oh, God . . . save them both. Save . . . all of them.

“Sire? You’re scaring me.”

Well, that made two of them . . .

Except it couldn’t be. Could it?

“I’m going to go,” she said roughly. “I thank you for your gift.”

He nodded and couldn’t look at her. “You’re welcome.”

As the door shut shortly thereafter, he shuddered, a cold, bracing fear settling into his bones . . . and going right into his soul.

Ironic, really, he thought. His parents had never wanted him to reproduce, and go fig—the idea of shafting Layla with a defective daughter, or even worse, laying his f*cked-up eyes upon an innocent young female, made him embrace his vow of celibacy like nothing else could.

And actually, he should be glad. Of all the destinies he could have seen, this was one hundred percent avoidable, wasn’t it.

He just was never going to have sex with Layla.

Ever.

So it was all an impossibility. End of.





FORTY-NINE