Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(16)

Her words were heavily accented, gorgeously so, and also a little surprised.

“Yeah. I am.” He wrenched off his suit’s coat and threw it into a corner, not giving a shit where the thing landed. “I’m here for you.”

As he approached, her stunning icy eyes slicked with tears. “My legs . . . they feel as though they are moving, but I suspect they do not.”

“Do they hurt?”

“Yes.”

Phantom pain. Not a surprise.

Manny stopped by her side and glanced at her body, which was covered with a sheet. She was tall. Had to be at least six feet. And she was built with sleek power.

This was a soldier, he thought, measuring the strength in her bare upper arms. This was a fighter.

And, God, the loss of mobility in someone like her took his breath away. Even if you were a couch potato, life in a wheelchair was a bitch and a half, but to somebody like this, it would be a death sentence.

Manny reached out and gathered her hand into his own—and the instant he made contact, his whole body went wakey-wakey on him, as if she were the socket to his inner plug.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he said as he looked her right in the eye. “I want you to trust me.”

She swallowed hard as one crystal tear slipped out to trail down her temple. On instinct, he reached forward and caught it on his fingertip—

The growl that percolated up from the doorway was the countdown to an ass-kicking if he’d ever heard it. Except as he glanced over at Goatee, he felt like snarling right back at the son of a bitch. Which, yet again, made no sense.

Still holding his patient’s hand, he barked at Jane, “Get that miserable bastard out of my operating room. And I want to see the goddamn scans and X-rays. Now.”

He was going to save this woman even if it killed him.

And as Goatee’s eyes flashed with pure hatred, Manny thought, Well, shit, it might just come down to that. . . .





SIX


Qhuinn was out alone in Caldwell.

For the first time in his frickin’ life.

Which, when he thought about it, was nearly a statistical impossibility. He’d spent so many nights fighting and drinking and having sex in and around the clubs downtown that surely one or two had to have been solo flights. But nope. As he walked into the Iron Mask, he was without his two wingmen for the very first time.

Things were different now, however. Times had changed. People, too.

John Matthew was now happily mated, so when he had a shift off, like this evening, he was staying home with his shellan, Xhex, and giving their bed one hell of a workout. And yeah, sure, Qhuinn was the guy’s ahstrux nohtrum and all, but Xhex was a symphath assassin more than capable of watching out for her male, and the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s compound was a fortress not even a SWAT team could break into. So he and John had come to an agreement—and kept it quiet.

And as for Blay . . .

Qhuinn wasn’t going to think about his best friend. Nope. Not at all.

Scanning the inside of the club, he put his f*ck filter on and began weeding through the women and the men and the couples. There was one and only one reason he’d come here, and it was the same for the other Goths in the place.

This was not for a relationship. This was not even for companionship. This was all about the in and out, and when that was over, it would be a case of, Thank you, ma’am—or sir, depending on his mood—I’m ghost. Because he was going to need someone else. Or someones else.

No way this was going to be a one-shot deal tonight. He felt like peeling his own skin off, his body all but chattering from the need to release. Man, he’d always liked the f*cking, but in the last couple of days, his libido had gone Godzilla on him—

Was Blay even his best friend anymore?

Qhuinn paused and briefly looked for a plate-glass window to put his head through: For f*ck’s sake, he wasn’t five years old. Grown males didn’t have best friends. Didn’t need them.

Especially if said male was banging someone else. All day long. Every single day.

Qhuinn marched over to the bar. “Herradura. Double. And make it the Selección Suprema.”

The woman’s eyes heated up behind her heavy liner and fake lashes. “You starting a tab?”

“Yeah.” And going by the way she ran her hand down her tight stomach and over her hip, clearly he could have ordered a shot of her as well.

When he held out his black AmEx, she breast-iculated wildly to accept the damn thing, bending over so far she might as well have been trying to pick a swizzle stick off the floor with her nipples.

“I’ll be right back with your drink.”

What a surprise. “Great.”

As she hipped her way off, she was so wasting her time: not at all what he was looking for tonight—not even close. Wrong sex, for one thing. And he wasn’t going for anything dark haired. Matter of fact, he couldn’t believe what he wanted.

Being color-blind had its limitations, but when you only wore black and worked at night, it wasn’t a big deal most of the time. Besides, his mismatched eyes were so acute and sensitive to variants of gray that he actually perceived “colors”—it was all about the gradient. For example, he knew who the blondes in the club were. Knew the difference between the brunettes and the black-hairs. And yeah, he might misread it if one of the fidiots had gotten a whacked-out dye job, but even then, he could usually tell something was up because the skin tone never looked right.