Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(40)

For once in his life, he did not go for breakneck: The speed was calibrated so that his pace was a steady churn, the kind of thing he could sustain for hours.

When you were trying to get away from yourself, you gravitated to the loud and obnoxious, to the extremes, to the reckless, because it forced you to scramble and hang on with your clawing nails to cliffs of your own self-invention.

Just as Blay was who he was, Qhuinn was the same: Even though he wished he could be out and with the . . . male . . . he loved, he couldn’t make himself go there.

But by God, he was going to stop running from his cowardice. He had to own his shit—even if it made him hate himself to the core. Because maybe if he did, he’d stop trying to distract himself with sex and drinking, and figure out what he did want.

Apart from Blay, that was.





FOURTEEN


Sitting beside Butch in the Escalade, V was a six-foot-six, two-hundred-fifty-pound contusion.

As they sped back to the compound, every inch of him was pounding, the pain forming a haze that calmed the screaming inside of him.

So he’d gotten something of what he’d needed.

The trouble was, the relief was beginning to fade already, and didn’t that get him pissed off at the Good Samaritan behind the wheel. Not that the cop seemed to care. He’d been dialing that cell phone of his and hanging up and dialing again and hanging up, like the fingers on his right hand had a case of Tourette’s.

He was probably calling Jane and thinking better of it. Thank f*ck—

“Yeah, I’d like to report a dead body,” he heard the cop say. “No, I’m not giving my name. It’s in a Dumpster in an alley off Tenth Street, two blocks over from the Commodore. Looks to be a Caucasian female, late teens, early twenties . . . No, I’m not giving my name . . . . Hey, how about you get down the address and stop worrying about me. . . .”

As Butch got into it with the operator, V shifted his ass in the seat and felt the broken ribs on his right side howl. Not bad. If he needed another hit to chill him out, he could just do some sit-ups and get back on the agony-go-round—

Butch tossed his cell onto the dash. Cursed. Cursed again.

Then decided to share the wealth: “How far were you going to let it go, V? Until they stabbed you? Left you for the sun? What was going to be far enough?”

V talked around his swollen lip. “Don’t front, true.”

“Front?” Butch swung his head around, his eyes positively violent. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t pretend . . . you don’t know what this is like. I’ve seen you on a bender. . . . I’ve seen—” He coughed. “I’ve seen you drunk on your feet with a glass in both hands. So do not go holier-than-thou on me.”

Butch refocused on the road. “You are a miserable son of a bitch.”

“Whatever.”

Yup, that was about it for the convo.

By the time Butch tooled up in front of the mansion, both of them were wincing and blinking like they’d been hit in the puss with Mace: The sun was still buried on the far side of the horizon, but it was close enough to put a blush in the sky that was only a few megawatts south of deadly to a vampire.

They didn’t go into the big house. No f*cking way. Last Meal was about to get its knife and fork on, and given both their moods, there was no reason to feed the gossip mill.

Without saying another word, V walked into the Pit and beelined for his bedroom. There was no seeing Jane or his sister looking like this, for real. Hell, given what his mug felt like, there might be no seeing them even after a shower.

In the bath, he started the water and disarmed in the dark—which involved all of taking his one dagger out of the belt holster around his waist and putting it on the counter. His clothes were filthy, covered with blood and wax and other shit, and he let them fall on the floor, unsure what he was going to do with them.

Then he got under the spray before it was warm. As the cold water hit his face and pecs, he hissed, the shock shooting down into his cock and hardening him—not that he felt any interest in doing something about the erection. He just closed his eyes as his blood and the blood of his enemy sluiced off his body and got sucked down the drain.

Man, after he got his shit washed up, he was so going to put a turtleneck on. His face was f*cked-up, but maybe that could be explained away by his having been in a fight with the enemy. Turning himself into a black-and-blue canvas from head to foot?

Not so much.

Hanging his head and letting the water run off his nose and chin, he tried desperately to go back to the numb floats he’d had in the car, but with the pain fading, his drug of choice was losing its grip on him and the world was getting too clear again.

God, the sense of being out of control and pissed off choked him sure as if there were hands around his throat.

Fucking Butch. Do-gooder, nosy-ass, interfering son of a bitch.

Ten minutes later, he stepped out, grabbed a black towel, and stemmed-to-sterned the terry cloth as he walked into the bedroom. Popping open his closet, he willed a black candle on and . . . got an eyeful of wife-beaters. And leathers. Which was what happened to your wardrobe when you fought for a living and slept naked.

Not a turtleneck in sight.

Well, maybe the damage wasn’t so bad—

A quick pivot to the mirror on the back of the door and even he had to pause. He looked like he’d been clawed by Rhage’s beast, great stripes of angry red welts wrapping around his torso and pouring over his shoulders and his pecs. His face was a f*cking joke, one eye so swollen that the lid was nearly inoperable . . . his lower lip split deep . . . his jaw looking like he was a squirrel stashing nuts.