Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (98 page)

but now, even that was gone.

It was ironic, really. Sex was but a transient physical connection—and there were many times in

his life when that had been all he’d been looking for. Even with Blaylock, in the beginning, such had been the case. Over time, however, the heart had gotten involved, and that had left him where he was tonight.

At the end of the road.

“…work out.”

Saxton shook himself. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m going to work out for a while.”

After you’ve had a decanter of port?
Saxton thought.

For a moment, he was tempted to push for precise details on the night, the minute whos and whats

and wheres—as if they might unlock some sort of relief. But he knew better. Blay was a

compassionate, kind soul, and torture was something he did only as part of his job when it was

necessary.

There would be no relief coming, not from any combination of sex, conversing, or silence.

Feeling as though he were bracing himself, Saxton buttoned his double-breasted blazer up and

checked that his cravat was in place. A passby of his pectoral revealed his pocket square was

precisely arranged, but the French cuffs of his shirt need a sharp tug, and he took care of that

promptly.

“I must needs take a break before I prepare to speak with the king. My shoulders are killing me

from having been at that desk all night.”

“Have a bath. It might loosen things up?”

“Yes. A bath.”

“I’ll see you later, then,” Blay said as he poured himself another and came over.

Their mouths met in a brief kiss, after which Blay turned and strode out into the foyer,

disappearing up the stairs to go change.

Saxton watched him depart. Even moved forward a couple of steps so that he could see those

shitkickers, as the Brothers called them, ascend the grand staircase one step at a time.

Part of him was screaming to follow the male up into their bedroom and help him out of those

clothes. Emotions aside, the physical sizzle between the two of them had always been strong, and he felt like he wanted to exploit that now.

Except even that Band-Aid was fraying.

Going over and pouring himself a sherry, he sipped it and went to sit before the fire. Fritz had

refreshed the wood not long ago, and the flames were bright and active over the stack of logs.

This was going to hurt, Saxton thought. But it wasn’t going to break him.

He would eventually get over this. Heal. Move on.

Hearts were broken all the time….

Wasn’t there a song about that?

The question was, of course, when did he talk to Blaylock about it.

NINE

The sound of cross-country skis traveling over snow was a rhythmic rush, repeated at a quick

clip.

The storm that had drifted down from the north had cleared after dawn, and the rising sun

that shone beneath the lip of the departing cloud cover sliced through the forest to the sparkling

ground.

To Sola Morte, the shafts of gold looked like blades.

Up ahead, her target presented itself like a Fabergé egg sitting on a stand: The house on the

Hudson River was an architectural showpiece, a cage of seemingly fragile girders holding stack upon stack of countless panels of glass. On all sides, reflections of the water and the nascent sun were like photographs captured by a true artist, the images frozen in the very construction of the home itself.

You couldn’t pay me to live like that,
Sola thought.

Unless it was all bulletproof? But who had the money for that.

According to the Caldwell public records department, the land had been purchased by a Vincent

DiPietro two years before, and developed by the man’s real estate company. No expense had been

spared on the construction—at least, given the valuation on the tax rolls, which was north of eight million dollars. Just after building was completed, the property changed hands, but not to a person: to a real estate trust—with only a lawyer in London listed as trustee.

She knew who lived here, however.

He was the reason she’d come.

He was also the reason she had armed herself so thoroughly. Sola had lots of weapons in easy-to-

reach places: a knife in a holster at the small of her back, a gun on her right hip, a switch hidden in the collar of her white-on-white camo parka.

Men like her target did not appreciate being spied on—even though she came only in search of

information, and not to kill him, she had no doubt that if she were found on the property, things would get tense. Quick.

As she took her binocs out of an inside pocket, she kept still and listened hard. No sounds of

anything approaching from the back or the sides, and in front, she had a clear visual shot at the rear of the house.

Ordinarily, when she was hired for one of these kinds of assignments, she operated at night. Not

with this target.

Masters of the drug trade conducted their business from nine to five, but that would be p.m. to

a.m., not the other way around. Daytime was when they slept and fucked, so that was when you

wanted to case their houses, learn their habits, get a read on their staff and how they protected

themselves during their downtime.

Bringing the house into close focus, she made her assessment. Garage doors. Back door. Half

windows that she guessed looked out of the kitchen. And then the full floor-to-ceiling glass sliders started up, running down the rear flank and around the corner that turned to the river’s shoreline.

Three stories up.

Nothing moving inside that she could see.

Man, that was a lot of glass. And depending on the angle of the light, she could actually see into

some of the rooms, especially the big open space that appeared to take up at least half of the first floor. Furniture was sparse and modern, as if the owner didn’t welcome people loitering.

Bet the view was unbelievable. Especially now, with the partial cloud cover and the sun.

Training the binocs on the eaves under the roofline, she looked for security cameras, expecting

one every twenty feet.

Yup.

Okay, that made sense. From what she’d been told, the homeowner was cagey as hell—and that

kind of relentless mistrust tended to be accessorized with a good dose of security-conscious

behavior, including but not limited to personal guards, bulletproof cars, and most certainly, constant monitoring of any environment the individual spent any amount of time in.

The man who’d hired her had all those and more, for example.

“What the…” she whispered, refocusing the binoculars.

She stopped breathing to make sure nothing shifted.

This was…all wrong. There was a wave pattern to what was inside the house: What furniture she

could see was subtly undulating.

Dropping the high-powered lenses, she looked around, wondering if maybe her eyes were the

problem.

Nope. All the pine trees in the forest were behaving appropriately, standing still, their branches

unmoving in the cold air. And when she put the magnifiers up again, she traced the rooftop of the

house and the contours of the stone chimneys.

All were utterly inanimate.

Back to the glass.

Inhaling deep, she held the oxygen in her lungs and balanced against the nearest birch trunk to give her body extra stability.

Something continued to be off. The frames of those sliding glass doors and the lines of the porches and everything about the house? Static and solid. The interiors, however, seemed…pixilated

somehow, like a composite image had been created to make things appear as if there were furniture…

and that image had been superimposed on something like a curtain…that happened to be subjected to

a soft current of air.

This was going to be a more interesting project than she’d assumed. Reporting on the activities of

this business associate of a “friend” of hers had not exactly lit a fire under her ass. She much

preferred greater challenges.

But maybe there was more to this than first appeared.

After all, camouflage meant you were hiding something—and she’d made a career out of taking

things from people that they wanted to keep: Secrets. Items of value. Information. Documents.

The vocabulary used to define the nouns was irrelevant to her. The act of penetrating a locked

house or car or safe or briefcase and extracting what she was after was what mattered.

She was a hunter.

And the man in that house, whoever he was, was her prey.

TEN

Blay had no business getting near a hand weight, much less the kind of iron that was down in

the training center’s gym. Hammering back that port on an empty stomach had made him fuzzy

and uncoordinated. But he had to have some kind of a direction…a plan, a destination to drag

his sorry ass to. Anything other than going up to his room, sitting on that bed again, and

starting the day in the same way he’d started the night—smoking and staring off into space.

Probably with a lot more port added in.

Stepping out of the underground tunnel, he walked through the office and pushed the glass door

open.

As he went along, still drinking from a half-full glass, his mind was circling itself, wondering

when all this bullcrap between him and Qhuinn was going to end. On his deathbed? God, he didn’t

think he could last that long, assuming he had a normal life span ahead of him.

Maybe he needed to move out of the mansion. Before Wellsie had been killed, she and Tohr had

been able to live in a house of their own. Hell, if he did that, he wouldn’t have to see Qhuinn except during meetings—and with so many people in and around the Brotherhood, it was easy to get out of

eyeshot.

He’d been doing that for a while now, actually.

In fact, under that construct, the pair of them wouldn’t have to cross paths at all—John was

always partnered with the guy because of the whole
ahstrux nohtrum
thing, and between the rotation schedule, and the way territory was divided up, he and Qhuinn never fought together except in an

emergency.

Saxton could go back and forth to work—

Blay stopped dead at the entrance to the weight room. Through the glass window he saw a set of

weights going up and down on the reclining squat machine, and he knew by the Nikes who it was.

Goddamn it, he couldn’t get a break.

Leaning in, he hit his head once. Twice. Three—

“You’re supposed to do reps on the machines—not on the door.”

Manny Manello’s voice was as welcome as a steel-toed kick in the ass.

Blay straightened up, and the world went wheeeeee a little—to the point that he had to

surreptitiously put his free hand on the jamb just so that the balance issue didn’t show. He also tucked his nearly done drink out of sight

The doc probably wouldn’t think working out while under the influence was a good thing.

“How are you?” Blay asked, even though he didn’t really care—and that wasn’t a commentary on

Payne’s
hellren
. He didn’t give a crap about much at the moment.

Manello’s mouth started to move and Blay passed the time watching the man’s lips form and

release syllables. A moment later, a good-bye of some sort was exchanged, and then Blay was alone

with the door again.

It seemed like a planker move to just stand there, and he’d told the good doctor he was going in.

And besides, there were, what, twenty-five machines in the room? Plus barbells and free weights.

Treadmills. StairMasters, ellipticals…plenty to go around.

I’m not in love with Layla.

With a curse, Blay pushed his way in and braced himself for an awkward oh-hey-it’s-you. Except

Qhuinn didn’t even notice the arrival. Instead of going with the overhead music, the guy was wearing headphones that went all around his ears, and he’d moved over to the chin-up bar so he was facing

away, into the concrete wall.

Blay stayed as far back as possible, hopping on a random machine—pecs. Whatever.

After putting down his glass and adjusting the pin on the stack of weights, he settled onto the

padded seat, gripped the double handles, and started pushing out from his chest.

All he had to look at was Qhuinn.

Or maybe that was more because his eyes refused to go anywhere else.

The male was wearing a black wifebeater that put those tremendous shoulders of his on full

display…and the muscles along them flexed up hard as he reached the apex of the pull, the ridges and contours those of a fighter…not a lawyer—

Blay stopped himself right there.

It was unfair to the point of nausea to make any comparison like that, ever. After the past year or so, he knew Saxton’s body nearly as well as his own, and the male was beautifully built, so lean and elegant—

Qhuinn ground out another lift, the weight of his heavy lower body straining the strength in those

arms and that torso. And, thanks to his exertions, sweat had broken out all over his skin, making him glow under the lights.

The tattoo on the back of his neck shifted as he released and descended to hang from his grip, and

then it was up again. And down. And up.

Blay thought about the way the male had looked as they’d turned over the Hummer: powerful,

masculine…erotic.

This was not happening.

He was not, in fact, sitting here, eyeing Qhuinn like this—

Images filtered in from years past, turning his brain into a television screen. He saw Qhuinn

bending over a human woman who had been laid out ass up on the edge of a flat table, his hips

pumping as he fucked her, his hands locked onto her hips to hold her in place. He hadn’t had a shirt on at the time, and his shoulders had been tight, as they were now.