Going behind the desk, he sat down in the cushy office chair and brought his legs up, stretching them across the flat top that should have had a computer, a plant, and a holder full of pens on it. Instead, it was barren, although not dust-covered. Fritz would never stand for that even in an unused space.
Rubbing at the sore spot on the front of his calf, it was clear that he was going to have one hell of a black-and-blue mark. But at least the pain distracted him from what had driven him down here.
That didn’t last, though.
As he tilted the chair back and closed his eyes, his brain returned to the locker room.
Was the torture never going to end, he thought.
And, God, his cock was pounding.
Considering his choices, he willed the lights off, closed his eyes, and ordered his brain to shut up and go to sleep. If he could just catch a few down here for an hour or two, he’d wake up sober, flaccid, and ready to face people again.
Now, this was a good plan, and it was also the perfect environment. Dark, a little cool, super-quiet in the way only facilities underground were.
Shimmying his body even deeper into the chair, he crossed his arms over his chest and got ready for the REM train to pull into his station.
When that didn’t work, he started to imagine all kinds of “off” situations, like vacuums unplugged from the wall, and fires extinguished with water, and TV screens going black….
Qhuinn had looked so eminently fuckable like that, his slick, smooth body carved with muscle, his sex so thick and proud. All that water would have made him both slippery and hot…and, dearest Virgin Scribe, Blay would have given almost anything to walk over the tile, get down on his knees, and take that sex into his mouth, feeling that blunt head with its piercing stroke over his tongue as he went up and down—
The disgusted noise he made echoed around, sounding louder than it probably had been.
Opening his eyes, he tried to clear any fantasies that involved sucking out of his mind. But all the pitch-black didn’t help; it just formed the perfect screen to keep projecting on.
Cursing, he gave that yoga thing a shot, where you relaxed the tension in each and every part of the body, starting with the perma-twist between his eyebrows, then the rigid ropes that ran from his shoulders up to the base of his skull. His chest was tight, too, his pecs contracted for no good reason, his biceps digging into his upper arms.
Next, he was supposed to focus on his abs and then his butt and his thighs, his knees and calves…his this-little-piggy-went-homes.
He didn’t make it that far.
Then again, trying to talk his arousal into any kind of malleability would have required powers of persuasion that his half-drunk brain didn’t possess.
Unfortunately, there was only one sure-fire way of getting rid of Mr. Happy. And in the dark, by himself, with the umbrella of no-one-will-ever-know protecting the moment, why shouldn’t he just work the damn thing, drain the burn, and pass out? It was no different from waking up at the fall of night with an erection—because God knew there was no emotional anything involved. And he was under the influence, right? So that was another pass.
He wasn’t cheating on Saxton, he told himself. He wasn’t with Qhuinn—and Saxton was the one he wanted….
For a while, he continued to argue the pros and cons, but eventually his hand made the decision for him. Before he knew it, his palm was burrowing under his loose waistband and—
The hiss he let out when he gripped himself was like a gunshot in the silence, and so was the groan of the chair as the thrust of his hips pushed his shoulders into the leather padding. Hot and hard, thick and long, his cock was begging for attention—but the angle was all wrong, and there was no room for stroking in the damn shorts.
For some reason, the idea of stripping from the waist down made him feel dirty, but his sense of propriety went into the shitter pretty fast when all he could do was squeeze. Lifting his ass, he swept the shorts off…and then realized he was going to need something to clean up the mess with.
The shirt came off next.
Naked in the dark, sprawled out long from the chair and to the desktop, he gave himself over, spreading his thighs, pumping up and down. The friction made his eyes roll back in his head, made him bite his lower lip—God, the sensations were so strong, flowing through his body—
Fuck.
Qhuinn was in his mind, Qhuinn was in his mouth…Qhuinn was inside of him, the two of them moving together—
This was wrong.
He froze. Just stopped dead. “Shit.”
Blay released his cock, even though the mere process of letting the betrayal go made him grit his molars.
Opening his eyes, he stared into the darkness. The sound of his breath punching in and out of his chest made him curse again. So did his pounding need for an orgasm—which he refused to give in to.
He was not going to take this any further—
From out of nowhere, that image of Qhuinn arched under the falling spray slammed into his brain, taking over everything. Against his higher reasoning, and his loyalty, and his sense of fairness…his body went into instant overload, the orgasm shooting out of his cock before he could stop it, before he could tell it no, that wasn’t right…before he could say, Not again. Never again.
Oh, God. The sweet, stabbing sensation repeated over and over until he wondered if it was ever going to end—even though he didn’t help things along.
This physical reaction might be outside of his control. His response to it was not.
When he finally stilled, his breath was harsh and the coolness across the bare skin of his chest suggested he’d broken out in a sweat…and as his body recovered from the rush, his awareness returned—and his deflating erection was like a barometer of his mood.
Reaching forward, he patted over the desk until he found his shirt; then he wadded it up and pressed the thing into the juncture of his thighs.
The rest of the mess he was in was not going to be so easy to clean up.
Across town, on the eighteenth floor of the Commodore, Trez sat in a sleek steel-and-leather chair that faced a wall of windows overlooking the Hudson River. The noonday sun was shining down from a crystal clear, chrome-like sky, everything ten times brighter because of the fresh snow that had fallen overnight on the shores.
“I know you’re there,” he said dryly, taking a sip from his coffee mug.
When there was no reply, he spun his chair around on its swival base. Sure enough, iAm had come in from his bedroom and was sitting on the couch, iPad on his lap, forefinger striping across the screen. He would be reading the New York Times online edition, of course; he did that every morning when they got up.
“Well,” Trez bit out. “Go on.”
The only response he got was one of iAm’s brows lifting. For, like, a split second.
The smug bastard wouldn’t even look over. “Must be a fascinating article. What’s it about? Recalcitrant brothers?”
Trez passed some time nursing his hot coffee. “iAm. Seriously. This is bullshit.”
After a moment, his brother’s dark stare lifted. The eyes that met his were, as always, completely uncluttered of emotion and doubt and all the messy stuff that mere mortals struggled with. iAm was preternaturally sensible…rather in the way of a cobra: watchful, intelligent, ready to strike, but unwilling to waste the power until it was needed.
“What,” Trez ground out.
“It’s redundant to tell you what you already know.”
“Humor me.” He took another draw off the rim of the mug, and wondered why the hell he was volunteering for this. “Go on.”