Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11) - J.R. Ward Page 0,33

right behind him, an open chart in her hand, her fingertip tracing down a page.

Blay ducked through the first door he came to—

And ran right into a wall of blackness. Patting around for a light switch, because he was too scattered to turn any bulbs on mentally, he found one, flipped it, and blinded himself.

“Ow!”

The sharp shooter that rocketed from his shin to his brain told him he’d walked into something large.

Ah, a desk.

He was in one of the mini-offices that satellited the classrooms, and that was good news. With the training program still suspended because of the raids, there was no one down here, and no one likely to think of a reason to be in this empty little room.

He could have some privacy for a while—and that was a blessing. God knew he wasn’t going to try to make it to the mansion now. With his luck he’d run into Qhuinn, and the last thing he needed was to be anywhere near the guy.

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