Looming over Qhuinn, Blay was preternaturally aware of everything around him: the feel of Qhuinn's hand on the back of his thigh, the way the hem of the robe brushed against his calf, the scent of sex thickening the air.

In so many ways, he had wanted this his whole life - or at least ever since he'd survived his transition and had any sexual impulse at all. This moment was the culmination of countless daydreams and innumerable fantasies, his secret desire made manifest.

And it was honest: Qhuinn's mismatched eyes were without shadows - or doubts. The male was not only speaking the God's honest as he knew it in his heart; he was at peace with laying himself vulnerable like this.

Blay closed his lids briefly. This submission was the opposite of everything that defined Qhuinn as a male. He never surrendered - not his principles, not his weapons, never, ever himself. Then again, the turnaround did make some kind of sense. Facing death did tend to be followed by a come-to-Jesus chaser....

The trouble was, he had a feeling this wasn't going to last. This "eye-opener" was undoubtedly tied to that plane ride, but as with a heart attack victim resuming his piss-poor diet soon afterward, the "revelation" probably didn't have a long shelf life. Yeah, Qhuinn meant what he was saying in this heady moment - there was no doubting that. It was hard to believe it was permanent, however.

Qhuinn was who he was. And soon enough, after the shock wore off - maybe at nightfall, maybe next week, maybe a month from now - he was going to go back to his closed-off, hands-off, distant self.

Decision made, Blay reopened his lids and bent down. As their faces got closer, Qhuinn's lips parted, the fuller, lower one pursing as if he were already trying out the taste of what he wanted - and liking it.

Fuck. The fighter was so magnificent, his powerful bare chest glowing in the lamplight, his skin carrying a sheen of arousal, his pierced nipples rising and falling to the driving beat of his heated blood.

Blay ran his hand down the corded muscles of the arm that linked them, from the heavy thickness of the shoulder to the bulge of the biceps and the cut curl of the triceps.

He removed the palm from his thigh.

And stepped away.

Qhuinn paled to the point of going gray.

In the silence, Blay didn't say a word. He couldn't - his voice was gone.

On sloppy, loose legs, he scrambled for the way out, his hand flapping around the doorknob until it gathered enough coordination to open up the exit. Walking out, he couldn't have said whether he slammed the door or shut it quietly.

He didn't make it far. Barely three feet toward his room, he collapsed back against the smooth, cool wall of the hallway.

Panting. He was panting.

And all that effort wasn't doing any good. The suffocation in his chest was getting worse, and abruptly his vision was replaced by black-and-white checkerboard squares.

Figuring he was about to pass out, he sank down onto his haunches and put his head between his knees. In the recesses of his mind, he prayed that the hall stayed empty. This was not the kind of thing he wanted to explain to anyone: outside of Qhuinn's room, hard-on obvious, body shaking like he had his own personal earthquake going on.

"Jesus Christ..."

I almost died tonight - that sets a male straight. Up there in that airplane, looking over the dark night, I didn't think I was going to make it. Everything got clear for me.

"No," Blay said out loud. "No..."

Putting his head in his hands, he tried to breathe calmly, think rationally, act reasonably. He couldn't afford to go any deeper in this -

Those heated, glossy, mismatched eyes had been the stuff of legend.

"No," he hissed.

As his voice resonated inside his own skull, he resolved to listen to himself. No further. This would go no further.

He'd long ago lost his heart to that male.

There was no reason to lose his soul, too.

An hour later, maybe two, maybe six, Qhuinn lay naked between cool sheets, staring up in the dark at a ceiling he could not see.

Was this horrible, aching pain what Blay had felt? Like, after that showdown in his parents' basement - when Qhuinn had been prepared to leave Caldwell, and made it clear that there were gonna be no ties between them anymore? Or maybe after that time they'd kissed in the clinic, and Qhuinn had refused to go any further? Or following that final collision when they had nearly come together, right before Blay's first date with Saxton?

So damn hollow.

Like this room, really: Without illumination, and essentially empty, just four walls and a ceiling. Or a bag of skin and a skeleton, as it were.

Shifting his hand up, he put it over his beating heart just to reassure himself he still had one.

Man, fate had a way of teaching you things you needed to know, even if you weren't aware the lesson was required until it had been served to you: He'd spent way too much time wrapped up in himself and his defect and his failure to his family and society. Such a tangled fucking mess he'd been for so long, and Blay, because he'd cared, had been sucked into the vortex.

But when had he ever supported his best friend? What had he ever really done for the guy?

Blay had been right to leave this room. Too little, too late, wasn't that the saying? And it wasn't like Qhuinn was offering any kind of winner. Underneath the surface, he was no more stable, really. No more at peace.

Nope, he deserved this -

The slice of light was lemon yellow, and it cut through the black field of his vision as if the blindness were cloth and the beam a sharp knife.

A figure slipped into his room silently, and shut the door.

By the scent, he knew who it was.

Qhuinn's heart began to thunder as he shot upright off the pillows. "Blay...?"

There was the softest of rustling, a robe being dropped from the shoulders of a tall male. And then, moments later, the mattress depressed as a great, vital weight got up upon it.

Qhuinn reached through the darkness with unerring accuracy, his hands finding the sides of Blay's neck sure as if they had been led by sight.

No talking. He was afraid that words would cheat him of this miracle.

Lifting his mouth, he pulled Blay down to his own, and when those velvet lips were in range, he kissed them with a desperation that was returned. All at once, the pent-up past was released in a fury, and as he tasted blood, he didn't know whose fangs had scored what.

Who the fuck cared.

On a hard yank, he laid Blay down and then he rolled over on top of the other male, spreading those thighs and pushing himself between them until his hard cock came up against Blay's....

They both groaned.

Dizzy from all the naked skin, Qhuinn began pumping his hips up and back, the friction of their sexes and their hot flesh magnifying the wet heat of their mouths. Frenzy, everywhere, hurry, hurry, hurry - holy fucking shit, there was too much hunger to make any sense of where his hands were, or what he was rubbing against, or -  for fuck's sake, there was too much skin to touch, too much hair to pull, too much...

Qhuinn came hard, his balls going tight, his erection kicking between them, his come going everywhere.

Didn't slow him down in the slightest.

With a quick jerk, he broke away from the mouth he could have spent the next hundred years working, and shoved himself down Blay's chest. The muscles he came across were nothing like the human guys' he'd fucked - this was a vampire, a fighter, a soldier who had trained heavily and worked his flesh into a condition that was not just useful, but downright deadly. And holy hell was that a turn-on - but more than that, though, this was Blay; it was finally, after all these years...

Blay.

Qhuinn dragged his fangs down abdominals that were rock tight, and the scent of himself on Blay's skin was a marking that he knew he'd done on purpose.

That dark spice was going other places, too.

He groaned when his hands found Blay's cock, and as he circled the hard column, the guy arched up sharply, a curse cutting through the room, much in the same way the light had just moments before.

Qhuinn licked his lips, stood Blay's sex up, and let the head of that thick, blunt cock part his mouth. Sucking down deep, he took it to its base, opening his throat wide, swallowing everything. In response, Blay's hips shot up, and rough hands bit into his hair, forcing his head even farther down until he couldn't get any breath to his lungs - and who the fuck needed oxygen, anyway?

Digging his hands under Blay's ass, he tilted that pelvis and started going up and down, his neck straining under the punishing rhythm, his shoulders bunching and releasing as he followed through on exactly what he'd been offering before Blay had left.

He wasn't stopping with this, though.

Nope.

This was just the beginning.