Screw that, he already didn’t. As John Matthew had frickin’ noticed, not only had he buzzed his head, he’d taken his eyebrow piercing out as well as the one on his lower lip and the dozen or so up his ears. Gone too were his nipple rings. He still had his tongue stud and the shit below, but the visi stuff was gone, gone, gone.
He was through with himself on so many levels. Sick and tired of being the odd man out on purpose. Exhausted with his slut reputation.
And uninterested in rebelling against a bunch of dead stiffs anymore. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t need some shrink to explain the psychology that had shaped him: His family had been all picture perfect, glymera-conservative—and payback had been a bisexual, metal-headed whore with a Goth wardrobe and a needle fetish. But how much of that shit was him and how much was a mismatched-eye-based mutiny?
Who the fuck was he really?
“More now?” Layla asked.
Wasn’t that the question.
As the Chosen went front and center again with the baguette, Qhuinn decided to cut the shit. Opening his mouth, he pulled a baby bird and ate the damn stuff. And some more. And then like she read his mind, Layla brought a sterling-silver fork with a piece of roast beef on it to his lips.
“Let us try this, sire. . . . Chew slowly, however.”
Fat. Chance. Starvation immediately became the name of the game and he went T. rex on the meat, nearly biting tines off in the rush. But Layla was right on it, feeding him another round as fast as he could take it in.
“Wait . . . stop,” he mumbled, afraid he was going to throw up.
He eased over onto his back again and let one hand rest on his chest. Shallow breaths were his savior. Anything deeper and he was going to pull a Technicolor yawn all over himself.
Layla’s face appeared above his. “Sire . . . perhaps we should cease.”
Qhuinn narrowed his stare on her, and saw her properly for the first time since she’d shown up.
God, she was a looker, all that pale blond hair swept up high on her head, her face stunningly perfect. With strawberry lips and green eyes that were luminous in the lamplight, she was everything the race valued in terms of DNA—not a defect in sight.
He reached up and brushed at her chignon. So soft. No hair spray for her; it was as if the waves knew their job was to frame her features and they were eager to do their best.
“Sire?” she said as she tensed.
He knew what was under that robe of hers: Her breasts were absolutely stunning and her stomach flat as a board . . . and those hips and the silky smooth sex between her thighs were the kinds of things that a naked male would fall on glass shards for.
He knew these particulars because he’d seen all of it, touched a lot of it, and had his mouth in a few choice places.
He hadn’t taken her, though. Hadn’t gone very far, either. As an ehros, she had been trained for sex, but with no Primale to service the Chosen in that way, she was all academic learning, nothing in the “field,” as it were. And for a while he’d been happy to show her some of the ropes.
Except it hadn’t felt right.
Well, she’d felt a lot that she’d thought was right, but her eyes had had too much in them and his heart way too little for things to keep going.
“Will you take my vein, sire?” she whispered huskily.
He just stared at her.
Those red lips of hers parted. “Sire, will you . . . take me.”
Closing his lids, he saw Blay’s face again . . . but not how it was now. Not the cold stranger that Qhuinn had created. The old Blay, with those blue eyes that were somehow always pointed in his direction.
“Sire . . . I am yours for the taking. Still. Evermore.”
When he finally looked at Layla again, her fingers had gone to the lapels of her robe and she had spread the halves wide, showing him her long, elegant neck and the wings of her collarbones and all that glorious cleavage.
“Sire . . . I want to serve you.” Inching the sateen fabric even farther apart, she offered him not just her vein, but her body. “Take me—”
Qhuinn stilled her hands as they went to the tie around her waist. “Stop.”
Her eyes dropped to the duvet, and she seemed to turn to stone. At least until she pulled herself out of his hold and roughly rearranged the robe.