Something small and soft got in the way of his falling. . . .
It was a body. A diminutive female body with hips and breasts that suddenly, shockingly imprinted on him even through the freak-out.
Instantly, the vision of No'One in that pool, her naked form glistening and wet, exploded like a land mine in his brain, the detonation so great that it blasted its way through everything that had been driving him.
It happened so fast: the contact, the memory. . . and the arousal.
Underneath the fly of his leathers, his cock punched out to its full length. Without apology.
"Let me help you back into the chair," he heard her say from a vast distance.
"Don't touch me. " He pushed her off. Stumbled away. "Don't get anywhere near me. I'm. . . losing it. . . . "
Floundering his way down the stacks, he couldn't breathe, couldn't. . . stand himself. . . .
As soon as he was free from the library, he raced away from the Sanctuary, returning his faithless body to his bedroom at the mansion.
He was still erect when he got there.
Duh.
Staring down at his button fly, he tried to find another explanation. Maybe he'd thrown a clot? A cock clot. . . or maybe. . . shit. . .
There was no way he could be attracted to another female.
He was a bonded male, goddamn it.
"Lassiter," he looked around. "Lassiter!"
Where the fuck was that angel?
"Lassiter!" he bellowed.
When there was no reply, no burst-through-the-door, he was stuck alone. . . with his hard-on.
Rage curled his right hand into a fist.
With a vicious swing, he punched himself where it counted, nailing himself in the cojones -
"Fuck!"
It was like getting hit with a wrecking ball, and his skyscraper went down, the pain buckling him so fast he ate carpet.
As he retched and tried to push himself up on his knees, all the while wondering if he hadn't done some serious internal damage, a dry voice filtered in through the ow-ow-ows.
"Shit, that musta hurt. " The angel's face entered his line of watery vision. "On the plus side, you could probably sing Alvin's part on a Christmas CD. "
"What. . . " Hard to talk. But then it was hard to breathe. And every time he coughed, he wondered if his balls were coming up his throat. "Tell me. . . the In Between. . . "
"You want to wait until you're not hypoxic?"
Tohr snapped out a hand and gripped the angel's biceps. "Tell me, motherfucker. "
It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set.
As Lassiter crouched beside the Brother's pretzel of a body, he was feeling a little nauseous himself, and he took a moment to cup what hung between his legs - just to reassure the boys downstairs that however much of an iconoclast he was, some things were sacred.
"Tell me!"