Page 15 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

Given that L.W. had fucked off his ahstrux nohtrum , he knew what was likely to be waiting for him when he went “home.”

So at the end of the night, he didn’t fucking go “home.”

Side note: Working alone had all the perks as far as he was concerned.

With his phone turned off, nobody dragging him down, and no reason for him to stop until the sun’s imminent arrival, he got three more kills in—and would have kept going for another couple hours.

Things got a little slice-and-dicey on that last skirmish, though, and he’d had to pull out of the engagement and up-up-and-awaaaaay’d while he still could.

And dipshits thought he was unreasonable? Come on, he knew how to take care of himself.

As he traveled in a scatter of molecules north from Caldwell’s inner city, he metaphorically middle-fingered all the haters who said he was too reactive to be without a goddamn babysitter.

Re-forming in knee-deep snow, he confronted the mountain view ahead of him like it was something he could fight.

“Fucking idiots.”

The fact that he had to studiously ignore the way blood dripped off the fingertips of his dagger hand was another thing that further backed up his solo career.

Thank God and Lassiter and whatever other sky daddies were above that Shuli wasn’t pointing out the obvious injury.

Otherwise he would have had to smack the guy, and he wasn’t sure he could lift his arm up higher than his own rib cage.

That frickin’ aristocrat was the Toby Flenderson to his universe.

“And that does not make me Michael Scott,” L.W. muttered.

The reminder that he knew all nine seasons of The Office by heart was a blast from the past he could have done without, because he hadn’t volunteered for the binge-watching.

When his mahmen had not been able to sleep in the bedroom next to his own, the episodes had played on her little TV like the audiovisual equivalent of mashed potatoes…

so his youth had been background music’d by the show to the point where the references just popped into his brain, corks rising out of the murky stew of his subconscious with reflexive insistence.

Although it was true that every time Shuli walked into a room or opened his mouth, L.W. heard a chorus of No God! No, God, please, no!

Taking out a bandana, he made a fist and wrapped shit up, not because his hand was where the wound was, but to catch the blood.

The pain was starting to ramp up, and not just from that bullet graze on the outside of his arm.

All kinds of places were starting to talk to him, proof that swelling and bruising were joining the chat and making things all about them.

“What else is new.”

As he turned away from the snowy evergreen view, the towering stone mansion before him loomed into the night sky like something out of the Marvel Universe.

With gargoyles along its slate roofline, and enough windows for all the ghosts of the past to stare out at him, the sculptural entrance had always felt like an abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here kind of thing.

Then again, his hope had been long lost well before the first time he’d come here as an adult, as a trespasser, to peel open its cathedral-like doors and wander its lonely rooms.

Proof that even the living could be dead.

Fighting his way forward through the snow, he looked down instead of up, searching for a set of footprints that had been left a number of nights before. The snowpack was all smoothed out, though, both from the additional inches that had fallen, and the gusting winds that had finally died down.

Come on, though, like he needed the additional verification that his sire was in fact back, had actually met him here just nights ago?

Aware his head was fucked, he rerouted around the fountain that was shut down not just for the season, but because no one lived on the property anymore.

As he made the half circle, he glanced across at the carriage house’s shuttered visage, the windows all battened down, its front door snow streaked and wedged with drifts.

It was as if centuries had passed since the last resident had shut things up and driven away with their shit, the whole property like the artifact of a previous civilization, its leftovers waiting for a decoding that would never be totally right.

When he got to the base of the mansion’s steps, there was so much accumulation that the levels leading up to the cathedral-worthy facade were just an ascension, their contours buffed out of existence under the blanket of an infinity of flakes.

Just like the stars in the sky. Too many to count.

After a shuffle of bad footing, he approached the imperial door.

The copper key he used to open the old-fashioned lock was something he’d stolen almost a decade before.

He’d snuck into his mahmen ’s room, and gone to the back of her closet.

There, in a duffle bag, had been sacred things, things he knew he shouldn’t have been fucking around with.

Because they were his sire’s.

He’d violated the privacy and the secrets, though—and hadn’t felt any guilt. He’d been about to go through his transition, and given his bloodline, there’d been a very good chance he wasn’t going to live.

So yeah, he’d needed to see what his dead dad had left behind, and like the heavy key could have gone to any other door?

It had taken him a couple of days to get out here, and he’d had to steal one of the doggen ’s cars to make the trip.

He’d also needed a map because he hadn’t been completely sure where the mansion was.

But Great Bear Mountain? Well, that was easy to find, and he’d gone around all the rural roads at its base, trying every lane into the dense trees until he’d met with the mhis barrier.

Getting through the wonky masking, fighting the disorientation and the nausea, persevering even as his heart had pounded with something close to fear…

had been his first opponent in so many ways.

And he’d been in the habit of not quitting since then.

As he reached the mansion’s portal—

A tremendous gust of wind punched him between the shoulder blades, his torso acting as the spinnaker for his lower body, the whole of him shoved face-first into the carved panel.

He managed to catch himself before he ended up with a pair of black eyes and a nose that needed a splint, but the almost-assault didn’t improve his mood.

Whatever did, though.

Well, he could think of one thing.

One… person.

Forcing the key into its slot, he cranked the shank and felt resistance as the cold tumblers shifted. When he went to work on the handle, there was a squeak of metal—and that got louder as he opened things up, the hinges that were big as a male’s forearm protesting.

Fritz certainly came here and kept after the place. These frigid nights, though. No amount of WD-40’ing was enough to keep things smooth. For that, you needed to have people coming and going, in and out over the hours. Steady streams of males and females.

Like hinges, people were subject to rust, he reflected.

Sometimes he thought his anger was because he wasn’t letting anybody in or out of his own life—

“Stop it.”

Stepping inside, he closed himself in the vestibule and stamped his shitkickers on the marble floor. No mat to catch a male’s heavy treads. There must have been one before, back when the Brotherhood and First Family had all lived here together with the other fighters and the staff.

He’d been a toddler then. So he didn’t remember much. Hardly anything, really.

Why he continued to come back to this empty husk of a house was a pathetic reflex he kept hidden even as his visits were no doubt caught by all of the security cameras.

Although maybe the monitoring had been abandoned after all these decades.

Whatever, this was so much better than going home, especially on a night like tonight. And if someone wanted a piece of him? They could make the trip and kiss his ass.

Opening the vestibule’s door, he looked across the acre-sized foyer to the staircase that poured down from the second level.

The carpet was red as blood and wide as a river, like the elevator scene from The Shining had been relocated from a hotel to Windsor-fucking-Castle and set up on the second-floor landing.

And talk about luxe. Even in the dull light, the gold balustrades glowed, and so did all the crystal hanging from the sconces and the light fixtures on the walls.

And then there was the marble and malachite columns.

And the yawning caverns on either side of him, homes to all kinds of hibernating furniture and antiques.

Worthy of a King. Built by a male with a vision that had outlived him.

L.W. shut everything up and crossed the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom.

His head was on a swivel, and the looky-loo bullshit was not because he expected anyone else to be here.

He just couldn’t help dubbing in the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, imagining them before he was on the planet, walking around here, living as single fighters before they settled down.

It was nearly impossible to imagine. Like all young, he was predisposed to thinking that his arrival on the planet had been the Big Bang, the origin of the universe.

And that was before you threw in all the heir-to-the-throne shit—

The steel toe of his shitkicker hit the first of the steps and he pitched forward, like the house was disciplining him for being a little bitch. As with his whoopsie at the entrance, he caught himself with his palms, going push-up position.

Craning his neck, he looked up, up, up.

Why the hell did he keep coming back here.

As he got vertical again and started his climb, he walked straight up the center of the staircase—which made him feel like he owned the place. The lie fed some part of him that was ravenous and hangry, and when he got to the second story landing, he glanced around.