Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(86)

Balz looked around the room. The two windows across from the door out into the hall both had privacy curtains drawn. Closet was in the corner with louvers closed. Bathroom was open and dark.

Shit, why hadn’t he brought that duffle in with him?

Because guns weren’t romantic, that was why.

“You got an extra gun?” he asked as he looked at that open doorway.

“Right here.”

There was the sound of the drawer opening for a second time and then a rustling of sheets. When the butt of something cool and heavy hit his palm, he closed his grip on it. There was no reason to look down and see what kind of weapon it was. He didn’t care as long as it pumped out bullets.

“Safety’s off,” she said. “Fully loaded.”

More rustling now, like she was putting her boxers back on.

Double-palming the gun, he pointed it straight out in front of his chest, at the darkened stairwell.

“Stay here,” he said under his breath.

“Not a damn chance.”

“You’re a distraction,” he snapped as he started to walk forward.

“No, I’m another highly trained asset.”

He glanced over his shoulder. She had her back to him and was covering the windows, to make sure that he was defended.

Okay, that was hot. And she was right, she was goddamned useful.

They moved together toward the doorway, and he didn’t have to ask to know that she was also making sure the bathroom was going to have no surprises for him.

He hated that they’d been interrupted. But he wasn’t surprised. Just his fucking luck. He’d had four months of uninterrupted hell with that demon in his sleep—and only what felt like four minutes with the human he wanted like nothing else he’d ever come across. In all his years of sex—in his years of thieving, too—there’d been no female or object more precious than the one…

…who at this very moment was making sure he didn’t get a bullet through the back of his head.

Tiny waists and big tits were all fine and good. But sexy to him was so much more than that. And what do you know, Erika Saunders ticked all his boxes. If they lived through whatever the fuck this was? He was going to swallow the orgasms he gave her like they were wine and fill her up between her legs until he was dry as bone.

But first? Living through this next threat.

Fuck.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE




The King’s Audience House was located in a part of town where the population density was about two humans an acre, tops. Which according to V’s sense of proportion was two humans too much—but it wasn’t like the Caldwell zoning committee was calling him and asking for his opinion. With grand houses that were set back behind gates, and yards that were mowed by private gardeners in warmer months, this was where the rich lived and entitled themselves to their hearts’ desires.

As V drove his R8 up the hill, he was late. He’d taken the long way into town from the Brotherhood’s mountain, but the first drive of the year was always a good thing for his mood. When you lived in a place where snowbanks could get as tall as small trees, and sometimes Prince was right and it snowed in April, you waited with the bated-breath shit to drive your car properly. Granted, his Audi had that Quattro stuff going on, which helped with traction, and given that he’d gotten the performance engine, some front-wheel drive added to the rear-wheel vroom-vroom was handy no matter the weather conditions. But the supercar was still not an all-four-seasons kind of ride.

He’d learned that firsthand.

He’d taken it out in snow once, with Butch on shotgun. Things had gone pretty well in terms of traction, but the rate limiter had been the air dam in front. With ground clearance that could cover at most ten sheets of paper in a stack—okay, fine, twenty-five—it had been no time at all until they’d gotten stuck.

That had been a fun time.

This was not a fun time.

But the car ride helped.

When he got within range of Darius’s old place, he laid off the accelerator and coasted for a good fifty feet. The driveway was something he had to take real slow and at an angle, the R8 shifting to the side as he eased into the up-and-over. After that, it was a straight shot to the detached garage at the back of the property, and as he parked, for no particular reason, he looked up to the little building’s second story and recalled what Saxton had done to the male who had fucked with his mate there.

Talk about needing a wet vac.

And you had to respect a solicitor who could use both the pen and the sword. There might’ve also been a power tool involved, he couldn’t remember.

Getting out of the car, his back cracked, and the involuntary and unhelpful readjustment made him grimace. A side stretch got whatever vertebra was being a little bitch back in line, and as he started for the rear entrance to the Federal mansion, he lit up a hand-rolled. He never smoked in his R8, even when the top was down.

Just as he came up to the door into the mansion’s kitchen, he glanced back at his car. He’d murdered it, everything from the body color to the rims to the four overlapping circles that formed the Audi logo, black.

It was a missile with a gas tank and a pair of airbags.

A disquieting thought challenged him that he didn’t drive it much. But as if he would ever sell the thing? Audi, like most car makers, was going electric for their next bomb on wheels, and although he was all for taking care of the environment, there was nothing like the sound of that naturally aspirated V-10 engine sucking fossil fuel like it was going out of style.