Page 45 of Lover Forbidden
“Where are you going?” the woman asked as she reached through the sheets.
As her hand found his dick with the same accuracy his had grabbed his phone, he swung his legs out and put his feet on the carpeted floor.
“I gotta go.” He cleared his throat. “My butler will take you home.”
“Do you always wake up in a bad mood?”
Well, considering he was about to be killed for not doing a job he didn’t want because a selfish royal fuck had fucked him off in the middle of the war—yeah, he was a little cranky.
“You know, I have ways of cheering a man up.”
The sinuous way she rolled over and swept that glossy hair back over her shoulder had no doubt been a successful play many a time.
“My butler will pay you.” And then, because he wasn’t a total shit, he eased back down and kissed her pouty lips. “Thanks for all the fun.”
“Keep me in mind.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
As he stood up, he swallowed a curse while he hit the summoning button under the lip of the bedside table. Then he limped over toward the loo with the full confidence that his bedroom would be empty when he came out: Willhis, his headdoggen, would make sure she used one of the guest rooms to straighten herself before he escorted her down to the car and took her wherever she wanted to go.
And no, she would never know she’d been with a vampire.
Shutting himself in his black agate bathroom, he didn’t make it over to the shower to start the water. His battered feet required an immediate interview, so he sat down on the padded stool in front of the double sinks and cocked one leg up.
The bloody blisters were concentrated on the back of the heel and the side of the big toe. He could feel that the same was true for the other foot, and as a twin set of heartbeats started to thump, he closed his eyes.
So many alleys. So many streets.
After Qhuinn had gone full confrontation with him in that alley outside of Bathe, Shuli had been taken off rotation and told to go home. But like that was going to happen. He’d walked the field for hours looking for his cocksucking roommate, to the point where he’d been a fucking zombie by the time his best friend, Nate, had found him and forced him into a car.
Even now, he wasn’t sure whether he’d been looking for L.W. to save his own life—or just so he could punch the heir to the throne in the nads.
Then again, the two were not mutually exclusive.
And that was how he’d ended up at Marhalle’s. If he’d stayed home and waited around? And L.W. had been walked through his door, all nonchalant-dick-in-his-hand?
Talk about waking up dead.
Marhalle, on the other hand, had given him exactly what he needed, right down to the escort: A brunette who had looked as different from Lyric as possible.
He didn’t trust himself to fuck a blonde at this point. Why spin the wheel of shame and risk landing on such more-than-likelies as Impotence, Premature Ejaculation, or—worst of all—Crying Jag.
Putting his foot down on the heated floor, he checked the other one—which turned out to be in worse shape—and then forced himself up to the vertical. As he initiated forward momentum, the distance to the shower seemed to get longer and longer, but hey, at least he had plenty of time to enjoy the view of all his gold faucets and the gold-and-black monogrammed rug.
Oh, and also the black agate tub that had illumination running through it, the veins of white and gold crisscrossing like some kind of magical map to be deciphered.
He used the thing as his nightlight.
Over at the spacious shower alcove, which was the size of a garage and lit up thanks to a motion detector, he hit the water, and when things were warm enough, he stepped into the eight-headed spray—
“Fuck.”
All that raw skin on his tootsies screamed as the H2O ran over his feet, and he gritted his teeth as he let his head fall back. Like the tub, the black agate walls and ceiling of the shower room glowed through that subtle veining, and he felt like he was up in the sky and there were ribbons of clouds all around him.
Was he still stoned, too? He couldn’t remember whether he’d smoked a bowl before he’d crashed with the Absolutely Not Lyric escort.
Sweeping his hands back through his dripping hair, the shed water hit his ass with a slap that felt a lot like a cosmic spank. Was it about the sex worker? Or about all his unrequited?
