A Warm Heart in Winter (Black Dagger Brotherhood 18.50)

“You should also feel no obligation to keep your hands to yourself. And this is more than a mere suggestion.”

Down at the other end of the house, at the library, there was another group gathered with a bigger ladder. Because yes, sometimes size did matter. Balz and Z were focusing on the second-story windows of Wrath’s study, and that was a heck of an elevation.

“I wonder how many other shutters failed,” Blay murmured.

“More than we want, for sure.”

Qhuinn went up to the second-to-the-last step and surveyed the shutter’s nonfunctioning landscape. As he came to absolutely no viable conclusion, he tried not to envy Ruhn’s obvious Mr. Fix It confidence—and he sure as shit wasn’t going back down to the ground until he figured things out.

The steel shutters that were mounted over every single piece of window glass around the mansion were not just sunlight blockers. They were windproof, bulletproof, fireproof, vampire-proof, and anti-tamper. Every sash setup had a set custom made for it, and the protective suits were painted the gray color of the stone wallings and set on tracks so the interlocking panels could unroll from their top mounts and click into place. Like little garage doors.

Only these weren’t coming down.

Qhuinn grabbed the lower lip with his gloves and pulled. And pulled again. “Yeah, it’s frozen in place.”

“As in ice frozen or not-moving frozen?”

“I don’t know. Gimme a screwdriver.”

Putting a hand down, he got the slap of the tool’s handle against his glove. “When in doubt, force it, right?”

“Usually, you just shoot things.”

“And you were worried I wouldn’t mellow with age.”

The flat head went right into a ridge on the lower lip like the shutter had been designed for just this kind of hard-muscled persuasion. After a test lean, Qhuinn put his shoulder into it. And then his whole upper body. And nothing happened—

All at once, the stuck became unstuck and Qhuinn pitched forward. But not to worry, his face caught his body weight—with a ringing bang followed by an old school washboard scrub as the shutter continued down its track.

“—don’t fall!” Blay reached up. “Oh, God!”

Qhuinn shoved himself off the house and mostly kept the wince to himself. “It’s okay. I needed to shave anyway.”

And hey, the frigid temperature had created a nice numbness. Plus, bonus, his nose was still attached: He knew this because he could poke at it with his puffy glove.

Secure in the knowledge that no aesthetic damage had been done—in spite of the fact that his schnoz now had its own heart rate—he clomped down and moved the ladder over to the next window in the lineup of three. The process was repeated, with the absence of the face-plant because now he was ready for it.

“One more to go—”

Just as he was about to step down again, a sensation like he’d been tapped on the shoulder startled him. With a wrench-around, he glanced over the back gardens and the forest rim beyond them.

“What is it?”

Qhuinn’s eyes searched the darkness outside the reach of the dimmed security lights. Familiarity with the estate filled in the winter details he couldn’t visualize fully: the pool, which was drained and covered for the season; the flower beds and blooming fruit trees, which were likewise on lockdown and draped with burlap; the snow-covered sloping lawn on the far side of the brick walkways. And after all that, the tree line’s boundary of coniferous sentries.

“What’s wrong, Qhuinn?”

Shaking himself, he intended to look down at his mate. But his eyes would not leave the back forty.

“Nothing,” he lied. “It’s… nothing.”

* * *

Over at the other end of the house, by the library, Z was coiling up a rope that was locked on Balthazar’s waist. The Bastard was not paying attention to any of the safety shit, and not surprisingly, he was already starting up the side of the house.

Oh, and not using the ladder that had been leaned into place.

Because why the fuck would you use the ladder.