He walked with a mortal’s slowness, taking the time to savor her scent. His eyes moving over her profile, his arms curling her soft body closer, enjoying everything that was her after having his fill, several times, of her poor relation tonight. This enjoyment strengthened his resolve to be far more patient while he made her understand and brought about her taming.
Carefully, he pulled back the covers and put her in bed. Swiftly disrobing, he joined her there.
Then he did what he’d decided to do in the car on the way home. It would, he thought, make Leah infinitely more agreeable.
Not delaying, his hands sought her, one at her breast, the other went straight into her pajama bottoms. His mouth went to the skin on her neck below her ear and he tasted her with his tongue.
His fingers worked and she woke on a soft, low moan.
“Lucien?” she whispered, her voice sleepy and sweet and entirely unguarded.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
She drew in a breath, her body stilled then it bucked as if to get away.
He expected this, kept her where she was and continued to work her.
“Lucien!” she snapped, an edge to her voice he hadn’t heard before.
His hand at her breast moved up to her jaw, twisting her head as he lifted his own. He took her mouth in a kiss, his tongue sliding inside as his finger slid inside her.
God, she felt and tasted magnificent.
On that thought he decided, no matter the frustration, he’d not take another meal, or anything, outside of Leah for some time.
Maybe years.
To his surprise, her head reared back into the pillows in order to break their kiss.
It was rare she’d break a kiss. Very rare. She was usually as hungry as he was for that connection. Even more.
Her lips parted, her eyes were wide and he watched them flare with an intensity he’d never seen before from her which was also surprising. She didn’t mask her reactions and she was extraordinarily passionate.
“You’ve –” she started and he withdrew his finger, found her, exerted pressure and circled.
She stopped speaking, her face softened and her eyes grew dazed.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured, his mouth capturing hers, her head reared back again but she pushed her hips into his hand. He gave up on the kiss, opting for something more intimate. He moved his lips to her throat, sweeping his tongue against her skin then biting her there, a small wound opened but the blood didn’t flow.
He had to suck. Which he did.
She liked it as he knew she would.
He heard her moan and her body melted back into his. He drew the blood out of the small wound, heightening her arousal in measured, controlled increments. His hand went back to her breast, fingers rolling her nipple and her head fell back to his shoulder.
He knew she was his when she started bucking her hips, riding his hand.
He felt his cock grow hard at her movements, his mind filled with visions of her riding him and, alternately and no less enjoyable, visions of him riding her.
He carefully opened the wound further and drew more deeply at her blood.
She gasped, her body tightening, he slid a finger inside then another one, both of them stroking deeply all the while his thumb circling her. Her hips were now moving in desperation, her breath coming in pants.
His tongue swathed her wound and he lifted his head to watch her face. He wanted to see her climax.
It didn’t disappoint.
Her neck arched gracefully, her face flushed gorgeously, her eyes slowly closed and her lips parted in a silent moan as her hot, wet sheath closed around his fingers deep inside her.
God, she wasn’t just magnificent. She was so stunning he stopped breathing, feeling it in his gut, lungs and cock, watching her come.
He pushed her orgasm further with his thumb. Her fingers circled his wrist in protest then imprisoned it as she drew in another breath and the shudder tore through her.
He ceased his movements, cupping her breast in one hand, stopping his thumb but allowing himself to keep his fingers inside her with the other. She trembled once, again, then again, before she stilled, spent, her body leaning heavily against his.
He held her close, his face in the hair at the back of her head, listening to her racing heart as it settled and breathing her scent, letting it consume his senses.
After a while, his hand left her breast and curled around her stomach, pulling her closer as his fingers slowly slid out of her and he cupped her between her legs.
He lifted his head and touched his lips to the now-pink wound.
“How are you feeling, pet?” he murmured there.
She didn’t move or speak.
He lifted his head to look at her profile. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted slightly forward.
“Leah? Are you asleep?”
When she spoke, she didn’t open her eyes and her voice was both very quiet and completely dead.
“You did that to me and I can smell her perfume on your skin.” His body froze and she kept talking. “And when you kissed me, I could taste her blood in my mouth.”
“Leah –”
She cut him off. “You forced me out of my home and my life. You’ve made me leave my friends and my job. During my initiation you caused me more pain than I’ve ever felt in my life. You’ve controlled my mind and my body. You’ve humiliated me. Today, you betrayed my trust. Tonight, you betrayed me.”
“Leah –”
“You win,” she whispered in her dead voice. “I can’t fight you, Lucien. You win.”
Remembering his oath to be patient with her, he rolled her to her back and got up on an elbow to get a better look at her.
“You don’t understand the way of my people, pet –”
He stopped speaking when she closed her eyes slowly in a gesture of defeat that seemed foul when done by Leah.
“Please give me one thing. Just one.” She opened her eyes and he was alarmed to see they were dead too. “Don’t call me pet and please, never, ever again call me sweetheart.”
“Leah –”
“May I go back to sleep?” she asked with genuine, not false, consideration.
In spite of his earlier vow, his temper was rising and with it the feeling he’d had when he saw her discarded lingerie.
“Leah, I’m within my rights to attend A Feast.”
She turned her head and looked over his shoulder. “I know you are. Of course you are,” she said wearily. “You’re within your rights to do anything.”
He decided to try a different tactic and his hand moved to cup her jaw.
Gently, he said, “I wanted to give you something tonight, sweetheart.”
When he uttered his endearment, she winced, her head jerking as if he’d struck her.
At this reaction, the strange, vile feeling was overtaking his temper and he didn’t like it. It felt like pain. Twisting, burning pain and it was magnifying quickly.
He lost hold of his patience but held tight to the anger. If he didn’t the pain would begin to be unbearable.
“Leah, goddamn it, look at me.”
Without hesitation she did.
“We need to talk about this,” he went on.
She shook her head and asked, “Why? I promise to be good, do as you say. Anything you want, I’ll do I. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
No, it wasn’t what he fucking wanted.
He wanted her trust, her acceptance of his power, his dominance, not to wield it against her, but to use it to keep her safe, protected, nurtured, thriving.
“You don’t understand,” he told her.
“Do you want me to understand?” she asked.
“Yes, I fucking do.”
Her eyes locked on his, hers were still lifeless. “Then of course I’ll listen. Whatever you want, Lucien.”
Blinding rage wrenched through him. At that moment, he didn’t know if he was furious at Leah or himself. This mingled with the bizarre, tw
isting pain and it took every effort not tear the room apart.
He watched her waiting expectantly and pulled in breath through his nose.
He knew he didn’t have the control to deal with this tonight. He needed to seek calm and deal with this rationally not when he wanted to throw the lounge through the window.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
She nodded and asked, “Do you mind if I go back to sleep?”
He drew another breath into his nostrils, attempting to keep a tight rein on his temper, which, fortunately worked.
“You don’t have to ask me to sleep.”
She nodded again, whispered, “Okay,” then rolled to her side, tucking her hands under her cheek again and closing her eyes. “Goodnight, Lucien,” she told her pillow.
His hold on his temper slipped and he growled. Her eyes snapped open and her head started to twist to look at him but he buried his face in her neck as his arms wrapped tight around her.
“You undo me, pet,” he muttered there, seeking solace in her warm, soft body, anything that might subdue that twisting pain.
He felt her grow still before she relaxed then, softly, she admitted, “I don’t know if I can redo you.”
Her words were so absurd, in spite of his anger, his smiled into her neck.
She kept talking. “But I think to redo you, I’d have to figure out how to redo me and that ship has finally sailed.”
His smile died and her head tilted forward, not to refuse him access to her neck but settling into sleep.
“It’s for the best,” she whispered as he lifted his head to watch her tired face. “I was always driving everyone crazy with my personality defects. Aunt Kate’s going to be thrilled.”
Her words made the burning pain intensify considerably.
“Leah, stop talking,” Lucien ordered.
“Okay,” she said then her eyes flew open and to the side and she said, “That’s speaking. Sorry. No, I mean… sorry!” Then she pressed her lips together and turned her face into the pillow.
Lucien didn’t know whether to laugh or to shout.
What he did know was that Kitty was a very bad idea.
He settled behind her, pulling her deeper into his body, something she didn’t resist, and pressing his face into her thick, soft hair.
He had thought Leah had been broken before and he’d been wrong. He took in a deep breath deciding that he’d see what tomorrow might bring.
When he knew she was asleep, he carefully pulled away so as not to wake her and took a shower.
Chapter Twelve
The Understanding
I woke up and pretty much saw nothing but the wide expanse of Lucien’s smooth, defined chest. This was because my cheek was resting against his pectoral. How I slept cuddled up to him like that, I’d never know. I wasn’t a cuddling type of girl.
Memories of the night before and yesterday flooded my brain but, regardless of the pain or maybe because of it, automatically I shifted closer to his hard warmth.
Yesterday, after taking a very long, very cold shower and then just barely stopping myself from breaking everything breakable I could find, I’d found myself in a huge rambling house with nothing to do. I’d finished the only book I’d brought with me. There was no company. No phone. No car keys. No books. No internet. No cleaning to do. No dirty laundry. No ironing.
Nothing.
I realized too late I should have asked Edwina to buy a few magazines. I only had the television and my thoughts and I didn’t want to spend time with either of them.
I avoided the television as I’d found, over the years (with vast amounts of experience) that there was rarely anything on. Plus I usually ate like a pothead with the munchies when I sat in front of the TV, so I made the decision to take a walk.
This was a very stupid idea mainly because I forgot my stinking iPod. There was nothing to do but think when you walked without your iPod.
Too lazy to go back, I forged on and, as they do, things occurred to me as I walked.
For instance, the fact that Katrina had marked Lucien. It wasn’t something that registered on me at the time seeing as I was freaking out but, looking back, the scratches were ugly and savage. His skin had been broken. Katrina not only had not held back, she had the power and speed to get a bit of hers back.
And she hadn’t responded in any way shocked at their fight. It had been like it happened all the time.
Even Lucien’s baiting, “Try,” sounded, in retrospect, as if it wasn’t the first time he’d ever said it but as if he’d said it lots.
And lots.
And Katrina hadn’t hesitated to attack.
Katrina had attacked Lucien, not the other way around.
She had also attacked me, something which Lucien not only protected me from (easily) but also it infuriated him (greatly).
Then there was their conversation, Katrina saying I was “life” to Lucien.
I still didn’t know what that meant.
What I did know was that something important was going on. Something I didn’t understand, told myself I didn’t want to understand but something that was happening regardless.
It was Katrina who left and Lucien didn’t go after her. As far as I knew, he didn’t give her a second thought before he’d turned to me.
This all made me distinctly uncomfortable or more uncomfortable than normal.
Mainly because I was afraid Lucien was right. I’d jumped to conclusions.
I had a lot of bad qualities but I’d never been judgmental. I hated people who were judgmental. They were the worst.
But I feared I had been with Lucien.
Regardless of Katrina’s words, it was clear that Lucien wasn’t sending her “severance papers” (it wasn’t hard to figure out what severance meant) because of me but because of something that had been going on far longer.
And, no matter how much I tried to stop it, his deep voice saying that love was a blanket that keeps you warm kept playing over and over in my head.
He said this not like he’d read it somewhere and liked that quote or as if he was simply explaining what he thought love should be. He said it like he’d felt that before, like he knew it to be fact.
This fascinated me, scared me and, for some reason, made me very sad because whoever taught him that lesson was not Katrina.
The house Lucien gave me was surrounded by woods except for the huge yard, immaculate garden and the pool (yes, pool, with a small pool house, no less). During my house inspection the day I arrived, I’d noticed a path leading into the woods and I took it.
Upon realizing I was a judgmental person and that I probably owed the Mighty Lucien an apology (which sucked), the winding, woodsy path led out onto a lake.
And what a lake.
It was huge. The day was warm and sunny, a gentle breeze blew but it didn’t disturb the glassy surface of the water which went on forever, the wooded hills around it rising to the blue, cloudless sky.
It was gorgeous.
There were big, beautiful homes nestled in the hills with paths or steps leading to the water. There weren’t many of them though. I counted five.
Seriously exclusive real estate.
I could see at the bottom of the path a long, wide, sturdy pier. Not rickety and ill-kept, of course not. It was the kind of pier you tied a fancy speed boat to (or a small yacht).
I walked out to the end of the pier and sat in the sun, staring out at the tranquil beauty of the lake, wondering if Lucien provided such luxurious locations for all his concubines. If he did, it must cost him a whack. He had to have dozens of concubines still alive. If he didn’t, this had still cost him a whack.
Either way, it didn’t change the fact that he’d provided this for me.
“I am so fucked,” I told the lake.
The lake, not surprisingly, had no reply.
I sat staring at the water and tried not to think of Gentle, Generous Lucien or the fact that, in all fairness, I should open a Why I Migh
t Like Lucien Vault even if it was only a small, fireproof safe. I also tried not to think about my many bad traits which maybe got my fool self into this mess in the first place.
Being a vampire’s concubine was my family’s legacy. It was their business, as it were, and had been for five hundred years. In fact, this whole practice had been going on for centuries and people liked it. It was their way of life.
Who was I to buck the trend?
Cosmo’s money had kept my mother, sister and I clothed, fed and housed rather nicely, I had to admit, until Lana and I moved out. Lana and I shared the same Dad or, I should say, we shared the same sire. Our sire, from what little I remembered, drank a lot, yelled a lot and got kicked out on his ass by my Mom backed up by the arsenal of my aunties. Then he took off, sending birthday cards for the first couple of years before giving up. I hadn’t seen him since I was six.
Cosmo still kept my mother in manicures, pedicures, a three bedroom ranch-style house, designer handbags and martini lunches with my aunties.
I should have thanked him when I first met him, not been cold to him.
And then there was Lucien.
Well, of course he was pathologically controlling and a pain in the ass but when he wasn’t being those two things he was other things. I couldn’t help but think about the way he was with me when I was drunk (before he became a jerk, I hasten to add) and the way he was at The Feast (and he never became a jerk then).
In fact, when he wasn’t being a jerk, controlling or a pain in the ass, he looked at me…
He looked at me…
Oh hell, he looked at me like I was life.
Like I was beautiful. Like I was beyond sexy whatever that was but Lucien looked at me that way. Like I was funny, interesting and he didn’t know what I’d do next but whatever I did, he was going to enjoy it on some level and therefore he was looking forward to it.
He was looking forward to me.
No one ever looked forward to me.
I could barely credit it.
I’d spent years looking for some guy who would keep me away from the concubine life. There wasn’t a lot I knew before my Selection and I didn’t know a lot more now. One thing I knew was that vampires could not invite the Uninitiated to go to a Selection if the Uninitiated was in a relationship with a mortal.