“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
Yep, definitely regret.
It was time to let him off the hook. What he did was uncool but it was very Lucien. What they did was just, plain wrong.
I looked up at him and put my hands on his chest. “So, seeing as you’re new to the Buchanan family dynamic, let me clue you in. I’m going to go out there and be sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious. Aunt Kate’s going to be overbearing because she’s never wrong. Mom’s going to be guilty, as she should be. Aunt Millicent is going to be mostly worried about when dinner will be served. And Aunt Nadia and I’ll probably talk a lot about the clothes you bought me and whatever new man is in her life. Then all will be forgiven. We’ll eat. We’ll probably get drunk. And, except for Aunt Kate, who will find the best guest room and lay claim to it before any of the rest of them even think about getting their suitcases from the car, we might end up dancing to eighties pop music and doing the robot. Just hope Aunt Nadia doesn’t try to breakdance. The last time she did that she threw her back out and was down for a week.”
The regret was gone, his hand was moving up my back and his eyes were smiling even though his mouth wasn’t.
“Two problems with the evening’s festivities, pet.”
“And those would be?”
“I don’t want you drunk and I don’t want a house full of Buchanans when I finally have you.”
Oh.
I’d semi-forgotten about that.
“Definitely no breakdancing,” he went on and because he was funny, I laughed out loud.
When I did, his gaze dropped to my mouth, the smile left his eyes and they went intense. His hand sifted into the hair at the back of my head and he kissed the laughter right off my lips.
It was a good kiss. One of the best in a lineup of seriously top-notch kisses.
My arms were wrapped around his neck and my body was plastered against his when he lifted his head.
When my thoughts unjumbled, I whispered, “We have a wee problem then.”
“No, we don’t.”
I tilted my head to the side. “We don’t?”
“Leave it to me.”
For some reason, I got worried and my arms tightened.
“Lucien, I’m not sure you understand. The Buchanan women can be kind of…” I couldn’t believe I was saying this to him of all people but I had to warn him as I would have to warn anyone who went head-to-head with the aunties, “daunting when they’re riled. Whatever they did made my Dad leave and never come back and–”
Lucien interrupted me, “First, they’re concubines. I’m a vampire. Your father wasn’t. They won’t say a single word to me.”
Oh yes. That was true.
He went on, “Second, your father left because of your aunts but he never came back because of Cosmo.”
My arms tightened again, this time spasmodically because at the same time I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut.
“What?” I whispered.
“If concubines find a man after their Arrangement and wish to stop their care, they can ask their vampire to stop it. Most of them do. Your mother did too. But your father couldn’t give her the life Cosmo gave her or the ones her sisters had. This made him mean. Mean turned to nasty. Drink made him dangerous. Your aunts got rid of him, Kate told Cosmo about his behavior and Cosmo reinstated your mother’s care and made certain he stayed gone.”
I stared at him, uncertain what to do with this knowledge.
“Did Cosmo… did he… kill my father?”
Lucien’s brows knitted. “Of course not.”
“What’d he do?”
“He gave him a very large sum of money.”
My mouth dropped open.
My father vanished from my life because Cosmo gave him money?
“He, Cosmo, Dad…” I stuttered, composed myself and then went on, “Cosmo made it so my father didn’t even send me a birthday card, a graduation gift, a –?”
“Cosmo made no stipulations about you girls. Only Lydia. Your father chose to disappear from your life.”
This rocked me and my eyes moved to stare unseeing over his shoulder.
What a schmuck!
Of course, I already knew this but to have it confirmed totally stunk!
Lucien’s arms gave me a gentle squeeze.
“Leah?”
“What a schmuck,” I whispered.
“Leah.”
My gaze returned to him and I declared, “Men suck.”
His lips turned up at the ends. “Not all men.”
I wrinkled my nose and then stated, “No, you’re right. Avery seems relatively nice.”
His arms gave me an affectionate squeeze this time but I didn’t feel in the mood for affection.
“Do you know everything about me?” I asked snottily.
“Not everything, no. But most things, yes.”
“That’s not fair,” I declared.
His small grin got bigger. “Why’s that, pet?”
“I don’t know hardly anything about you.”
His hand twisted in my hair then started playing like we had all night and my aunties and Avery weren’t in the other room and Edwina wasn’t blustering around in the kitchen in a dither at how to feed twice as many people as expected.
“What would you like to know?” Lucien asked.
I looked over my shoulder at the door mumbling, “The aunties –”
Another arm squeeze and I looked back at him.
“What would you like to know?”
I had a million questions. No, a billion. Enough where the aunties would have to find ways to amuse themselves and breakdancing would no doubt commence.
“Lucien, we have company.”
“Two questions,” he returned.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Later you can ask me whatever you want. Now, you’ll ask two questions.”
I stared at him and curiosity, as it had a way of doing, got the best of me.
I started with, “How old are you?”
“Eight hundred and twenty-two.”
I felt my lips part and my eyes grow wide. The instant he caught my look, his eyes went hooded.
“Wow,” I breathed, “you’re old.”
His eyes stayed hooded and he smiled, making it the sexiest smile I’d ever seen in my life except the first one I witnessed from him at my Selection the minute I clapped eyes on him when he heard me verbally drooling over how handsome he was.
This one, however, was up close so it was even better.
“Second question,” he prompted, taking me out of my sexy smile reverie.
I tried to decide. There were too many.
Then it came to me. “How do you stop from hurting me?”
His head cocked sharply to the side and he asked, “Pardon?”
“You can throw a car, Lucien,” I said softly. “How do you hug me and not crush my bones?”
His hand slid through my hair then twisted back in it and he explained, “It’s like speaking two languages from birth. It’s second nature. You can think, speak, read and write in them both. You just learn from the minute you’re born how to be a vampire and how to live in the mortal’s world. It’s rare I’ll lose control or any vampire will and it only happens when emotions are high,” he paused, “or when it’s deliberate.”
“It’s like you speak two body languages?” I asked. “Fluently?”
“Exactly like that, yes.”
I thought that was kind of cool. Then something occurred to me that was seriously not cool and my heart skipped a beat.
He heard it and called, “Leah?”
Before I could lose my courage, I blurted, “Emotions are high when you have sex.”
His hand fisted in my hair, his other arm growing tighter.
“Yes,” he agreed.
My breath caught, my body tensed then automatically I tried to draw away.
His arm got even tighter and his face dipped closer. “I’ll not hurt you.”
&nbs
p; “Have you ever hurt anyone else?”
“Never.”
“You said that about the feeding,” I whispered.
“Leah –”
“Maybe we should –”
His face got even closer. “No you don’t,” he warned. “I was a week without food when I lost control at your first feeding and you were far more excited than I could imagine. Not than I could desire, but definitely than I could imagine, especially at that point in our relationship.”
This was highly embarrassing and even more highly annoying so I tried to cut him off.
“Lucien –”
I failed at cutting him off.
“I wasn’t prepared. It won’t happen tonight.”
I stared at him.
For three weeks I knew he didn’t go to Feasts. If he did, he was a glutton. He fed morning and night and even would come home some afternoons. And, on top of that, the last time I thought he had sex with someone else, he said he couldn’t even though she tempted him.
As far as I knew, he’d been without for three weeks or longer.
I’d had Lucien-induced orgasms. He’d had nothing.
If that wasn’t a recipe for disaster, nothing was!
“What’s working behind your eyes now, pet?” he demanded, watching me closely, too closely.
I looked over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” I lied.
He gave me a shake.
I looked back at him. “Seriously! Nothing!”
His hand in my hair pulled my head back and his face got close.
“Waking up every day after sleeping next to you, smelling you, feeling you, I take care of myself in the shower. In the beginning, during your punishment, I’d have to do it two or three times a day.” I stared up at him in shock and wonder and maybe a little turned on at his frank honesty but he saved the best for last. “It’s been a long time, too long. It’ll be good to come inside you, sweetling.”
Oh my God.
Yes, totally turned on.
Before my brain kicked in, I whispered, “Can we kick the aunties out right now?”
I saw the flash of his smug smile before he buried his face in my neck and muttered, “You’re adorable.”
I wasn’t trying to be adorable. I was trying to get laid.
“No, seriously.”
His head came up and he touched his lips to mine.
Then he promised, “Soon, Leah.” His eyes went all vampire sexy and he whispered, “Very soon.”
My female parts rippled. He smiled like he knew it.
And he probably did.
I rolled my eyes. He burst out laughing.
Then he walked me out so I could be sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious to my family.
* * * * *
I was padding on bare feet down the hall when I heard them.
Lucien’s “very soon” didn’t come about because Stephanie showed up during dessert. Then Lucien, Avery and Stephanie went behind closed doors in his study.
While they were plotting whatever it was they were plotting, I sat and talked with Mom and the aunties for a while.
Since Lucien was hogging the study and the desktop computer was in the study, I had to go to the laptop upstairs to search online for someplace for my family to stay. Lucien might not have been right about the “very soon” but he was right about my Mom and aunties not giving him any backtalk when he told them they had to stay somewhere else. Not a single word was spoken except Aunt Millicent asking, “Could someone pass the potatoes?”
Luckily, Dragon Lake was a picturesque town so there were tons of posh bed and breakfasts. Unfortunately, most of them were booked up.
I lucked out on the seventh call when I found a place that not only was a B&B but also had a big guest house which had a cancellation.
I booked them in and was heading toward the comfy seating area in the kitchen where they were all gabbing (seriously, that huge house and we used, like, four rooms, it was such a freaking waste) when I heard them.
“Lifemates?” my mother cried in a weird strangled voice that sounded both thrilled beyond belief and scared stupid.
At her words, I stopped dead. I thought they were talking about Lucien and Katrina and I felt like a knife had been plunged in my gut.
I hadn’t exactly forgotten about her but I had also not let myself think about her. Lucien had moved on from her that much was clear. What wasn’t clear was how I felt about how easily he could leave what amounted to his wife of fifty years and carry on with another woman, namely, me.
“What else could it be?” Aunt Nadia replied to my mother.
“There’s no such thing as lifemates. That’s romance novel balderdash,” Aunt Kate proclaimed.
“Sounds fishy to me too,” Aunt Millicent agreed.
“Well, it doesn’t sound fishy to me. She’s marking him and only Lucien can do that. She can talk to him with her mind. That’s never happened, not from a mortal. And she’s dreaming about The Sentence,” Aunt Nadia said.
The Sentence? What on earth was that?
I moved to the wall to better hide myself and decided to full on eavesdrop since they weren’t talking about Katrina, they were talking about me.
Me being lifemates with Lucien.
I read romance novels, loads of them, and lifemates were what some of those books called the unions between immortals or mortals and immortals.
The concept was, there was one being on all the earth through all of time that belonged to the immortal. She was destined for him (it was usually a him) even so far as created for him.
And of all the millions and billions of beings on the planet through time, he had to find her. Through all his centuries and sometimes millennia of living, he had to search out his one true love, the other half of him and bind himself to her.
Of course, he found her. They usually had lots of hot sex. Though how they got to the sex when all the rest of the time they were bickering or there was some huge misunderstanding or they had to fight against some grave evil or he’d done her some wrong for which she hated him, I’d never know. Still, it worked.
Eventually she soothed his savage soul, he’d find some way to make her immortal if she already wasn’t and they lived happily ever after for eternity.
Aunt Kate was right. Balderdash.
“What do you think, Avery?” my mother asked and my eyes went to the study door which, I noticed belatedly, was open and no one was inside.
Where was Lucien?
“I think I’ll respectfully decline participation in this conversation,” Avery murmured.
“Oh come on Avery. You have to speak up,” Aunt Nadia urged. “Mortals don’t have those powers. Leah didn’t even have those powers until she met Lucien.”
“She’d had the dreams,” Aunt Millicent pointed out.
“Okay, she had the dreams,” Aunt Nadia allowed. “But the rest? It’s crazy! Sounds total lifemate to me.”
“Can you imagine? My Leah, lifemate to the Great Lucien. She’s already famous but she’ll be a legend.” Mom sounded ecstatic.
I was famous?
I didn’t have time to ponder my celebrity, Aunt Kate spoke.
“I hope you jest, Lydia. I hope to God you jest,” Aunt Kate whispered but her whisper was strange.
It was angry and it was afraid.
“Katie –” Aunt Nadia started.
“You’d wish that on your daughter, to build a legend?” Aunt Kate hissed.
There was silence.
Then Mom replied, “Kate, I just want to see Leah happy.”
“Happy for what? A few years? Until they cotton on, they hunt them down, they torture them and they hand down The Sentence?”
“Kate –” Avery said gently.
“No, Avery, no,” Aunt Kate cut him off. “If such a fool thing as lifemates exists and if Leah is Lucien’s lifemate, I hope she doesn’t figure it out. And I especially hope he doesn’t. There is no way the Great Lucien will denounce her. Not ever. And Leah’s so stubbor
n, she wouldn’t denounce him either. He’d burn and while he did he and the rest of us would watch her swing.”
My breath stuck in my throat, stars exploded in my eyes and I thought I might faint.
My dream, the heat I felt, the noose around my neck, Lucien telling me he was in it. Was that what it was? A premonition of this sentence thing?
Lucien burning. Me swinging!
Oh my God!
“For a month, Lydia,” Aunt Kate went on, “you and Nadia, Lana, Natalie, Kendra, Melissa, you’ve all been after me to let you speak to Leah, to let you disobey the wishes of a vampire to make sure she’s all right. And now you want her life to be at risk?”
They wanted to speak to me? Even Kendra?
My cousin Kendra and I fought before I left because she couldn’t find that kickass belt I loved so much that I wanted to bring with me but I’d lent to her. She was always losing my stuff (like my kickass belt). Why I let her borrow it, I’d never know.
“Do you think Lucien would let anything happen to Leah?” Mom asked, sounding uppity and taking me out of my thoughts about my belt. “You saw them when we walked in. Have you ever, once, seen Lucien laugh?”
More silence. I guess they hadn’t.
Wow.
Mom went on, “We agreed to this because this is bigger than all of us. This is huge.”
“Yes, and this is about Leah,” Aunt Kate returned. “The reason I didn’t allow you to go against Lucien was because I had every faith Leah would have the exact effect on Lucien that we witnessed when we walked in. She’s the best of the lot of us. She’s a true Buchanan. She’s a Buchanan of old.”
At those words, uttered by Aunt Kate no less (I always thought she thought I was a big, crazy loon), I felt my chest get tight and I had to put my hand to the wall to hold myself standing.
It was Aunt Millicent who spoke next and she did so softly.
“Let her work her magic, Lydia. She’s got the strength to see this through at Lucien’s side to however it ends. No other concubine I know, living or dead, has that same strength. But lifemates, which is a ridiculous notion Nadia, even for you, don’t even consider it. And definitely don’t put that idea in Leah’s head. She’d run and Lucien would have no choice now he’s come this far, to hunt her.”
More silence. More swirling in my head.
Finally Aunt Nadia muttered, “I still want them to be lifemates.”