Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (32 page)

He cocked his head deeper into his hand and asked, “What is?”

“What is what?”

“Your preferred on the run from a vamp location.”

My eyes moved to his naked shoulder (this was a mistake, by the way, he had a nice shoulder but I had to power through it), “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell you that.”

His body moved when his head jerked back and he let out a shout of laughter. Half a second later, his arms were tight around me and he was hugging me again, his face stuffed in my neck.

“Probably not,” he said against my neck, his voice still shaking with hilarity.

It was time for this to end. I could easily find things to put in my Why I
Might
Like Lucien Small Fireproof Safe when he was like this.

For instance, how good it made me feel when I made him laugh.

And that, I hated to admit it but it was undeniable, I liked it when he hugged me. He gave good hugs, tight and warm and with him being so big, I felt snugly and cozy and safe.

“I think I’m hungry,” I told his ear and his head went back.

His eyes were still amused when he looked at me and that look had to go in my little safe as well.

He brushed my mouth with his, pulled back less than an inch and rested his forehead against mine.

“Let’s get you fed and take you to town,” he murmured.

Oh hell.

That
had to go into my safe too. All of it, the mouth brush, the forehead rest and him taking me to town.

Damn but it was getting freaking crowded in there.

He rolled over me, exited the bed but pulled the covers to, not exposing my lower half at all.

He leaned in, put fists into the bed on either side of me and said, “Take your time, sweetheart. Edwina’s likely gone. I’ll see what I can do about breakfast.”

Then he was gone,
zoom
, out of the room.

I looked at the clock and noticed it was nearly noon. Then I looked at the ceiling. Then I wondered if Lucien could make breakfast. Then I figured, since he’d lived hundreds of years, during
one
of those years he’d have to learn how to cook. At least make toast (or something).

Then I sighed because I couldn’t escape it.

If he kept acting like this, there was a big, ugly, gaping flaw in my plan.

This was going to be hard. Really,
really
hard.

Lucky for me, one of my bad traits would come in handy. I was crazy stubborn.

“I can do this,” I mouthed to the ceiling, not wanting Lucien to hear and hoping I wasn’t lying to myself.

* * * * *

I stood at the stove and slid the big spoonfuls of vegetable shortening into the skillet, the shortening melting as it hit the hot iron. As I did this, I considered the many mistakes I’d made that day and began to prepare
not
to make anymore that evening.

I didn’t discover if Lucien could cook. But I did discover he could toast a mean sesame bagel and put the exact right amount of cream cheese, smoked salmon and capers on it.

As we ate our bagels and drank our coffee, we didn’t talk. This was not companionable silence, it was uncomfortable or at least it was for me. I didn’t know what to say, seeing as I couldn’t be me. And I didn’t know why Lucien wasn’t talking. And I wanted to know why, like, a lot.

I tried to gauge his mood but failed.

What I did know was that he’d attuned himself to me. It wasn’t that he marked me. It was something else, something new, it made me feel less like I was drugged and more like I was pulsating. It was like he was trying to figure me out, source my mood.

I didn’t know if he succeeded but I guessed no as his quiet watchfulness lasted all day.

I was terrified he’d want to take a shower with me or worse, a bath, but he let me take a shower alone.

My first big mistake was when I was sitting at my dressing table, blow drying my hair.

Lucien had disappeared while I showered but I heard the shower go on as I was doing my makeup. While I was doing my hair, Lucien walked into the dressing room in nothing but a towel.

My mistake was I should have looked away. But I caught sight of him in my big, Hollywood starlet mirror and my mouth started watering.

Then he tugged off the towel with me sitting right there and at the sight of all that was Lucien, and there was a lot of it, my mouth went dry.

He was, it must be said, perfect from head-to-toe. Utterly perfect. Strong, heavy thighs. Muscled, well-formed behind. Bunched, defined calves. He even had handsome feet!

And there were other parts of him that made me wonder if he was not a vampire but instead a living god.

I jerked my eyes back to my reflection as Lucien dressed.

He chose jeans, boots, a great belt and a tailored shirt that was stripes of white, baby-blue, midnight blue, light gray and charcoal gray. He wore this untucked.

It was pretty much casual wear on any other man.

Lucien looked like he’d stepped alive out of a magazine.

I decided from what Stephanie had said during my Selection, and how Lucien behaved at The Feast, that he’d want me to make an effort so he could show me off.

This wasn’t tough for me. I was a girlie girl. I made an effort even if I was running to the store to buy eggs.

I decided on nice, low-rider jeans, high-heeled, ultra-strappy tan sandals, a matching belt and a great blouse, almost see-through, white with buttons that stopped at my cleavage. The neckline went out to a vee, it was collared and had half a dozen thin pleats running along the sleeves and down the spine from collar to waist. It was a killer shirt.

I did my makeup subtle and left my hair long, in smooth flips.

I had no jewelry to put on so, being done, I just tucked my lip gloss in my back pocket as I had no wallet or phone thus taking a purse was unnecessary. Then I left the room.

By the time I was ready, Lucien had disappeared and I went in search of him. When I found him, he was plugging the phone into the jack in the kitchen.

I didn’t know what this meant to him but I knew what it meant to me. I nearly threw myself at him and gave him a big kiss.

Instead, I called, “Ready.”

His head came up, he looked at me, his eyes went lazy and my stomach pitched pleasantly.

Then he asked me, “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

My body rocked to a complete halt.

It was safe to say, no. I didn’t know.

I mean, I knew I was nothing to sneeze at. No mothers had pulled their children away from my grotesqueness and I could somewhat easily get a date.

The way he said it, the fact that
Lucien
said it – a man so rugged, so compelling, I’d likened him to a living god not twenty minutes before; a man who’d probably seen his fair share of women in his time – that made it another compliment which was profound and I was definitely not sure I could handle it.

“Leah?” His voice calling my name jerked me out of my Lucien Profound Compliment Stupor.

I didn’t know what to say. What
did
you say?

I decided on, “Thank you.”

He walked right up to me, his eyes thoughtful. When he stopped (in my space, by the way), he used both his hands to shift my hair over my shoulders and then he curled his fingers around my neck. The whole time, his eyes were locked on mine.

“You have no idea, do you?” he asked quietly.

“I count the fact that I’ve reached forty and no one has asked me to join a circus as a good sign,” I told him, his head cocked sharply to the side and he burst out laughing, pulling me to him roughly and giving me a stand-up hug.

I endured this hug. It was hard. A stand-up hug from Lucien wasn’t as good as a lying down one but it wasn’t far off.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity but wasn’t, obviously, he pulled away. “Let’s get you some books.”

He drove us in the Cayenne to a mall in the city. Not any mall but an exclusive one that was surrounded by streets and streets of luxurious boutique shops and classy restaurants, cafés and bars. These were all nestled in between wide, clean sidewalks with lampposts on which hooked hanging planters and big, stylish pots on the walks all dripping colorful flowers.

He valet parked and we went to an enormous bookstore. There, he bought me ten books.

I thought we’d walk right back to the valet but he steered me into the boutique streets and seemed perfectly fine with wandering the sidewalks on a sunny day, hand-in-hand.

I saw a particularly gorgeous outfit in a window and my heart must have leaped because his head turned to me before he walked me right in. Then he went directly to the shop assistant, told her we wanted the outfit in the window and gave her my size.

I was staring at him and I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open when the assistant asked me, “Would you like to try it on?”

I looked at her and was about to speak when Lucien said, “No. We’ll take it.”

I watched in horror, mainly because I could see the prices on the register display, as she rung it up and it took all my willpower not to freak out.

I stood dutifully beside Lucien as he paid, the shop assistant looking at him probably like I did when he yanked off the towel and at me definitely like I was the luckiest woman in the universe.

As we walked out, Lucien carrying both my bags, I felt it important to say something.

“That wasn’t necessary.”

His hand gave mine a squeeze but he didn’t look at me.

“You’re correct, it wasn’t,” he replied.

Well, what could you say to that?

Except nothing. So I said nothing.

I was careful to moderate my heart and I did this by not looking into any more windows so that Lucien wouldn’t again go spending hundreds and hundreds (and
hundreds
) of dollars on one single outfit.

It didn’t matter. This happened twice more with things Lucien wanted me to have. A pair of delicate, antique, silver and coral Navajo chandelier earrings and two pairs of outrageously expensive but undeniably gorgeous, high-heeled shoes.

I tried the shoes on. Both pairs, Lucien, lounged back in a chair like he owned the joint and staring at my feet, asked me, “Do they fit?” Before I said a word, he looked at my face (which was probably rapturous, what could I say, they were great shoes) and then said to the salesperson, “We’ll take them.”

I was struggling with the supremely peculiar fact that it appeared that the Mighty Vampire Lucien, who was most definitely a male of his species, didn’t mind shopping when I noticed something.

It was the same on the street and in the shops as it had been at The Feast. People were looking at him, even some of them staring at him.

They didn’t know who he was. They only saw a tall, vital, unbelievably good-looking man who was clearly wealthy and held himself with a raw but restrained power.

They had no idea he could move faster than lightning and haul me
and
my fat ass around like I weighed as much as a pencil. They had no idea that, for whatever reason, he was revered by his people, a race of superhumans who lived forever.

And they’d never know.

The Mighty Vampire Lucien was walking down a sunny street but he was forced to live a secret life hiding who he really was.

Memories hit me like sledgehammers. My behavior at The Selection. My response to my first lesson, telling him the way his people fed was sick. When I was talking to Stephanie, assuming the people who went to Feasts were victims. Telling Lucien yesterday he disgusted me.

This was when I made my second mistake.

I stopped walking down the sidewalk but I did it like my body had slammed against a brick wall. Lucien kept walking for a stride but turned his head when he felt resistance from my arm. His eyes went to our linked hands then to my face. Whatever he saw made him turn to me and take a swift step back.

“Leah, sweetheart, what is it?”

My head had tilted back to look at him and for some reason I again felt like crying.

Before I could think better of it, I blurted, “You can’t be you.”

He got closer. “Pardon?”

I lifted my hand and waved it around. “Out here. You can’t be you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“
You,
” I repeated, pointing at him. “You can move like a rocket and you can probably lift up that car and throw it across the street.” I gestured to a shiny Audi parked next to us and Lucien looked at the car then back at me. “You can, can’t you?”

“Throw a car across the street?” he asked like he thought I might be mental.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I’ve never tried,” he replied, his brows drawing together and he got even closer. “What’s this about?”

I gestured again in a vague way. “Everyone’s looking at you. They look at you and they can see you but they don’t have any clue what you are.”

His jaw got tight but I was too much in my tizzy to notice it.