Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (47 page)

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.”

“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 stubborn, 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?
”