Your normal, average, every day guy couldn’t pick me up, not for more than a couple of seconds anyway.
This man, even if he wasn’t a vampire, could have done it. No doubt.
I felt fragile in the face of him. Breakable. Delicate.
All conversation in the room had again died.
The entire room was silent. Everyone was watching.
I opened my mouth to say something, likely something foolish, when Stephanie spoke.
“Lucien –” she began, her voice impatient.
He cut her off, eyes locked on mine, he didn’t lead into it, he didn’t even say “hello”.
Instead, his deep, strong, throaty voice announced loudly, “I declare my intentions.”
Oh shit.
“Thank you, God,” my mother breathed happily from behind me.
Chapter Two
The Contract
“Get out,” Lucien growled.
This was not going well and he didn’t like it.
Leah glared at him.
Her mother, Lydia, stared in horror, at her daughter’s behavior or Lucien’s break with tradition he didn’t know. He also didn’t care.
Cosmo, who had been smiling until the moment Lucien growled, now frowned with concern.
Avery stepped forward. “Lucien, you know the law. You need consent. Your second must be present as must the Uninitiated’s Distinguished. Even you can’t –” Avery started.
Lucien lifted a hand and Avery ceased speaking.
He knew. He’d been fucking well living the nightmare for five hundred years. He bloody well knew.
This was also something about which he didn’t care.
“Go,” Lucien ground out.
“Lucien, don’t do this,” Cosmo implored.
Lucien lowered his voice to a dangerous rumble. “Now.”
There was a hesitation before Avery, as ever, played diplomat.
Glancing at the occupants of the room, Avery said on a whisper, “There’s a way. No one need know, Cosmo. This doesn’t leave this room.”
“I don’t like it,” Cosmo replied to Avery.
“Lucien, let me talk to her,” Lydia pleaded, her hand coming toward him.
“I will not say it again,” Lucien snarled.
With that, they knew they’d tried his patience, they knew what that meant and without further hesitation all of them moved to leave.
Including Leah.
“Not you,” he demanded and everyone turned.
“What?” Leah asked, her soft, sweet voice grating on his nerves.
“Not you. You stay.”
Her eyes darted to her mother, Cosmo, Avery then back to Lucien. “But I thought –”
“Come over here,” Lucien ordered, cutting off her words as the others quickly and silently left the room.
She didn’t do as he’d commanded. Instead, she looked at the closed door in confusion.
In fact, since she’d stepped foot in the Contract Room she hadn’t done a single thing that he’d commanded.
It wasn’t just her voice that was grating on his nerves, everything about her was.
He’d expected to enjoy this. He hadn’t had a challenge in five hundred years.
He wasn’t enjoying this.
“Leah,” he called, his voice as strained as his patience.
Her head snapped around. “What?” she asked sharply.
He felt his body go taut fighting back the desire to teach her the respect he was owed.
Instead of acting on this urge, he warned quietly, “Don’t ever speak to me that way.”
She stared at him, confusion warring with fear in her face, another look he hadn’t seen in a long time. A look he liked, a look he missed, a look he craved.
This appeased his anger. Not all of it, but enough.
“I don’t get it,” she said, the same fear and confusion in her voice and he felt it stir his blood.
Especially the fear.
Every concubine itched to be selected. This served a purpose but it also eradicated the chase, the capture, the taming.
All of which Lucien also liked, missed and most assuredly craved.
Her fear was as delicious as her face, her hair, her eyes, her breasts, that ass, her fucking scent which had practically brought him to his knees the minute he’d entered The Selection and caught it.
As it had done the first time he saw her, smelled her, years ago, after which he’d marked Leah Buchanan as his. Everyone knew it, they had for decades.
Except, of course, Leah.
She kept talking. “I thought if I refused to blood your contract that I was free to go.”
Lucien pulled in a calming breath.
It failed to calm him however his voice sounded less impatient when he explained, “If Nestor had declared his intention. Yes. Magnus. Yes. Hamish. The same. Any one of them,” he paused, gesturing to the door with his hand to indicate The Selection before he finished, “Me? No.”
“Why not you?” she asked.
“Because I want you.”
“But I don’t want you.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re mine.”
She blinked then rallied, “But, Mom said the rules are absolute. No one breaks them. Ever.”
“I’m not no one.”
Her head jerked with surprise. “Who are you?”
“I’m your Master.”
Now she started to look angry. “No one is my master.”
“I am.”
She stared at him, anger displacing the fear, her hands balled into fists and she leaned toward him before she declared, “You. Are. Not.”
He’d had enough.
Come here, Leah.
Instantly she moved to him. Lucien watched as the anger disappeared and the confusion came back.
So did the fear. A great deal of it.
So much the room reeked of it. It mingled with her scent. He had the forbidden desire to snatch her in his arms, rip open her throat at the same time he ripped off her clothes and buried his cock in her so deep, he’d feel his own thrusts as her blood poured into his mouth.
“Stop doing that,” she whispered as she halted less than a foot from him.
Silence, he demanded and her mouth clamped shut. Better, he told her. She glared at him, her hands again fists at her sides but she didn’t move away from him. She was straining to do it but she couldn’t. He wasn’t allowing it.
It didn’t matter, she fought it. He liked that.
Give me your hand.
She lifted her hand to his and watched it move, horror and anger in her eyes.
He turned, his fingers curling around the sharp dagger which was one of four things on the shining, oval table next to him.
There was also their contract, as big as a poster board, ivory parchment, tiny calligraphied words from the very top to near the bottom. There was only an inch of space for their signatures. All if it were words declaring her blood his, giving him feeding rights and in return he’d take care of her, not through the length of The Arrangement but until she took her last breath on this earth.
What she did not know, Cosmo did not know, her mother did not know but Avery did know was that Lucien had the five hundred year old agreement altered.
Upon entry to the room, she’d sat and read every word, something not one single concubine he’d selected in five hundred years had done. She had no way of knowing the changes he’d ordered Avery to make or she wouldn’t until she attended her studies. He’d planned for that and was prepared for the consequences.
Nevertheless, or likely because, after she finished reading it, her face pale, her eyes seething, she tossed it on the table, caught Lucien’s gaze and announced, “Not on your life.”
Thus had started Lucien’s demands, her mother’s pleading, Cosmo’s chuckles and Avery’s grins.