He wanted to instruct me?
Well, I was going to teach him a few lessons too.
But I’d gotten carried away.
I determined to rectify that.
“Hangers?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What does that mean?” I went on.
He looked to the room. It was a gesture I was meant to follow which I did and when I was facing the room his mouth came back to my ear. “They want to be down here.”
I stayed facing forward, something I sensed he wanted me to do and asked, “Have they ever been down here?”
“Never, and they never will,” he answered. “But they don’t give up. Obsessed with vampires and our culture, especially The Feasts. Obsessed in an unhealthy way. They’ve made themselves servants, unpaid unless someone gives them a gratuity.”
I felt badly for Breed and Wats, to want something so badly, to be so close but never to have what you want.
“How do they know about vampires?” I queried since I thought no one but those in the life did.
“They sense us,” Lucien answered. “I’ve no idea how. Very few mortals do. And those who do always become hangers.”
I found this interesting.
“Do people tip them?” I asked.
“Rarely.”
“Why?”
“They’re filthy, ill-bred, unkempt. Most vampires have the capacity to procure the finer things in life and they do, without fail. They don’t have patience for reminders that there might be something less.” I felt my body stiffen as he continued, “And they’re hangers, Leah. Zealots. They make people uncomfortable, vampires but especially the mortals. They’re not only uninvited, they aren’t wanted.”
I looked across the room, taking in the beautiful people who could afford the finer things in life who wouldn’t tolerate the not so beautiful people who had next to nothing.
Then I remembered Lucien tossing his keys to Wats and Wats’s fanatical toadying.
“Do you tip them?” I whispered, thinking he might not hear me, my voice was so low and forgetting he was a vampire, so of course he’d hear me.
“Always,” Lucien answered and I twisted my neck to look at him.
“Really?” I breathed, not knowing why his answer, which was the right answer, meant so much to me.
His eyes roamed my face and I watched the guard go down as they gentled.
“Really, my pet. They wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t for Cosmo and me.”
Without my permission, my body relaxed into his and I faced forward again.
His arm grew tighter around my waist as his mouth went back to my ear. “It doesn’t make us terribly popular with our kind, however.”
“Screw ‘em,” I muttered before I could stop myself and I felt his body shake with laughter as I heard his throat roar with it.
Automatically, my entire being tuned itself to his laughter. Something I hadn’t heard since yesterday morning. Something that seemed to feed me, not like chocolate or some other forbidden treat, but like essential nourishment.
I felt my throat close with fear at the very thought.
In all the time I was with him, a vampire who drank human blood, who was vastly stronger than me (hell, than anyone I knew), who hurt me and humbled me and played my body against me, I’d never felt more fear than at that moment.
He felt it or sensed it, I knew this when his mouth at my ear called questioningly, “Leah?”
I noticed it then. Something else. Something that had been playing at the edge of my consciousness since we arrived.
Actually, two things.
The first wasn’t so much real as it was an undercurrent.
The eyes. The ears. The senses. The attention. Surreptitiously people were watching us, listening to us, probably, as some of them were vampires, hearing our words, smelling my perfume mingled with his woodsy cologne.
I wasn’t the sole curiosity, being new to this crowd.
It was also Lucien. In fact, it seemed to be mostly Lucien.
It was like we were movie stars…
No.
It was like he was a wildly famous movie star, I was his arm candy and we’d gone out to a regular club amongst the common people.
The second thing was what I’d felt at The Selection. The weird drugged feeling. The feeling Stephanie explained was him tracking me, marking me.
“Are you marking me?” I whispered.
His arm at my waist slid up, his hand stopping at the side of my breast, his thumb stroking the skin over my dress there.
I felt his head move, his mouth no longer at my ear but his lips were against my neck.
“Yes,” he answered.
I forgot our audience, who were now getting a show, turned slightly to him and his head came up.
I got close to his face and asked, “What is that?”
He answered without delay. “I’ve tuned myself to you.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You know I can hear your heart?” he asked in return.
I nodded.
He hesitated before he went on, “You know I can control your mind?”
I swallowed before I nodded again and asked, “Are you reading my mind?”
“I can’t read your mind unless you’re speaking to me with it.”
Wow. That was a relief.
“So what are you doing?”
“I’ve adjusted you to me and me to you. At the same time I’ve attuned my senses to you, so every breath you take, every slight movement, I know it almost before you do it.”
I didn’t get it but whatever it was, it was freaking me out!
“What does that mean?”
“It means our hearts are beating in tandem. It means I’m anticipating your movements. It says to the vampires in this room who can hear it and feel it, that you’re mine.”
“Don’t they already know that?”
“Yes.”
“Then isn’t that overkill?”
For some reason his face got hard before he replied, “No.”
“Don’t you think you holding me pretty much sends the message?”
“Holding you is a message I’m sending to the mortals.”
I was surprised at that answer. “What do they care?”
“I don’t give a f**k if they care. I care. But it says I’m not here to feed. I’m not here to play. I’m not here to f**k. I’m here to be with you.”
Oh my God.
What did that mean?
I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.
And why did my heart skip a beat when he said that?