“What would drag you away from that family and all those friends of yours. Obviously, if you can afford to live in Dragon Lake, you must have got a helluva job. That’s a pricey neighborhood.”
“We don’t actually live in Dragon Lake.” Lucien decided it was time to enter the conversation. “We live outside town, on the lake.”
Lucien didn’t put any emphasis on the “we” but then again, he didn’t have to. Justin caught his meaning, his eyes narrowed on Lucien and his jaw clenched. He again looked between Lucien and Leah and Lucien heard his heart start beating faster.
Angry.
Lucien bit back a smile.
Finally Justin’s eyes settled on Lucien and he asked, “Do you?”
“Justin –” Leah started, her tense body going solid but Justin’s eyes didn’t move from Lucien.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Justin –” Leah began again but Lucien talked over her.
“Yes,” Lucien replied.
“Then you know she broke up with me just five months ago.”
“Justin!” Leah snapped but Lucien again spoke over her.
“Yes,” Lucien repeated.
Justin’s eyes shot to Leah. “You’re a fast mover. Or were you with him before you finished with me?”
“Justin –” she started yet again, his name a shard of ice but this time Justin talked over her.
“Nice necklace, Ley-lo.” His voice was snide and it was Lucien’s turn to go tense.
“Do we have to do this?” Leah asked, her tone hard saying it was not a question at all and that they were not going to do “this”.
Justin disagreed. “Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled sarcastically. “Six months ago I was told I was being transferred, with a f**king great raise and a huge bonus. Not anything that would put me near Dragon Lake but it wasn’t anything to f**king sneeze at either. You said you wouldn’t move, no way, no how. Guess you were waiting for someone who could put gold around your neck and your ass in a two million dollar house on Dragon Lake.”
“I think you’re done,” Lucien told him and his voice made it clear Justin was, indeed, done.
Again, Justin didn’t agree. “Oh, do you now?”
Leah pressed into his side as her hand came up to grasp his lapel. “Lucien, don’t –”
Lucien looked down at her and saw her face had paled with alarm. But before he could reassure her, Justin was there.
“He’s a big guy, Ley-lo, but you know I can handle myself,” he announced. Leah’s body turned to marble and Lucien’s eyes sliced to him.
Justin was dark-haired, dark-eyed and clearly fit but, even if Lucien wasn’t a vampire, he had four inches and fifty pounds on him at least.
However, he was a vampire and without any effort at all, he could rip the man’s head off which was something he would have liked to do. Not because he was clearly an ass**le but because Lucien knew he’d been an ass**le to Leah for a very long time.
Justin, Lucien knew from Fiona, was ambitious. He was also callous with his ambition not only in business but often cancelling plans with Leah, sometimes important or special ones in order to spend his time clawing his way to the top.
Justin was so ambitious that when he needed Leah to be available to charm associates at a business dinner or the like, regardless of the fact that he often chose work over her, he demanded her attendance. He did this even, on occasion, when she was ill or when she had other plans. The former, she’d done, according to Fiona, once. The latter she’d told him to “go screw himself” (Fiona’s account, direct from Leah’s mouth), which meant they fought, not cleanly or at least Justin didn’t fight clean. In a fight, as he was always, he was insensitive, selfish and manipulative.
Justin, Lucien now knew, was also stupid.
Leah tried to salvage the situation. “We’re at the opera,” she hissed to Justin.
“So, f**king, what?” Justin hissed back. “You think you can stand there and hang on some guy, some guy you’ve known for what? A couple of months? Some guy you’ve moved in with when you wouldn’t entertain the notion for even a second with me? Hang on him right in front of me when five months ago you were in my bed?”
Lucien prepared to move. “I see you’re not done but we are.”
Justin, proving his immense stupidity, leaned in and snapped, “Listen up, Lucien, whatever f**king kind of name that is, take it from me. Trust me, I f**king know. Get out, get out now. She’ll twist you around her little finger, get you addicted to that toffee snatch of hers, then she’ll –”
Lucien was done.
Instead of ripping his head off, which was something he now really wished to do, he did something else which would likely not horrify Leah, the rest of their many onlookers and sentence him to be hunted down and burned by The Dominion. The last of which would put a world of hurt on his plans to tame Leah as he’d be dead.
Silence, Lucien commanded, Justin’s mouth clamped shut and his eyes bugged out. Walk away, Lucien continued and without hesitation, Justin’s body jerking woodenly, he turned and walked away.
Lucien watched him go.
Then he heard Leah breathe, “Did you…?”
His head tilted down to look at her and she was staring at him, lips parted, eyes wide, faced filled with wonder. His favorite look. A look he hadn’t seen in three weeks, a look he didn’t realize how much he missed until that very moment.
She went on, “Did you just mind control Justin?”
“Yes,” Lucien replied without hesitation wondering what her reaction would be.
If he’d been asked, he would have guessed a variety of things. None of which was what he received.
She burst out laughing.
Laughing.
She threw her head back, exposing the elegant line of her throat, her face lit with mirth, her entire body shaking with it.
He’d never made her laugh. Not once.
In eight hundred years there were a great number of things he’d done but at that moment none of them seemed as monumental as making Leah laugh.
She curled into his front. One arm was still holding him tight around the waist, her other hand still clenched at his lapel. The rest of her body collapsed into him as if the weight of her hilarity was too much to bear. She bent her neck and rested her forehead against his chest, still giggling.
“You… you… mind-controlled Justin,” she stammered through her giggles into his chest then her head snapped back and she cried with very loud glee, “Justin!”