“If you go against us, you’ll be banished from our family,” my mother replied softly trying, I knew, to take the sting out of her awful words. “If you go against Lucien, with that signed contract, he’ll have certain rights, Leah. Rights you won’t want him to invoke. Rights, I feel relatively certain, he will.”
“And those are?” I snapped, tired of the secrets and not scheduled to go to my Vampire Studies until the next day. Vampire Studies were two days of learning all things vampire and all things concubine, something I was not only not looking forward to but had, at that moment, no intention of doing.
“He’s allowed to hunt you and when he finds you, which he would, he’s allowed to do as he wishes,” Mom answered.
“And ‘as he wishes’ means suck my blood which is exactly what that contract allows him to do, amongst other things.”
She blanched at my words, something I couldn’t put my finger on not right behind her eyes, but her next words forced my attention elsewhere.
“Feed, yes, and not stop.”
“Sorry?” I asked.
“He has every right to feed and not stop. As his willing concubine, he’s allowed to feed. Once he initiates you and you get used to the feeding, he can do it when he wishes as often as he wishes. But he must stop, not only before he kills you but before he unduly weakens you. If you challenge that contract, he can hunt you and he can feed from you until you’re dead.”
I had nothing to say to that because it was downright terrifying.
Lucien hunting me down and sucking the blood out of my body until I was dead.
He’d do it. If I defied him, the bastard would not only do it, he’d love every minute of it.
“It’s never happened. Not once. Not in five hundred years,” Mom informed me, came close and grabbed my hands, both of them, fervently clenching them in her own. “Don’t make the first be a Buchanan. Please don’t,” she beseeched me. “Our name is impeccable. We have the highest Selections, the longest Arrangements. The shame you’d create would mean no vampire would associate with us for years, decades, maybe ever. Your sister would be released and that would devastate her. Rafe adores her. He’s lost no taste for her. She’s set to challenge my accomplishment. Your cousins would be released too. And your cousins who haven’t seen their Selections yet… but they want to, Leah… think of them.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking this of me,” I whispered and I couldn’t.
It was hideous. All of it.
Her hands gave mine a squeeze. “You don’t understand. Go to your studies, you’ll learn. Go to Lucien. He’ll be good to you, Leah. After he initiates you, I promise, you’ll understand.”
“Who is this guy?” I asked.
“He’s Lucien,” she replied as if that said it all.
“I think I need more information.”
She nodded but said, “And I’ll give you more, after your studies, after the first bloodletting, when you understand. Then I’ll tell you about Lucien.”
“Why after?”
“First, you must understand.” She squeezed my hands again. “I’ve no doubt he’ll make you understand. After that,” she smiled, “you might not even care.”
I doubted that then. I doubted it now, standing in this beautiful room, my beautiful room, in my new beautiful house, a room (and a house) that the Bastard Vampire Lucien had provided for me.
I hated him with all my beating heart.
On that thought, the door opened. I whirled toward it and as I ended my whirl, I saw him close the door.
I hadn’t seen him in a week.
He was again wearing a dark suit with a dark shirt open at the throat. His eyes never left me as he walked across the room to a chaise lounge where he shrugged off his jacket and threw it on the lounge.
Eyes still on me, he walked to the side of the bed where he stopped, stood and said, “Come here, Leah.”
Again, I noted, he didn’t even say “hello”.
I didn’t complain at his lack of greeting. Nor did I greet him.
I walked toward him.
Not because I had no control over my own body. That had been too humiliating to endure again.
But because I had no choice.
And that sucked.
He was just as huge and overwhelming as I remembered. More so in this smaller room standing by a bed with me in bare feet.
His eyes were more intense too. Far more intense. Scarily more intense.
I stopped a foot in front of him and tipped my head back to look at him. I didn’t know him at all but he looked strangely disappointed.
I realized why when he spoke. “Not feeling stubborn tonight?”
I was stubborn every night. And every day for that matter. I just wasn’t stupid.
“My mother says, if I run and break the contract, you can hunt me down and murder me.”
His head tipped very slightly to the side.
Then he said somewhat hesitantly, “That’s right.”
“Well, even though the next however long I’m with you is going to stink, I kinda like breathing and I definitely don’t want you to get your kicks out of taking my life, so, no. I’m not feeling stubborn.” I tilted my head back, exposing my throat, tensing my body and ungraciously invited, “Have at it.”
I waited, slightly panicked and definitely scared, to be torn asunder.
Instead, I heard his rich shout of laughter before I found myself in his lap.
That’s right. One second I was standing one foot in front of him offering him my blood as his lifeline. The next second (or maybe half a second), he was seated. I was in his lap, one of his arms tight around my front and hip, the other one strong along my spine between my shoulder blades, his fingers in my hair. My torso was pressed to the surprising warmth of his, my arms crushed at my sides.
His face was in my neck and he was still laughing.
He did this for a while. I sat stiff in his lap while he did.
Then his head moved, his mouth went to my ear and he murmured, “I knew you’d be fun.”
“I’m not trying to be fun,” I told the wall behind him with total truthfulness.
He gently tugged on my hair to pull my head back and he lifted his own to face me. “I know. That’s why you’re fun.”
I glared. He grinned.
He looked good grinning or I should say, even better, so I sighed.
“Can we get this over with, please?”
His eyes traveled over my face and hair. “Is this all for me?”