“I’m trying to find new and interesting ways to annoy you,” I informed her.
“Well, you found one,” she retorted.
“Good,” I returned. “Next I’m going to force you to cuddle with me and a tub of ice cream and tell me about all your secret crushes as a teenager,” I hesitated and finished, “in minute detail.”
Aunt Nadia, Aunt Millicent and Mom giggled. Stephanie out-and-out laughed and I heard Avery’s chuckle.
Aunt Kate stood and announced, “We’ve a guest house to check into. Ladies, we’re going.”
The rest of my family and also Avery and Stephanie made their moves to leave.
Nicely done, pet, Lucien said to my brain.
I looked at him. He looked amused and hungry and very, very sexy.
My heart skipped a beat.
I hadn’t actually kissed Aunt Kate to piss her off enough to leave and drag everyone with her.
But at that moment, I also wasn’t upset to see them go.
Chapter Seventeen
The Joining
Three weeks ago, Lucien came home and gave me a black-colored credit card, a checkbook and a bank card
The credit card, he told me, was for my use whenever I wanted, whatever I wanted. The bills would go to him.
The checking account, he told me, had its first deposit. The same amount would be deposited every month and that was for my use whenever I wanted, whatever I wanted when cash was required.
When he left me, I looked and the amount of the deposit was a quarter of my yearly salary.
It was the kind of thing dreams were made of, if you didn’t hate the person who made that dream come true as, at the time, I hated Lucien.
Two weeks ago, Stephanie came over one morning and told me we were having a girlie day. Then she whisked me off to a spa, we had facials and massages and then sat in a sauna where, incidentally, her super-vampire senses came in handy because all that steam made me blind. I tripped over the wooden mat by the door and she caught me before I took a header. Then we had a gourmet lunch followed by manicures, pedicures, makeup and hair.
Then we went shopping and she took me to the place where she bought the outfit I admired so much.
And she also took me to a place that sold lingerie that cost more than most people’s monthly mortgage payments.
It was there that she made me (and she did make me, I didn’t want to do it) buy the getup that I was wearing at that very moment. She heard my heart start racing when I eyed it in the shop, she forced me to try it on and then she vampire-talked me, as in no protesting allowed, into buying it.
Now I was standing in front of the three-way mirror in the dressing room and examining myself.
I had to admit, I loved it. It was kind of naughty but it was also cute.
The problem was I didn’t know if Lucien would like it.
It was a camisole and panties in sheer baby pink. The camisole was bloused from under the br**sts, the cups had rows of tiny, black lace frills that ran at diagonals. The thin straps were made of baby pink satin and there was a little black frill around the hem. The panties were also sheer baby pink but they were covered in rows of tiny, black lace frills, like little girl panties.
Very sexy. Very sweet. Very cute.
But definitely kind of naughty.
I fancied I heard a noise, jumped like the scaredy-cat I was and ran to the black silk man’s tailored robe that came down to my knees that I also bought at that store. Both purchases cost more than my food budget for six months when I was at home. Lucien was going to have a conniption when he got the credit card bill.
I covered up, tugged the belt tight on the robe and wondered if I should put on lip gloss. Then I decided that was a supremely stupid idea since I was, essentially, going to bed.
I took a deep, ragged breath, walked out of the dressing room through the bathroom and into the bedroom.
Lucien was laying in bed, back to the headboard, covers up to his waist, gorgeous chest bared. He was reading a book.
I stopped and stared. His eyes came to me. I fought back the need to start panting. To hide my distress, I latched onto something else.
That something else was the fact that he was lying in bed reading and he was blinkety blank eight hundred and twenty-two years old.
“After eight hundred years plus, haven’t you already read every book ever published?” I asked.
His thumb holding his place, he dropped the book to his side.
Then he answered, “No.”
Hmm.
Next question.
“Do vampires ever get so old they have to wear glasses?”
“No,” he repeated.
“Hearing aids?”
“No.”
“Dentures?” I went on stupidly and, maybe, semi-hysterically.
His lips turned up at the ends. “No, Leah.”
“Do they ever have to walk with canes?”
The lip-turn morphed into a sexy smile.
“Come here, sweetheart,” he ordered gently.
Seeing as, if I decided to make a run for it, he could be on me faster than I could blink, I thought it best to do as he ordered.
As I walked toward him, he put his book on the nightstand.
I stopped at the side of the bed.
With vamp speed he twisted, grabbed me by the waist, slid down the bed and I was on top of him over the covers. I arched my back and rested a forearm on his chest, catching my breath at his sudden movements. He gathered all my hair in both of his hands at the back of my neck and his eyes caught mine.
“Nervous?” he murmured.
Nervous? No.
About to have a cardiac arrest? Yes!
“No,” I lied to save face.
He grinned and told me, “I can hear your heart, pet.”
Why was I always forgetting that?
I wrinkled my nose and informed him, “You’re very annoying.”
He put pressure on my neck, enough for my arm to buckle and get trapped between us as he lifted his head and buried it in my neck.
“You’re very adorable,” he replied against my skin.
I was pretty certain my heart was accelerating past the point of cardiac arrest straight to cardiac explosion.
Regardless of this fact, since I was me, I retorted, “That’s part of you being annoying.”
His lips slid up the side of my neck and I did a full body tremble.
“What is?” he asked the underside of my jaw.
“You calling me adorable,” I answered, tilting my head back to give him better access.
I felt his smile. Then I felt the tip of his tongue move along my jaw and then down my throat. I held my breath while he did this and my female parts rippled.
“Are you going to feed?” I whispered.
“No,” he answered.