Edwina stared at him in horror, a stainless steel spoon any television chef would give one of their kidneys for held aloft. “Is it too weak?”
Lucien poured himself another cup. “It’s fine. But Leah has a heavy hand with the sugar.”
“Oh dear, I didn’t do it right?” I chirped, sounding devastated, like someone ran over the beloved cat that I’d had since childhood.
Lucien turned to me. “Do you remember what your behavior bought you when you disobeyed me?”
Oh I remembered all right.
Boy did I remember.
I clenched my teeth and nodded my head once.
“You could get more of that before breakfast,” Lucien went on. “Would you like that?”
Lucien turning me on to the point my body screamed for release and then leaving me wanting?
No. I didn’t want that.
I shook my head.
He calmly took a sip of his coffee.
Edwina thankfully pretended she hadn’t heard a thing.
I pulled the grocery list to me and started to read it.
All of a sudden I felt Lucien behind me, the heat from his chest against my back as he leaned over me.
I detested a lot of things about him. His recent behavior was one shining example. When he went all nearly breaking the sound barrier vampire was another.
“Tonight, I want you to make your fried chicken for me,” he ordered. My mind cleared of the latest Humiliating Lucien Encounter and I twisted my neck to look up at him, dumbfounded.
“What?”
His eyes caught mine. “Your fried chicken.”
My fried chicken?
I did, of course, make great fried chicken. The best. It was one of my only real talents.
But how the hell would he know that?
A weird chill ran up my spine.
“How do you know about my fried chicken?” I whispered.
His chin motioned to the pad of paper on the table and he didn’t answer my question.
Instead he commanded, “Put the ingredients down.”
“How do you –?”
“Just write down the ingredients, Leah.”
I gaped at him.
Then I considered my recipe, which required at least overnight marinating of the chicken in my famous buttermilk marinade.
It wouldn’t be near as good without time to marinade.
“I can’t,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed.
“No, really, I can’t. It’s the marinade. It needs at least…” I looked at the clock on the microwave, it was nearly ten, “eight hours of marinading!” My voice was rising dramatically but what could I say? I had a fried chicken reputation to keep up. Every woman knew how important that was. “And even that isn’t optimal. Anything less just isn’t worth it. I don’t even have eight hours!”
He grinned, I caught it close up and my heart skipped.
But he was relentless. “Put the ingredients down.”
“Lucien!”
“You can make it for me tomorrow night.”
Oh. Right.
Tomorrow night would give me plenty of time. I could do that.
I wrote the ingredients down.
Edwina served up poached eggs on toast with crisp fried bacon. Lucien had three eggs. I had only two. I wanted to ask for another egg (or two), seeing as I was still on course to gain as much weight as possible to turn Lucien off my “beautiful body” but I felt I’d tried his patience enough for one morning.
He sat beside me and we ate while Edwina tidied the kitchen and I wrote stuff down on the grocery list. I omitted the flame thrower. When the laptop in the bedroom had broadband, something I discovered the day before it didn’t, I’d see if I could order one online.
Edwina whisked the plates out from under us when we were done, rinsed them, put them in the dishwasher and did a rub down of all the countertops while Lucien and I sipped at our final drops of coffee.
It was weird having a housekeeper.
It was even weirder living in a rambling mansion in the middle of nowhere.
In my ex-life I lived in a two bedroom condo in the city and although I didn’t do too badly career-wise, I didn’t have a housekeeper. I had been a Media Specialist, a field in which I’d never get a job again considering I gave them two whole days notice. Though I didn’t have to worry about that since Lucien would be taking care of me for the rest of my natural born life, something else that sucked.
My condo was excellently situated. I could walk anywhere to get anything I needed. Bars, takeaway pizza, movie theaters, grocery stores. My condo had enough room not to feel like I lived in a cave but not too much where it would take all weekend to clean or I could accumulate too much stuff which I had a habit of doing.
Luckily, although Edwina was a bit strange, I liked her and her living with me made the big house seem less monstrous.
Still, I missed my little place. I’d lived there for ten years. I’d made every inch of it mine.
I liked it.
On that thought, I heard the backdoor close heralding Edwina’s departure (further heralded by her calling out “good-bye”), and I came back to the room.
“Time for your lesson, pet.”
I looked at Lucien in time for him to take my hand. He pulled me off the stool and walked me to the comfy seating area. With me standing in front of him, he sat on the big, fluffy couch then grabbed my hips, pulling me off my feet. He fell to the side, twisted to his back with me on top, partially falling off his side, my back to the back of the couch.
Why we needed to be lying pressed together on the couch for my lesson, I didn’t know.
Obedient Leah also didn’t ask even though she wanted to.
I just looked at him expectantly like whatever wisdom he was about to share would soothe my savaged soul.
His eyes roamed my face.
Then he whispered, “You’re adorable.”
Not that again. I was trying to be annoying. It just wasn’t working.
“My lesson?” I prompted.
He smiled.
My heart skipped another beat.
His smile grew arrogant.
With effort I contained my frustrated growl.
He burst out laughing, his arms closed around me and he hugged me close.
“Are we going to hug or are you going to teach me vampire knowledge?” I asked, trying not to sound as annoyed as I was.
“We’re going to do both,” he replied, his arms loosening but not letting go.
Whatever.
I lifted my head again and looked at him. His eyes caught mine.
“Feeding,” he started and my ears perked up because I was interested in spite of myself. “Do you remember the other night when I kissed you and your mouth tingled?”
I nodded.
“That was the anesthesia,” he explained. “It releases when my body prepares to feed. If I’d kissed you harder, longer, more frequently, your mouth would have gone numb.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. He was a good kisser and if my mouth was numb I’d miss all the fun.
He kept talking. “Also, when my body prepares to feed, the healing properties in my saliva release. They permeate your skin when I prepare it for the wound and they infiltrate the wound while I’m feeding so it’s healing even as I feed.”
As with all things vampire, this made sense so I nodded again.
Lucien continued, “Those healing properties stay in your bloodstream. They help your blood regenerate. Even after your first bloodletting, they were working. No mortal could have lost that much blood without a transfusion but after a couple of days rest, you were back to normal. The longer I feed, the more healing agents are released into your bloodstream, the quicker you recover. In a week, I can feed once a day. In two, I can feed more than once a day. In three weeks, I can feed whenever I like.”
This also made sense.
However, I was stuck on the idea of him feeding whenever he liked.