Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (The Three #1)(89)
Author: Kristen Ashley

This was highly embarrassing and even more highly annoying so I tried to cut him off.

“Lucien –”

I failed at cutting him off.

“I wasn’t prepared. It won’t happen tonight.”

I stared at him.

For three weeks I knew he didn’t go to Feasts. If he did, he was a glutton. He fed morning and night and even would come home some afternoons. And, on top of that, the last time I thought he had sex with someone else, he said he couldn’t even though she tempted him.

As far as I knew, he’d been without for three weeks or longer.

I’d had Lucien-induced orgasms. He’d had nothing.

If that wasn’t a recipe for disaster, nothing was!

“What’s working behind your eyes now, pet?” he demanded, watching me closely, too closely.

I looked over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” I lied.

He gave me a shake.

I looked back at him. “Seriously! Nothing!”

His hand in my hair pulled my head back and his face got close.

“Waking up every day after sleeping next to you, smelling you, feeling you, I take care of myself in the shower. In the beginning, during your punishment, I’d have to do it two or three times a day.” I stared up at him in shock and wonder and maybe a little turned on at his frank honesty but he saved the best for last. “It’s been a long time, too long. It’ll be good to come inside you, sweetling.”

Oh my God.

Yes, totally turned on.

Before my brain kicked in, I whispered, “Can we kick the aunties out right now?”

I saw the flash of his smug smile before he buried his face in my neck and muttered, “You’re adorable.”

I wasn’t trying to be adorable. I was trying to get laid.

“No, seriously.”

His head came up and he touched his lips to mine.

Then he promised, “Soon, Leah.” His eyes went all vampire sexy and he whispered, “Very soon.”

My female parts rippled. He smiled like he knew it.

And he probably did.

I rolled my eyes. He burst out laughing.

Then he walked me out so I could be sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious to my family.

* * * * *

I was padding on bare feet down the hall when I heard them.

Lucien’s “very soon” didn’t come about because Stephanie showed up during dessert. Then Lucien, Avery and Stephanie went behind closed doors in his study.

While they were plotting whatever it was they were plotting, I sat and talked with Mom and the aunties for a while.

Since Lucien was hogging the study and the desktop computer was in the study, I had to go to the laptop upstairs to search online for someplace for my family to stay. Lucien might not have been right about the “very soon” but he was right about my Mom and aunties not giving him any backtalk when he told them they had to stay somewhere else. Not a single word was spoken except Aunt Millicent asking, “Could someone pass the potatoes?”

Luckily, Dragon Lake was a picturesque town so there were tons of posh bed and breakfasts. Unfortunately, most of them were booked up.

I lucked out on the seventh call when I found a place that not only was a B&B but also had a big guest house which had a cancellation.

I booked them in and was heading toward the comfy seating area in the kitchen where they were all gabbing (seriously, that huge house and we used, like, four rooms, it was such a freaking waste) when I heard them.

“Lifemates?” my mother cried in a weird strangled voice that sounded both thrilled beyond belief and scared stupid.

At her words, I stopped dead. I thought they were talking about Lucien and Katrina and I felt like a knife had been plunged in my gut.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten about her but I had also not let myself think about her. Lucien had moved on from her that much was clear. What wasn’t clear was how I felt about how easily he could leave what amounted to his wife of fifty years and carry on with another woman, namely, me.

“What else could it be?” Aunt Nadia replied to my mother.

“There’s no such thing as lifemates. That’s romance novel balderdash,” Aunt Kate proclaimed.

“Sounds fishy to me too,” Aunt Millicent agreed.

“Well, it doesn’t sound fishy to me. She’s marking him and only Lucien can do that. She can talk to him with her mind. That’s never happened, not from a mortal. And she’s dreaming about The Sentence,” Aunt Nadia said.

The Sentence? What on earth was that?

I moved to the wall to better hide myself and decided to full on eavesdrop since they weren’t talking about Katrina, they were talking about me.

Me being lifemates with Lucien.

I read romance novels, loads of them, and lifemates were what some of those books called the unions between immortals or mortals and immortals.

The concept was, there was one being on all the earth through all of time that belonged to the immortal. She was destined for him (it was usually a him) even so far as created for him.

And of all the millions and billions of beings on the planet through time, he had to find her. Through all his centuries and sometimes millennia of living, he had to search out his one true love, the other half of him and bind himself to her.

Of course, he found her. They usually had lots of hot sex. Though how they got to the sex when all the rest of the time they were bickering or there was some huge misunderstanding or they had to fight against some grave evil or he’d done her some wrong for which she hated him, I’d never know. Still, it worked.

Eventually she soothed his savage soul, he’d find some way to make her immortal if she already wasn’t and they lived happily ever after for eternity.

Aunt Kate was right. Balderdash.

“What do you think, Avery?” my mother asked and my eyes went to the study door which, I noticed belatedly, was open and no one was inside.

Where was Lucien?

“I think I’ll respectfully decline participation in this conversation,” Avery murmured.

“Oh come on Avery. You have to speak up,” Aunt Nadia urged. “Mortals don’t have those powers. Leah didn’t even have those powers until she met Lucien.”

“She’d had the dreams,” Aunt Millicent pointed out.

“Okay, she had the dreams,” Aunt Nadia allowed. “But the rest? It’s crazy! Sounds total lifemate to me.”

“Can you imagine? My Leah, lifemate to the Great Lucien. She’s already famous but she’ll be a legend.” Mom sounded ecstatic.

I was famous?

I didn’t have time to ponder my celebrity, Aunt Kate spoke.