“You’re thinking too hard,” he said, drawing a fingertip along her spine. “I must not be doing my job right.”
She felt his lips against her back and shivered. “Not too hard,” she said.
“What has distracted you?” The kisses moved lower.
“The past.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “The future.”
His mouth stilled against her. “You still see no hope for us.”
She rolled over in his arms. “Am I wrong?”
“We cannot control the future.” Abbey thought of what Melissa had told her. She had so many questions about Claudette, but bringing an old lover into their bed was the last thing she wanted to do.
“What if I asked you about your transformation? Would you trust me that much?”
Lucian was silent and, in all honesty, she didn’t expect him to answer. Just because Melissa had told her of the past didn’t mean Lucian felt the need to make such a connection.
“Sorry,” she whispered, kissing his chest over his heart. “Forget I asked.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Sometimes you’re so sage and worldly. Then you say something like that and it makes me think maybe you don’t have all the answers after all.”
“Abbey?”
She looked up into his eyes. “I want to know you,” she whispered. “Nothing more sinister than that.”
Silence stretched. Would he actually trust her with his tale? The thought sent her heart racing. What did it mean if he would?
“It’s not a glamorous story,” he said after a long pause. “I was born a peasant. Lowest of the low.”
Her hands drifted down his arms. “How did you become a vampire?”
“A woman,” he replied. “One who was beautiful and callous.”
“She saw how handsome you were.”
“Yes. And she wanted me.” He kissed her palm. “When we first turn, there is little we won’t do for our sires. I was her perfect toy.”
“Did you want to be a vampire?”
He shrugged. “I had nothing else. My life as a human would have ended early, as many in those times did. My sire saved me from that, at least.”
“Do you see her anymore?”
He flipped her onto her back. “She was in France during the Revolution. Lost her head, along with many of our comrades.” His mouth glided across her stomach as he moved over her.
“You must mourn her,” Abbey said.
“She was my sire. Whatever our differences, I owed her much. I would have helped her had I been able.”
“So you were alone.”
“For years,” he agreed, his thumbs rubbing against her inner thighs.
“Until you found Melissa.”
His body froze, intimately tangled with hers. “Yes,” he said. “Until Melissa.”
Lucian said nothing more and she understood the conversation was over. He’d tell her about his sire but not his daughter. Not Claudette.
Because they mattered to him, she realized. And his sire, for all his talk of owing her, did not. Speaking of his turning was safe enough because he had little to lose.
Bringing up Claudette would be like showing her a piece of his heart. And that was not something that came into their affair.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
He grinned his Cheshire cat grin. “Thank me this way,” he purred as his mouth moved between her legs.
She gasped his name as his lips touched her, blasting Claudette from her mind. In that moment, the dead woman didn’t matter. All that mattered was here and now. And right now, she was the woman in his bed.
Abbey closed her eyes and gave herself up to Lucian’s expert touch. She’d live in his fantasy for however much longer he allowed her to.
…
“Your mortal did well at the benefit.”
Lucian looked up when Melissa entered his study. He’d moved his operations to the New York apartment for the duration of his tenure at Fated Match, and the small study was filled with files and ledgers. Blackout drapes were drawn over the large windows and the soft glow of well-placed lamps illuminated the room. He’d always avoided harsh fluorescent lights when he could.
His daughter walked straight to his desk, dropping into the brown armchair on the other side and casting him an expectant look.
“Yes,” he said, looking down at the papers before him. “She did better than expected.”
Abbey kept surprising him at all turns. She’d moved elegantly through his world and then had gone back to being the messy, chaotic woman he was coming to know. She could be cool and reserved for her work, then hot and wild in his arms. He knew very well she’d intended to end their relationship after the first night, but he kept convincing her to stay with him. It was lowering, to know he was groveling after a human. But for a woman like Abbey, a man would do much to ensure that she stayed in his bed.