Love at Stake (Entangled Covet)(56)

He heard her swift inhale. “Maybe I’ve had better from someone else,” she said.

A grin stretched his lips. “I doubt it.”

The blush staining her cheeks confirmed his hunch. Oh yes, he would be the best she’d ever had.

And the last.

…

Abbey looked down at her wrist. The skin was clear. Not a blemish on it to explain the acid in her veins she’d felt at his bite. Her clients might wax poetically about a vampire’s fangs but one thing was for sure: she’d be dead and cold before she put herself through that again.

At least her sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing. Lucian’s back had been in shreds when they’d stumbled through the door, and now his skin was perfect. That was vampires for you. Add a little blood and they could rebound from anything.

“You’re okay now,” she said. “You can leave.”

“That’s the last thing I’m going to do.”

She didn’t want to look at the man by her side. The last hour had been about keeping him alive, nothing else. But now he was healed and in her domain.

An opportunity Lucian wasn’t about to let slide.

He pushed to his feet to explore her bedroom. She was suddenly conscious of the bra hanging on the closet doorknob and the makeup scattered across her vintage vanity table. Her queen-size bed was decked out in its handmade multicolored quilt that she’d bargained for at the farmer’s market. She silently groaned as she took in her neon-orange walls that she just knew he’d hate. Nothing was put away, not the piles of paperbacks by her bed or the mismatched outfits strewn over her dresser. She was one of those people who would forget what she owned if she didn’t see it out.

Lucian glanced back at her, one brow arched, before leaving her bedroom to explore the rest of her tiny home.

Abbey pushed herself to her feet in order to follow him.

“It’s not the Upper East Side,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb.

“No,” he said. “This is not what I expected.”

She looked around her living room and tried to see it through his eyes. The explosion of color, the chaotic taste. The pink couch had been a throwaway by the side of the road that she’d convinced Chloe to help her carry up here. Two armchairs in opposite corners of the living room were stuffed with cushions. A small screen door to her right led to her balcony. Her kitchen opened into the living room, and since she was a takeout kind of girl, condiments and dirty chopsticks littered the counter. Nothing about her home was organized or tidy.

“I told you we weren’t a good match.”

Lucian turned back to her, looking completely out of place standing in the middle of her decorative home.

“Not a good match,” he agreed. “We don’t have the ratings you have with Christian. Or I have with Fiona.”

She flinched at the reminder. “I know that.”

“And yet, do you remember what I said when we first met? How your computer system can’t calculate the feeling of seeing a woman across a crowded bar and knowing she’s yours?”

Abbey looked at him, knowing he paraphrased. He’d claimed nothing could replace the experience of seeing one’s mate across a bar, not merely a woman one wanted to screw.

But right now, she let the slip pass. They weren’t mates. Someday Lucian would find his perfect match and it would be someone refined and elegant.

Right now, however, he was hers. He’d been searching for a millennium for his mate with no luck. Claudette hadn’t bemoaned the fact that he didn’t love her as she’d dreamed when they’d made a life together. Abbey felt as if she was bowing out in a contest that might not be decided for a dozen generations.

“I’m not yours,” she said, moving toward him. “You’ve shown me how little you respect human lovers.”

His eyes darkened with regret. “We all make mistakes.”

“Not you. Everything you told me in the car was true. We aren’t meant to go the distance.”

“You, more than any other woman, have consumed my thoughts.”

“Really?” she asked, knowing she was pushing but she needed to know. “More than Claudette?”

Lucian froze. Not the way a human went still. When Lucian stopped moving, he was like a statue. No breath filled him, no life. He was as inhuman as she’d ever seen him.

“Melissa,” he murmured. “Telling tales.”

“Yes.”

His blue gaze locked on hers. “You never said anything. That last night.”

“Your old flame was of no interest to me then.”

“But she is now?”

She drew a deep breath. “This can go two ways, Lucian. You can leave and we’ll go back to the way we were this past week. You with your partners and I with mine.”