Until the Sun Falls from the Sky 2

Chapter Fourteen


The Explosion





“What’s happened to Leah?”

Even after hearing Stephanie’s whispered question, Lucien didn’t take his eyes from Leah as she slid away from them through the crowded room.

He heard Leah saying softly again and again, “Excuse me,” as she moved amongst the crush of opera patrons on her way to the restroom. Sometimes she would give them a small polite smile.

As she moved and spoke, the patrons turned to look.

The men would keep looking. The women would either stare or glare.

She disappeared from sight and Lucien’s eyes stayed where he last saw her.

Three weeks.

It had been three weeks since their Sunday together, a day that started unbelievably well and ended unbelievably badly.

And then she had her dream.

“Lucien?” Stephanie called but, lost in thought, Lucien didn’t respond. He continued to watch the entrance to the hall where he’d last seen Leah.

He feared he’d broken her. Not how he’d intended, in a way he could never have imagined nor would ever have wanted.

For the first week, he saw her come through every once in a while. Often her eyes would flash. Other times she’d look painfully and hilariously undecided, as if she had one reaction but was forcing herself to display another. She also lost her patience while attempting to make him some complicated soufflé that went tremendously badly however her foul-mouthed tirade after it collapsed was immensely entertaining.

The disastrous soufflé gave him hope.

So did the dreams.

She’d had four more, all the same. All of them starting with her moving, nearly writhing against him as if in ecstasy but this would end abruptly in a blood-chilling scream.

Seconds later, he’d hear her words whispered in his head.

I love you.

Shortly after came the choking sobs, she’d wake and attempt to flee. He’d catch her and hold her until her trembling and tears ceased.

After the second dream they’d stopped talking about it. She would simply hold onto him in a way that felt desperate. He’d stroke her back or her hair until her body relaxed and she fell asleep in his arms.

Lucien closed his eyes tightly as the words sounded softly in his head.

I love you.

Those words, those three fucking words, whispered in his head.

It wasn’t even the words, it was the way she said them. As if she’d pulled them out of her soul and offered them to him like a gift.

And he knew she was talking to him, dreaming of him. She wouldn’t be in his head if she wasn’t. He wouldn’t be able to hear it.

He also knew she wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t remember. Something was blocking the memory, likely the power behind the emotion of whatever made her scream and sob in such a fucking heartbroken way it was difficult to witness.

Lucien didn’t know what to make of the intensity of her dream and the aftermath or what they meant to him or Leah except it was pretty clear her earlier hostility toward him, and now her deference to him, were defense mechanisms. He’d managed to establish a connection but she wasn’t allowing herself to embrace it.

Even so, he didn’t like that Leah had them.

Her terror was stark, her pain palpable and he was powerless to stop them, a feeling he never felt and one he didn’t much like.

But he had to admit, he was intrigued by the words and the intensity with which she spoke them.

Even if he felt somehow tortured by them.

It was the dream, and the soufflé, that made him think she’d never be able to continue her latest game.

However, the last two weeks, except for when she had the dreams or when he was feeding and even then she seemed to hold herself back, all that was Leah had vanished. It appeared not to be a struggle in the slightest.

None of his Leah came shining through even for a moment.

She was like every concubine he’d had for five hundred years. Perhaps not as worshipful as some or as obviously greedy for the feeding as others but mostly just the same.

He missed her.

He actually missed their verbal tussles, her comical one-liners delivered when she was angry, her strength of will, her stubbornness, her curiosity, her spirit which filled the house.

All that was gone, including his anticipation of coming home to see what she’d be up to next.

“Lucien? Luce? Helloooo, Luce! Are you in there?” Stephanie called and Lucien’s gaze moved to her.

“Sorry,” he muttered and Stephanie’s eyes narrowed on his face.

“Something’s not right in Lucien and Leah Land,” Stephanie noted.

Lucien took a sip from his drink before saying, “Everything’s fine.”

“Doesn’t seem fine to me,” Stephanie shot back. “Leah looks like Leah, gorgeous as ever. And she smells like Leah. And she walks like Leah. And talks somewhat like Leah. But she’s not Leah.”