Regardless, I bit into the biscuit and chewed, the biscuit like dust in my mouth and looked at him with what I hoped was respectful enquiry.
He took in my look and his mouth got tight.
“And yesterday,” he went on.
I decided to waylay the talk by announcing hurriedly, “I was wrong about yesterday.”
His eyes locked with mine. “Yes, you were.”
My mind seethed.
My mouth reminded him softly, “I already apologized.”
“You apologized about some of it, not all of it.”
I pressed my lips together.
Lucien kept talking. “Katrina and I have been mates for fifty years, Leah, but I’ve known her seventy-five. I filed Severance from her this week. Do you know what Severance means?”
I nodded.
He watched me nod and continued, “Our impending Severance had nothing to do with you and everything to do with you.”
That didn’t make any sense and I didn’t want it to make any sense. I didn’t want to be talking about this at all. But as usual, I didn’t get a choice. Lucien kept speaking.
“I knew things weren’t right with Rina and you personify everything that isn’t right about her. Being with you prompted me, finally, to make my decision.”
His words didn’t penetrate.
That wasn’t true, one did. He called her Rina.
I heard him say it the day before but now I felt him say it.
My stomach twisted.
“She loves you,” I whispered through the pain in my stomach.
“She doesn’t know what love is,” he replied tersely. “Vampires don’t have the same expectations when they mate, Leah. Eternity is a very long time. It isn’t unheard of for there to be absences, sometimes for years, even decades. And fidelity is definitely not a requirement of vampire mating.”
I had the sense he was explaining something about his relationship with Rina but I also had the sense he was explaining something to me.
My dry mouth went parched.
Obviously, since my contract stated he had free use of my blood and my body, I couldn’t expect him to be faithful to his mate.
Just as obviously, since he had a mate, Severance or not, I shouldn’t expect that he would be faithful to me. Neither my blood nor my body.
It was then something hit me. Something so overpowering that stomach twist wrenched the other way, more acute, slicing through me.
I had enough experience with the wrong kind of men to know exactly what he was saying. The about face with the orgasm business last night and this morning wasn’t him wanting to give me something.
It was Lucien’s act of contrition.
Regardless of this Vamp Non-Fidelity rule, he felt guilty.
I put my biscuit on my plate.
Then I whispered, “You had sex last night.”