He hesitated then he said, “Trust.”
I blinked in the dark. “Trust?”
“I’ve told you this before, you need to trust me, Leah.”
“With what?”
“With everything.”
Was he crazy?
He wanted me to trust him? With everything? Then, when he was sick of me, he’d let me go and move onto his next concubine, doing this for eternity.
He had to be crazy!
He would, of course, throw me birthday parties and maybe, as decades passed, recruit me to help him stalk his next obsession.
Boy, that would be fun.
It took a lot out of me and it was really not a nice thing to do but self-preservation forced me to curl closer to him and lie yet again.
“You have my trust.”
It was nearly imperceptible but I could swear I felt his body give a small jerk.
“You don’t think I know how it feels?” he asked and his voice was no longer mellow and amused, it was edging toward anger.
I had, inadvertently, made a tactical error.
I attempted to salvage the situation.
“Lucien –” I started.
I failed to salvage the situation. He kept right on talking.
“When the taming is complete, Leah, it isn’t completed with words or a ceremony. It happens through actions and feelings.”
His words took the breath out of me. Or, I should say, one particular word.
“The taming?”
“The taming,” he said calmly. “I’m taming you.”
I felt Old Leah slipping back into place.
“You’re taming me?”
His body tensed and his arm tightened around me in a way that felt like containment.
Even so, his voice was still calm when he replied, “Yes.”
“Taming,” I repeated.
Now he sounded like he was smiling when he repeated, “Yes.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” I asked.
“I’m guessing that’s unlikely,” he answered.