“Please can we talk about this later?” she begged and he studied her face.
She’d had enough. However, he was again getting through.
“Yes,” he relented. “We can talk about it later.”
She sagged in relief against him.
He dipped his face to touch his mouth to hers.
“But we will talk about it, Leah,” he cautioned, his lips moving against hers. “Your new game ends and we begin.” He watched close up as her eyes grew round, her scent enveloping him, her delicious fear coating his throat. “Tonight,” he finished.
* * * * *
Leah sat beside him in the car, feigning sleep.
He knew she wasn’t asleep. He’d slept a month of nights beside her. He knew exactly what her breathing and heart sounded like when she was sleeping.
That was not it.
Furthermore, she couldn’t be tired considering she’d had a nap at the opera.
It was safe to say, even though Leah hadn’t told him, she didn’t like opera.
During the first act, he’d discovered this when he felt her subtle movements beside him. However when he turned his head to look at her, her own head was bowed as if deep in contemplation.
He thought nothing of this, suspecting she was considering her options for their discussion later that evening.
His gaze moved to Stephanie who was sitting beside Leah, eyes glued on the stage, lips curved into an amused grin.
They weren’t watching a comedy.
His gaze traveled back to Leah and he saw her suddenly pull an outrageous face. Chin jutted out so the cords in her neck strained, she flicked her tongue between her lips like a snake.
Lucien stared in disbelief wondering if the pressure of his taming was getting to her.
Then he heard a child’s giggle.
He looked down over the balcony railing and saw a little girl no more than six who was completely uninterested in the opera. She was staring up at Leah, her face wreathed in smiles. After a moment she mimicked Leah’s snake face and then rearranged her features, using her thumbs to pull out her mouth and her fingers to pull down her eyes.
Lucien looked back at Leah, who’d bugged out her eyes comically wide and was shaking her head in a subtle “no”.
The child giggled again, practically jumping up in her seat, making motions with her hands that Leah was to follow her lead something that had, apparently, been going on for some time. Her mother, sitting beside her, finally noticed her daughter’s behavior and Lucien heard the mother’s hushed rebuke.
His arm moved around Leah’s shoulders, she jumped and her head turned to him. He caught a look on her face that nearly made him roar with laughter. She looked exactly like the six year old below who’d just been caught and scolded.
He sought her ear with his mouth and whispered, “Be good.”
He felt her shoulders tense under his arm but ignored it, pulling her into his side which she resisted pointlessly.
His eyes moved to Stephanie who was watching them, smiling broadly now before he tucked Leah firmly in his side and glanced back at the stage.
He, too, was smiling.
She managed to curtail her antics for the rest of the first act and chatted amicably if pensively with Stephanie during intermission.
The second act, he positioned her as he had the first and she promptly fell asleep with her head against his shoulder.
And that nap had not been feigned. She had been out, the entirety of her weight resting against him. Although he wished she’d told him she didn’t like opera, he couldn’t say he minded her sleeping with her head on his shoulder where he could tug a tendril of her hair free and twirl its silkiness around his finger something he found that night he could do for hours.