My eyes moved to Jordan when he spoke and I realized he was speaking to me.
“I hope to see you at another Feast. The next time, heading in the other direction.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Lucien remarked dryly.
Jordan didn’t take his eyes from me when he asked, “She didn’t fancy it?”
“Not even a little bit,” Lucien answered.
“Shame,” Jordan muttered. I shivered, Lucien’s arm tightened and Jordan lifted a hand and then he was gone.
Just like that.
Whoosh.
One second there, the next second he disappeared.
Lucien uncurled me from his body and walked me down the hall. This time he didn’t take my hand but kept his arm around my shoulders.
At the top of the stairs when Breed opened the door for us, Lucien slipped him a bill. I tried to see what it was but didn’t succeed.
Wats was standing sentry by the car right where we left it.
“Everything’s fine, Master, no one even looked at it,” he panted, bowing and holding the keys out to Lucien who held his hand up and Wats dropped the keys in.
Lucien held the door for me and Wats scampered out of the way for him to do so.
After Lucien closed my door, I spied the one hundred dollar bill Lucien slid into Wats’s waiting hand. I also saw the shiver of excitement that shook Wats’s body and I had the feeling it had nothing to do with the fact that Lucien just made him the highest paid car watcher in history but because Lucien had almost, but not quite, touched him.
We were well away, Lucien’s hand back on my thigh after he’d pulled the material away, but this time no stroking, just proprietary resting.
After a while, I couldn’t help myself, I requested, “May I ask a question?”
“Of course,” Lucien replied instantly.
I pulled in a breath and before I could lose my courage, I asked, “You said to Cecile you’d take it away from her. What would you take away?”
Again he answered without hesitation. “Her house, her car, her money, everything I give her to keep her. Everything I’ll keep giving her until she dies. If she falls, which, you should know Leah, any concubine does if they attend A Feast after they’re released, I’m within my rights to cease her keeping.”
“You’d do that?” I whispered.
“In a second,” he answered. “My concubines, current or past, don’t participate in Feasts.”
I was confused. “But you took me to A Feast.”
His hand squeezed my thigh. “To see, to watch, to experience, to be with me amongst my own, not to participate.”
My head turned to look at him. “You were never going to feed?”
He glanced at me briefly then back to the road before he stated implacably, “Never.”
This caused me to feel an extreme sense of relief.
Then I felt an extreme sense of fear that I felt so relieved.
Then I felt the extreme desire to cover his hand with mine.
Then I mentally kicked myself.