The Contract
“GET OUT,” LUCIEN growled.
This was not going well and he didn’t like it.
Leah glared at him.
Her mother, Lydia, stared in horror—at her daughter’s behavior or Lucien’s break with tradition he didn’t know. He also didn’t care.
Cosmo, who had been smiling until the moment Lucien growled, now frowned with concern.
Avery stepped forward. “Lucien, you know the law. You need consent. Your second must be present as must the Uninitiated’s Distinguished. Even you can’t—” Avery started.
Lucien lifted a hand and Avery ceased speaking.
He knew. He’d been fucking well living the nightmare for five hundred years. He bloody well knew.
This was also something about which he didn’t care.
“Go,” Lucien ground out.
“Lucien, don’t do this,” Cosmo implored.
Lucien lowered his voice to a dangerous rumble. “Now.”
There was a hesitation before Avery, as ever, played diplomat.
Glancing at the occupants of the room, Avery said on a whisper, “There’s a way. No one need know, Cosmo. This doesn’t leave this room.”
“I don’t like it,” Cosmo replied to Avery.
“Lucien, let me talk to her,” Lydia pleaded, her hand coming toward him.
“I will not say it again,” Lucien snarled.
With that, they knew they’d tried his patience, they knew what that meant, and without further hesitation, all of them moved to leave.
Including Leah.
“Not you,” he demanded and everyone turned.
“What?” Leah asked, her soft, sweet voice grating on his nerves.
“Not you. You stay.”
Her eyes darted to her mother, Cosmo, Avery then back to Lucien. “But I thought—”
“Come over here,” Lucien ordered, cutting off her words as the others quickly and silently left the room.
She didn’t do as he’d commanded. Instead, she looked at the closed door in confusion.
In fact, since she’d stepped foot in the Contract Room she hadn’t done a single thing that he’d commanded.
It wasn’t just her voice that was grating on his nerves, everything about her was.
He’d expected to enjoy this. He hadn’t had a challenge in five hundred years.
He wasn’t enjoying this.
“Leah,” he called, his voice as strained as his patience.
Her head snapped around. “What?” she asked sharply.
He felt his body go taut fighting back the desire to teach her the respect he was owed.
Instead of acting on this urge, he warned quietly, “Don’t ever speak to me that way.”
She stared at him, confusion warring with fear in her face, another look he hadn’t seen in a long time. A look he liked. A look he missed. A look he craved.
This appeased his anger. Not all of it, but enough.
“I don’t get it,” she said, the same fear and confusion in her voice, and he felt it stir his blood.
Especially the fear.
Every concubine itched to be selected. This served a purpose but it also eradicated the chase, the capture, the taming.
All of which Lucien also liked, missed and most assuredly craved.
Her fear was as delicious as her face, her hair, her eyes, her breasts, that ass, her fucking scent, which had practically brought him to his knees the minute he’d entered The Selection and caught it.
As it had done the first time he saw her, smelled her, years ago, after which he’d marked Leah Buchanan as his. Everyone knew it, they had for decades.
Except, of course, Leah.
She kept talking. “I thought if I refused to blood your contract that I was free to go.”
Lucien pulled in a calming breath.
It failed to calm him, however, and his voice sounded less impatient when he explained, “If Nestor had declared his intention. Yes. Magnus. Yes. Hamish. The same. Any one of them.” He paused, gesturing to the door with his hand to indicate The Selection before he finished, “Me? No.”
“Why not you?” she asked.
“Because I want you.”
“But I don’t want you.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re mine.”
She blinked then rallied, “But, Mom said the rules are absolute. No one breaks them. Ever.”
“I’m not no one.”
Her head jerked with surprise. “Who are you?”
“I’m your master.”
Now she started to look angry. “No one is my master.”
“I am.”
She stared at him, anger displacing the fear, her hands balled into fists, and she leaned toward him before she declared, “You. Are. Not.”
He’d had enough.
Come here, Leah.
Instantly she moved to him. Lucien watched as the anger disappeared and the confusion came back.
So did the fear. A great deal of it.
So much the room reeked of it. It mingled with her scent. He had the forbidden desire to snatch her in his arms, rip open her throat at the same time he ripped off her clothes and buried his cock in her so deep, he’d feel his own thrusts as her blood poured into his mouth.
“Stop doing that,” she whispered as she halted less than a foot from him.
Silence, he demanded and her mouth clamped shut. Better, he told her.
She glared at him, her hands again fists at her sides, but she didn’t move away from him. She was straining to do it, but she couldn’t. He wasn’t allowing it.
It didn’t matter, she fought it. He liked that.
Give me your hand.
She lifted her hand to his and watched it move, horror and anger in her eyes.
He turned, his fingers curling around the sharp dagger which was one of four things on the shining oval table next to him.
There was also their contract, as big as a poster board, ivory parchment, tiny calligraphied words from the very top to near the bottom. There was only an inch of space for their signatures. All if it was words declaring her blood his, giving him feeding rights, and in return he’d take care of her. Not through the length of The Arrangement, but until she took her last breath on this earth.
What she did not know, Cosmo did not know, her mother did not know, but Avery did know was that Lucien had the five-hundred-year-old agreement altered.
Upon entry to the room, she’d sat and read every word, something not one single concubine he’d selected in five hundred years had done. She had no way of knowing the changes he’d ordered Avery to make, or she wouldn’t until she attended her studies. He’d planned for that and was prepared for the consequences.
Nevertheless—or likely because—after she finished reading it, her face pale, her eyes seething, she tossed it on the table, caught Lucien’s gaze and announced, “Not on your life.”
Thus had started Lucien’s demands, her mother’s pleading, Cosmo’s chuckles and Avery’s grins.
Not to mention Lucien’s irritation.
Also on the table were the quill and the Joining Bowl, a small, oval, crystal plate that sat on four tiny crystal feet by the quill.
Both of which, Lucien decided, they would be using now.
Lucien’s hand lifted to hers and his fingers wrapped around it. He forced her index finger straight and she fought that too. She knew she’d never win but she did it anyway.
He was, he found, finally enjoying this. “Keep fighting, my pet, I like it.”
She stopped struggling immediately.
He grinned at her. She scowled at him.
He lifted the dagger to pierce her finger but stopped and looked at her. Her eyes flew from her finger to his.
He could see the pleading.
Yes, he was enjoying this.
He dropped the dagger on the table.
He felt her relief hit the room. Her heart had started beating wildly, tripping over itself. Now it began to slow.
His eyes moved to hers as he lifted her hand toward his mouth, finger still forced to extended by his thumb.
He felt her body tense, the fear invade, her heart picking up the pace as her hand resisted its ascent.
She was magnificent.
No! she cried in her brain.
He opened his mouth, put her finger to his lips and sucked it inside. She went completely still and her eyes dropped to his mouth.
With effort he fought back the arousal he felt at his first taste of her and the direction of her gaze.
Christ, she tasted fucking good.
He used a single tooth to tear open the pad of her finger.
Oh my God! she breathed in her mind as he sensed her registering the brief pain.
He’d been wrong, her skin tasted lovely, but her blood was glorious.
With regret he extracted her finger from his mouth, pushed her hand to one end of the Joining Bowl and pressed several drops of blood from the wound into the bowl.
She resisted this too and Lucien found this vaguely surprising. She knew she couldn’t win. He had her trapped with his mind, and even if he didn’t, she could never overpower him physically.
He found he liked her stubbornness when he had her at his command.
It was when he didn’t he found it annoying.
When he was done, he returned her finger to his lips and his tongue darted out, lashing the cut. The bleeding stopped instantly. Through his saliva the wound would be healed within the hour.
He released her hand but demanded, Dip the quill in your blood and sign the contract.
Her body jerked, strained and, he was intrigued to see, she hesitated a second before she did as she was told. He watched as she did this, her face pale, her body trembling.
Could she possibly fight mesmerization?
It was, he knew, impossible. However, if she could, she’d be even more fun.
She put the quill down and turned to him.
I hate you.
He put a hand to her neck, his thumb resting along her jugular, her heart beating heavily against his skin and in his ears.
“That won’t last long, my pet,” he assured her.
Don’t call me your pet.
“You are my pet.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. It was meant to communicate her irritation and disgust. However, he found it adorable.
He had not, until she’d done it in The Selection, had anyone backtalk him while he was communicating nonverbally. He’d been surprised and pleased she had this heretofore unknown ability.
It would make things more interesting. Hell, it already was.
He turned to the table, took the dagger and pierced his own finger. Going through the same motions as she’d done, he signed the contract.
Once completed, he used the tip of the dagger to mingle their blood in the plate as she stood trembling beside him.
He moved into her and her body tensed.
“You can’t fight it, Leah.”
This can’t be legal, she snapped.
She was right. It absolutely wasn’t. If anyone knew he’d forced her signature through mesmerization, he’d be punished. Or they’d try to punish him.
They wouldn’t succeed, of course. They’d have to kill him first.
She was, he knew without a doubt, going to be worth any risk.
He positioned her in front of him, one of his arms going around her waist holding her tight against his chest and his stomach. Her sweet ass pressed to his thighs.
Feeling her soft body against his hard one, he knew it would be a long week to wait for The Bloodletting.
He reached across the front of her, taking up the quill, and he dipped it in their combined blood.
Take my hand in yours, he commanded.
She did as she was told.
Together they wrote the word Bound between their names in their mingled blood.
It was done. She was his.
Triumph seared through him.
He hadn’t felt that in a long time either and he liked it the best of all.
His arm tensed along her waist as he shoved his face into her neck, smelling her skin, her hair, the perfume that she didn’t need, hearing the blood sing warm and moist through her veins. He heard the breath move out of her in a gasp and knew he was using too much strength.
He kept her pinned to him and didn’t let go.
Mine, he declared.
Never, she returned.
His mouth moved to her ear and he murmured, “We’ll see.”
He felt her shiver.
Then he freed her mind and her body from his control.
She felt it immediately, turned in his arm to glare at him a moment before she tore herself free and ran directly from the room.