Kristen Ashley: Until the Sun Falls From the Sky

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.

I stood at the window staring out at the night.

The sky was free of clouds, the moon full, its brightness frosting the dark, immaculate garden below in a way that was appropriately eerie.

My eyes moved from the garden and I caught my reflection in the glass.

I looked like an idiot.

I was wearing a pale pink nightgown, simple, unadorned by lace or any other accoutrement. It was ankle length, slit up both sides all the way to my hips with spaghetti straps holding up the bodice and the back under my shoulder blades between a deep exposed V.

Some strange woman named Edwina had come in to do my hair and makeup. She’d been quiet and watchful but smiling and obviously excited like I was about to be crowned queen of the world.

I let her have at it and stayed quiet too. I had too much on my mind.

I shouldn’t have stayed quiet. She gave me way too much hair. She also gave me way, way, way too much makeup.

I was, imminently, going to get my throat gnashed open by that fucking vampire’s teeth, he was going to suck my blood and then go home to his mate.

Why all the fuss?

After The Selection I told my mother what happened in the Contract Room and demanded she contact the Vampire Dominion and appeal the contract.

At first, she looked shaken. Then she called my aunts. My aunts called in my sister but surprisingly not my cousins.

They had a meeting I wasn’t invited to which pissed me off.

Then they contacted The Dominion but not to appeal the contract, to get a copy of it.

As was my and their due, this we received. Avery delivered it personally. Behind closed doors, without me there, they’d perused it for hours.

Okay, more like an hour but it felt like a million of them.

My sister came out first, her face pale, eyes shocked. She said not one single word before she took off. This was surprising. Lana was chatty. She could chat anyone’s ear off. I didn’t think it was even in her not to say a single word.

This was not a good sign.

My Aunt Kate came out next. For some reason she looked shocked too but determined. The oldest of the four Buchanan matriarchs, as tradition had ingrained in me for four decades, she had the final say. I just didn’t like the final say.

It was this: “You’ll abide by the contract.”

“ What? ” I shouted.

“Every word,” she returned. Then without one more word, as if she was scared of what those words might be and I swear Aunt Kate wasn’t scared of anything, she took off.

So did Millicent and Nadia.

My mother stood before me and I demanded, “They can’t be serious.”

“If you go against us, you’ll be banished from our family,” my mother replied softly trying, I knew, to take the sting out of her awful words. “If you go against Lucien, with that signed contract, he’ll have certain rights, Leah. Rights you won’t want him to invoke. Rights, I feel relatively certain, he will.”