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It all felt too easy, and I was currently engaged in a mental battle to stop myself from listening to my tainted instincts.
He also had a way of looking at me like he’d been dreaming about me for years. It was an addictive amount of attention he seemed to shower onto me, but I needed to make sure I didn’t let myself get too comfortable with it.
I’d decided to refer to Lucian’s current state as sun drunk. He really did appear out of it, and he was either crazy and a great actor, or what he’d said was true.
I eventually collected five or six suits, ties, belts, and shoes I liked best for him to choose from. Lucian surprised me by buying all of them, apparently unconcerned about the price.
Add rich to the growing list of descriptors for this guy, I thought.
“What do you do for a living, exactly?” I asked while he pulled out conspicuous wads of cash to pay for his clothes. The money looked old, which made the cashier have to call her manager to verify it still would work at the bank.
“What do you do for work, exactly?”
“That’s complicated.”
“Then try your best to help me understand.”
Lucian paused in the shade outside, clearly still feeling somewhat off from the sunlight and not looking forward to going into it again. “I was an artist. Before,” he added.
“Really? What medium?”
“I painted. I also did some work with sculptures. But I don’t do that anymore. It reminds me of what I’ve lost.”
Lucian was doing that hot guy thing where he kept clenching his jaw again and again, which made a bundle of muscles on his smooth jaw bunch and unbunch.
Sensitive topic, it seemed.
“Well, what do you do now? Or what were you doing before you got bricked up in a room for a hundred years.”
“I was what you might have considered a law enforcement officer. But within the vampire world.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Vampire cop? That sounds like some low budget sitcom.”
“Vampires are still held to standards, even if they would all prefer to live outside any sense of order.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Does this have anything to do with the Bennigan guy and why he seems to hate you so much?”
“Do you always ask so many questions?”
“Yes,” I said. “What do you do for fun?”
Lucian looked down at me incredulously. “I like to brood in isolated castles on hilltops, especially if a thunderstorm is coming.”
“Seriously. What do you like to do?”
“I used to enjoy traveling. Seeing architecture and new things. Okay? Can we go on with your daily tasks yet?”
“We still have plenty of time. I missed my morning classes for this, and I don’t need to be at my internship yet. You said used to. Why? You can’t travel anymore?”
“Because reasons I don’t need to share with a human,” he said through clenched teeth.
“But you kind of like this human, don’t you?” I teased.
“I’m bonded to this human, which doesn’t give me much of a choice.”
“Right,” I said. “You like me.”
I stepped out into the sunlight and left him no choice but to follow behind me. He shielded his eyes and looked even more pale than usual but was keeping up with me all the same.
“Okay,” I said. “First test is you need to come with me to my internship at Anya’s. If she asks who you are, we can just say you’re my boyfriend, okay?”
Lucian was looking loopier the longer we walked around outside. I’d given him a pair of sunglasses to help disguise exactly how out of it he appeared. But he wasn’t even walking completely steady anymore.
“Hey, are you in there?” I asked, nudging him.
Lucian gave me a thumbs up.
I grinned. I thought I liked him better when he wasn’t so in control. The big, hot, stumbling mess at my side was at least less intimidating. “Are you sure the sun isn’t going to kill you? You’re not looking so good.”
“I may have neglected to mention my kind usually limits our time in the sun to very brief, necessary exposure. This is more than I’m accustomed to.”
“What does that mean?”
Lucian shrugged. “I suppose you may end up needing to drag me to our location.”
I shook my head. “Not happening, shades. Come on, let’s pick up the pace and get to Anya’s.”
Lucian managed to keep up until we got to Anya’s.
Anya was wearing a thick, pink, fluffy bathrobe. Her hair was leaning to one side in an act of defiance towards gravity, and something was stuck in her eye. She grunted at me, then gave Lucian a curious look.
“This big man is?” she asked as we headed down the stairs.
“Drunk. And high, I think. But he’s, um,”
“Her boyfriend,” Lucian interjected. “We’ve developed very strong feelings for one another. It’s quite serious.”
As if to demonstrate his claim, Lucian put his arm around me and pulled me into the side of his chest. I felt myself blush both with embarrassment and with the explosion of mostly irrational horniness that blasted through me at the simplest touch from him.
