Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

95 - Chapter XCV: An Immediate Consequence

Eventually, he'd thought.

But he had no clothes for her.

And on the other side of the room, Reinette was not so much calm...and collected...as trying to find her bearings with a compass that was now pointing south. Opting to remain still in the bath, watching the target of her nether regions from...just...above the water...while the rest of her...categorised all the occurrences of the last hour. Not just occurrences but the...feelings...that came...twice...with said occurrences. On the one hand, feeling as though she had finally added two pages to her blank memoir on sexuality, and on the other, starting to question what it would mean to...go slower...or do other things.

Instinct suggesting she ought to add an appendix to the memoir, containing numbered references, detailed drawings and concise definitions for all the things he might do to her. Or she to him. But the exhaustion from the past three hours making slow sound more and more inviting. Feeling an ache beneath the water as she thought on it...hungering for him...followed by a sudden unease in the moments before sleep took her.

Not fear.

But...unease.

One portion of her mind taking comfort from the past two decades. Fully aware-to her chagrin-that for as long as she'd known him, at least once a month, Lucian seemed to avoid his mistresses like the plague for approximately one week, choosing instead to spend those evenings on her carpet rather than leaving the table for his post-dinner fuck as he liked to call it.

Something she previously assumed had to do with menstruation, but now suspected had to do with ovulation. A word that ought to have provided a memory of Allegra explaining something, but ultimately conjured up a memory of Singe...again...droning on about the female reproductive system.

Sleep nearly upon her, but the memory causing her brow to crease. A stem of concern that in the hour before...it had just...flowed...and happened...and she had not been thinking about consequences. Or contraception. In short, she had not taken this class with Allegra. Though if her understanding of lycan-vampire relations was correct...then in the history of their two races copulating...other than the one time, there had been no consequences. So in theory...

...she was...likely...unaffected, she decided. Refusing to think too long on the one time...and what could have caused the one time. Whether there truly was something...different...about him. Turning toward the side of her bath, feeling as though the water was a blanket pulled up to her chin. Feeling safe despite having rocked the foundations upon which she stood. And her eye now fixing on the source of that feeling.

One who was...still at the forge. Dressed once again now. His hand affixed to the hammer. Pounding...and pounding on the metal. The entirety of his focus on creating something new, while in the background she could see the work table behind him. The chaos that came from knowing...and finding herself pleased by the exact place her legs had been when his mouth had descended between them. Only in passing, thinking on how she had known...precisely how to suck his cock, preferring in her mind to chalk such answers up to dreams of her future rather than the iron-clad boxes of her past.

And with that last thought...

...she fell asleep.

o...o...o

While Lucian worked.

At first ignorant of her change in breath.

The initial optimism of fitting a gargantuan copper bath through a too-small door-while a woman watched in disbelief-having carried him like a wave into the wide open sea of possibilities. Suddenly conscious of why Raze had spent nearly a year working on his mourning knife before giving it to Allegra. Able to see now what it might look like. The intricacy that could be wrought in the hilt. Sweeping up towards the heavens as though in flight.