Chapter 148: Noble
Chapter 148
"Did I... did I do something wrong? Don’t you want me?"
The silence that followed her question was more deafening than the roar of the shower had ever been.
Lucian stood several feet away, his back pressed so hard against the far marble wall that it looked as though he were trying to merge with the stone itself.
His chest was heaving in gulps, the muscles of his torso rippling with an intensity as if he had just run a marathon through the very pits of hell.
His wet trousers were still unzipped, the dark, heavy fabric hanging precariously low on his waist, revealing the sharp, tensed lines of his pelvic bones and the flushed, angry red of his skin.
"No," he rasped but couldn’t even bring himself to look at her; his gaze was fixed rigidly on the flooded marble floor, watching the last of the pink-tinted water swirl and disappear down the drain.
He looked haunted, his eyes shadowed by a self-loathing that was almost physical in its weight.
"You didn’t do anything wrong." The words were stripped of their usual Sovereign authority. Isabella didn’t move. She remained standing in the dead center of the room, a statue of ivory and gold.
Her damp shirt still hung completely open, clinging to her sides and exposing her flushed, shivering skin to the sudden, biting chill of the air that moved through the room.
The steam was beginning to dissipate, leaving behind the cold reality that neither of them was ready to face.
"Then why did you push me away?" she whispered, the sound of her voice barely audible over the dripping of the faucet.
She took a small, uncertain step toward him, her bare feet splashing softly in the shallow pool on the floor.
Her hand reached out, fingers trembling, seeking the heat of him again. "I’m right here. I’m telling you I want you. Why won’t you just..."
"Because you’re not in your right mind!" Lucian finally snapped, his head whipping up, his eyes flying to meet hers with a ferocity that made her halt in her tracks.
The amber of his irises was dark. He looked at her "Look at your hands, Isabella! Look at your arm!"
Isabella stopped. The silence in the ensuite suddenly felt fragile, her hand, which had been reaching out for him with an uncoordinated hunger that felt more like a physical craving than a choice, froze mid-air.
She stared down at her forearm. Her breath caught in her throat, hitching painfully as her mind struggled to process the sight before her eyes.
The angry punctures where Lucian’s fangs had sunk deep into her skin in the kitchen—wounds that had been weeping crimson only minutes ago, wounds that by all laws of nature should have required stitches, antiseptic, and weeks of painful scarring—were gone.
In their place was skin so smooth, so flawless, and so unblemished that it looked like it had been carved from polished porcelain.
There was no scab, no dried blood, not even a lingering soreness. She turned her hand over, her heart hammering against her ribs. The dark, weeping bruise from the burn on her palm, the one that had been throbbing with searing heat since the moment of the blast, had vanished entirely.
Not even a faint pink line remained to mark where the trauma had been. It was as if the injury had never existed, as if the pain of the last hour was nothing more than a fever dream.
The shock of the realization slammed into her, more effective at clearing the thick, lustful fog in her mind than the cold spray of the shower ever could have been.
The golden haze in her vision flickered, the "high" momentarily recoiling in the face of such an impossible reality.
"When..." she breathed, her voice small and stripped of its demanding edge. She used her other hand to trace the spot where the puncture marks had been, her fingertips sliding over the cool, perfect skin in disbelief.
"Lucian, when did it heal? How is this even possible?" Lucian finally let out a long, shuddering breath, his shoulders slumping as he finally found a sliver of breathing space to actually think without the constant, deafening roar of his instincts—and his cock—cluttering his mind.
He leaned his head back against the tile, eyes closing as he tried to stabilize the crashing waves of his own adrenaline.
"The moment I stopped feeding" he managed to grind out.
Isabella didn’t hear a word. She was too busy staring at the perfection of her own skin, her mind reeling.
The "high" was still there—a buzzing hum that lived beneath her ribs and made her skin feel too tight for her body—but the sight of the healed wounds brought a cold confusion.
Her vision swam, running her thumb over her forearm again and again, expecting the skin to tear, expecting the blood to bloom but there was nothing.
No pain. No jagged edges. Just a terrifying, unnatural perfection. She brought her hands to her neck, and to her surprise her neck was smooth too.
"I don’t understand," she whispered.
"It was just there. I felt the teeth, Lucian. I felt the heat of the burn. How can it just... be gone?"
Lucian pushed himself off the ma wall. Every muscle in his bare torso was corded with a tension so high it looked painful. He stepped toward her.
His boots splashing through the water, closing the gap until he was standing directly in her space. He didn’t pull her into his arms, but he reached out, his large, calloused hand wrapping firmly around her wrist. He lifted her arm, bringing it between them, his gaze tracing the porcelain-smooth skin with a look of profound disturbance.
"Look at me, Isabella," he commanded. She tilted her head up, her eyes—still swirling with that potent, molten gold—meeting his dark, red and haunted amber. The proximity was electric, the scent of him, threatening to pull her back into the lustful fog.
"It was the blood," he said. He tightened his grip on her wrist, not enough to hurt, but enough to hold her.
"When I was feeding.... In that state, the connection becomes a two-way street. A bridge."His thumb traced the spot where his fangs had been.
"I must have been so deep in the trance that I transferred my own healing properties back into you. My blood carries a regenerative catalyst—it’s what keeps me from dying, what keeps these scars from killing me. In the heat of the feed, while our pulses were locked, I pushed that energy into your system. I knit you back together without even realizing I was doing it."
Isabella’s breath hitched, her chest heaving against her open shirt. "You... you healed me by accident?"
"I healed you because my body refused to let yours fail," Lucian corrected with an intensity that made her knees weak. "But that’s why you have to stop. That’s why I’m pushing you away. You aren’t just feeling desire, Isabella. You are literally vibrating with my power. It’s my essence screaming in your veins, telling you that you need more, when u don’t."
He let go of her wrist and instead cupped her face, his palms cold against her flushed, feverish skin.
He forced her to maintain the eye contact, his thumbs brushing just below her gold-rimmed irises.
"I want you," he confessed. "I want you so badly it’s tearing the breath from my lungs. I want to spend the rest of the night showing you exactly what you do to me. But I won’t do it while you’re confused. I won’t do it while you’re looking at your own skin like it belongs to a stranger."
Isabella leaned into his palms, her eyes fluttering. The logic of his words was trying to take root, but the "high" was a stubborn beast.
"But I feel... I feel like I’m finally awake, Lucian. If this is what you are... why shouldn’t I want it?"
"Because in a few hours the high will fade," Lucian whispered, his forehead dropping to rest against hers. "The high will be gone, and you’ll be left with the memory of a choice you didn’t make with a clear head. And I... I can’t be the man who let that happen to you. I’ve already taken your blood, Isabella. I won’t take your agency too."
He stepped back, the loss of his touch feeling like a sudden drop in temperature. He reached for a dry, plush towel and, with hands that were still visibly shaking, wrapped it around her shoulders, tucking it firmly over her chest to cover her nakedness.
"The shower is over," he said, his voice regaining a sliver of its hard, Kingly edge. "We are going to get you into bed. You are going to sleep until the high settles. And if you still want to look at me like that in the morning... then nothing in this world or the next will stop me."
Isabella looked at him—really looked at him—and saw the sweat on his brow, the unzipped trousers, and the sheer, agonizing restraint in his eyes.
"You’re a jerk," she murmured, her voice finally softening as the exhaustion of the "crash" began to pull at her limbs.
"I know," Lucian replied, a ghost of a smirk touching his blood-stained lips. "Now move. Before I forget how to be noble."