In Fading Hush of Eden Lost
An Elucien Story // Start at the Beginning
Chapter 7 Snippet
“Quick- before he comes back,” Feyre whispered, eyes alight and curious. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Elain hummed.
“Nothing happened?” Nesta gave her sister a long suffering look. “He’s been blushing like a schoolboy every time you enter the damn room.”
“I’ve never seen Lucien cut a blush in my life,” Feyre added with a smirk. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Elain simpered.
Lie.
She had kissed him. He had kissed her back. For the first fragile time, their lips had graced each other's skin. Ardent and true and intensely shattering. It was perfect, and yet somehow, it was far from enough.
Lucien’s footsteps echoed outside, clambering down to the wine cellar below the cottage.
Elain huffed an indignant breath and stared down her sisters. They stared her down far more piercingly across the oak table. She buckled beneath their mirrored blue-grey gazes. She was always a terrible liar and all three of them knew it.
“It’s private,” Elain edged hushedly, the glow in her cheeks giving her immediately away.
“We are your sisters, nothing’s allowed to be private,” Nesta barbed back.
Elain shrugged, sipping from her glass, a bashful grin curling upwards.
“He took you in the meadow, didn’t he?” Nesta whispered.
Without pause, Elain spat out her mead all over the table.
Nesta stifled a hushed cackle and Feyre immediately refilled Elain’s empty wine glass, urging her courage onwards.
“I do have boundaries, you know,” Elain choked out, attempting to retain her composure before the male they were so lewdly speaking about waltzed back upstairs and directly into this conversation. “I don’t abandon all sense of propriety for a handsome face and a few gallant words.”
Feyre drained the last of her mead and arched a brow. “I had boundaries once too. And they all went up in flames the second Rhys took his pants off.”
Nesta snorted, saluting Feyre with a near-empty chalice.
“I told her you she’d never allow him to do such a thing in the open,” Feyre nudged Nesta. “You owe me fifty gold marks.”
Nesta swatted her away immediately.
And Elain willed the Mother above to save her from prying sisters.
The hatch of the cellar door could be heard closing below, and again, Lucien’s booted footsteps were echoing- up and towards the ground level now.
Bashful panic sent Elain’s treacherous heart beating into overdrive.
“He agreed to stay for the evening,” she uttered, willing a general’s command into her chestnut gaze. “Don’t embarrass me with vulgar-”
“He’s staying? Gods and heavens above,” Nesta grimaced. “Do you intend to die atop the infallible walls of propriety or shall we plan to sleep in the toolshed?”
“Stop it,” Elain fettered in her seat, eyes darting nervously to the back of the cottage. “I don’t even know if he wants that sort of thing yet-”
“Would you though?” Nesta grinned like a cat, surveying her flustering sister. “Let him take you in the meadow one day?"
Feyre batted Nesta on the shoulder with a scowl.
"My damn money is still on the line,” the eldest Archeron hissed back.
Elain sighed, exasperated, bringing a hand to her temple.
“If he behaves himself effectively she will,” Nesta declared.
And Elain, despite herself, let a little of the truth leak out, if only to shut her blessed sisters the hell up.
“More likely if he misbehaves effectively,” she uttered wryly. "I've been wondering what other uses that clever mouth of his might have, anyway."
All females broke into peels of laughter.
Lucien stood silent at the cottage's back door, slightly ajar. One hand caught vacantly reaching towards the knob. The other was gripping a bottle of honeymead so tightly it might shatter at any moment.
The war with his instincts was wholly lost.
A deep breath in, a deep breath out. And it did nothing for him.
He swallowed. Made an abrupt, noticeable noise opening the door to feign his re-entry.
And promised he would sell his soul to every reigning demon in hell if they would guide him to misbehave very, very effectively in regards to that female.