Blood Knot (20 page)

Winter thought she was about to go up in flames. “I have an edge, too, Bastian.” Her voice was hoarse.

He drew in a breath at her use of Nial’s pet name. “Surprise me, if you can,” he said.

“
My most powerful fantasy, the one that makes me come quickest and strongest, Sebastian…” She had to pause to draw a breath. “It’s not you.”

His mouth hovered over her collarbone. So close she could feel his hot breath. Then he forced himself away. “Nial,” he said flatly.

“
No.” She drew another quick breath. “It’s you and Nial together. Fucking each other.”

Sebastian sucked in a short hard breath. He looked toward the ceiling as if he was reaching for inspiration. His hands tightened on hers.

Then he groaned and dropped his mouth onto hers and kissed her, his body pressing hers hard against the wall. He kept her hands pinned and spread, but his kiss was an erotic assault that melted every defense she had. Winter passively accepted it, opening herself up to Sebastian’s passion willingly, unable to do anything else.

She lost herself in the kiss. It was the culmination of two years of wanting, a year of longing and loss, and now these few days of mixed-up and tortured feelings. She poured her heart into it and wasn’t at all confused by whose lips were upon hers now. It was quite clear and wonderful and every bit as good as Nial’s kisses were.

The kiss ended with Sebastian’s lips resting against hers. They were both breathing far too fast. Slowly, Winter dared to open her eyes.

Sebastian drew back enough to look into her eyes. One hand curled into a fist and pummeled the wall silently and softly next to her head. “Damn it, Winter. You won’t like it where I might take you. Where Nial will take you.”

“
How can I know until I get there?”

“
Because you’re human with a talent for healing. For
good
. Vampires aren’t good, Winter. They’re dark, angry creatures with no souls, who wander time and watch mortals come and go and history pass them by, while they linger on and become wretched shadows of themselves. They’re the damned, Winter, and Nial is one of the oldest of them. And you’re in his bed.”

She shivered.

Sebastian closed his eyes. “Leave him, Winter.”

“
What?” she breathed, stunned.

He opened his eyes again and she gasped when she saw the tears in them. “Leave us both,” he said. “Run to some corner of the planet neither of us will ever find. Give me a mail drop and I’ll make sure you get your blood supply every month. I promise. And every three months or so we’ll meet and I’ll spend the night in the same room with you so I don’t keel over for lack of your pheromones. But leave us, Winter. Stay away from us. Keep your good life while you still can. I know what Nial is like. He’s addictive. It took me nearly fifty years to cut the cord and now I think he’s reeling me back in. He’s a thousand years old. It’s too much to fight.”

“
Nearly fifteen hundred years old,” she said. “He was born in five hundred and fifty-nine, in northern Italy.”

Sebastian frowned. “He told you that?” He seemed stunned.

She nodded.

“
Leave, Winter. You’re already getting in way too deep.”

“
I can’t leave. It’s already too late,” she said. “I’m falling in love with him.”

A tear rolled down Sebastian’s cheek. “Then you’re damned, too.” He pushed himself off the wall and away from her. “Such a tangled knot. What romantic could possibly dream this one up?” He wiped his cheek with the heel of his hand, walked into his bedroom and shut the door very softly.

EVEN THOUGH SHE tried to dismiss Sebastian’s words as simply an understandable bitterness toward Nial, it still took Winter a good hour to fall asleep despite her tiredness because the dismissal didn’t work.

She could still feel Sebastian’s kiss. His heated body pressed up against hers. The silken length of his cock between them, nudging her belly, making her pussy ache to take him.

Finally, she dozed, but her dreams were shot through with imagery so disturbing, she woke after a few short hours, disoriented and groggy, until she saw Central Park through the window and heard the traffic and remembered.

She climbed out of bed and went in search of food, suddenly ravenous. Her biorhythms were all mixed up now and that was one thing she had no control over. She had to eat when her body demanded energy. It was an demand for external input that she couldn’t manufacture for herself.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused, listening. Nial was speaking German. She knew enough to know he was speaking finance. Was he talking to Switzerland? Zurich? Banks? That would make sense at two in the morning.

She headed into the kitchen and opened the fridge, hoping Nial had human food in there. But it was virtually empty except for wine bottles. Next, she tried the cupboards and there she found a packet of cookies that hadn’t expired yet. She opened them and ate hungrily.

Nial emerged from the alcove made by the elevator shaft, where his desk and phone had to be. “There’s real food being delivered at five. I thought it would be here before you woke. I didn’t count on midnight pantry raids.”

“
I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.

His eyes narrowed. “I would have expected you to sleep like the dead after all the flying we’ve done.”

“
I have things on my mind,” she said flatly.

“
So do I, watching you move about in that negligee. French, is it?”

“
Italian. And you’re changing the subject.”

His smile warmed. “Italian… You didn’t put it on just for me, did you?”

“
And he sails right passed the redirection sign again.” Winter brushed the cookie crumbs off her hands. “Sometimes, Nial, talking to you is like herding cats.”

Nial picked up her hand. “Come here.” He pulled her around the counter and over to the big windows and turned her to face the view. He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Like that, she could see his reflection in the glass if she wanted to.

“
You’re not invisible,” she joked.

“
But it makes a nice fantasy for the movies, doesn’t it? So when people see my reflection in a mirror, they know I can’t possibly be a vampire.”

“
You mean…” She twisted a little to look at him. “All that stuff about daylight and garlic and crosses…vampires have been putting that out there all this time just so you can hide in plain sight?”

Nial nuzzled her neck, making her look out the window once more, as her neck straightened to give him access. “Winter, you of all people have to ask about something as simple as misdirection?”

“
But you are immortal?”

“
No.”

Fright tore through her. “But…”

“
Immortals cannot die, Winter. We can. You can kill us in a small handful of ways. But outside of those ways, we live on, unchanging, for as long as time itself. It is immortality of a sort, but it comes at a price.”

Winter turned in his arms so that she could see his face. “What price?”

“
Humans were never meant to live forever.” His voice was soft and the look in his eyes was haunted. “We pay the price for living virtually forever by watching those around us live and die. Enemies, cities, states, nations, civilizations. Loved ones.” Pain filled his eyes, then was gone. “And there’s nothing you can do about it, but make those people you love a vampire, too. And who would be mad enough to wish this curse upon their mortal enemy, let alone their most dearest love?”

“
Curse?” Winter gripped his shirt. “But Nial, you have never once hinted that you believe this. Sebastian raves about vampires being cursed, but not you!”

“
Sebastian never accepted this life.” Nial covered her hands with his. “I’ve had longer to come around to it.”

Winter shook him gently with her grip on his shirt. “And in the week you’ve known me, Nial, tell me how often you’ve been tempted to ask me to make you human again?”

Nial sighed. “Tempted? A hundred times.” He brushed her hair from her temple. “It is Pandora’s Box and Eve’s Apple all rolled into one, Winter. I just have to look at Sebastian to wonder what would be unleashed if you agreed to try to attempt the same feat with me.”

“
You fear the outcomes,” she guessed.

“
I am over five times older than Sebastian,” he pointed out. “Does that make a difference? There’s far too many unknowns. And would it tie you to yet another symbiosis, Winter?” He sighed. “But it is a sweet temptation, all the same.”

“
You’ve forgotten one major factor,” Winter said.

“
And that is?”

“
I don’t think I could do it, Nial.”

“
Why not? You would be giving me life.”

“
And certain death,” she added. She bit her lip. “I already can’t bear the idea that Sebastian—” She stopped and started again. “Please don’t ask me unless you must, Nial. It will kill me to do it, but I will if you ask me because I know you have no other choice, that you must have this. But I’ll hate myself knowing that I’m handing you a d-death sentence.”

“
Q
uis dulcis
, shhh…” Nial gathered her up against him, his arms around her. She rested her head against his shoulder and unashamedly sought the comfort he offered. She slid her arms around his neck and his own tightened more.

Gradually, the need to cry tapered away to nothing and calm returned. She sighed.

“
What has Sebastian been whispering in your ear?” Nial murmured.

“
Why do you ask?” She lifted her head to look at him.

“
I know you two spoke just before you went to bed. I heard you as I came back down the stairs.”

“
You listened?” Horror washed through her.

He shook his head. “You’re entitled to privacy, Winter.”

“
Like on the plane back to New York?”

“
Ah…
that’s
what you spoke about, then.” Nial’s mouth lifted at the corners. “I wondered what was keeping you so sleep deprived.” He ran his fingertip over her face, tracing her nose and cheekbones and jaw. It was a strangely intimate and soft, erotic touch. “Did Sebastian play fair or did he dump an untimely confession on you just to add to your burdens?”

Winter flinched. “Are you toying with us, Nial?”

Nial shook his head. “I just know Sebastian better than he thinks I do. He’d like all this to be about him.”

“
All what?”

“
All the tension and angst he is inventing and discovering. Sebastian is a romantic at heart.” Nial’s fingers swept over her throat. “So he couldn’t resist teasing you with a true confession. No wonder you’ve been tossing and turning. Did he kiss you as well, Winter?”

She sucked in a breath, her arms sagging around his neck. “God damn it, Nial. You may as well have listened in.”

He shook his head again as he ran his fingers over her now exposed collarbones and upper chest. “Sebastian is the voyeur, not me. So…he kissed you. That explains the haunted look in your eyes when you first saw me just now. You have a conscience.” He picked up the satin tie between her breasts and tugged on it. “Does this unravel the entire negligee?” The tug untied the bow and the negligee slithered off her shoulders, down to the floor about her feet.

Winter reached for Nial’s belt buckle. “That’s a two-way game, you know.”

“
I do,” he agreed. “But you’ve already won the race.” His kiss and his hand closing around her breast happened at the same instant, driving her to instant lust, instant heat.

Winter moaned into his mouth, working hard to strip him of his clothes quickly. Nial twisted his limbs and torso, helping her, until he was as naked as she, when he finally let go of her mouth.

His cock jutted up from between his thighs, thick and ready, below flat abs that dipped with the hint of six pack muscles. But it was his shoulders and thighs and taut trim hips and the tight ass that Winter had trouble looking away from.

Until she looked into his eyes.

He was watching her drool.

She shrugged. “We’ve been having sex half-clothed and in public nearly all along. This is the first time I’ve got to see you all for myself, in full view.”

He smiled. “It’s refreshing to see a woman openly aroused by the sight of a man. You as a gender tend to be so coy about it.”

“
We’re getting better, generation by generation.”

“
True.” He trod toward her, the muscles moving under his flesh in sleek unison, making her heart leap. “But you are not the only one who paused to salivate, Winter.” He picked her up and carried her over to the big, thick area rug in front of the unused fireplace and knelt on it before placing her down gently on the velvet pile. “Tell me when you get sleepy,” he warned.

The question barely formed in her mind before he kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, a hand on her breast and the other between her thighs, sliding up to her cleft with a soft swoop across the delicate skin of her inner thigh, making her arch and moan and her legs to spread open, inviting his invasion.

He kissed his way down to her breast and sucked the tip into his mouth, biting the nipple with his teeth.

Winter fought the natural desire to close her eyes and let the passion have her. She wanted to take all the pleasure she could from watch Nial’s face and hands and body move and strive and work above her or against her as well.