Blood Knot

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Winter took a deep breath and tried to hide the silly grin spreading across her face. “That would be lovely,” she said. She could see Nial’s smile from the corner of her eye and fought the need to either look at him or ram her elbow into his side. She could almost hear his silent “I told you so.”

  Her whole body seemed to tighten and pulse with possibilities.

  * * * * *

  They served Winter a decaffeinated coffee laced with brandy at the bar while their suites were prepared for sleep. Like he had in her basement, Nial sat on the bar stool and stretched out his legs. He seemed to be getting huge amounts of amusement out of her unfamiliarity with this level of first class travel and her enjoyment of it.

  When one of the other businessmen introduced himself to Nial, Nial shook his hand and used the name on the passport he was travelling on and Winter could actually see the shield drop down behind his eyes. She put her coffee cup down, some of her enjoyment evaporating, and pushed her thigh up against Nial’s leg to get a reading from him.

  He was wary. Guarded.

  At her touch, he picked up her hand and drew her between his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist as he continued the polite conversation about the Red Sox and the Yankees. Then, in a slight pause, he introduced her, using the name on the passport she had used to check in with.

  “My wife,” he added casually.

  Winter was fully into role playing, keeping names straight, facts aligned and assessing the man in front of her, or she would have jumped, startled. Unobtrusively, she slid her bare left hand out of sight behind her.

  “Different names?” the man said, puzzled. Pete, she reminded herself. His name is Pete.

  “Professional necessity,” she said smoothly. “I have thousands of clients. It would have confused them all if I changed names.”

  “Besides, we’re still on our honeymoon and haven’t got around to sorting all the details out yet.” Nial nuzzled her neck from behind and she did jump this time, for as his lips seared an imprint against the nape of her neck, a ring slid onto the appropriate finger of her left hand and was pushed into place.

  Winter laughed, venting her surprise that way and reached for her coffee cup with her left hand. There was a gold ring on her ring finger. An Irish Claddagh ring, with the crown sitting toward her hand. It was very slightly too big, but not enough to look odd.

  Nial must have been carrying it with him somehow. He hadn’t been wearing it even on his smallest fingers.

  Pete laughed, too. “Then I guess I’m interrupting the wedding night, huh?” He winked. “Helluva way to celebrate, though. Good hotel would’ve been nicer.”

  “I don’t know…the little beach and palm tree we’ll spend the next ten nights beneath will do very nicely,” Winter said judiciously.

  Pete roared with laughter, slapping his thigh.

  “Although, you do need to be careful of all that sun on that tattoo on your—” Nial began and stopped. He glanced at Pete. “Well, you know where,” he finished, with a smile that was both secretive, seductive and intimate all at once.

  Pete almost drooled as he picked up his scotch glass. “I guess I don’t wanna know,” he said.

  Winter gave a small laugh. “I just got it for the wedding,” she explained. “So I have to be careful for a while. It has black roses and says ‘I love Josh, horn dog and con artist’.” Josh was the name on Nial’s passport. She smiled winningly at Nial. “Doesn’t it, honey?”

  Pete choked on his scotch and thumped his chest.

  There was a light in Nial’s eyes that told her he was enjoying this immensely. He stroked his crooked finger under her chin. “That’s a joke you’re going to have to live with forever, you know.”

  “Yes, but which half of it is the joke?” she teased back.

  “Yep, you two are definitely in love,” Pete said. “So the other half must be the joke.”

  Winter’s coffee cup jerked and the contents splashed all over the bar.

  “Oh dear!” the hostess behind the bar said, with her strong Arabic accent. She leaned over and began mopping up black coffee with a cloth in hurried, expert movements. The fuss of cleaning up brandy-smelling coffee stole the attention away from her and Winter was deeply relieved because for several seconds she could not have covered up properly to save her life.

  They looked like a couple in love? They really looked like a couple in love?

  By the time the coffee had been cleaned up and the bar restored to normal, Winter’s pulse had also returned to something close to standard. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Nial, though. She knew he would be studying her with more amusement in his expression and a knowing light in his eyes. He was a master at human psychology—he had to be, to be able to scam people so well. He would have known the coffee didn’t leap out of her hand at that ill-timed moment all by itself.

  Winter picked up Nial’s hands from around her waist and stepped out from between his legs. “I’m heading back,” she said and kissed his cheek, avoiding his gaze. “Don’t be too long, huh?” She smiled at Pete. “My husband tends to stay up all hours of the night. Vampire hours, you know? Nice to meet you.”

  She slipped between the first class suites to theirs, knowing that Nial would not be far behind.

  Chapter Seven

  WINTER KICKED OFF her shoes and climbed onto the bed that had been assembled while she was gone. The lighting had been lowered and pillows plumped and placed for them both. Soft music played on the entertainment screen, masking the constant thrumming of the aircraft.

  It was cozy and would definitely be private once the doors were shut.

  “Vampire hours, hmmm?” Nial murmured. “Very cute.”

  She looked up from studying the entertainment controls, startled. “You sneaked up on me deliberately,” she accused. He stood on the other side of the double suite, a hand on either side of the curved walls.

  “Of course,” he said. “I wanted to see what you were doing. I admit I’m somewhat disappointed. I thought you might be lying across the beds, waiting for me.”

  She laughed. “You’re an optimist.”

  “I have fantasies,” he corrected gravely.

  Winter felt her cheeks heat. He seemed to be able to do that to her far too easily. “You enjoyed that,” she admonished him.

  “Which? Making you blush, or the by-play at the bar?”

  “Both,” she said simply. “A professional would have been too focused to enjoy himself.”

  Nial’s smile faded. “I’ve never considered myself a professional,” he replied. “I did it from necessity and made myself good at it because I wanted to survive. Life is ugly enough at the baseline without adding to the seriousness. You should be adding joy wherever you can, Winter. Not the other way around. Didn’t Serbia teach you that?”

  She sat up on her knees. “Define joy for me,” she demanded.

  Nial’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want a dictionary definition or a personal interpretation?”

  She hissed her impatience at him. “How old were you when you became a vampire, Nial?”

  Nial glanced along the corridor, dropped off his shoes, then eased himself onto his side of the bed and shut the door on his side of the suite. It enclosed them in their own little world. Then he surprised her by crossing his legs and threading his fingers together. He didn’t reach for her or languidly recline. He was treating the question seriously.

  “I was twenty-eight, as near as I can calculate,” he told her. “Age was not a critical matter in my day,” he added. “And calendars and years were not precise.”

  “But you were taken from your family and put into slavery when you were ten, you said.”

  He drew a breath. She saw his shoulders lift. “Yes,” he said simply.

  “While you were a slave, did you have friends amongst the other slaves?”

  His eyes narrowed again. “Slavery didn’t work like that. I was sold to a household after my capture and put to work there. But I had a fri
end in the house, one of owner’s sons, and there were other slaves in other households nearby.”

  Winter nodded. “You had a place, then.”

  Nial’s expression became a fully-fledged frown. “For the way things worked back then, yes. I had a place. I didn’t particularly care for it, once I understood where I stood in the scheme of things. But I had my place.”

  “I didn’t,” Winter replied. “Not once. Not ever. You at least had twenty-eight years of being human and being accepted, Nial. I’ve never had that, not even from my family.” She filled her lungs and held them for a moment against the swell of self-pity, before letting herself go on.

  Nial’s expression was neither pitying or gentle. It was simply interested and that helped. “They rejected your talent as soon as they learned of it,” he surmised.

  She nodded again. “They wouldn’t touch me. Ever. They would rarely speak to me. It was only my father’s idea of Christian charity that made him keep me in the house and feed and clothe me. He began to drink and beat my mother when I was four. He thought it was her fault for producing me. When he was drunk he would say she had slept with the devil to get me. Because of my parent’s examples, my older brother would steal my food and also beat me whenever he could find me, so I spent most of my time hiding in my room, or escaping through my window and roaming the city. That brought its own dangers, of course, so I quickly learned the ways of the streets and how to use my talent to defend myself. I learned very fast that I was different. Not precisely human.” Winter bit her lip.

  “Then the war came and everything changed. Not for better or for worse. It just changed. I met my first Americans a few years later and decided I wanted to go there. I had to wait until I was eighteen and could lie about my identity and emigrate as an adult, but I landed in New York in February the year after I turned eighteen. I was mugged two hours later and found out that nothing had changed, everything was the same…so I picked up where I left off and here I am, the world’s best thief and con artist.”

  She looked Nial in the eye. “I don’t find much joy in life, Nial. Life hasn’t accepted me in any way. I just live on the outside, peering in, pretending to be part of it. So do you, now.”

  Nial rested his hands around her waist. “Is that what you think I do?” he asked. He lifted her with ease and lowered her onto his lap, spreading her legs over his. With his thighs already spread by his cross-legged posture, Winter found herself opened up and accessible in a way that made her clit throb with the possibilities. The only barrier was her panties.

  Nial’s hands cupped her ass, moving restlessly.

  She linked her hands around the back of his neck. He was tall enough that even perched like this, she didn’t have to look down too far to look into his eyes.

  “You’re breathing quickly,” he murmured.

  “Your heart is racing,” she countered.

  “Yours would too, if all you could feel is bare flesh underneath a pretty skirt.”

  “I’m wearing a thong, Nial.”

  “Hence the racing heart. Those things are a menace to a man’s heart beat.” His hands slid higher. “Mmm. Lace, too. Just like your stockings. You do not play fair.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But you’re stronger and faster. I need my advantages.”

  His eyes looked sleepy with arousal. “Take off your jacket thing.”

  “This?” She tugged at the knot at the front of the soft cropped knit jacket with its ruffled sleeves and fronts, untied it and dropped it behind Nial. She wore now the tartan pleated skirt and a green stretch silk camisole and the bra beneath. But the bra was a shelf bra and her nipples were already hard, erect nubs pushing at the thin, sensual silk.

  Nial let out a soft breath as he saw them and his reaction made her body clench and her clit bloom. She drew in a shaky breath.

  “The top,” he whispered.

  She could feel his own heart thundering in his chest. His body straining with a sudden and overwhelming arousal. But he was holding it back. Damming it.

  The knowledge fed into her own arousal, increased it. Winter moaned as she reached for the hem of her top and tugged it upwards. She could feel Nial’s gaze on her bare midriff as it was revealed, then her bra and the naked tips of her breasts as she pulled the top over her head. She shook her hair out and found Nial was watching her face.

  “You packed with me in mind, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  His gaze was steady.

  “Perhaps,” she conceded. “But you did say to pack for every contingency.”

  “I didn’t have seduction in mind when I said that.”

  “I did,” she replied simply. “You had just finished kissing me not so long ago. It may look like it, but I really don’t switch off so easily.”

  He brought a hand up to slide it into her hair. “Truth, Winter?” He brought her mouth to his. “Neither do I.” His tongue stroked the outline of her lips before plunging deep inside, making her moan.

  His fingers on her ass were separating her cheek, exposing even more of her cleft, making her aware of exactly how moist she was growing. How slippery.

  And how desperately she wanted Nial to slide his fingers the necessary few more inches deeper into her vagina, to fill the empty space that was aching to be possessed.

  His hand did finally move…but to grip the lace of her thong and tear it with slow, inexorable force until the panties tore away from her with a tired, low ripping sound.

  Nial’s mouth moved from her lips to her chin, nibbling and licking, making a small feast of her flesh. His hand in her hair gently pulled her head back so that he could access her throat.

  Then he began to dine on the column of her neck, his tongue leavening and marking the trail.

  Winter clutched at him, her excitement building, her breathing accelerating, her body vibrating. Her eyes kept trying to close with pleasure and she fought the temptation. She wanted to watch Nial’s male beauty as he touched and toyed with her.

  His progress slowed as he neared her nipples and Winter beat at his shoulder with her fist. “Tease!”

  “Of course!” he murmured, his lips brushing against the swell of her upper breast. He was smiling. His tongue stroked her skin. “Would you prefer I be even more cruel?” He pulled her head back again, so that she could not see what he was doing as he began to tease and stroke and suck her flesh, moving near and around and close to her nipples, but not quite touching them.

  Winter began to writhe with need and impatience. But just her own fraught arousal was having a profound effect upon Nial as she squirmed upon his lap. She could feel his heart hammering with a very human, very stressed and ragged beat. His blood pressure was that of a man under intense stress and it was still slowly climbing.

  The fingers of the hand he was using to cup her bottom rolled closer to her cleft, making her moan low in the back of her throat. His fingertips traced the wet valley in soft, delicate touches designed to taunt her.

  Winter arched against him, her hips and pelvis pressing against his taut stomach.

  She heard his breath catch, felt his heart jump and his pulse leap at the same time. His hand in her hair tightened, keeping her locked in that position.

  At the same time, his fingers pressed inside her, driving deep. Two, maybe three, she wasn’t quite sure. The rough, uneven shape of them, the knuckles pushing up against the walls of her pussy, were so unlike a man’s cock.

  Almost at the same moment, Nial captured the tip of her breast in his mouth, his teeth closing around the hot, sensitive nipple and tugging on it, as his tongue swept over the very end.

  She bucked, as the wave of sensation that rocketed through her sparked the beginnings of her orgasm. She clutched at Nial desperately. “Together,” she breathed. “I want us to come together.”

  “We will,” he assured her.

  He had released her head and now his hand stroked between her thighs. “Get rid of the skirt,” he commanded her. His voice was thick with plea
sure. She could measure how drunk he was on it by the rush of blood in his veins, the force of life in him. He was as human now as she was.

  Winter slipped the button on the band of her skirt undone and the skirt slithered away from her hips, leaving her bare to Nial’s gaze, all except for the lacy tops of her stockings.

  He drew in an unsteady breath. “Pure sin,” he breathed. His hand drifted from her thighs to her bare mound. He slipped his forefinger between her lips and rested it up against her clit. “Wet and throbbing,” he crooned, looking up at her face.

  Her breath shuddered on the way down. “Make me come,” she breathed.

  Nial drew his finger back and forth with a firm, knowing stroke and the pleasure rippled through her. From deep inside, her climax stirred and gathered. Winter fought to keep her gaze on his face, to not sink into the pool of ecstasy to the point where she lost focus on Nial.

  “Again,” she whispered.

  His fingers drove into her vagina as he stroked her clit again and this time she could barely hold herself upright against him.

  “Let go,” he told her. “Let me watch you let go. Please.”

  It was the ‘please’ that was her undoing. With a guttural groan she let her head fall back and her orgasm take her. It was one of the most powerful climaxes she had ever experienced, and she grit her teeth to muffle the sounds that wanted to emerge from her in reaction. The white noise and fizz and buzz of electrical storms slammed through her system with the impact of a hurricane, leaving her breathless and her chest heaving, and a faint ache behind her eyes.