Blood Knot

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Then she took Nial’s hand and pulled him to the big bed sitting up on the low platform at the end of the room. She shed her robe as she walked and dropped it at the foot of the bed.

  Nial picked her up and lay her on the bed. His eyes glittered as he pushed her thighs apart. “Nearly a week without the taste of you. I’m starved, Tera.” And he plunged into her with a hard stroke that drove the breath from her, then held still.

  Sebastian climbed onto the bed, naked and erect. He curled his hand over Nial’s shoulder. “That applies to us, too, Nial. We missed you.”

  Nial kissed Winter’s neck. “Not too much, I hope? He kept you happy while I was gone, Tera?”

  She smiled. Sebastian had kept her more than happy. He was a sensual, hedonistic and inventive lover. “Oh, yes,” she breathed and felt Nial’s cock shift inside her in response.

  He lifted his head to gaze into her eyes. “I’ll want highlights later.” There was devilment in his eyes.

  Sebastian ran his hands down Nial’s back. “Later,” he promised. “Maybe we’ll even demonstrate.”

  Winter gasped at the idea, her body rousing even more. Her clit was throbbing. She lifted her gaze to the mirror on the ceiling and watched as Sebastian gripped Nial’s hips. Sebastian’s heavy cock was glistening with lubricant, and he guided it slowly in between Nial’s taut ass cheeks until it was buried to the root.

  Nial closed his eyes briefly, his breath shuddering.

  “Fuck me,” Winter told him as her climax swirled closer.

  He thrust into her, beginning slowly and she watched as Sebastian did the same in counter beat. But the slowness did not last. She clawed at Nial’s chest. “Faster,” she begged as her climax rippled and roiled through her, provoked by the images she could see and the delicious sensations. So close!

  Nial’s body was a taut, hard bow above her, his muscles iron-hard as he strained. He clenched the bed cover into a tight bunch as he drove into her, while Sebastian worked with fevered need behind him.

  Winter came first, arching off the bed. She screamed, but Nial stole the scream by kissing her and returning it with his own harsh groan as he shuddered through his own climax.

  Sebastian was a heartbeat behind, his fingers digging into Nial’s shoulders as he came, his eyes hooded and his gaze locked on Winter as she held Nial in her arms.

  * * * * *

  Sebastian was drawing lazy circles around her breasts with his forefinger, while Nial, lying to her left, played with her hand, caressing the flesh and tickling the sensitive flesh between her fingers with his tongue.

  “Do you remember what you told me about outsiders, Bastian?” she asked him.

  Sebastian propped his head on his hand. “Once you have more than two outsiders together, they’re inside their own group. They’re not outside anymore.”

  She nodded. “In one respect, we’re all outsiders. None of us is entirely human and none of us fit exactly amongst them. Especially now, after the Flatiron.”

  Nial sat up and turned to face them both. “You’ve been reading my mind,” he said. He still had hold of her hand.

  Winter shook her head. “I’ve been doing my own thinking.” She sat up, too.

  Sebastian flipped himself around so that he was sprawled across the sheet on his other side and could see both of them. He looked at her expectantly.

  Winter lifted up the hand that Nial held, with its significant ring. “The relationship you two had, for all those years. It was unusual amongst vampires?”

  “Very,” Sebastian said simply.

  Nial blew out his breath. “And it was used against me,” he said flatly. He lifted Winter’s hand and kissed the back of it. “So were you, Tera.” He released her hand.

  Sebastian sat up. “That’s what they used as leverage? Me?”

  Nial looked at Sebastian and nodded.

  Sebastian licked his lips. “And Winter…the other faction threatened Winter,” he said hoarsely.

  “Both of you,” Nial said simply.

  Winter drew her knees up against her chest, feeling cold. She stared at Nial as the whole pattern of his behaviour since she had met him reassembled and fell into place in her mind.

  “You came looking for me not just to do the job, but to protect me,” Sebastian surmised.

  Nial grimaced. “You wanted your freedom, Sebastian. I tried to give it to you, but they were going to pull you back into vampire politics with or without me. I thought I would be the softer alternative. So I came looking for you…and found Winter instead.” He glanced at her. “And so you were drawn into the mess as well, because I took one look at your green eyes, red hair and fiery emotions and I think I fell in love on the spot. Sebastian had told me so much about you over the years, I was half-way in love before I met you. But it was what he didn’t tell me that had the greatest impact. And that,” Nial said, picking up her hand, “knocked my knees out from under me.”

  Sebastian chuckled. “Told you so,” he said complacently.

  Winter could feel her heart melting. “When the second faction carved you up, you went out of your way to make sure we didn’t know we were the ‘or else’.”

  Nial shook his head. “I went out of my way to extricate us all from a mess that could have no happy ending. There was no point in worrying either of you with a scenario that I had no intention of ever letting come to pass.”

  Winter understood better, now, some of the ferociousness she had seen in Nial’s face when he had dealt with the faction in the shed.

  Sebastian stirred. “And now you have managed it,” he said. “You’ve pulled us all out of the soup. What are you going to do with us?” Despite the dryness of his tone, he was smiling.

  Nial’s mouth lifted in a smile, too. “Why don’t you ask Tera that? She’s already figured it out.”

  “I have?” Winter didn’t bother hiding her surprise.

  “You spoke about not being outside. About groups,” Nial said. “Extrapolate from there.”

  Winter frowned, thinking it through. Then she suddenly understood. She began to smile. “Nial, you’re really going to be that ambitious?”

  “What ambitious?” Sebastian complained. “Will you two stop talking in hieroglyphics?”

  “It’s not ambition that drives me,” Nial told her. “Everything I do from now on has a simple purpose.” He kissed her hand, then leaned forward and kissed Sebastian. “To preserve us.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Fine, great, wonderful. But you’re still skipping swathes of text here.”

  Nial lifted his brow and looked at her. “Want to spare Sebastian a coronary? Tell him the very first step.”

  “Thank you,” Sebastian said.

  Winter picked up his hand. “First step, Sebastian? You have to marry me.”

  “Well, finally,” he complained. “A simple sentence I can understand. Consider it done.” Then he frowned. “That’s just the first step?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Wawel Castle, Krakow, Poland. Ten days later.

  THE CIVIL WEDDING ceremony was small, attended by a handful of guests, and held in a grand, tapestry-lined state room.

  Winter stood with Nial at her back, his arm around her and her left hand held in his, while Sebastian held her right and slipped his wedding ring onto that hand, as was the custom in Poland. The celebrant, who had been paid a great deal of money, made no protest over the odd arrangement of the wedding party.

  Neither did the assembled guests, who watched the short ceremony with eagle eyes and sharp minds.

  A small wedding buffet was served in the same room, but most of the guests were unable to partake although everyone took a glass of champagne, for show. Sebastian served Winter a piece of the fruitcake and a glass of champagne, along with a kiss. He did the same with Nial.

  After the celebrant had congratulated them and hurried off for his next appointment, one of the guests, a man in his thirties with red hair, came up and congratulated them in a quiet voice that nevertheless
put Winter on alert.

  Nial smiled pleasantly at the man. “I appreciate that you were able to make it from the States, Garrett.”

  “I was in London on business,” Garrett said. “So it wasn’t the inconvenience it seems. But in truth, I would have tried to make the date even if I hadn’t been so close.”

  Nial raised a brow. “Your curiosity bump was itching?”

  “Something like that,” Garrett confessed easily. “Of course, most of us on the eastern seaboard had heard you were dead, Nathanial. So you can imagine my surprise when I got your communication.”

  “I don’t die that easily,” Nial said blandly.

  “No, I don’t imagine you do after all this time,” Garrett agreed, with a small smile. He looked around the room. “So many of us in one place. This is…almost uncomfortable.”

  “I’d get used to it, if I were you,” Sebastian said.

  Garrett lifted one brow, just as Nial had done. “Then this ceremony was not just personal. I thought as much.” His eyes narrowed. “Speak plainly, Nathanial. I will listen.”

  “As will I,” said one of the other guests, who had drifted up behind Garrett—a plain man with greying hair and brown eyes.

  “Bartholomew,” Nial acknowledged.

  The remaining three guests ranged themselves behind Bartholomew and Garrett, silently listening.

  Winter stepped in front of Nial, shielding him. Sebastian stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him. They had deliberately chosen those positions beforehand, for the symbolism they would impart.

  “Organization was once an anathema to us,” Nial said. “Meeting in numbers greater than two forbidden because of the security risks. Keeping ourselves hidden from humans has driven everything we do for centuries.” He shook his head. “That is about to change.”

  Garrett’s smile faded. “You jest,” he breathed.

  “An expensive jest, to bring you all this way.” Nial shook his head. “Ask the good senator behind you if I am joking. Senator Billson?”

  Garrett spun around. So did the others, to face the oldest and portliest of the group facing them.

  The senator cleared his throat. “He is not joking. There was a congressional hearing set to reveal us, most especially the Speaker. But the evidence was destroyed before the subpoenas were sent out a couple of weeks ago, so the hearing was abandoned.”

  Garrett turned back to Nial. “You had something to do with that?”

  “Against my will, yes,” Nial said. “In part, that is how I ‘died’.” He held up his hand. “But you have just made my point for me, Garrett. There was a group—a whole group—who worked together to have that hearing dismantled.” He spread his hands. “We are no longer a species of individuals.”

  Garrett considered that. “You never have been, Nathanial.”

  “No,” Nial agreed. “And I intend to embrace it, as this ceremony today should have underlined for you all. The fact of our existence will emerge amongst humans sooner or later now. It is inevitable. Too many humans who bear us ill-will already know of us and are working against us. We need to organize. We need to identify each other, learn more about how many of us there is. We need to talk amongst ourselves. And we need to meet more often face to face.”

  “It sounds like we’ve already started doing that,” the senator said. “What’s wrong with this group who got the hearing thrown out?”

  “They have their own interests at heart,” Nial replied. “They care nothing for humans. They don’t care for anyone outside their group, either. I don’t believe they intend to reveal themselves at all, even though they assured me they would eventually do so, when the time was right.”

  “And you will, Nathanial? You’re going to drop the bomb on the world?” Garrett asked.

  Nial looked them in the eye, one by one. “Yes.”

  The five vampires ranged before them all gasped.

  “For the love of…” Garrett began. He spread his hands. “Why?” he demanded.

  Nial shrugged, as if it were self-evident. “So we—all of us, Garrett—can belong. So we can stop being outsiders and loners. So we can start really living again, openly and honestly, as ourselves.”

  Garrett stared at him.

  “Don’t you want that, deep down in your gut, Garrett?” Sebastian asked.

  “Hell, yes,” Bartholomew growled.

  Garrett grinned and thrust out his hand.

  Nial gripped it. “Welcome back to real life,” he said.

  Tracy Cooper-Posey is a national award-winning writer. An Australian, she brought her family with her to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1996 to marry. Tracy is a net citizen— she met her husband on the Internet, and has coordinated discussion groups and teaching on-line. She also built and maintains her own web site. She has taught creative writing both on-line and at university, and entertains students and the public with anecdotes and insights into the publishing industry.

  By the end of 2010, Tracy had published 35 titles, under her own and other pennames. She has won the Emma Darcy Award, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of Western Australia’s Best Pastiche Award. She has been a Romantic Times Top Pick author. Her short stories and articles have appeared in various Canadian and Australian magazines and periodicals, and on the Internet. Thief In The Night was announced as one of RRT Review’s Best Book of the Year, and also selected by eCataromance for their Reviewers’ Choice Awards in February 2007. Her 2004 historical romantic suspense, Heart Of Vengeance, was nominated for a CAPA Award for Best Historical of 2004, a Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice finalist for best medieval historical romance for 2004, and was published in Germany in February 2007. On Christmas eve 2010, she was announced as a finalist for the prestigious romance world’s CAPRA awards, in the best erotic paranormal category, and as favorite author.

  So far her life has encompassed an eighteen month stint on war-ravaged Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea, and at various times she has been a secretary, office clerk, single mother, freelance writer, public speaker, columnist, law student, international traveler, writing teacher, advertising production coordinator (for a national newsmagazine), web-press production coordinator, and the first female cinematograph operator in Western Australia. She has been the editor of WHERE Edmonton magazine, and managing editor of the national magazine, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, and for a decade, she taught creative writing at Grant MacEwan University. She currently lives in Edmonton with her husband, a professional wrestler.

  You can find her web site at http://www.tracycooperposey.com.