Blood Knot (10 page)

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 pleasure. 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.

She realized her forehead was resting on Nial’s shoulder and her arm was loosely around his neck. His hand was soothing her back.

But his body was still raging with an arousal so powerful if it had been radiation a lighthouse could have guided ships by it.

Winter could feel her own body responding as if it
was
radiation. She was stirring, rousing, becoming infected immediately, despite her heart still racing from her powerful climax. Or perhaps that even helped. Her clit was still throbbing. She could still feel the imprint of Nial’s fingers being inside her. Her pussy was still moist and hot and ready.

Winter pulled off her bra and tossed it toward the untouched pillows.

Nial watched but didn’t comment. His heart, though, gave a little skip.

She reached for his sweater and pulled it up and over his head.

Nial’s sweater had outlined what appeared to be agreeably built musculature and that proved to be correct. Nial had all the muscle the mounds and dips in the cashmere had hinted at.

The cashmere had hidden the scars.

There weren’t a lot. Just three. Two on his chest and one on the arm. But they looked brutal and badly healed.

Winter tried not to react, to let her gaze pass over them and on. But she failed.

“
Look at them,” Nial told her. “They’re part of me.”

“
I thought…don’t you heal?” she asked.

“
I got these when I was human,” he said simply. He smiled a little. “My back is worse. Slaves were most often whipped on their backs.”

Winter bit her lip, looking at the disfigurements. Then she leaned down and deliberately kissed them. She felt Nial’s shock. His hand touched her head, then slid into it.

“
Turn and lie down,” she told him.

“
If I must,” he said, but his body gave lie to the neutral tone. It leapt.

He managed to turn in the tight quarters and lie across the narrow beds, yet still keep Winter straddled across his hips. She moved enough to give herself access to his trousers. Nial’s crotch was a congested, swollen mound.

Winter stripped him of the rest of his clothing, feasting on the sight of his cock. From her gazes inside him, she knew this organ functioned just as did every other man’s except for one crucial difference—Nial was sterile and utterly unable to catch any sort of sexual disease. She could have unprotected sex with him with a completely free conscience.

But in every other regard Nial was completely male.

Utterly so. She stroked him and his pelvis lifted and his cock jerked. Veins ran the length of the shaft, engorged and thick. The head flared, purple with excitement and a bead of pre-come appeared.

Winter cupped his testicles. They were swollen, heavy in her hand and she squeezed gently, making Nial draw in his breath in a shuddering, long hiss.

She smiled, watching him through her eyelashes. It was powerful, watching Nial groan under her hand. She reached beneath and stroked the sensitive perineum and was rewarded with not just his groan but the thrust of his hips and his hands gripping the sheets.

Sensitive…

Her heart racing, she leaned down and ran her tongue from the base of his cock to the tip, letting it bump over the head and swirl around the dimpled eye.

Nial’s moan was like music, played off against the internal sensations of his body beating and swelling and responding to her touch. Winter loved to fuck a man with her mouth, but she had never deliberately used her talent to get feedback on what worked and what didn’t before. It was only now, because Nial had agreed to let her read him for lies, now that she was constantly touching inside him, that it occurred to her to use her talent in this extraordinary way. Normally she tried to be…well, normal.

But Nial wasn’t normal.

And neither was she.

Winter curled her fingers about the base of his cock and slipped her lips over the head. She let her throat relax and pushed him as far inside as possible, then slid her lips back up the shaft to bump over the head.

Nial couldn’t even groan, the tension in his body was too tight. His climax leapt closer.

Winter settled in to drive Nial as mad as possible, using her talent to read just how close to climax she could bring him, then let him subside before building him up, again and again, with her mouth and hands orchestrating a medley on his cock and testicles, perineum and around the sensitive tissues of his anus.