Blood Knot (14 page)

“
He’s in there,” Nial said, putting his hand on the closed door.

“
How do you know?” Winter asked.

“
Morning sunlight shines in that room. And it’s bigger. Plus the door is shut. He’s in there.”

Winter grasped the big oval doorknob and twisted it open. The door squeaked open, showing a room dim with the day, beyond. Leadlight windows and lace curtains revealed a big hand-carved bed covered with an embroidered eiderdown duvet.

Sebastian lay beneath it, his eyes closed. He didn’t move as they stepped further into the room.

Nial kneeled on the bed and shook his shoulder. “Sebastian.”

The movement rocked Sebastian enough that he rolled onto his back. He appeared to be unconscious.

Nial looked at Winter. “Quickly. Can you tell what the problem is?”

She clambered onto the big bed and picked up Sebastian’s hand. Immediately she felt life, but so faint and weak it frightened her. “He’s barely there,” she whispered. “His heart beats, but it labors to do so. It’s like he’s trying to let go.”

“
Is he unconscious?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen this state before. I can’t even give it a name.”

Nial stared down at Sebastian, a tiny furrow between his brows.

Outside, thunder rolled. Rain began to patter at the windows. Winter shivered. It hadn’t been nearly this cold in her house in Montana, despite the lingering snow on the mountains and the late start to the summer. “It’s cold in here,” she observed.

“
These old places don’t have central heating.” Nial looked around. “I’ll get a fire going downstairs. It’ll be set up to feed all the rooms with hot air.” He moved off the bed again and headed for the door. “Come here for a minute, Winter.”

She touched Sebastian’s cold shoulder before backing off the bed herself and following Nial out of the room. He shut the bedroom door behind her and made sure it was latched properly.

Then he stole her breath in surprise by gathering her in his arms and pressing her up against the door with his long hard body and kissing her furiously.

For seconds, moments, Winter could barely breath as her surprise had taken all the air from her lungs and Nial was stealing what little she could gather for herself. Then she managed to draw a decent breath as he lifted his mouth from hers to press his lips against her face, her eyes, her cheeks, her throat, and she moaned her pleasure aloud.

She clung to him as he continued to stroke her throat with his tongue and lips, driving her crazy, making her want him, making her body ache.

“
Nial,” she begged helplessly.

He pressed himself up against her, pushing her into the door. His eyes gazed into hers. “You must go to Sebastian. You must be with him. Stay with him.”

“
Be with…?”

“
Something about you completes the symbiosis,” Nial added. “Something you must…provide, to keep Sebastian alive. You have to figure it out.”

She let her hands drop away from him. “You’re giving me to him.”

Nial shook his head. “I don’t want to.”

“
But if that is what is needed…”

He looked away.

Winter reached out to touch him, to reach inside. Nial abruptly backed away, letting her go. When had he got so good at knowing when she was reading him?

“
If you don’t let me see, I won’t go in there,” she told him flatly.

In the dim light of the landing, his eyes seemed to almost glow as he moved slowly closer. “You’ll regret this, Winter,” he breathed and kissed her again. His hand cupped her cheek, the big thumb resting high up against her cheekbone.

Winter thrust herself inside. It was the first time she had invaded his body for nearly two days—since they had left Coral Bay.

Chaotic feelings pummeled her in a windstorm of bio-chemical reactions that because she had spent a lifetime reading them, it was like reading Braille—she interpreted them just as easily.

Despair and anger she had expected. Love, yes. And the painful sense of raw loss. Shockingly, there was resentment there.
Resentment
. From Nial, one of the most resourceful individuals she had ever met. And there, buried deep, so deep she could barely…Winter struggled to more finely tune her senses, for a layer of dull fury and helplessness lay over all of it, like a smothering fog.

Nial lifted his lips from hers. “You wanted truth,” he reminded her.

The door behind her opened.

“
No, Nial, not yet—!”

But he gently nudged her through and the door closed on her.

It was dark and growing darker in the room so Winter turned on the old-fashioned lamp next to the bed. It was sitting on a beautiful piece of lace and the lamp itself was probably a valuable antique, too.

She considered Sebastian’s still form and wondered where to start. There was no hint inside his body to give her guidance. His cold flesh was completely unresponsive.

Winter shuddered again and that gave her a partway useful interim idea. She needed to get warm until Nial got the fire going downstairs. So did Sebastian.

She stripped her boots and jacket and eased herself under the eiderdown next to Sebastian. She rolled him onto his side again and tucked herself up against his back. He felt cool against her, which wasn’t good. At the very least warming him up was a good idea. She reached inside him and encouraged his metabolism along, which would give him extra warmth, too. It was hard to push it any faster in his current state, but it cranked up a notch or two and she was pleased. Any response at all from him was a small victory.

He was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans—more signs of how ill he’d been when he’d arrived in Ireland. He’d barely been able to undress. Winter rubbed his flesh where she could reach—his arms and stomach and chest and back, trying to warm the flesh and encourage circulation manually, as she couldn’t nudge it internally. She worked her knuckles over his thighs through the denim of his jeans, massaging the flesh that way.

The work warmed her as well.

After a while, she realized that the eiderdown had slid down her body as she worked, but the air wasn’t biting into her body as it had been when they had first arrived. Nial had got the fire working well, then.

She checked Sebastian’s internal readings again. They still seemed dormant, but his body temperature was up. Surely that was a good sign?

Winter wrapped her arms around him and rested for a while, trying to think things through and figure out a next step to try. In New York, when it had been her turn, they had accidently discovered what she had needed. No…she had
taken
what she needed. She had been awake though. Aware. Able to reach for what she needed. Sebastian could well slip into a real human coma and then death simply because he wasn’t able to reach for what he needed.

But why hadn’t he reached for what he needed weeks ago? Why hadn’t he called?

The heat of a human body against her back and filtered sunshine on her face told her she had fallen asleep—deeply asleep with one of those asleep-one-moment-awake-ten-hours-later sleeps that only the truly exhausted or truly jet lagged manage to pull off.

Nial was watching her. He sat in the tiny chair under the window, arms crossed, freshly bathed, in clean clothes and looking relaxed, and very pleased with himself.

She blinked and tried to sit up. “Sebas—”

Nial put a finger to his lips. “He’s sleeping,” he murmured.

She tried to look over her shoulder, but Sebastian’s arm was heavy over her waist and his leg was thrown over her thighs. She was locked down tight.

“
Sleeping?” she murmured. She eased inside Sebastian’s body to check for herself and found, to her delight, that Nial was right. Sebastian was just sleeping. She began to smile. “Well, fabulous. But I really need the bathroom.”

“
It’s outside,” Nial said gravely.

Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding!”

He nodded. “I am. They built an addition off the kitchen. But it looks like it’s only a few years old. If you’d come here a few years ago you
would
have been going outside.”

Winter tried to pull herself out from under Sebastian’s deadweight and failed. She exhaled heavily. “This is ridiculous. Nial, can you…I can’t believe I have to ask you, but can you help me get out from under him?”

Nial’s expression was delighted mix of devilment. “Aren’t you right where you always wanted to be, hmmm?”

She blew him a soft raspberry. “Unconscious men are an especial turn on of mine, yes.” She tried again to move Sebastian’s arm and failed. “Nial?”

He gave a soft, almost soundless laugh and flipped the eiderdown back enough to slide onto the mattress alongside her.

“
What are you doing?” she demanded in a harsh whisper.

“
Helping,” he said blandly. “You do want my help, yes?”

Winter caught her breath. She lay tangled in the limbs of one man, while another pressed up close to her. Her body seemed to ignite and burn with a white hot flame as erotic possibilities danced in her mind. She was almost afraid to look Nial in the eye in case he read those thoughts in hers.

Honesty
, she told herself and caught his gaze. She shifted her hand a fraction of an inch to touch his fingers.

Heat. Super-charged arousal.

Hope.

She heard herself gasp. It was ragged. But she was caught by the look in Nial’s eyes. So mixed. So confusing.

“
I’m not who you think I am, Winter,” he whispered. “I never was.” He kissed her, his tongue thrusting deep.

Then he lifted Sebastian’s arm and leg and lifted her over him so she could dash downstairs to the bathroom. Her last glimpse as she left the bedroom was Nial studying Sebastian’s sleeping face.

It jolted her and made her remember that the emotions she read in Nial did not come with tags. They weren’t memories. She had no way to know who Nial was experiencing the emotions
for
. If he was feeling lust it could be for Sebastian or for her. The same with any emotion she read in him. Just because the emotion was present, she couldn’t assume that he was feeling it for her.

So when she came out of the bathroom, instead of heading back to the bedroom, she decided to make breakfast, instead. It suddenly seemed safer.

I’m not who you think I am, Winter
. Was that a warning, now that Sebastian had been returned to him?

But that was exactly the sort of man she had assumed him to be…

Confused, she tried to drop the subject, but her mind wouldn’t leave it alone. Like a sore tooth, her mind kept going back to prod it, over and over, until it throbbed painfully.

By the time she sat down to tea and toast at the tiny little breakfast bar, she was grumpy as hell.

Just as she took the first mouthful of tea, Nial strolled into the kitchen. He pulled up the fragile second bar stool and sat next to her.

Her appetite fled. Her mood darkened. It didn’t help that her body seemed to want to reach out to him and wrap itself around him as tightly as possible. She pulse with need. Damn.

Nial was wearing jeans. But not just any jeans. Black ones. Midnight black. Designer. Sophisticated. Stretch. And they stretched over every muscle in his thighs and butt. And they emphasized every long inch of his legs. And a charcoal black shirt that seemed to lay limp and cling to every inch of his flesh as if it couldn’t get enough of him.

She knew the feeling.

He dipped his forefinger into her tea and licked it. “Irish breakfast and cream. Mmm.”

She sighed. “Do you do this with all your human dates?”

“
I don’t date humans. Sebastian is just starting to wake. He’ll be down in a minute, I’m guessing. The smell of toast will bring him here, guaranteed.”

Winter stared at him, trying to process his first incredible statement. Did that mean she was a rare exception, or that he didn’t consider her human? Or something else entirely? They weren’t ‘dating’? It was too convoluted a statement to begin to interpret it without further clarification. And Nial was already beginning to close up on her.

“
Bloody brilliant,” Sebastian said from the door. “The two people I’m trying my hardest to get away from, and they’re in my bloody kitchen, eating my bloody bread, half-way around the fucking globe from where I left them.”

SEBASTIAN’S HAIR WAS tousled and his eyes sleepy, and his tee-shirt crumpled from long wear and sleep, but otherwise, he looked so healthy—and pissed—that Winter could feel tears pricking her eyes at how excessively normal he looked.

Nial turned on his stool. “Only one of us is stealing your daily bread, Sebastian. As she is the one that saved your life, I’d be a bit more grateful, if I were you.”

Sebastian ruffled his hair, frowning. “What?”

“
What date is today?” Nial asked.

“
Twenty-second, isn’t it?”

“
It’s Friday. The twenty-third. You lost a day, Sebastian. The symbiosis is two-way. Winter must have your blood, much more regularly than your needs. As far as I can tell, you must have her pheromones.”