Blood Knot (6 page)

Sebastian cursed softly. She felt his fingers on her mouth, and one slide gently under her upper lip. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re quite human. But you need to feed. And I don’t have canines any more either.”

The mattress shifted and light glared as he entered her bathroom. Then he was back. She heard him give a soft hiss of pain. “Quickly, Winter. Here.”

His fingers touched her lips. This time they smelled differently. She turned her head, alerted by the aroma. The rich promise.

“
Drink,” he crooned as drops fell onto her tongue.

Winter swallowed and felt the spread of warmth and energy from the few little drops. Eagerly, she sought more, and more flowed into her mouth. Thick and sweet as honey. She swallowed.

Warmth seemed to spread through her body as the liquid made its way down to her stomach.

“
That’s it,” Sebastian told her, his tone approving. A hand slid under her head, supporting her. “Now, can you put your lips on my wrist?”

The first faint alarm filtered through her haze of enjoyment. But the strength she was drawing from the liquid overrode her intellectual objections. In the back of her mind she put together the truth. Sebastian’s wrist. His hiss of pain. Canines. Teeth. Fangs.

Blood. She was drinking blood. Sebastian’s blood. Hot blood.

It tasted nothing like blood. It tasted ambrosial. The finest wines had nothing on this. The heat and energy it was generating in her was like the strongest energy drink in the world. Industrial strength power straight into her veins. She could feel her body responding and could measure its restoration for herself.

She gripped his wrist and pressed her lips against the wound she knew she would find there. With the slightest of hesitations, knowing full well what she was doing, she made herself draw blood into her mouth.

The flood of hot liquid was like a mouthful of the most delicious mulled wine, made with a gourmet bouquet of herbs and spices. She moaned, forgetting what it was she was drinking. She sucked, drawing more and more into her mouth, feeding greedily.

“
I said enough, Winter!” Sebastian tore his wrist away from her mouth. His tone implied it wasn’t the first time he had spoken.

Appalled, Winter let go of Sebastian’s wrist and rolled away, curling into a tight ball and hiding her face.

She felt the bed move then heard the sound of running water in the bathroom. Then, even worse, the sound of tape being torn off a roll. Sebastian was staunching the wound on his wrist.

The his hands tugged at her shoulders. “Look at me,” he said.

Because his tone was gentle enough, Winter let her arm drop so that she could peer at him with one eye.

Sebastian eased himself onto the other side of the bed so that his face was level with hers. “You’re not embarrassed, are you?”

“
More like sickened.”

“
Honestly, Winter? That’s how you really feel?” He brushed her hair off her face as if he were trying to see it properly to judge for himself. The white gauze on his wrist was very white in the low light filtering through the curtains. It had to be late afternoon for the light to be so dim.

“
Or is the sick feeling something you think you
should
feel so your intellect is trying to make you feel that way?” Sebastian ask her.

Winter considered that for a moment.

“
You’re no longer ill,” Sebastian pointed out. “You look…well, marvelous,” he admitted. “Glowing. Just like one of us after we’ve fed.”

She jumped a little and he rested his hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright,” he told her. “I don’t think this means you’re becoming a vampire, Winter. If you were it would have happened already.”

Winter let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes. The fear she hadn’t been aware of holding evaporated. “Mother Mary above!”

Sebastian laughed, a soft low sound. “
Now
you feel better, hmmm?”

“
Yes!” She opened her eyes again. “You’re right. I just thought I should feel wrong about it. And it
is
disgusting. But so is sex, if you just look at the basic mechanics.” She picked up his wrist, the one with the gauze and tape, and stroked the flesh just outside the tape. “It’s the everything else about sex that makes it so great.”

“
What are you doing?”

“
Can’t you tell?”

“
My wrist is tingling.”

“
Mmm…” She picked at the edges of the tape, then ripped it away. The wound underneath was a fine pink line, healed over.

She stroked it with her fingertip, healing it further, until the line blended in with the rest of his flesh, leaving no sign of the wound at all.

Sebastian turned his wrist to different angles, examining it. “I used to be able to heal myself faster than that,” he said clinically, although Winter could tell that he was pleased.

“
I could have done it faster,” she admitted. “But it would have hurt rather than just tingled. And I wanted to show off.”

“
Why hurt?”

“
You’re human now, Sebastian. What I did was speed up your metabolism in that one little area so the wound healed naturally dozens of times faster than the rest of your body aged. The tingling was the area where the metabolism differences met. The bigger the differences, the more discomfort you feel. When you healed yourself as a vampire, I suspect there were supernatural powers involved, so there was no discomfort at all.”

“
No discomfort, no.” He lifted her chin. “And why show off?”

She tried to smile. “You’re the only person on this planet that knows what I can do.”

He blinked. “
No one
else knows?”

She shook her head.

He sat up. “Well, that explains it a little bit.”

“
Explains what?”

“
Nothing. Well, something for later, anyway. You need rest.”

But she didn’t need rest at all. She stretched out on the bed. She felt marvelous. Glowing, like Sebastian said. And sexy. Heated. Feral, almost. She rested her hand on Sebastian’s back. “You’re not going to rush off, are you?” she asked.

He grew still. Just his head turned to look at her. Through her touch, she could feel the spike and leap of his heart. The flood of adrenaline. Excitement, she guessed. Hope, perhaps. But his face was like marble. “Lonely, Winter? Run out of blind dates and studs? You?”

The need to have him inside her, to be consumed by sex, was beating at her, a tattoo in her brain, threatening to steal her concentration. Through her hand on his back, she pushed some of it into Sebastian, just to give herself a chance to think.

He gasped and shuddered. “Winter…” And she watched his pupils dilate. He turned to her in a movement almost too quick to follow, reminding her that not so long ago he had been a vampire. His lips and his body pressed against hers and Winter sighed. He was as perfect as she had always imagined. Hot and hard and eager.

His hand slid under her hip and held her against him, so that she could feel his pelvis and his hard, erect cock pushing against her abdomen.

Sebastian thrust his tongue into her mouth with a hungry moan. He rimmed her lips before thrusting again, a mini-promise of what was to come.

The pulsing need was threatening to drown her again, so Winter pushed more of it into Sebastian. She wanted to be aware of every moment of this.

He groaned, arching against her. His pelvis ground into her with good, hard pressure as he reacted to the need she was feeding into him.

His fingers scrabbled at the buttons on her shirt. Then he simply ripped it open. She heard the little disks land softly on the hardwood floor across the room. Sebastian cupped her breasts in their lace bra with trembling hands. “I want this too much,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I have no finesse left to spare this time.”

Confusion touched her. He wanted this? Or was she making him want this? Had Sebastian wanted her to begin with? She would never know now because if she asked, she would have to reveal what she had done.

Guilt speared her.

Sebastian looked up at her face. His expression hardened and he reared up and to the other side of the bed, so that he wasn’t touching her. “No!” He took a breath, and another. “You were…you made me do that, didn’t you? When you touched my back.” He wrapped his arms around his middle, like he was suddenly cold. “I should have remembered what it was like straight after I fed, when I was younger. The need for sex.” He grimaced. “Jesus.” He looked away.

She sat up. “It wasn’t quite like that,” she said.

“
You didn’t do anything to me at all, then?” he shot back.

When she didn’t reply, he climbed off the bed. Fury radiated from every stiff angle of him. “You could have talked me into it, Winter. Just you. Seduction works, you know. Manipulating me doesn’t.
Fuck
!”

She scrambled off the bed to follow him and almost ran into him when he turned to face her again.

“
Two years I spent talking about Nial and his ways, Winter. About how he pushes people around and uses them. About why I left him. Didn’t you learn
anything
from that at all?”

“
I didn’t mean to do it, Sebastian.”

“
It just slipped out or something?” he said caustically.

“
Yes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Will you at least close your shirt?” He turned and stalked into the main room.

She tied her shirt closed and hurried after him. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”

“
No, you’re not.” He said it flatly. “You’re just like Nial. You’re only sorry you got caught.”

“
Damn it, Sebastian. That’s not fair. You’re angry and you want to punish me, fine. But that’s over and above.”

He pushed his hands into his jeans pockets. “You’re a
thief
, Winter. Your whole life is defined by secrecy. Getting caught is just a job hazard for you, one that you’ve got pre-built responses for.”

It hurt, more than she thought it would, because the accusation was coming from Sebastian, of all people.

“
You’re a thief, too,” she reminded him.

“
I didn’t get a choice,” he said bleakly.

“
You think I did?” she cried. “You think I sat in junior high dreaming about growing up and breaking into bank vaults?”

“
So you were in Serbia during the war and had to steal to survive. My father was a belted English earl, Winter, and I slept on ermine and silk until he learned I was a bastard. Then I got tossed from the family at thirteen to fend myself and my mother with me. Ireland was a hard land in which to be penniless back then. My mother lasted six months. I survived because a con man took a fancy to me.” He shrugged, his face hard. “We are all a product of our times.”

“
And you’re as secretive as me,” Winter accused. “You lied about the dating thing, Sebastian. You just didn’t want me finding out you were a vampire. You never had any intention of telling me, did you?”

He hesitated. “Not at first.”

“
At first?” she repeated. “Then when? When I tripped over your victims? We were two years working together. How long were you going to leave it?”

Sebastian’s hands curled into fists in his pockets. “Vampires have been necessarily secret for millennia. It’s not that simple, Winter. Every extra person who is aware—”

“
Bullshit,” she shot back. “You’re just hiding behind that as a shield. What is the real reason why you wouldn’t tell me, Sebastian?”

“
You’re a fine one to talk! You never said a word about your talent for adjusting people’s biologies, and that directly affected our work!” He yanked his hands out of his pockets. “All that crud about serums and hypnosis and blather about domination. You didn’t trust me enough to just tell me the truth. You had to get me out of the way with stupid excuses and nonsense for two fucking years, Winter, so you could simply put guards to sleep. So you haven’t told a single soul about your talent before. Why couldn’t you tell
me
?”

Winter tried to find an honest answer in the face of his fury. “I suppose…I felt I didn’t know you well enough.”

He made a sound that was something like a half-laugh, but it was skewed by an emotion she couldn’t name. “You can strip down in front of me for a job without blushing, but you don’t feel you know me well enough. Brilliant.” He shook his head. “That’s just…the best news I’ve had all day.” He crossed to the apartment door, his long legs moving in easy strides. “Don’t call me, Winter,” he said at the door. “My new blood pressure can’t take the challenge.”

“
I DID SEE him once more, about a month later,” Winter added, stirring her coffee. “Neither of us had realized that the feedings would be an almost monthly thing. So, about four weeks later, when I felt the beginnings of new symptoms, I realized what was happening and called Sebastian.”

Nathanial’s mouth lifted at one corner. “That must have been a fun phone call for you to make.” He was sitting across the table from her again.

She stuck her tongue out at him and added a touch more cream to her coffee. “He didn’t believe me, of course. So I suggested he simply drain off his blood and send it to me, instead, as I had no more wish to see him than he had to see me. That was enough to get him to the apartment, where he confirmed my symptoms for himself and let me feed. Then he left. And like clockwork, his blood has been arriving on my doorstep ever since.”