“I don’t have any plans to leave just yet, Lathe,” Ryan said gently.
“But you are not happy,” Salathiel retorted. “You are not perfectly happy like I am. You must tell me—us—what you need to make you perfectly happy.”
Ryan’s humour fled. He sat up. “You can’t give me what I need to be happy, Lathe.” He stood up. “I need to check on the manifest for that new captain. I don’t trust—“
“Wait!” Salathiel cried, sitting up and just about spilling Nayara onto the tiles in his haste.
Nayara stood, too. Her heart had started beating hurriedly. Fear rippled through her, although she wasn’t certain why.
“Ryan!” Salathiel called.
Ryan halted on the second broad step that led into the house. He kept his back to them both, his head down. He was barefoot, Nayara realized. He wore only a tunic and the belt that pulled it in around his body, sitting down low on his hips. His shoulders and arms gleamed from the little bit of sun he was exposed to on the docks.
“Tell me what it is you want and I will move heaven and earth, if I can, to give it to you,” Salathiel said.
Ryan lifted his head and turned to face them both. His eyes were gleaming with the intensity of the emotions churning inside him. His hands curled into fists. “It’s not all yours to give, Salathiel.”
His gaze flickered toward Nayara.
Her breath hurt, she pulled it in so sharply. Salathiel’s expression as he looked at her told her all she needed to know. He had seen Ryan’s glance and he knew.
Ryan closed his eyes and lifted his chin, as if he were praying to God. Then he turn silently and walked back into the house.
Salathiel picked up his wine and drained it, then picked up the pitcher and refilled his cup without calling for the servant.
Nayara couldn’t control her heart. It was beating all on its own, slamming against her chest. Hurting. She had no idea what to do. She was afraid to take a step forward. It felt like a canyon had just opened up at her feet, one that she couldn’t cross.
Salathiel lifted the cup to his lips and drank heavily again. Then he placed the cup gently on the table and rose to his feet and turned to face her. He cupped her face and smiled. His blue eyes were warm. “Do you believe I love you, Nia, love of my life?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you trust me?”
She hesitated. “Yes,” she said, her voice low.
He kissed her cheek. “Rest easy. I will be gone for a while, but I will be back and then we will talk about this.”
“You will not stay the night?” They had planned a whole night of celebrations, the three of them, for the mid-summer evening... Now, she would spend it alone and terrified.
“I can’t. There is a ship coming in late. I have to inspect the shipment. I will be at the dock all night. I’m sorry, Nia. Word came late this evening.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “I will return tomorrow.” He kissed her gently, but it was devoid of passion and she could tell his thoughts were far away from love.
He strode from the terrace and into the house without looking back, just as Ryan had done.
Ryan found her there an hour later. Nayara was still sitting on the divan, watching the first of the evening stars peek through the trellis at the top of the terrace. She could not cry and was too bewildered to try even if she could.
He sat next to her and looked up. “Lathe came and found me before he headed to the docks,” he said softly. “He went out of his way to tell me where he was going for the night.”
Nayara turned her head to look at Ryan in the deepening night. “He’s giving me to you?” she asked dryly. “How generous of him.”
“He’s removing himself from the equation,” Ryan replied. “The first day I met you, Nayara, he made it very clear that you chose him. You are the one that chooses to stay with him, day after day, after year. He knows that. He said it, that first day. Now, he’s giving you another choice.”
“You,” she said flatly.
“If you’ll have me,” Ryan replied. “If you’ll reach out and take me. I know you want me, Nayara. I’ve watched you for a year and I know you, now. God, I’ve loved you for most of it. How could I not know?”
She gasped. “You can’t love me,” she said slowly. “Salathiel—”
“He knows, too,” Ryan said.
Nayara closed her eyes as her fear bloomed large. “Knows what?” she pleaded.
“All of it, I think,” Ryan replied. His hand, with the long clever fingers, curled around the back of her neck. “He is too clever not to have seen it, Nia.”
She pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the hard wall of muscle and sinew. “Seen what?” she asked, although she already guessed what Ryan’s answer would be.
He drew her head closer to his. “That you love me just as you love Salathiel,” Ryan told her.
He was stronger than her, physically and emotionally. He dominated her, drew her into him. In truth she longed for him to stake the sort of claim that Salathiel never could, being human. Ryan either sensed her need, or was naturally inclined that way. His kiss was hard and demanding and his hands ran along the length of her body, feeling their way, even as his tongue thrust deep into her mouth. There was no gentle seduction. No coy teasing.
Even as he kissed her, Ryan lay her back on the divan, his knee thrusting between her thighs, separating them.
Arousal spread through her like a flame rising up in a fire gone wild. It whooshed the length of her body, making Nayara gasped against Ryan’s lips.
He lifted his head to look at her properly. “Next time will be more sedate. I’ve waited too long for this, Nia.”
Next time. She shuddered in anticipation, even as his fingers gathered up the hem of her tunic and pushed it above her hips. She fumbled to rid him of his own short tunic and the cumbersome belt.
Ryan naked was as glorious as she had suspected him to be. There were rounded muscles, that rippled over his stomach. And his member was rigid and erect. Throbbing with the limited blood supply a vampire could spare for sex.
He lifted her knee, leaned over her and pushed into her. The sound he made as he buried himself inside her was halfway between a growl and a groan. It came from deep inside him.
Nayara curled her leg over his hip, as her body squeezed and trembled around him. She was already nearing the peak of pleasure and Ryan had done nothing more elaborate than kiss her.
His fingers curled over the edge of her tunic, at the neckline. He ripped it aside with an impatient wrench, baring her breasts. He exhaled heavily at the sight of them. “Perfect,” he muttered and lowered his head to nip and lick at the tips with his teeth and tongue.
He thrust slowly in and out of her as he worked, but that was its own torture. Nayara fell to pieces around him, her hips lifting under the sweet pressure of his thrusting, her body wriggling, until Ryan lifted his head with a low curse.
She felt his shaft spasm and quiver and that triggered her own release. She clutched at Ryan’s shoulders, acquainting herself with their actual width, as she lifted her back off the divan and came with a low, harsh cry.
Ryan gave one last, hard thrust and emptied himself into her, his arms and the tendons in his neck straining as he climaxed.
Then, as he relaxed, he slid his arm under Nayara, picked her up and turned onto his back, bringing her with him.
He brushed her hair out of his face and her eyes. “Now, where was I?” he murmured. “Mmm... I can start here.” And he kissed her again. This time, the kiss was slow, deep and long. Passionate. An expression of emotion, not just a taking.
Next time, Nayara realized, pleasure tingling through her.
* * * * *
Vienna, 2263 A.D.
“Of course, ‘next time’ lasted all that night and into the next morning,” Nayara finished, with a small smile at Cáel.
“I was making up for lost time,” Ryan observed. He didn’t sound at all uncomfortable, having his
sex life discussed so openly. He sat in his chair, an arm resting on the table, relaxed and comfortable in his evening suit.
Cáel shifted on the wrought iron chair, moving his knees to make room for the painfully uncomfortable erection he’d developed as his imagination had built the picture Nayara’s words had provided for him. It had taken all his training and practice to sit still at the table and look unmoved by the tale. He knew without doubt that he couldn’t react sharply to anything these two told him, or they would shut up and no force in the universe would ever get another word from them.
He had them talking now. He had to do whatever it took to keep them talking. If that meant suffering through the most powerful arousal known to man and not letting them see it, so be it.
So instead of reacting to Ryan’s amusement, Cáel focused on the original question that had prompted the tale. “Salathiel must have been an extraordinary man. To have trusted you both and loved you, Nayara, enough to give you both what you wanted, in order to keep everyone happy. Is that why you took him—a human—as a lover?”
“Maybe we have simply changed since then and that is why we don’t take human lovers anymore,” Nayara replied.
Cáel shook his head. “Vampires don’t change. You keep telling me that. Memories stay the same. You stay the same. Emotions go on endlessly.”
“Perhaps we just made a mistake with Salathiel,” Ryan said quietly. There was pain in his tone. It was raw and bruised. “A mistake we will never make again.”
Chapter Seven
Cáel glanced over to the dance floor. “The ball is ending, but you still owe me your half of the story, Ryan. Perhaps...on the way back in the carriage?”
Ryan frowned. “Why bother with the carriage?”
Nayara was standing up, pulling her train in around her. Picking up her tiny evening clutch.
Ryan meant jumping back to the station. Cáel’s pulse spiked. Did that mean they were offering to take him with them? Or were they ending the evening right now? Would he not hear Ryan’s story after all? He didn’t want to ask. He felt he had achieved far more this evening than he had ever dreamed or fairly expected to. To end the evening with the added bonus of the privilege of being jumped back to the station with them seemed far beyond expectations.
Cáel stood up and pushed the small recorder into his pocket. “I can have your coat returned to you, Nayara. It will still be in the carriage.” He glanced out on the dance floor. “I have a feeling Brenden may not be returning to the station tonight.”
Ryan grinned. “I think that one is a given. Brenden has discovered a new hunting ground. He’ll be months depleting this stock.”
Cáel snorted. “I’ve spent decades fighting off charity wives, Ryan. I know what he’s up against. He may never run out of fresh meat.”
Nayara was suddenly at Cáel’s side, a soft rustle of chiffon and sequins. “I can’t jump in this and take a companion, too,” she told Ryan. “The train doesn’t behave.”
Ryan nodded. “I’ll take him.” He stepped around the table toward them and Cáel realized that he was going to get Ryan’s story after all.
Nayara glanced over Ryan’s shoulder. Looking for observers, Cáel realized. Then she smiled at Cáel. “See you there,” she said. She turned, leaning forward, as if she were falling. Then, abruptly, she was simply not there.
Cáel caught his breath. He had only been taken on a jump a handful of times and he had never seen anyone else jump in front of him before.
“It’s fascinating, until you get used to it,” Ryan told him. He threaded his arm under Cáel’s and drew him against his body. “Especially the way Nayara falls into it. I prefer to jump. On three. One. Two. Three.”
Cáel jumped with Ryan and felt the rough plucking of forces tearing at him and putting him back together again. It was very brief this time. When he had travelled into the past, the complete lack of sensation and the sense of disintegration had lasted longer.
Then he blinked and found he was standing in Ryan’s office.
“Not an arrival chamber?” he queried.
“Our offices are arrival chambers,” Ryan said. “They’re keyed for arrivals and won’t let anyone in until we have returned, if we set them up that way, which we do whenever we leave the station. It gives us a quick way to return home if we need it.”
The door that connected Ryan’s office to Nayara’s made a chiming sound.
“We’re here!” Ryan called.
The door opened and Nayara glided in, the ball gown train drifting elegantly behind her. She was carrying a tray, which she placed on the table in front of Ryan’s sofa. “Espresso and baklava. Sit down, Cáel and make yourself comfortable.”
His mouth watered. “I presume it is only the best baklava money could buy. You two spoil me utterly.”
“How else will we ensure you keep visiting, if we don’t ply you with the best?” Ryan replied. “But I think this baklava was quite cheap. A little merchant stall in Istanbul’s market. It’s handmade and I watched him make it myself.”
“You don’t have that sort of time,” Cáel challenged.
“I did when I went back to 1883 yesterday. I spent a week there.”
Cáel sat and picked up the demi-cup of piping hot coffee. “I keep forgetting the advantages of time travel.”
“There are drawbacks,” Nayara replied, settling into a chair opposite him. “Dangers we deal with every day. The perks don’t come close to compensating.”
Cáel sipped. The coffee, of course, was perfect. “So now that you have me here, tell me the rest of the story, Ryan.”
“I will, but first, Nayara must finish her part in it.”
Cáel glanced at Nayara. She sat, a glowing picture of elegance, but there was a tiny furrow etched between her brows.
“There is more to add to yours?” Cáel asked delicately.
She sighed. “I don’t like this part. I feel so foolish. Even now.”
Ryan touched her shoulder. Cáel had never seen him voluntarily touch her before. She looked up at him.
“It wasn’t done to make you look foolish.”
“I know.” She gave Cáel a small smile. “They did it because they were afraid of me. Afraid of what I would do.” Her smile turned into a grimace. “I am so terrifying, no?”
Cáel gave a small shrug. “I find you are, sometimes.” He smiled at her to take the sting out of it.
Nayara laughed. “I should not have asked.”
Ryan gave a low chuckle. “And you’re dodging the tale, too.”
“Yes, yes. I know. “ Nayara folded her hands and put them in her lap, then looked at Cáel. “Can you guess what happened next, Cáel?”
“I would, if I could spare you the tale,” Cáel said honestly. “But I don’t think like story-tellers, so even your hints are not enough for me to guess. I’m sorry.”
“Ah well.” She sighed. “It was quite obvious, in hindsight.”
* * * * *
Constantinople. 1443 A.D.
Although they did not sleep and had no need for beds for the normal human reasons, both Nayara and Ryan had bedchambers each in the big house, where they kept their personal possessions, changed clothes and tended to their appearance. They had beds in those chambers, too, to maintain the illusion of humanity for the sake of the odd stranger and for the servants who had access to their rooms.
After making love all night on the divan, Nayara reluctantly sent Ryan away from her as the sun lifted above the ledge of the terrace. She was aware that Salathiel would return very soon and she needed time to gather her composure and to figure out how to face him.
Ryan was as unwilling to pull himself away from her as she was to have him leave, especially as Nayara refused to speak of any sort of future between them. She would not entertain the idea. “I love Salathiel,” she reiterated many times. “I will not hurt him any more than this one night will cost him. You have your gift, Ryan. Take it and be grateful.”
But when the servants stirred
and began to move about the house, Ryan gave her his tunic to cover her body, for her own was in ruins. It forced him to return to his own room and he left, his body tight with tension and pain.
Nayara fled to the sanctuary of her chamber and swiftly donned more suitable day clothing, her heart hammering hard, her body trembling. She knew she had to repair the damage she had just caused. An apology, or an explanation. Something. She could not leave hurt feelings between them, or Ryan might well leave after all and for that, Salathiel would never forgive her.
Once she was dressed appropriately for a lady of her rank and station, she hurried through the house to the north side, which was cooler and shadier. She was so intent on forming the words she would speak and rehearsing them in her head, that she was inside the vestibule that led into Ryan’s chamber before she realized he had company. Someone else was in there with him. He was talking to them, his voice low and harsh.
Nayara caught her hand to her chest, because Ryan was talking about her.
“...you don’t tell her, I will. It can’t go on like this anymore. I love her too much to hurt her this way.”
Nayara could barely breathe. She was waiting for the response. She already knew, in her heart, who would answer, but she needed to hear the answer. She needed to know for sure. She wanted the confirmation of exactly how blind and trusting she had been.
There was the sound of a heavy sigh. A long silence.
“I never meant it to be like this,” Salathiel replied. “I was simply...”
Silence.
“You wanted her to stay,” Ryan finished. “So did I.”
Nayara’s heart actually hurt. She squeezed, trying to stop the pain, but it didn’t help. Finally, she knew she could not hover in the vestibule like a thief for another moment. She couldn’t stand it.
So she pushed open the shutter than was shielding her and stepped into the room.
Byzantine Heartbreak Page 7
