“I let you think I was hiding the beach shack so you wouldn’t go looking for this one,” Nayara told him.
Cáel chuckled, as Ryan tried to look indignant and failed.
“I wanted to tell you,” Nayara admitted. “After Salathiel, I kept waiting for things to get better between us. For everything to go back to normal. But it didn’t. You kept drifting further and further away and the nice warm moment when I could tell you about me and where I really came from and the farm I had just set up in the hills back there...well, that moment never came.”
Ryan looked down at his feet. “You seemed to want it that way. I thought you wanted it that way.”
“You might have asked,” she chided him.
“You might have said something,” Ryan returned. “You had no trouble directing how matters would be between us when Salathiel was alive.”
Nayara blinked as something cuffed her lightly on the back of the head. She glanced over her shoulder. Ryan did, too. Cáel stood behind them. “Enough,” he said. “What’s done is done. You both shied from each other. Salathiel was too strong a ghost. Acknowledge it and move on, or he’ll linger and keep tearing at you. Personally, I’d like to kick him where it hurts, but I’ll never get the privilege. Nia, the goat boy has spotted you and he’s looking very excited to see you. We’d better go down, hadn’t we?”
Nayara turned back to look. Hanish was waving hard, his whole body swaying with the movement of his arm. She could see his big grin from here.
Yes, this had been the right place to bring them.
They climbed down the gently sloping hill to the bottom where the house was tucked up against the south side of the small valley. Hanish didn’t desert his post, but he was jumping up and down on the spot by the time they reached him and he had called others from the house and the working sheds to come and greet them. Nayara introduced Cáel and Ryan by their real names to the head stockman and her housekeeper, Ederne, before turning to the woman with a pleading look. “Please tell me you have some paella ready?”
Ederne grinned, showing missing teeth and nodded. “Always, always,” she said, in heavily accented common tongue. “You should have told us you were coming, Missy,” she added in her own dialect.
“I understood part of that,” Ryan said, sounding surprised. “She’s not happy you arrived without notice.”
“Ederne is always unhappy about my abrupt arrivals, but I haven’t yet figured out how to leave advanced warning.” Nayara pushed the front door open. “Welcome home.”
* * * * *
None of the staff working silently around Nia seemed surprised by their strange costumes, or by her sudden appearance with two men in tow. They calmly served the three of them one of the best servings of paella that Cáel had even tasted, made as it was with freshwater fish and shellfish and the most tender lamb he’d ever tasted, along with the lightest touch of spices. Served piping hot, along with freshly baked crusty rolls and a very good white wine, that was as cold as the paella was hot, it was one of the best meals Cáel had eaten in a while.
He pushed his plate aside and sat back to watch the always fascinating process of Ryan and Nayara eating. It was still new to him to see them indulge in this mundane human practice. Clearly, it was a novelty for them, too, for they took far longer over their meal than he did, savouring each mouthful of food and wine and lingering over the taste. They spoke very little, their minds and attention on the meal.
Cáel looked around the room. It wasn’t a room in the normal sense. To begin with, it was round. There were other rooms leading from it, but this room was the centre of the house and it served as a multi-purpose room for a variety of functions; eating, gathering, entertainment.
In the middle of the room was a stone pit that held a large fire. The stonework was good masonry work and there was a ledge on the top of it wide enough for sitting or resting objects on. Cushions scattered along the ledge and some low piles of reading boards said the ledge was used for both.
There was a fire crackling in the pit now, even though the day was not that cold—not for the upper northern mountains of Spain. The roof above the pit was open to the sky, although it could be closed over if necessary.
The long table the three of them sat at had been pulled up near the fire, but not close enough to roast them. The table had been hewn from local wood and hand crafted and was the most solid looking thing in the room apart from the fire pit. The chairs they sat on matched. The chairs were softened with cushions on the seat, but they wore the satiny gleam that came from generations of hands and bodies wearing them smooth and polishing them from constant use.
“I can see why you love this place,” Cáel told Nayara.
She smiled at him and sipped her wine, then put the glass down. “This? This is just a small part of it.” She stood and stretched, her lithe figure extending. She had tossed her cloak onto one of the vacant chairs in order to eat, so now she wore the skirt and what was left of her green velvet gown, which clung in all the right places. It didn’t help Cáel’s equanimity to know that she was naked beneath both. He found himself watching how the velvet moulded itself around her breasts, his breath pausing.
Then he noticed that Ryan was watching her, too, his fork in mid-air. His jaw flexed and tightened.
Then Nia lifted first one boot, then the other, up onto the seat of her chair and pulled out the long knives she had kept sheathed there for the last two weeks. Cáel had seen her pull the knives at least once.
Nia laid them on the table next to her empty bowl.
Ryan put his fork down.
“Come and see,” she said, glancing at them both.
She led them through one of the double doors. The doors, Cáel noted, were ancient, solid oak, with reinforced steel behind it. They had very modern locks on it and old fashioned bars. This was a bulkhead door, designed to be a shield in times of trouble. There was more to the design of this house than mere aesthetics.
But for now, the doors lay open on either side of the walls.
On the other side was a private oasis.
Ryan halted, ten paces in, looking around.
Cáel found himself pausing quite naturally next to him. The room...the area...seemed to deserve it.
The roof soared a good twenty feet, held up by a small series of pillars that glowed with the soft milky gleam of marble. Various sections were separated by lattice screens or swathes of rich tapestry or embroidered chiffon or satin.
From behind one of the screens, water bubbled, indicating a pool or bath. And at the far end of the room, raised upon a tier reached by three shallow, broad steps and hidden behind a curtain of gauzy chiffon, was an enormous bed under a canopy of golden cloth.
“Christ, you’ve rebuilt Constantinople,” Ryan said.
Nayara walked back to them. “I didn’t rebuild it, exactly. I improved it.” Her smile was impish. “Plumbing, for instance. And I got rid of the servants and slaves.” Her face shadows over, then cleared. “There was a bonus I discovered when I picked this valley, too.” She beckoned with her hand and they followed her around the lattice screen she had first disappeared around.
It was a sunken spa bath, big enough for eight people and the water was bubbling with a soft chuckling sound. Cáel sniffed. “Do I smell sulphur?”
“Not exactly,” Nia told him. “It’s natural mineral salts. I discovered the hot water spring when I built the house and I diverted the water here. It’s filtered to remove the toxic stuff and the offensive gases and by the time the water hits this bath, it’s just the right temperature. One hundred degrees.” She reached for the button on her skirt. “After two weeks on the road and the last few hours, I know I need to relax. Join me if you want.”
Nayara couldn’t use vampire speed in her human form, but she managed to remove her clothing faster than Cáel could have thought possible. She dropped her boots onto the pile with a little moue of distaste, finally naked, while Cáel stood motionless, more than willing to simply stand and
watch her.
Nayara raised her brow. “You’re very slow at catching on, aren’t you?”
Cáel cleared his throat. “I can’t speak for him, Nia. But my brain function is somewhat impaired right now.”
Her smile was slow and wicked and did interesting things to his crotch. “Put it this way, then,” she said. “First one in, I kiss. All over.”
Ryan made a soft sound, deep in his throat. He sounded stressed. But he began to undress as Nia elegantly lowered herself into the bath and leaned back against the edge.
Cáel made a show of pulling his clothes off as if he was in a hurrying, but he managed to fumble things well enough so that Ryan stepped into the bath a few seconds before he did. He found his corner and sat on the ledge there. The heat worked its way into his bones and he realized how good it felt. It had been at least two weeks since he had showered or had the chance to take advantage of modern plumbing. Nayara had been forced to teach him the ancient way to shave with a knife blade, or he would have haired up like a barbarian. Not one of his favourite looks. His travelling skills were quickly amassing.
Nayara picked up a fluted, coloured glass bottle sitting next to the bath. “Salt water soap,” she explained, as she unstopped the bottled and poured some of the contents into her hand. She pushed through the water toward Ryan. “You look like you haven’t been personally acquainted with soap for the entire week you were in Ireland.”
“It’s a very small cottage,” Ryan objected. “And the sea is right there.”
Nayara rubbed her hands together, lathering the soap into a double fistful of thick foam, which she smeared all over Ryan’s upper chest and shoulders, all of him that was above the rippling water. She reached over his shoulders, down behind to his back, then up to circle his neck.
Ryan’s gaze never left her face. Cáel could see his concentration narrow down to Nia’s hands, the movement of her body in the water and his growing arousal.
The tension in the pool was building.
Nia’s washing movements gentled and turned to stroking, her fingers sliding down the length of Ryan’s neck, then along the breadth of his shoulders. She finally looked him in the eye.
Cáel held his breath.
Nayara pushed forward through the water the few inches more she needed to reach Ryan’s lips with her own. She pressed them up against his mouth, gripping his shoulders with her slippery hands to anchor herself.
Ryan finally moved. His arm came around her back, holding her against him and the other hand plunged into her pinned up hair, holding her head steady as he took hold of the kiss and plundered her mouth with a long-damned hunger that he expressed with a deep groan.
Cáel’s body throbbed with the passion of the moment. He had no intention of leaving, or giving them privacy, or anything other than soaking up every second of this. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Ryan broke the kiss, finally, breathing hard and brushed his thumb over Nayara’s cheekbones. “Shh,” he said. “Tears are for sadness.”
“They’re for happiness, too,” she said. She turned and looked at Cáel and held out her hand to him. “Cáel.”
He moved closer to them reluctantly. “You should have your time,” he said. “You’ve waited two—”
Ryan grabbed his arm, yanked him closer and kissed him, stealing the rest of what he was going to say.
It was a rough, fast kiss. It wasn’t intended to be kind, sweet or seductive. It was meant purely to shut him up in a way that sealed the argument. But it had been weeks since Cáel had been kissed by him and he hadn’t realized until now how much he had missed it. His stomach clenched and his body tightened, including his balls and his cock.
Cáel groaned and found himself reaching for him quite without meaning to.
Ryan pulled away. But not far away. He rested his hand on Cáel’s shoulder, heavy and hot. “Nia and I have had our time, Cáel. Six hundred years of it. We lost it, that time, but now we have it back again, thanks to you. You’re not going anywhere, mo leannán. Not until we’ve left you limp and drained and as content as a well fed lion lying in the sun.”
Cáel swallowed. “If you insist,” he said, his voice just slightly hoarse and not simply because of Ryan’s promise.
Nia stroked her soapy hand over his shoulder. Her eyes were warm, even tender. “Kiss me, now, Cáel,” she said.
That was easy enough to do. Except that Cáel was mortally aware of Ryan’s arm around her back and that Ryan was watching him steadily.
Cáel hesitated, swallowing.
“Isn’t this what you always intended, Cáel?” Ryan asked softly.
Cáel was too tense to jump in surprise. He looked at Ryan. “Have my motives been that transparent? I’m slipping.”
Ryan smiled a little. “As a political strategist, you’re truly in a class of your own. Even I didn’t figure out what you were aiming for until just now at the supper table, when I put together all the small hints and clues you’ve let slip over the last few weeks...and there were damned few of those.” He glanced at Nayara. “I’m presuming you didn’t tell Nia, either, but when she guessed, you confirmed it. Sometime in the last two weeks, while you were searching for me, yes?”
“No,” Cáel said. “I haven’t confirmed it at all. I suspected she knew only because she shanghaied me into the jump to find you.” He looked at Nia. “Yes?”
Nayara’s smile was warm. “You were more eloquent with me, Cáel. It was easier to read between the lines. Men...” She rolled her eyes. “You should learn to talk about your feelings more. It solves a lot of problems.” She twisted herself around to press her lips against his. “And now you have us, Cáel. What do you intend to do with us?”
His heart began to gallop. Hard. “Then you haven’t guessed all of it,” he said. He wasn’t surprised by how uneven his voice was. He caught her lathered hand in his. “Now isn’t the time for that confession,” he said. “Not when I can barely think for looking at the pair of you in each other’s arms and imagining what I want to do with you both.”
Ryan grinned. “Listen to him. There’s a man who has been indulging in more than the odd fantasy or two, Nia.”
“Definitely,” Cáel agreed.
Nia look at Ryan. It was a glance loaded with meaning. Ryan’s grin widened. “Yes,” he said, his voice low.
Nia moved through the warm water, sending a surge of it against Cáel’s chest. She reached for his lower legs and lifted. Because he was naturally buoyant in the water, she was able to lift him easily even with her diminished human strength.
Ryan’s hands slipped under Cáel’s shoulders and he was lifted out of the water and laid on the mat that ran the length of the pool, along the edge. Cáel felt the touch of the room’s ambient air as cold, but not for long, for Nia’s hands immediately smoothed their way over his chest, spreading soap. But she wasn’t just distributing the liquid. Her hands were stroking in long, leisurely sweeps across his flesh. Designed to stimulate.
Cáel drew in a steadying breath as he found himself looking into her liquid green eyes.
“Hello,” she murmured, the corners of her lips curving up into a smile for which he could find no words other than ‘wicked’ to use to describe it. Standing in the pool as she was, her head was only a few inches above his. She leaned down and Cáel thought he was about to be kissed, but the tip of her tongue swept over his lips, tracing the outline of them.
His pulse, his whole body, leapt as he realized that Nayara was playing with him. Seducing him.
When Ryan’s hands slipped across his lower abdomen, spreading more of the soap, Cáel’s hips lifted and he sucked in a sharp breath in surprise. Nia had very neatly distracted him.
It wasn’t Nia who was seducing him. It was both of them.
Ryan’s hand were circling over his abs, tripping over the sensitive skin of his hips, sweeping down his thighs and pushing between them, easing his legs further apart with each gliding sweep of his fingers.
Ryan and he had only been
together a handful of times, but Ryan had quickly learned all Cáel’s most sensitive trigger points and weaknesses and he didn’t spare him now.
Nia’s hands rode the dents and caps of his shoulders and chest and her tongue teased and tasted his jaw and mouth and throat.
Cáel tried to keep track of what each individual hand and Nia’s mouth was doing, but it was impossible. Sensory overload. He couldn’t process all the sensations separately. Even his feet and toes were not spared and Cáel learned that his inner ankle was a personal erogenous spot that could leave him writhing, given the right attention.
Ryan gave it the right attention.
By the time the pair of them began to rinse him of the foaming remains of the soap, Cáel was breathless and hovering on the edge of a powerful climax. All he needed was just a small amount of direct stimulation. It felt like his whole body was clenched, on a hair trigger. But Ryan had carefully avoided his genitals and Cáel’s cock stood quivering against his stomach, dark with blood and throbbing with the beat of his thundering heart, silent evidence of his frantic state.
When the soap had all been removed, Ryan flopped back into the water and Nia rinsed her hands below the surface churning of the pool. Then she turned her back on him and climbed leisurely out of the pool, using the steps in the far corner. Water streamed from her naked body as she walked over to where a robe in the exquisite green colour that matched her eyes hung from a hook.
Cáel sat up, moving carefully, trying to get his creaking mind to work faster, as he watched her, puzzled.
Nia put the robe on, her back to him and Ryan in the pool, then slowly walked away, heading for the other end of the big room.
“What the hell?” Cáel breathed.
“Wait. Watch,” Ryan murmured and Cáel realized that he was leaning against the far edge of the pool, watching Nia walk away, too.
Cáel watched her again.
She looked over her shoulder, back at them.
Cáel felt the impact down to his toes. Her eyes were no longer crystalline, wicked, or even simply lovely.
Byzantine Heartbreak Page 26
