Blood Knot

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  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.”

  Chapter Five

  “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.”

  “Until six weeks ago.”

  She nodded, and tapped the spoon to the side of her cup. She went to put it on the table, but Nathanial’s hand was suddenly on her wrist. “May I?” he asked, almost diffidently.

  “Do what?”

  “Have the spoon?”

  “Uh…sure.”

  He took the spoon from her hand and licked the bowl. His eyes closed as he savored the taste. Then he put the spoon his mouth and sucked it clean, a blissful expression briefly crossing his features.

  “Ahh…coffee. I wish I had been mortal when coffee reached western civilization. It smells heavenly and the few drops I get to steal confirm it is worth the addiction. Even adulterated with cream.”

  She realized then that Nathanial didn’t not like humans eating. He liked it too much. It would be for him like an alcoholic watching others drinking and being unable to join in.

  She studied Nathanial’s cold visage and wondered how much of the controlled mask she could believe. He was a con man. There would be layers upon shields upon lies. Even this little glimpse could be false, designed precisely to appeal to her.

  Nathanial saw her watching him and put down the spoon, straightening up. “We need to find Sebastian.”

  “We? If I come near him, he’ll blow a gasket, Nathanial.”

  He shook his head. “It must be both of us. I am concerned, yes. But you must also come with me, because I suspect he needs you.”

  “Me?”

  “This relationship, this symbiosis you have formed. Don’t you remember your high school biology, Winter?”

  “I never went to high school,” Winter replied. “I was too busy ducking Croatian bombs or stealing my next meal. And most human biology I just…know.”

  “You have to keep up with the frontiers of human knowledge,” Nathanial said, threading his fingers together. “Sometimes it feels like a full time occupation,” he added. “But you have the luxury of time, which many humans do not.” He shrugged. “A symbiotic pair thrive because each supplies the other with something essential. Sebastian is providing you with his blood, Winter. What are you giving him? More to the point, what have you failed to provide him these last eight months? Is that the reason he is missing now?”

  Winter realized that she was sitting with her coffee cup halfway between the table and her mouth. She dumped the cup down. “Mother Mary above, Nathanial!” She clutched at her chest. “Why didn’t
you say this twenty minutes ago?”

  “You would have kicked me out the door twenty minutes ago,” Nathanial said simply. “Sebastian had you ready to shoot me first and ask question later. I had to get you to the point where you trusted me enough to understand how dire this could be for Sebastian. And I had to get you past your anger at Sebastian.”

  She nodded. “I get it, Nathanial. I get it. I’m still pissed as hell at Sebastian, but I don’t want him to die. What do we do?” She stood up. “And for the record, I resent being manipulated as much as Sebastian does.”

  Nathanial stood up, too. “No, you don’t. You do not yet know even when I’m doing it.”

  Quenched, she gripped her elbows. “Right,” she agreed softly. “Well, your arrogance is at least truthful.”

  He grinned. “Go and pack a bag, Winter. Summer and…well, winter clothes.” His smile returned briefly. “I wonder, is your birthday December 21st?”

  She pursed her lips. “I guess someone as old as you would see the connection to the winter solstice and my name.”

  “Time was, I drank wine and danced around standing stones, calling to the goddess in thanks for the crops and the women’s bellies on the solstice,” Nathanial murmured. “Aye, I remember well enough.” His inward gaze cleared. “Bring as many passports as you can. I’m not sure where we’ll end up travelling. There’s a midnight flight to Heathrow from LAX. I have a Lear at Helena airport. We should be able to make it. On the way to Heathrow, we can figure out where to look next. I’ve exhausted New York.”

  * * * * *

  Forty minutes out of Los Angeles, in the private Lear jet Nathanial had rented to come find her, between the two of them they had settled upon a first, most likely destination to look for Sebastian.

  The most unlikely one.

  “He can withstand the full sun now,” Nathanial pointed out. “He’ll use that fact.”

  “Somewhere near the equator?” Winter shook her head. “He loved the sun but he hated humidity.”

  Nathanial rubbed his jaw. “He always had a pet fantasy on the go, somewhere where he wanted to lie in the sun and pretend he was human. If he mentioned it to you at all he would have modified it. Somewhere he wanted to have a good long vacation, or retire to.” Nathanial looked at her, his head tilting.

  Winter thought back through the numerous conversations Sebastian and she had idled through on soft, mellow nights while waiting for jobs to begin, or contacts to arrive, or the many various times when they had been simply together for whatever reason. There had been so many occasions and until this moment she hadn’t realize how well she and Sebastian had got along. Winter had always thought they chaffed each other and at times they did. But when they were working, they fit together like two micro-engineered and oiled pieces of chromed and nickel-plated gadgetry.

  “Moskva,” she murmured, remembering.

  “Moscow?” Nathanial repeated in English, sounding startled. “That’s…not the sand and surf getaway I would have thought—”

  “No, that’s where he mentioned it. We were standing around on Borodinsky Bridge in the middle of winter close to midnight waiting for a contact and it was freezing, ten degrees or less, and everything was white—even the concrete was white. Sebastian started talking about Ningaloo Reef off the Western Australian coast. How blue the water is and how warm the Indian Ocean is. And the sand is as white as everything was there that night. He said that if he ever wanted to get away from everything, that’s where he was going to go because it was the world’s best kept secret. The reef was bigger than the Great Barrier Reef and had more fish and better diving and no one seemed to know it existed.” She looked at Nathanial. “He never mentioned it again.”

  Nathanial nodded. “He won’t have forgotten though. We can’t, you know.”

  “He can, now,” she reminded him.

  Nathanial reached past her for the cabin phone. “There will be a police station there or an outpost. They’ll be able to confirm if he’s there if I speak to them nicely. And I’ll phone ahead for tickets. We’ll need a commercial flight. The Lear will take too long.”

  Winter pressed herself back in the luxurious leather chair, drawing in her breath at his sudden nearness. Nathanial froze, his arm outstretched, and looked at her. “You haven’t forgiven me for my demonstration, have you?”

  “Of course,” she said smoothly. “We’re both professionals. I understood exactly the point you were trying to make, Nathanial.”

  “Then why don’t you call me Nial?” he suggested. “We’re going to be in close quarters for the next few days at least. Four syllables for a first name became passé ninety years ago. These days people barely have time to use two syllables.”

  He still hadn’t moved, although his arm had lowered. He was so close she could count the black lashes around his eyes.

  “I will if you move away from me,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. She succeeded. Just.

  Nathanial picked up the phone and sat back in his chair. “You’re defensive. It’s either because of what I am or who I am.”

  “Or both,” she suggested sweetly.

  He smiled. “I should be so lucky,” he said as he dialed. “But I had you in my arms and melting at least once, Winter.” He lifted the phone to his ear. “I’ll give you another warning, my red-headed companion. I want you there again. This time brought there by nothing other than my presence and my body and your need to have me.” His gaze locked with hers.

  Something rolled over deep in her belly and began to pulse.

  “No strong arm tactics, Winter. No artifice.” His voice was deeper, and seemed to caress her entire body. “You know most of the tricks and I tire of the game as you do. So just you and me. A man and a woman.”

  “But you’re not a man,” she pointed out.

  “If you’re about to object to the blood drinking, think of what you do once a month, then rephrase your objection.” He pressed another button on the phone. “Perhaps Spanish will be faster.” Then his gaze returned to her. “Yes, I have lived much longer than you. What of it, Winter?”

  “You’re not human.”

  “Not exactly human. Not anymore. But Sebastian was human enough to pass, was he not? We have been mingling as human throughout history, undetected.” He smiled and it was hot with promise, so that Winter shivered. “The differences, where it counts, are vast, Winter. We’ve had so much more time to learn and improve, after all.”

  Then his gaze became unfocused. “Buonas noches,” he said into the phone, then began a rapid conversation in, as far as Winter could tell, flawless Spanish, as he asked about flights to Australia.

  Winter fought the need to shift in her chair, to hug herself, or in any way show how deeply Nathanial’s words had affected her. She turned her head to watch the spectacular sunset through the small window, instead.

  Nathanial wasn’t anything like Sebastian had warned her he would be like. That was the problem. Oh, he was exactly like she had expected—controlling, a master at measuring and manipulating people—but at the same time not at all the Boris Karloff-style monster she had been braced to expect that she would one day meet.

  “Winter.”

  She turned her head to look at him. Nathanial was holding the phone out to her.

  “What, you’re going to pass up the opportunity to get my attention with a heavy hand to my shoulder and then reach past me and brush my chest? I thought you were good, Nathanial?”

  He gripped the corners of her chair and turned it so she was facing him square-on. “No heavy-handed tactics, remember?” His mesmerizing eyes drilled into her, as if he were trying pour the message into her brain via his gaze. “Besides, that’s clichéd and predictable. If I were going to attempt something so ham-fisted I would have pulled you into my chair twenty minutes ago and brought you to your first climax ten minutes ago, and had you begging for release again five minutes after that. All without removing a stitch of my own clothing.”

  This time she couldn
’t hide her indrawn breath. It shuddered as it went down.

  Nathanial sat up, a tiny line between his brows. “Enough,” he said shortly. “You keep bringing me to these crude promises.” He held out the phone again. “There’s a United Emerites flight leaving at eleven. It stops at Hong Kong, then straight through to Perth, Western Australia.”

  Winter scrambled to assimilate the dry, practical switch of topic. “I see,” she said. But her voice was thick with her arousal.

  Nathanial’s eyes narrowed. “You liked that idea, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head as she returned the phone to the wall mount. “The idea of being seduced by your professional array of strategies and schemes leaves me utterly cold, Nathanial.”

  “But my offer of an honest seduction…?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, as her body jumped and throbbed.

  Nathanial’s position on the chair didn’t move, but she could feel his rising arousal, almost like an aura around him. It was in the tension that seemed to zap through him. The stillness that gripped him.

  “Honesty between two thieves and expert liars,” he said very softly. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  She slid forward to the edge of her seat. “Give me your hand and I’ll see if it is.”

  For the tiniest fraction of a second, Nathanial hesitated. Then he lifted his hand out to her. He had a big hand, to match his height and frame. But unlike Sebastian, he did not have the long, sensitive fingers. His were strong, the palm square. There were calluses below the fingers. Winter touched them.

  “From my sword,” Nathanial said.

  “But…that must have been years ago.”

  “Centuries, actually. Our physiologies do not change, Winter.” His gaze was steady, defying her to be appalled or horrified.

  She covered his hand with both of hers and edged her senses inside him. It was the same deadness she remembered from her incursion inside Sebastian. But it wasn’t all black and dead and darkness. There was life of a sort. Just not life as she understood it. The heart was there, capable of beating. Blood, and veins and arteries. All the organs were where they should be. They were all dormant, ready to function as needed.