Blood Knot

His hand curled under her arm, lifting her from the chair and Winter gasped. She had been so focused on her internal systems, she hadn’t noticed Nathanial move to her side. He tugged her gently to her feet.

“Shhh…” he said as she opened her mouth to protest. “I just want to look at your eyes in the better light.” He led her closer to the windows with their glowing polished wood blinds and turned her so the light fell upon her face.

At five foot nine, she was tall for a woman, but Nathanial was much taller. He tilted her chin up so he could study her eyes and she tried not to look away.

He brought a hand up to her temple and his fingertips ran through a lock from roots to ends, all two feet of it. “Glorious red. And not from a salon. Sebastian did tell me you were a brunette. More of your talent, Winter?”

She nodded fractionally. “The black didn’t...well it didn’t go with my eyes anymore. And I wanted to…” She drew in a breath.

“You had changed profoundly on the inside, so you marked the change on the outside,” Nathanial said.

She licked her lips. That was it exactly. “The old me was gone,” she said.

But Nathanial was still stroking her hair, his gaze on her face. Abruptly, she was aware of just how close he was standing to her. There was barely a hand span of space between them.

She wanted to step back, but almost like he read her mind, his other hand slid over the back of her hip, holding her there.

“I never could resist eyes like yours,” Nathanial said softly.

A ripple passed through her. It seemed to switch on all her nerves, making her body hypersensitive. “What the hell—”

He touched a finger to her lips and it stopped her protest as completely as if he had clapped a hand over her mouth. She sucked in a breath and it shuddered on the way down.

“Stop analyzing yourself, Winter,” Nathanial told her. His voice seemed to reverberate in her mind. “Stop looking inside you. Just feel instead, like a normal human.”

She shook her head.

He leaned closer to her, his lips almost brushing her cheekbone. “You’ve been responding to me since you saw me. But you’ve been denying it. Ignoring the signals. All because Sebastian has convinced you I’m such an evil man.”

“You’re not a man,” Winter breathed.

His lips brushed over her skin. “I am man enough I can bring a scream to your lips, sweat to your brow and have you trembling in my arms, begging for a release in a voice you will not recognize as your own. Do you doubt that, Winter?” His hand on her hip moved in a restless little movement against her ass, stroking her through her jeans.

Her heart was pounding, hard enough to echo in her temple. Under her tee-shirt, her breasts were aching for his touch, but Winter struggled to admit that.

“Sebastian was human once and now you’ve made him a man again. He has his weaknesses, just as we all do,” Nathanial told her. His lips hovered over her pounding temple. “I’m one of those weaknesses. He has seen me only as a negative in his life for years now. That is the picture he painted for you.” His lips slipped down to her mouth, brushing over her skin in barely-there caresses, to hover over her lips in an achingly-close not-quite-kiss. All Winter had to do was lift her chin the tiniest fraction of an inch and she could take the kiss for herself. She found she was holding her breath. Waiting. Hoping.