Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night. Jennifer Armintrout
Читать онлайн книгу.
fear or anguish. And I really wanted him.
“What are you—”
I shushed him as I reached for the gleaming button of his fly. He took a sharp breath as the button popped free. I pulled the zipper down and slipped my hand inside his pants.
Despite the interruption, he was still hard. His erection jerked as my fingers closed around its substantial girth, and his shudder passed through me. I stroked him, my head reeling from the peripheral sensations that affected me through the blood tie.
He stood beside the bed to step out of his jeans, and I slithered across the mattress to grip the tight muscles of his thighs. He groaned when I rubbed my cheek against his hip, my soft breath teasing his straining cock. I gave in to his silent urging through the tie, opening my mouth to draw him in.
He tasted salty, but not unpleasant. I swirled my tongue around the swollen head as I sucked more of him in. As his excitement built, so did mine. When he grasped my hair and gently pulled me back, I knew he’d nearly reached the end.
Laying me back, Nathan relied on the blood tie to learn how I liked to be touched. He’d rush to fulfill my requests with eager hands and lips. He reveled in my responses. Not the way Cyrus had. Nathan didn’t view my desire as a way to manipulate or control me.
This realization removed the last of my inhibitions. If I lost control with Nathan, I wouldn’t lose a part of myself. I was so relieved by this that I came as he slid two fingers inside me. From the look on his face, he was as surprised as I was.
“Apparently I’m not as rusty at this as I thought.” He sank between my legs, bracing his weight on his arms.
The movement of muscle beneath his skin fascinated me. “Watch it. I’ve got what I wanted. I could just decide I’m done with you and then where will you be?”
“Jerking off, like I’ve been for the past twenty years. But you’re not going anywhere.”
I slapped his shoulder lightly for his crude remark, and he reached between us and guided himself into the slick entrance of my body.
My lungs constricted as I stretched to accommodate him. I gasped, wrapping my arms around him. “Oh, my—oh.”
He slipped his hands beneath my back and lifted me onto his lap. I held on to his shoulders as every long inch of him slid into me.
Leaning close to my ear, he practically purred, “Told you you weren’t going anywhere.” I buried my face in his shoulder as he flexed his hips. He felt solid and real, and his skin smelled faintly of soap.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the night you came into the shop.” His voice was fueled by ragged breaths, and his words sent a shock through me.
It was nice to be wanted. Not for power or control, but wanted as a woman.
I pushed my hips down as he surged up and I bit down hard on my lip to stifle a moan. I tasted the blood my bite produced. Nathan leaned back, his eyes dark. He unconsciously licked his lip.
My heart pounded, echoing the throb of his erection that was buried deep inside me. Nathan’s eyes never left the smear of blood on my mouth.
“Go ahead,” I whispered. “I want you to.”
He hesitated only a moment. Then he caught my lip between his teeth and licked the blood away.
When I’d ingested Cyrus’s blood, I’d seen a vision of Nathan’s past death. I could only imagine what Nathan saw when he tasted mine.
Whatever it was, it tore a fierce growl from his throat. He pushed me back on the bed and stretched my arms high above my head, pinning me.
Pain. In my blood, he’d seen pain.
The tenderness in his eyes overwhelmed me. “Why didn’t you tell me what he did to you?”
I shut my eyes. “Why would you want to know?”
His lips brushed mine. There was nothing in the gesture but kindness, the love of a sire. His frustration and rage shook me to the core. “I could have made it better. I don’t know how, but I could have.”
I swallowed against tears. “You could make me forget.”
With a sad smile, he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He moved within me, slowly. Over and over, he withdrew almost completely, then slid back in, gaining a bit of speed each time. Soon, he pumped against me so furiously, an explosion of breath escaped from me with each thrust. I clenched the sheets in my fists and rocked in time to his movement.
The familiar spiraling feeling, the sense of swiftly losing control, gripped me. I needed only a little push to make it over the edge. Hearing my silent desperation, he slipped his hand between us and rubbed my swollen clitoris. The stimulation was exactly what I sought. I arched up from the bed.
It was his name I cried when I came, his face I saw when I opened my eyes. The relief was so intense that I almost sobbed.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he groaned against my hair. He abandoned the rhythm, plunging into me with more urgency than before.
“Come,” I urged, clutching at his sweat-slicked back. He thrust almost too hard against me as he reached the end.
“Thank you,” he whispered over and over when he could speak again. He kissed my lips, my forehead, anywhere he was able to reach.
When he laid beside me, I rolled awkwardly off of the bed, wrapping the sheet around my bare body.
Nathan frowned. “Where are you going?”
I suddenly felt cold, and oddly lonely. “The bathroom. To clean up.”
When I got to the door, he spoke. “It was good we got that out of our systems. It was probably inevitable.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Hadn’t it meant anything to him? It didn’t have to be serious, but he had to feel something more than just relief that it was over.
Exhaling in frustration, he leaned up on his elbow. “You know it did, Carrie.”
His answer to my unspoken question should have comforted me, but it didn’t.
I shuffled to the bathroom and snapped on the light. As I stared at my suddenly tired face in the mirror, a tear slid down my cheek.
No, I don’t know. And I don’t know you, either, Nathan. I turned away from my reflection, slightly disgusted with myself.
I didn’t know him any better than I ever had.
Twenty-Two
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
Though I dreaded the fallout from our encounter, the nights that followed were too busy to be very awkward.
During my recovery, Nathan had been feeding me his blood. With nothing to replace what he’d given, he’d seriously drained himself. Combined with the marathon insomnia and the energy he’d expended with me, he could barely get out of bed the next evening.
Luckily, I was able to contact his emergency donor. A perky suburban woman, she graciously dropped off neatly labeled and dated bags of blood. The first night, he was so weak I had to hold his head up so he could drink, but he improved quickly after that.
Ziggy’s room was nearly packed up. Nathan had obviously been splitting his time between caring for me and repressing more memories. The only indication that the kid had ever lived in the apartment at all was the small collection of framed pictures on the bookcase in the living room. I rummaged through the boxes and brought out a few other items, tucking them away in places I knew Nathan would find them later. I wasn’t about to let him forget Ziggy.
Little by little, I began to learn about Nathan’s past. Not that he helped with the process. Occasionally, things would come to me in a flash of intuition from the blood he’d shared with me. That’s how I learned