Byzantine Heartbreak (21 page)

Cáel’s eye had a hooded, sleepy look, but Nayara knew he was not tired. Not now. “Who was it that stripped me and put me to bed that night?” he asked.

“Both of us,” she told him. “We’re strong, but a deadweight human is awkward to manipulate if you care about not hurting them. Or waking them.”

He glided his lips along her neck. “I wondered. Did you like what you saw, Nia?”

“I didn’t look that way.”

“Liar,” he said, his mouth nudging aside the collar of her shirt. “Did you?”

She clutched at his shoulders as he caressed the nape of her neck with his tongue. Shivers ripped through her. “I...yes,” she admitted. She had tried hard not to linger over that memory, or to recall images of Cáel’s naked body, but they had jumped into her mind unbidden at unguarded moments ever since. She had felt guilty for taking advantage of his human need for sleep in that way and had railed at herself for even thinking about those moments when her hands had touched his body.

Cáel laughed softly against her flesh. “You can stop flaying yourself for thinking about me, Nia. I like that you did.”

His lips seared another moist path across her throat to her other shoulder. As her kimono slid from her bare shoulder, she realized that Cáel had unfastened the sash.

Her body leapt at the idea. She was being seduced in soft, delicate steps, but her fall was inevitable.

Nia let the kimono slither from her other shoulder, where it hung and heard it flutter to the floor. She was bare beneath the shirt and Cáel made a rumbling sound in his throat and curved his hands around her waist, just above the waistband of her pants. His thumbs moved restlessly across her flesh, making her stomach muscles quiver. “Beautiful,” he murmured.

He lifted her. It was a feat of strength Nayara wouldn’t have thought him capable of, but Cáel was stronger than she had suspected. She held his shoulders as he carried her over to the table and placed her on it.

“I have a bed in my quarters,” she pointed out.

“I’m feasting, not sleeping. A table is appropriate for that,” he told her. He shook his head. “Another time, perhaps, Nia. A bed is too...ordinary for now.”

“And my office is not? Cáel, I had begun to think you were a romantic.” She slid off the table and wrapped her arms around his chest, under his and bent her knees. “Jump with me. One...two...
three
.”

Chapter Twenty

Southwest Western Australia, 1973 A.D.

The air in the forest was warm, thick and still. But in the distance was the sound of waves rolling against a beach and as Nayara listened, a kookaburra chattered in one of the high jarrah trees nearby, protesting their sudden arrival. The still, dark night air was warm against their skin.

Nayara felt the ripple of hundreds of nerve endings coming alive in her body. Her human systems were coming on-line.

Cáel looked around and sniffed. “Okay, I have no idea where I am.” He looked at her. In the gleam of the moon filtering through the treetops overhead, his bare chest gleamed. “But that looks like a romantic getaway if ever I’ve seen one.” He was looking over her shoulder, at the beach house.

“I left a fire burning, although on a night like this, it’s really only for cooking and light.” She picked up his hand. “Come.”

“This is your place,” he said. It was a statement.

“Yes.”

“Where are we?” he asked, as they walked toward the cabin-sized house. Their footsteps crunched on dry leaves and twigs, until they stepped up onto the narrow veranda. There was a low light coming through the two small windows.

“The kookaburra didn’t tell you where you were?”

“That’s what that sound was? We’re in Australia?”

“The southernmost tip of Western Australia,” Nayara told him. “It’s 1973 and they’re still logging the timber, but the surfers have just started to discover the spectacular beaches so there is a lot of squatting, too. I go unnoticed among the hippies and beach bums.” She pushed open the door and stepped aside so Cáel could enter.

It was a one room cabin, with a bed, a table and a big wood stove for cooking, heat and warming water. The stove grate glowed red with coals. “You were here not long ago,” Cáel observed.

“About two years ago,” Nayara told him.

He frowned, confused.

“That’s my personal timeline. Local time, it’s been three minutes exactly.”

Cáel turned back to face her and shut the door behind her. “It’s perfect,” he told her and pressed her up against the back of the door.

Nayara found herself smiling up at him. “Now you can take all the time you want, Cáel. No rush. No interruptions. No meetings.”

“That’s part of what I meant by perfect,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers. “Now, where were we?”

“You just put me on the table, after removing my shirt.”

“I recall that the shirt came off with some mutual effort. But..” He picked her up again and held her up in the air, his hands around her waist. He showed no signs of effort, although the big muscles in his arms bunched and rounded and so did the ones in his chest. “But not the table, this time,” he said. “This place is special enough.” He carried her to the big bed made of hand-sawn tree trunks and placed her on the quilt cover. “You’re warm again,” he said. “Human warm.”

“You prefer me warm?”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” he told her, pressing on her shoulder. “But while you’re human, I can do some wicked things that will make your nerve endings sizzle and your toes curl up. It’s all a matter of perspective.” As his persistent pressing laid her flat upon the mattress, his mouth touched hers. It was another intoxicating kiss.

And Cáel was right. Without the worry of interruptions, calls and the need to attend to the next meeting or commitment, Nayara could let herself sink into the kiss fully and completely.

She felt his hand tugging at the fastenings of her trousers, then they loosened and for a brief moment, he let her mouth go while he stripped her of the rest of her clothing. Then he stood and gazed into her eyes as he removed his.

Nayara shivered, despite the warmth in the room.

Cáel was the first naked man she had seen in the flesh beside Ryan and Salathiel, in over five hundred years. She had tried hard not to notice details when they had stripped his sleeping form, before. Now, she let her gaze linger and take in the differences.

Ryan was a beautiful man, but Cáel was handsome in a rugged, terribly masculine way. He oozed testosterone, especially naked. His body was in peak condition and he had the ridge of muscle that ran down to his groin like a broad arrowhead, that only very fit and lean men had and that Nayara found to be an incredibly erotic sight.

He climbed onto the bed next to her and fitted his body alongside hers.

“No wonder Ryan capitulated,” Nayara said. “You’re overwhelming, Cáel.”

“Thank you. I think.” He slid his hand over her belly. “But I keep remembering you in that green velvet dress.” He frowned.

She touched the furrow between his brows. “Ryan said he thought you were upset about the tomato thing. Why?”

Cáel shook his head. “Now isn’t the time for that.”

“If not now, when? Now is the perfect time. Both of us have our shields down, Cáel. You get to be your real self here in this house and so do I.”

He smiled. “I’d rather you think less of me
after
I’ve had my way with you.” His hand stroked up toward her breast, fluttering closer and closer.

Nayara’s stomach muscles quivered and she gasped. “Tell me now,” she demanded, gripping his wrist and holding his hand away.

“Nia...”

“Now,” she insisted. She pulled his hand up to her lips and kissed the palm, tasting salt and his unique aroma. “I promise that there will be a next time, Cáel, only if you tell me now.”

“Blackmail,” he muttered, smiling a little. But it didn’t reach his eyes. “Ryan is very perceptive. I was...well, angry is closer to what I felt. Frustrated. What if that tomato had been a bomb, Nia? What if it had been something less harmless than a tomato? I stood there, flat-footed, while Ryan and Brenden reacted. They did all the heavy-lifting that night. I, with my treacle-slow human reactions, got to watch like a poor dumb tourist while they protected you. Ryan is right, I didn’t like it one little bit.”

And he sat up with a convulsive jerk.

Nayara sat up next to him. “Cáel, for goodness sake, you’re a politician. A power strategist. You’re not supposed to be throwing bodies around. Who said we ever expected you to do that?”

“Ryan is a political player and he had no trouble holding his own that night,” Cáel muttered. “It made me feel useless.”

“Because he’s a vampire and he’s been defending himself physically for centuries. You’re trying to compare lemons with giraffes, Cáel and you should know better than that, except you’re letting your ego get in the way. The only thing I remember about that night, when it came to you, was that you were standing at my back.”

He looked at her, his eyes narrowed.

Nayara curled herself around him, her arms around his neck. “And what I remember the most about you, Cáel Stelios, is that it is you who came to bring me back from Constantinople.”

This time he needed no encouragement to kiss her. He gathered her up against him and his kiss was an unspoken summation of everything they had said and everything he had not yet spoken of, for Nayara suspected there was far more running deep inside Cáel Stelios, waiting to emerge. She saw hints of it in his eyes when he looked at her and in the fine tremble in his hand when he first lay it against her hip.

But then mutual passion rose and they were both caught up in it and all her worries and concerns fell away.

Cáel spread her on the bed once more and used his mouth and lips to explore every inch of her, his hands blazing the trail. Long before he was done, Nayara was panting and moaning on the mattress, her hips lifting in invitation. Her pussy was gushing with fluids, more than ready to take him into her.

But Cáel merely smiled. “You say we have time. I intend to take it,” he told her.

She scrabbled at the tapestry quilt, careless of its origins.

Finally, when her heart was beating so hard she could hear it in her mind and her climax seemed to be threatening to wash over her at the slightest of touches, Cáel settled between her legs. His cock was a heavy, dark red throbbing mast between his legs. He sat with his hands resting on his thighs, just looking at her. Even his gaze made her writhe.

“Cáel...” she begged desperately.

He leaned over her and she caught her breath, waiting for the delicious moment he would take her. His eyes met hers and his cock pushed into her. Nayara curled her leg over Cáel’s hip, helping him go deeper, relishing the sensation.

He watched her for every fraction of an inch he thrust into her, until he was fully lodged inside her.

Nayara gasped. “Oh, that’s good...” she breathed.

Cáel let out a harsh breath. “It’s better than I ever imagined it to be.” He touched his lips to hers.

He withdrew, taking his time again. Because she was human, she was alert to every little sensation and Nayara moaned as the counter thrust sent a deep ripple through her. She was going to come too fast. She was already too close. Her clit was blooming with pleasure.

Cáel thrust back into her again, this time a little faster and just a little deeper.

Nayara threw her head back, straining to control her excitement level. She wanted this to last.

“Come for me,” Cáel told her. “Let me feel you coming around me.”

Nayara wanted to protest, She wanted to come with him. But Cáel’s low, coaxing voice was her undoing. Her body leapt, her climax gathered, almost like it was at his command. She arched as her climax tore through her in a searing wave of tormented nerves and tendons. She moaned and felt her pussy clenching around Cáel’s cock in powerful contractions.

Cáel gave his own deep groan. “Yes,” he breathed softly. He kissed her cheek as the tremors from her climax kept her quivering.

He continued to drive into her in hard, controlled thrust. Nayara ran her hands over his hard buttocks, her fingertips dipping between them and Cáel gasped. “Wicked woman,” he breathed, his thrusts momentarily becoming unsteady, his hips shifting.

“As you very well know.” She caught her breath as he shifted again. The movement brought his pelvis up against her swollen, sensitive clit, stirring it. Her body, already a trembling pillar of sensations centred around his invading cock, now began to build toward another orgasm. She clutched at Cáel’s solid shoulders, straining beneath him. “Oh...harder. Cáel, faster!”

He slid his hand beneath her hip, holding it for better leverage as he pounded into her. “Come again, Nia. Come with me,” he said, his voice hoarse.

And again, she obeyed. Her body gathered and leapt into a glittering, sizzling climax that seemed to sear her sight and all sensation for a few heartbeats.

Cáel’s hand slid up to her back to hold her as she arched up off the covers. He thrust one last deep time and grew very still, his body strained, as his climax gripped him.

When it released him, he didn’t fall against her as she expected. He held himself up over her, his breathing heavy, his gaze steady. He slid his finger down her cheek. “I don’t know how I managed to survive so long without so much as touching you, Nia. Now I’ve had this much, I know I’m going to be like an addict. I won’t be able to live without it.”

“It’s easier than you think,” she told him. “You do it a day at a time. And suddenly, two hundred years have passed.”

He carefully lowered himself down next to her, contriving to keep himself inside her, her leg over his hip and his thigh threaded through hers, until he lay looking at her. “You’re talking about Salathiel, aren’t you?” he said gently, pushing a stray lock of hair from her face.

She bit her lip to hide the sudden tremble. “And Ryan,” she confessed and suddenly couldn’t look Cáel in the eye.

Cáel’s hand curled under her chin and turned her face back to him. “No, look at me, Nia,” he said, his voice low, but determined.

She looked. Reluctantly.

He wasn’t angry. “You think this is a surprise to me? You were lovers for six hundred years. You still love him, Nia, whether you’re in his bed or not. You can’t just switch those feelings off.”

“He can.”

Cáel shook his head. “No, he can’t. He might like to think he can. He might pretend he does. I guarantee he hasn’t. There’s a reason he fucks anything in sight, Nia.”

She jumped a little in surprise, both at his language and at the idea he had planted in her mind. Why hadn’t she considered this before?

“Even you, Cáel?” she asked. “You didn’t mind being...a distraction?”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.” He touched his finger to her lips and ran it around the edges of her mouth. It was an oddly erotic gesture. “If you must know, wicked Nia, I seduced
him
. That puts me in a different category from Ryan’s usual conquests.”

“It does. Ryan would find anyone dictating terms a novelty. It’s been a long while since anyone was strong enough—powerful enough—to do it.” She considered. “Not since Salathiel, really.” She opened her mouth to ask another question, but closed it. It was none of her business. But the images were there anyway. Her imagination supplied answers to the questions she wouldn’t ask.

Cáel was watching her closely, his eyes gleaming. “What is your nimble mind concocting there, Nia? What is it you won’t speak of?”