Page 19 of Blood Stone

Nial grimaced. “I pointed out to him, quite rightly, that if we achieve everything I want to achieve, then we won’t have to worry about fake identities and former lives, so a little laxity now can be afforded.” He scratched at the short hair on the back of his neck, which he still claimed he was not used to, months after it had been cut. “But this is a different thing altogether. I lowered my security standards to please my wife. The people who remember me and would recognize my eyes are all part of our world. It was a calculated risk. Your slip opened you up to blackmail and early exposure to a hostile world that will fail to see you as a person, but as the ultimate cure to every incurable disease known to man. You’ll lose whatever life you might think you deserve, Winter.”

She nodded. This danger had been impressed upon her many times before by Nial and Sebastian. They were long-term thinkers and had seen further ahead than she. They had predicted, as she had not, how humans might react if her talent ever became common knowledge.

“You’ve already had a small taste of it,” Sebastian added. “This Finka...she was persistent?”

Winter remembered the strength in Finka’s fingers when they latched onto her forearm. The absolute conviction in her voice when she caught up with Winter the second time.I don’t care who you are now. I’ve come a long way to find you.

“Yes,” Winter told Sebastian. “She was very persistent. I couldn’t bluff her. She wasn’t listening to me at all. She was desperate.”

Sebastian nodded. “Multiply Finka by a few dozen people every day, with dying spouses, children, parents. All of them not giving a damn about your life. All of them intent on dragging you totheirailing relative, and making you cure them.”

Winter shuddered. She rubbed at her forehead. “How do I fix this? I can’t help her brother. There’s isn’t a way to explain his sudden return to good health. And no way to guarantee he or Finka won’t tell their best friends or families when they’re desperately ill or injured.” She bit her lip. “It won’t end, will it? It’ll keep on going. Even if they have the best intentions never to breathe a word about me, as soon as someone dear to them is hurt or sick, they’ll think of me. The wild card in their pocket.”

Nial drew in a breath that lifted his chest, and let it out. “You see it now.”

“What do I do?” she asked, feeling pathetically useless.

Nial held out his arms and she was more than willing to slide up against his chest and bury her flushed face against his neck. She felt Sebastian’s warmth against her back and closed her eyes. There really was no better place on earth to be than right here between these two men. Her heart slowed and calm returned and she didn’t have to artificially induce it. The internal peace came simply because she was with Nial and Sebastian, touching them.

“Do nothing,” Nial told her, his hands caressing her hips. “Go about your day as you had planned it. Bastian and I will take care of this for you. The woman was to come here?”

“She has my cellphone number,” Winter said, her lips brushing the corner of his jaw. She only managed to reach that high because of the heels on her shoes.

“I’ll give you my phone and I’ll take yours for the afternoon,” Sebastian said. His voice reverberated against her back. His lips pressed against the nape of her neck. “We’ll talk to her. Make her see how this can’t happen, how bad it would be for you.”

More tension eased from her body. Nial alone could be intimidating and powerfully persuasive. Sebastian was potently charming when he chose to be. The two of them working to make Finka see how impossible this situation was for Winter...they would win Finka over.

Sebastian’s lips were travelling in the lightest of caresses along the open neck of her shirt, skimming her flesh. Making her shiver.

Winter reached up and wrapped her arms around Nial’s neck. “My next appointment isn’t for nearly ninety minutes,” she told them.

Nial’s hands swept down to the hem of her skirt. “Barely enough time,” he complained. He pushed her skirt up her thighs, his big hands skimming up to her hips once more, but this time sampling her flesh. His thumbs stroked, aiming unerringly for the hollows right next to her hipbones, and making her hips jerk as the highly sensitive nerves there fizzed and flared in reaction.

Winter gasped, but Nial’s lips were already covering hers. His tongue swept inside and she felt the pressure of his incisors against her mouth, behind his lips, telling her he was unusually aroused. Her pleasure leapt, knowing he would bite her as her pleasure peaked, intensifying her orgasm many times over.

Sebastian’s hands were busy, stripping her of her clothing. His mouth followed along behind, covering the flesh his hands revealed.

Winter let herself sink into the pleasure they were orchestrating, deliberately releasing all her worries over Finka Zupan and letting them go. Nial and Sebastian would take care of it for her. She trusted them utterly. It allowed her to let them seduce her into a mindless wanton in five minutes, screaming out her pleasure their hands and mouths and fingers invaded her genitals and toyed with her breasts.

Then they tore off their own clothes, both of them watching her, their expressions feral and hungry, as she lay on the rug, recuperating. Naked, they settled next to her.

‘You need a lesson,coniunx,” Nial said, sliding his hand over her waist.

Winter shuddered. “A lesson in what?”

“We’ll figure that out as we go,” Sebastian declared.

Winter let them take her, Finka Zupan already a dim memory.