The Ruby Kiss (36 page)

The next morning, Ruby learned she was going to be left alone. Nightshade announced he had a job to do and departed Trevelion Manor. Rose and Cordelia kept giving her secret looks, and Michael was grinning with a twinkle in his eye, but none of them would tell her where her nightstalker had gone.

He couldn’t be far away because she could still feel him through their bond, his enthusiasm and excitement. Even when he wasn’t by her side she no longer felt alone.

She was in the garden two nights later, sketching the rocky coastline at twilight when he returned, dropped unheralded out of the sky. Lifting her in his arms, he spun her around. “I have a surprise for you,” he announced, grinning.

A frisson of excitement raced through Ruby, and she ignored the fact that he hadn’t even said hello. “So, what is it?” She had guessed he was doing something for them but had no idea what.

“You’ll have to wait and see. Wrap up warm.”

She grabbed a sweater from her room, then Nightshade picked her up and leapt into the chilly twilight sky, his wings beating down. Ruby snuggled against his chest, enjoying his heat and the feel of his muscles working beneath his skin. Warm light glowed from the windows of Stigy Mill, the house Niall had loaned them, like a beacon in the shadowy countryside below.

Nightshade dropped carefully to the ground outside the
back door of the house and stood her on her feet. “Ready for a unique experience?” he asked, closing his wings with a snap.

Her eyebrows rose. They’d shared every intimate experience she could think of. What did he have in mind now? She was no longer as terrified as she once was of the unknown, and she tingled with imaginings of new pleasures he might bring her.

“As long as it doesn’t involve dragons or shape-shifters,” she quipped. “Or Troy,” she added more seriously.

“No, just the two of us.” Nightshade rubbed his hands together nervously, and a spike of apprehension shot down Ruby’s spine.

He placed a hand on her back and directed her through the quaint house toward the stairs. Up them, on the landing, he pushed open the bedroom door. Short fat white candles burned on the windowsills and cupboards, the soft, flickering light giving a lovely romantic atmosphere. But there Ruby stopped dead.

The mattress was on the floor. At first glance she thought Nightshade had erected a weird tent on it; then she realized it was a huge ball of fabric. She peered closer and identified sheets, blankets, towels, comforters, a duvet or two, and curtains. She could even see a blue fish on the corner of a bathmat. She experienced the same strange surreal sensation as the night he’d first dropped through her roof into her life.

“What do you think?” He stared at her, eager for her reaction. The touch of vulnerability in his silver eyes tugged at her heart, but she still didn’t understand. She nodded dumbly, words escaping her. She hadn’t been expecting a diamond ring, but . . .

“Do you like it?”

“Hmm. It’s . . . big. It must have taken you a while to . . . build.”

“Do you want to go inside?”

“Inside?” She peered more closely at the ball of material. The fabric was woven together leaving an opening on the side nearest the bedstead. She walked closer and bent to get a better look. Was this some kind of regression to childhood and he’d made them a fort?

Ruby put her arms around him and kissed his chest. “Nightshade, I’m new at all this fairy stuff, remember. I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s our love nest,” he said.

“Our love nest?” She was starting to sound like a parrot, so perhaps a nest was just what she needed. She stared at the giant ball some more, a bit taken aback by his obvious pride. “You sure there’s enough room in there for both of us?”

He grinned, shimmying against her suggestively. “We’ll be pressed together. We don’t need much room.”

She clung to him, unable to take her eyes off the massive rag ball. She couldn’t imagine Twister, Devin, or Troy balling up the contents of a linen cupboard to make a love nest, so she guessed this was probably a nightstalker thing. That meant Nightshade would be ultrasensitive about it.

“It looks very soft and comfortable,” she finally managed.

“It is. I tried it out before I brought you over. I can lie on my back inside there without hurting my wings!”

“Right.” She smiled and nodded, wondering when someone was going to jump out with a camera and start laughing.

She took another step toward it and crouched to check the space inside. The word
sardine
flitted through her mind, but she had to admit it would be fun crushed up against him naked. It always was.

“We won’t have room to undress in there. Shall we take off our clothes first?” she suggested.

He grinned, a flash of white teeth against the gleaming ebony of his skin. “Good idea.”

As his fingers went to the buttons on his jeans, suddenly she didn’t care if he wanted her to climb inside a rag ball. They could end up anywhere as long as he would always be with her. How different things were from the night they first met when she’d wanted one night of passion with no strings.

She dragged her sweater over her head and her shirt followed. Nightshade undid his boots and kicked them off by the door; then he stripped out of his jeans. Quivering inside with anticipation, she stared at his sculpted muscular body. He was so incredibly gorgeous she would never get enough of him.

He sauntered over, a sexy grin on his face. “You’ve still got too many clothes on,” he whispered by her ear.

“I’m waiting for you to help me out of them.”

He rumbled a growl deep in his chest, sending shivers of arousal through her. He slid his hands behind her back and released her bra, then cupped her breasts and stroked his thumbs across her nipples.

“Hmm, a little better,” he allowed. “But you’re still wearing too much.”

His hands grazed down her belly, sending tingles racing over her skin to focus on the tight demanding heat between her legs. He crouched, trailing kisses over her belly before he dragged her jeans and panties to the ground. She stepped out of them, her fingers threading through his hair.

“I could get used to having you at my feet ready to do my bidding,” she commented.

“Your wish is my command, Ruby love. But first I want to try out our love nest.”

Swiveling on his knees, he crawled into the ball of fabric, giving her a view of his muscular backside that wiped all other thought from her mind. Ruby had to suck in a deep breath before she remembered how her legs worked. She crawled in
through the hole into the shadowy warm nest, and he pulled her against him so that her back fitted snugly to his front, his erection pressed against her bottom. A slow simmering heat started in her belly and spiraled up.

“So, do you like our love nest?” he asked. “Hmm?”

Coherent thought escaped her as his hand slid down her belly to that aching place she longed to be touched. His teeth tickled her neck and she tilted her head, yearning for the erotic pain of his bite.

“Oh, Nightshade.”

Ruby closed her eyes as the pleasure from his stroking fingers built inside her, but she wanted to touch him as well. She turned to face him, their bodies jammed together in the tight, soft space. She hooked a leg over his thigh and wriggled to make herself comfortable, drawing a groan from him. His lips found hers in a devouring kiss.

She flattened her palm against the bulging pectoral muscle over his heart, feeling the rapid thud behind his ribs, and let her consciousness expand to meld with his. Beneath her lowered eyelids, she saw ropes of energy winding around them, joining them together and meshing into the structure of the love nest to surround them with a glowing sphere. Maybe there was more to Nightshade’s creation than she’d thought. There was so much yet to discover about Nightshade’s world, about her power.

“I love you, Nightshade,” Ruby whispered, her sense of self dissolving into the expanded swirling energy around them. She held him tightly, and for long moments they just lay in each other’s arms.

Nightshade rolled onto his back and pulled her astride, a position they hadn’t tried before, as a normal mattress hurt his wings. This seemed to have solved that problem. She rubbed against him, their shared rush of pleasure melting her bones.

“I’ve fantasized about having you on top,” he whispered.

“I thought you’d want to stay in control.”

“I
am
in control.” He gave her a feral grin.

Ruby lifted her hips, and he angled his arousal for her to sink down atop. He swept his hand up her spine to her neck. But as she started to move, he pulled her down for a long hungry kiss, then grazed his teeth on her collarbone. A breathy murmur of pleasure escaped her.

“Bite me.” She yearned for the pleasure-pain that transported her to bliss, though she knew he wouldn’t take blood from her again as he’d done so only the night before last.

“I want to give you The Ruby Kiss,” he whispered instead.

The Ruby Kiss?
“Is that a special name you’ve made up for biting me?”

“No, that’s what it’s called. It’s a little different from a normal bite,” he whispered. He rolled her over, moving atop her, keeping himself buried within her and pushing her down into the softness of the nest he’d built. She wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his buttocks. “So, do you want to try it?”

“Just
bite
me,” Ruby whispered, her pleasure swirling into a hot knot of unbearable need. The sensations he experienced were resonating back to her through their bond, and it was excruciatingly delightful.

Nightshade maintained the slow sensuous rhythm of his thrusts while his fangs trailed a tantalizing streak of fire over her neck and shoulder. Ruby gripped the back of his head and pulled his mouth tighter to her skin. He hummed deep in his throat, the sound sparking along her nerves.

She strained against him as his fangs sank into her flesh, sending shards of bliss spiking through her, dropping her over the edge into mindlessness. The Ruby Kiss was more than she’d ever imagined. A connection that seemed to fuse the Magic
Knot bond with the blood bond. Something unique that no other man could have offered her. So much more than the Magic Knot bond alone.

* * *

Nightshade had expected to have to concentrate hard not to drink from Ruby when he bit into her sweet flesh, but her pleasure ricocheted through him, sating his hunger, and the faint metallic sweetness on his tongue simply magnified the sensation. The bite became magically bloodless, and it worked on their energies instead, fusing the blood bond with the bond of the Magic Knot and heightening their pleasure beyond anything he’d ever imagined.

Ruby moaned, her fingers clutching him as he drove her higher toward a peak she’d never before reached. She was totally under his control, and she loved it, his strong independent woman weak with desire in his arms. The Ruby Kiss was his gift to the woman he loved. It was everything she wanted, everything any woman could want. He wanted it for her now that he saw what it was.

She writhed beneath him, and he squeezed his eyes closed, barely hanging on to his own control. When she tensed in his arms, he could do so no longer. He let himself go as her cry of release filled the soft nest, and he collapsed at her side. They snuggled together. Warm, comfortable, and sated, he dozed for a while.

Ruby’s sharp inhalation roused him. She pressed her hand to her belly, her eyes rounding. “Gosh. The life force is swirling like a tornado inside me.”

Nightshade let his consciousness combine with hers, and he sensed the blending of their energies in a magical mix as old as time. His voice came out a thick whisper: “That’s our baby forming!”

He laid a gentle hand on her belly and closed his eyes, feeling the miracle as the life force wove a web of being around the tiny spark of consciousness growing inside his woman. He had almost forgotten his driving desire in his need to pleasure Ruby, but now he had everything he wanted from life: he had secured the safety of his little brother and now he had a woman and a child. He was certain everything was perfect.

“I’m so happy I crashed through your roof into your bed,” he whispered.

Ruby curled against him with a blissful sigh. “I can’t imagine my life without you. We are both exactly where we belong. Together.”