Chapter 7 #3
Nadine entered warily, much more at unease here than she had been in any of the other rooms. She went right to his bookshelf, like she was looking for something, but her eyes skirted over the titles too quickly to be reading them.
She paused at the raven pin he had worn at the wedding and if she had asked, he might have told her that it was mourning jewelry that had been worn by his great-grandfather after the death of his first wife and by wearing it to Ben’s nuptials, he often felt haunted by the idea that what had begun as a joke in poor taste now felt like a bitter omen.
“Does your room have a name, too?”
“The raven room,” he said. “Because of the blue-black wallpaper and counterpane.”
That was also original and carefully preserved. He didn’t sleep with it, folding it back every night so the fabric wouldn’t rumple or crease.
Nadine lifted her chin an inch higher as she marched past his bed, turning to examine the medieval tapestry that covered the hidden door.
This, too, was an original, carried over with the family along with all of their other lordly trappings from England.
The scene it depicted was that of a hunt, nobles sitting astride their horses with all of their various accoutrements as they gave leisurely chase to the small animals fleeing for the stitched border of trees.
“This looks old,” she commented.
“It’s medieval.”
“What?” She jumped back from it, hands clapped over her mouth as if she thought her very breath might cause it to crumble, and Cal felt himself softened by affection. “Really?”
“We’re a very old family. See, you can see the family crest woven here.
” The old heraldry showed a raven issuant, with an escutcheon clutched in its glittering talons.
CULLEHRAVEN had been stitched below that, in old English.
Probably by one of the ladies while their men were at a hunt.
“It’s been preserved. Don’t ask me how—my mother would know.
This is wool, though. And these shining threads here are wrapped in gilt. Very expensive, especially back then.”
She backed into him and jolted when he reached forward—not for her, no, not yet, but for the tapestry itself, which made her gasp out of concern.
You are concerned about so many things, aren’t you, darling?
He gave his hand a tug, revealing the hidden door, and she looked over her shoulder.
For permission, he realized, both surprised and pleased.
He nodded once, Go ahead.
Needing no further prompting, Nadine stepped forward eagerly, leaving behind a chill that he felt throughout his person. She took the knob in her own hand and twisted, revealing the three-foot long hallway where his great-grandfather had once summoned his wife for trysts in the night.
The hall was thick with cobwebs, which rippled in the draft.
The maids didn’t clean this room. Most of them didn’t even know it existed.
His own tracks were in the dust-covered floor, demarking the path he had taken to her bed.
If she had looked down, she might have seen them, but she was too busy looking at the other door to notice she was erasing his traces.
“Where’s that one lead?”
Cal stepped forward, smearing a footprint she had missed with his shoe. “Try it and see.”
She was slower this time—warier. The hallway was scarcely large enough for two and when he followed her into it, he could feel her nervousness. She glanced back at him again, keeping him in her line of sight, and he rewarded her with a small crescent of a smile made sharp by hunger.
She scoffed, though her shoulders were nearly up to her ears—one of her anxious tells—and she gave the door a defiant yank. It stuck and then released with a loud pop, and he heard her inhalation as she found herself looking into her own bedroom.
When she backed into him again, he wrapped his arms around her waist, trapping her firmly in his embrace. “W-was this always here?” She wouldn’t look at him.
“Caledon Cullraven had this hallway built so he could come to his wife in the night.” He stepped forward from the hip, using the tip of his loafer to gesture at a lighter square on the floor, where some of the boards were scarred.
The movement pushed his pelvis into Nadine’s pleasingly ample backside.
“There used to be a little bench right here where she would wait. He liked making her wait.”
Nadine’s breathing was shallow and uneven. He turned her around in his arms, so that they were standing face to face. “What are you thinking right now?” he demanded, the words harsh and nearly unfamiliar. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m wondering if that door locks,” she blurted.
Cal laughed but it felt dragged from him. “Even if it did, do you really think, for even one second, that a door would be enough to stop me?”
He ran his thumb along the edge of her stubborn jaw.
“I would come to you, little sparrow.” Tracing the plush swell of her lower lip, he whispered, “Would you want me to?”
Animals would sometimes play dead in the wild to escape a predator. It was called thanatosis, or tonic immobility: a preternatural stillness designed to make their would-be hunter lose interest. As he continued his gentle caress, Nadine stood as still and frozen as a statue.
“You’re shaking.” He leaned closer and felt her jerk involuntarily. “Just like a little bird.”
It was her eyes that were her undoing; they were large and dark, the pupils blown out with the wanting she could not quite bring herself to deny.
It was her eyes that made him bend to kiss her, seizing her mouth the way he had in the square.
He lowered his hands to her hips and filled them with woman and fabric alike, moving up her torso in a heavy dragging motion until smooth silken skin yielded to rough lace beneath his callused palms.
He pinched her nipple, which made her yip, so he did it again—harder—before flipping the cup of her bra down and exposing her breast. Then he gave it a squeeze, rolling his thumb over its center in a hard circle that made her moan into his mouth.
Cal heard a growl leave his throat, low and possessive.
That was apparently too much for her. Her desire morphed into panic when he caged her against those exposed beams, using his larger frame to keep her pinned.
Poor sparrow. He captured her mouth, biting at her lip as he exposed her other breast, shuddering at the textured feel of her in his hand.
He didn’t want to release any part of her body, but he made himself take his hand away so he could yank down his zipper.
It was like a releasing a pressure valve; he groaned, bringing her hand to the weeping crown of his swollen cock and folding her fingers over his throbbing flesh.
She stared at him, fear and confused desire in her eyes.
With her blouse pushed up and her bra tugged down and her lips puffy and red from his teeth and his beard, she looked—ravished, his brain supplied.
“That’s all because of you.” He thrust, grinding his hips into her loose grip in what felt like a shallow mockery of the friction he craved.
“Still want to torture me, Nadine?” Another thrust, harder this time.
This one brought them chest to chest, close enough to feel the warmth of her bare breasts against his thin dress shirt. “I might have some suggestions.”
Nadine twitched, tightening her grip on him, and Cal exhaled harshly as her fingers rubbed over his extremely sensitive cockhead.
It was as if she’d set off flares beneath his skin: white-hot bursts of heat sparked in his belly, behind his eyes.
Yes, he thought, nearly delirious with pleasure.
Do that. Touch me. Excite me. Give me the fight that I crave.
“I—” Nadine’s eyes tore away from her hand and went to his. She was shaking in a way that he could feel but she couldn’t seem to find the words she wanted.
That was unfortunate. He wanted her talking—begging for his mouth on those eager little nipples, screaming his name as he claimed her inch by inch, hole by hole.
They could find out together how deeply he could take her when she sat astride him, her heart beating for him.
Her lips shaping each pleasured sigh. His in every way, from come to breath to blood.
Nadine shook herself, melting beneath his arm before he could close his hands over her again and drag her to bed.
Then she was pulling her clothes back into place with frantic movements that might have been entertaining if he weren’t standing there with his cock out and throbbing like an open wound.
He tucked himself back into his pants with a labored sigh and she darted a quick, unhappy look at him.
He recognized that look—she’d looked at him that way in the car, just before she’d begun to cry.
It had moved him to comfort then; it softened his ire now, even as his skin felt pricked by small dots of fire that turned every graze of clothing against his skin into a constellation of agony.
Returning her gaze, he said in an effortfully level tone, “Eventually, I’m going to get tired of letting you run. ”
Nadine pushed her hair out of her face. “I’m sorry you thought I wanted that.” She swallowed, visibly trying to compose herself. “And now, I’d, ah, l-like to see the garden.” She gave him another look. “Please.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” He brushed the dust from his clothes, sending plumes of it rising up like smoke into the shadows. “I suppose I did promise to behave. More fool I.”
Her discomfort was palpable as they left the little hall, using her room to get back to the main corridor.
Her eyes kept going to him, like he was a meter she didn’t fully trust to explode.
Did she think he was angry with her? He wasn’t.
Disappointment was part of every hunt, after all.
It just made the final conquest all the more satisfying.