Chapter 12 #2
A gasping laugh escaped her lips as he drank in the sight of her unhurriedly, but her wrists twitched in his grip like she wanted to cover herself.
“I—I didn’t come here for this,” she said, as he dragged his knuckles over the downy rise of her stomach.
He imagined her swollen with child—his child—and felt a dull answering throb low in his belly.
(yes)
“I didn’t imagine you did. But I’m enjoying it just the same.”
She was breathing fast. So was he. His great-grandfather had taken his second wife like this, locking her in with his lust like a ravening wolf.
And she had feared him for it, which had only heightened his pleasure.
Nadine was frightened, yes, but a dark anticipation lit up her features in much the same way as the lightning had, and it was this, more than anything, that threatened to undo him.
“Fuck me, Nadine.” His voice was loud in the darkness, grating as thunder. “I’ll chase all the shadows away.”
“I’ve—never done that,” she stammered.
“No?”
She shook her head, eyes lowered.
Cal rolled down her underwear. Arousal glossed her flesh and beneath the dark springy curls of her pubic hair, he could see pinkened flesh, swollen and enflamed from his touch. She sucked in with a slight hiss as he pushed her legs wider.
Grabbing for himself, he demanded, “How do you fucking stand it?”
“I—”
Her eyes flew open wide as he aligned his cock against her slit with a low groan. She parted around him like a kiss. He could feel her trembling now, like the flame of her candle when held aloft in her shaking hand.
“Wait,” she protested.
She felt . . . even better than he had imagined.
And what better way to mark her, than to fuck her deep and brand her womb with his seed. What lush Eden, he thought, inhaling against her throat as he cupped her breast, as if trying to capture the flutter of her racing heart. My perfect hell.
“Cal—please.” She tensed against him. “I can’t . . .”
“You need this as much as I do, little sparrow.”
And I need to be tamed.
His push was met with immediate resistance. Still shackled by his fist, the muscles in her wrists flexed as she strained beneath him, squeezing with her thighs, the walls of her cunt. The friction was ungodly, making goosebumps ripple down his arms.
Let Daddy scare you a little more.
“Cal,” she cried out.
“You’re not getting away.” He bit back a moan as he sank deeper into the cradle of her hips. “Not this time. I can save you, Nadine—but only if you’re mine.”
She recoiled in shock even as he felt her clench around him involuntarily as his words splintered into a growl, and that little movement brought them fully flush.
Her soft body cushioned his, warm and pleasing, her face mere inches from his.
With her lips swollen from kissing and her cheeks reddened from exertion, Cal thought she looked like a blushing bride.
“Oh god.” Her wrists jerked in his grip as he shifted inside her, aroused to the point of aching. “Cal, please. It hurts.”
He forced himself to pause. If he were younger, he might not have been able to. Even as it was, the strain of his control was evident in how tautly he needed to hold himself over her as he looked into her eyes, like a beast poised over its kill. “Relax for me.”
“Please.”
“Shh.” He pulled out and felt the staticky burst of friction ripple down his chest as his flesh pulled from hers.
With a growl, he cocked his hips and filled her again, as deeply as he was able.
He felt the stretch, the exquisite grasp of flesh tightly gripping flesh, and then resistance when he could go no further.
A flash of startled pain in her eyes as she set her teeth against the onslaught of his passion spurred him on, the need to make her work for it instinctive.
It had been a long time since he’d been with someone so inexperienced.
She was stiff beneath him, but there was a skittish tension coiled beneath her skin as if the sensations he inspired were simply too much to bear.
Watching her closely, he canted his hips and entered her from a different angle.
Grazing her clit in a long, smooth stroke that made her cry out as if wounded.
He gave another experimental deep thrust, bowing her back against the cushions, and her jaw tightened as he caressed her beautiful face. “Poor little sparrow. It only hurts because I want you so much.”
He kissed her cheek, letting his fingers tangle briefly in her hair as he gave her a caress she leaned into—what a good girl—yielding beneath him with a surrender he felt everywhere.
She tried to match his pace but the brocade was slippery, throwing her off, and she did not have his endurance. Every time she neared the edge of the settee, he nudged her back into place.
“I want my hands,” she said abruptly. “Please. I feel like I’m being—forced.”
Cal paused. “Call me Daddy,” he told her impulsively. “And I’ll let you go.”
“W-what? No!”
“Yes.” Now that he’d spoken his desires aloud, he was even more insistent.
From the moment he’d met her, he had sensed in her a sweetness, a need to be tamed.
She wanted control, and she wanted it from him, and she wanted it couched in a cruelty that left her tender but possessed.
“Say it just like that. With that sharp little quiver of outrage.”
“Cal, no.”
“Then it sounds to me,” he panted, “. . . like maybe you want force.”
Her breathing faltered and he felt her twitch around the sensitive head of his cock.
You like it. You need this. So give it to me.
“Daddy?” she said it slowly, testing the word.
“Mmm.”
“D-daddy, please. Let me go.”
That fucking stammer. “Again. Tell me what you think of this.” He punctuated his words with another thrust that made her cry out again.
“Y-you’re scaring me, Daddy. And it h-hurts.”
“But you like it.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Yes.”
“Yes.”
Cal reached between them. She was drenched, pre-come smeared along her inner thighs and dripping from where they were joined. He was coated with her. Beneath his fingers, she was as smooth and wet as polished sea glass, and he wanted to fucking bury himself in her alive.
“Fuck yes,” he said. “You feel . . . so good. Soft, and sweet, and good. I’m going to have you coming all over my cock.”
Nadine shuddered as he filled her; she took all of him, letting him breed her deep like the sweet little sparrow bride she would very soon be.
Daddy’s little sparrow. Her nails scored his broad shoulders, the pain bracing.
Invigorating. He pumped harder, a cry of his own escaping him as he continued to spill against her walls with each aching pulse.
Soon I’ll be breeding you like this every night . . .when I make you my wife. The thought pushed him over, into the realm of the pleasure-blind. I will be your husband, your lover, your raven—and you, my darling, will be a finely-bred sparrow indeed when I fuck you pregnant with our first child.
Eyes unseeing, he sank his teeth into her throat until she yelped. He would take care of her—them, he corrected himself feverishly. Her and their brood.
She would bear his mark, his ring, and his children.
He heard a subtle creak, just barely audible over the drum of rain against the glass, their commingled breathing, and Nadine’s soft moans.
Cal turned his head, braced on his forearms and knees, and noticed with narrowed eyes that the door to the library was now open.
Another bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, throwing the shadows into relief, and just before the darkness flooded back in, he caught a glimpse of a departing silhouette fading back into the gloom like a melting shadow.
And then Nadine’s fingers skirted along his nape.
He grabbed her hand—but not fast enough. He felt the sting of sweat in the wound just as her eyes met his, wide, shocked, and very, very afraid.
“Oh my god.” Her wrist went limp in his grip. “Oh my god.”
“Nadine—”
“You were in the mine.” She began to struggle, like a butterfly in its death throes, trapped in a cyanide jar. “You fucking bit me!”
“Fuck.”
“Get off me!” She began to beat at his chest with her fists. “Get off me!”
“Be quiet, Nadine.”
“Fuck you,” she shrieked.
“You don’t understand what you’re fucking dealing with,” he hissed.
“You’re right, I don’t understand. Is this what you like to do in those woods, Cal? Knock girls unconscious so they can’t fight back and then bite and rape them? You sick fuck.” The vicious words splintered into a wet sob. “Let me go, you bastard, or I’ll scream the whole house down.”
A chill iced his spine at the thought of Nadine being dragged from him as Noelle had.
“Yes. Do that, Nadine. Find out what happens to little sparrows who don’t heed the shadows when the ravens start circling.
” He glanced at the path his brother had taken, a dark note entering his voice.
“It’s a fine thing to do if you don’t care for your neck. ”
She clapped her hand over where he’d bitten her. His come was cooling where they were still joined. “Fuck your sparrows. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go to the police.”
Cal leaned back, eyes on her face as he slid out of her slowly. Deliberately. But she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He had claimed her, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. With a rueful grimace, he tucked himself back into his pants. “You’ll die.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” She scooted back on her arms as he leaned towards her—not for her, but for his beveled glass, which she rebuffed with a violent shake of her head when he offered it to her first. Cal took a deep drink. “You’ll die. Is that what you want, Nadine?”
Her eyes were huge. She stared at him, her chest still heaving, until she realized that was where he was looking, and then she covered herself with a furious gasp.
“It isn’t what I want.” Cal took another drink as she dressed herself. Her fingers were trembling so badly that she stumbled over the buttons of her dress. Several thoughts seemed to be going through her mind, but she was trying to hide them from him.
A line in her jaw tightened and she glanced down, the tenseness fracturing into despair. “Can you take me to the drugstore? Please?”
Thinking of the rockslide, Cal answered, immediately, “No.”
“But you didn’t use protection,” she protested. “What if I get pregnant. What if I—”
Her voice died in the gloom.
“You want that,” she said, covering her stomach. She looked . . . sickened. That tore at him. He’d been wrong. She hated him, hated this. She would never forgive him.
Cal turned back to his drink. “I said I didn’t sleep with sparrows,” he said quietly.
He felt the pain before he’d fully registered that she’d struck him.
It wasn’t a hard blow—he’d suffered worse—but he had not been expecting it, and caught the full force of her slap on his jaw.
He felt the kiss of wetness through his pants and realized his drink had spilled, soaking into the fabric.
When his eyes narrowed, she cowered as the first Cullraven bride likely had.
Backing off the couch until there was nowhere left to back as if he were a wild animal she couldn’t bear to take her eyes from.
He saw her tip, and struggle to right herself as she stumbled like a newborn foal across the slippery parquet floor.
She flinched when he raised his glass to his lips and downed the rest.
“I thought you liked me,” she sobbed.
That, he felt in his chest like a knife. He set his glass on the table and leaned back, stretching his legs to fill the space she’d left. The cushions were still warm from her body. They probably smelled like her, even now. He nearly shuddered at the thought.
“Go to your room, Nadine. And if you have any sense, lock your doors.”
“Fuck you,” she spat at him. “You monster! You sick fuck!”
Cal sighed as she fled from the library, her muffled sobs following in her wake.
Then his fingers tightened and he threw his glass, watching it shatter with a sound that was quickly swallowed up by thunder.
Casting his eyes about the room for something else to throw, Cal noticed a dark, glossy stain on the jacquard cushions, highlighting the individual threads that made up the faded floral design.
Frowning, he touched two fingers to the mark; they came back red.
She had bled. He licked his fingers thoughtfully, letting the copper tang of her innocence linger, until it was all he could taste over the residual acridity of the alcohol. Sparrow blood: sweet—and just a little bitter.
He laughed harshly as he lowered his hand to his lap, where it clenched into a fist.
Just like a true Cullraven bride.