Chapter 14 #2
Nadine sprang out of the chair—but he had been anticipating that, too.
With a low sound of reproof, he dragged her back into her seat and kissed her, punishingly.
She was breathing hard through her nose, keeping her lips pressed tightly together against the tender assault of his kiss, and the nudge of his tongue against the seams of her mouth.
There was a small vibration in her throat, where his hand was cradling the underside of her jaw: from the look on her tortured face, whatever noise she was making was a far throw from approval.
Cal knotted his fingers in her long, wavy hair, until he had a generous loop wrapped around his knuckles to use as a lead. Tugging from the base of her scalp, he tilted her face up towards his, baring the pale expanse of her throat. “Kiss me back.”
“Fuck you,” she said again, keeping her mouth movements as small as possible in a show of stubbornness he quite admired. “You’re just going to kill me anyway. Just like Ben killed Noelle.”
“I don’t want to kill you.” He brushed his mouth along her trembling lips, giving the lower one a slight tug. “I want to keep you. Would you like to be my sparrow, Nadine? All you would have to do is submit to me, fuck me—love me. And in return, I’d take care of you. Forever.”
A sliver of eye appeared. Tears trailed down her cheeks when he took his hands away, resting them just over the small of her back through the barrier of the wooden chair.
They were close enough for their bodies to touch. He could feel the heat from her thighs, where they rested on either side of his ribs. And no matter how stiffly she held herself or tried to duck her shoulders, her worn shirt was ungenerous in its modesty.
“You’re a monster,” she said. “You’re all monsters.”
Cal made a soft sound and her eyes flashed up at him with a resignation he knew better than to mistake for surrender. She would fight him and he would let her, and when she was beaten, he would hold her close and let her imagine herself victorious in her resistance before taking her apart.
“If you’re going to force me,” she said, “just get it over with.”
“Force you to do what?”
She set her jaw and kept her eyes averted.
“I see.” Cal caressed her jaw, allowing her a small flinch before firming his touch and bringing their faces level. Tracing her chin and the stubborn jut of her lip, he murmured, “I think I’d rather have you beg me for it.”
“No.” With a suddenness that surprised him, she spilled over the back of the chair, stumbling backwards as she struggled to right herself. “You can’t make me do that for you again.”
Cal got to his feet, brushing off his jeans. “Can’t I?”
She looked up at him with horror and this time, it was clear what she was imagining. Chagrined, he sat on the edge of her mattress, tracing his mother’s embroidery as he had so many times before, imagining her careful hand before her softness was crushed to impotence.
“You can choose how I have you,” he said, “just like how you can choose to be my sparrow. But all roads lead to me, darling, so I really do suggest you make the right choice. You won’t get a better ally than me in this house.”
Nadine stood frozen in the center of the room beneath the windrose. The open window stirred a lock of hair across her throat in a gesture that seemed premonitory and threatening.
Straightening, he gave her a thin smile, not quite inviting. The one he wore in court. “I promise I won’t think less of you for giving in to me.”
She looked at the door and Cal tensed, digging his fingers into the mattress as he prepared to spring. The creak of his weight shifting had her whipping back around.
“You won’t h-hurt me.” It sounded like a question.
“You’re my sparrow.” He tilted his head. “Come here.”
She dragged herself to him, each step a slow, painful trudge. Cal made himself still, waiting, until she halted two feet away, just out of reach. She was biting her lip to keep it from trembling.
“Closer,” he commanded softly.
She scooted a half-inch nearer.
“Closer, Nadine.”
Nadine gave him a teary, defiant look before closing the rest of the distance in one large, clumsy step, before sinking in front of him as if her pockets were weighted with stones. Cal felt the shift of fabric at his thighs as she tugged on the zipper, releasing him from his jeans.
Then he felt a whisper of breath, the teasing graze of her lips.
“Good girl,” he breathed, sliding his hands into her hair. “Yes.”
???????
It was different this time. This was no slow seduction, no candlelight vigil for innocence lost. Now she knew exactly what he was, and he could feel the tension in her body like a spring in a stubborn lock.
It gave an edge to the movements of her mouth that he could feel and taste, like spiced honey on his tongue. It made him shiver.
He slid off the bed and picked her up from the floor, dropping her onto the mattress.
On his hands and knees, he crawled over her body and gave a tug at her waistband that had her lifting her hips in reluctant acquiescence.
With a deep exhale, he lifted her shirt and then he seated himself inside her, surrounding himself in his sparrow’s softness while she tried not to cry out.
“I’m sorry it hurts, Nadine.” He thumbed the corner of her swollen mouth, fingers brushing over her jaw. “But this is all I have to give you, and I love seeing you try to take it.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said, in a voice like venom.
That poisoned note struck a vicious chord inside him; he took her where she lay, his eagerness ferocious as he savored her, the staccato of her heart pounding against his chest as every roll of his hips brought them flush.
She tried to be silent but they were too close for lies, and he heard every sound that left her throat.
Cal clamped his hand down over her throat, pinning her to the bed by her neck as he came inside her. Nadine lay beneath him, staring up at the ceiling, her breathing harsh. Her chest pressed against his with every exhalation, as if she were fighting him for the right to life itself.
When he leaned back, her thighs still spread open around him, Cal could see the drip of come from her tender, swollen cunt before she shifted her hips away, pressing her legs together.
Her eyes snapped back towards him in shock when he reached between them, and pushed his come back in with two fingers, curling them deep until she choked out, “Don’t.”
“I thought you’d figured out what I wanted.” He gripped her thighs, dragging her closer to the edge of the bed. “It’s as tradition dictates, Nadine. A raven needs a sparrow—and you are mine.”
“What?” She shot up as he yanked her pants the rest of the way off, gripping the waistband where it dangled around her calves in a futile attempt to fend him off. “No! Don’t do that!”
“You’re mine.” Her inner thigh was trembling now. “Lie back, sparrow.”
She jumped at the first touch of his tongue, prompting him to hold her down by the hips.
Nadine offered no direction, so he looked at her hands, clenched around the sheets like she wanted to claw through them.
Her fingers twitched with every unhurried stroke of his tongue.
“Why are you doing this?” she grated out, breathing in raggedly. “You could just take what you want.”
“That’s not what I want.” He trailed his fingers over her belly. “I want to please you.”
“You can’t.”
Cal moved slower than he wanted, keeping every touch slow and exploratory. Her stomach muscles jumped involuntarily at the chafe of the stubble around his mouth. When he tongued the apex of her slit, her hands convulsed.
“Cal—”
“Say you’re mine.”
“I won’t,” she gasped.
He slid his fingers inside her again, spreading himself all over her walls as he sucked on her clit, gradually increasing pressure and suction until her body bucked under his mouth. At the graze of his teeth, she let out a loud whimper that made him hard again.
“Please.” It was muffled. She was covering her mouth with her hand. “No.”
“Say what I want to hear,” he told her.
“I’m yours,” she sobbed. “Fuck. Please—”
Cal finished her off brutally while she screamed into her palm. He yanked her shirt off, cutting her off mid-yelp, and dragged her onto his lap. With her wrists gathered loosely behind her back, he fucked into her, hard and sweet, forcing her to ride him.
“Look at me, Nadine,” he said.
She shook her head wildly, but he touched her cheek, angling her head down.
“Look at us.”
The skin of her lower belly moved with him on the next stroke of his hips, revealing the faintest outline of movement as he bottomed out on a particularly deep thrust that had her arching in what could have been ecstasy or pain.
He kissed her again, flicking his tongue into her mouth in time with each rocking motion, tasting every sound that left her lips.
“I said I was a patient hunter.” His voice thickened with the slow throb of his release. “Don’t hide from me now, my exquisite darling. The capture is what I crave the most.”
She bit him. Cal was startled out of his easy rhythm, shocked. Nadine spat, eyes narrowed.
With a low laugh, he gave her breast a tweak and then rolled her onto her back, finishing in a series of knifing thrusts that left him feeling drained. Mine, he thought, closing his eyes against the onslaught of pleasure coursing through him in ribbons of light and shadow. All mine.
Nadine sank under his weight, limp. When he pulled out, his cock was slick with their commingled juices; it spilled over her thighs, the sheets. A wicked christening for what they’d done, he thought, draping her body with the embroidered bridal sheet.
The sight of her, felled and supine, plucked at a hunger he didn’t know he possessed.
“This room might have been designed with you in mind, little sparrow,” Cal told her.