Chapter 14 #3
When she didn’t respond, he leaned over to pick up his pants from the floor, unbothered by the traces of her slicking his head and shaft. He would wear her all day, like a brand beneath his clothes. “The gilt and the turquoise are both striking against your skin,” he added.
Nadine hugged the sheet to herself and shivered, looking miserable.
After the afternoon they’d shared, her reaction unnerved him.
He had given her pleasure and gone out of his way to make this a gentle claiming.
She, in return, had given him—well, not quite everything, but nearly that.
And in this room that had always been reserved for the maidens of this house, she was clutching at the sheets like she’d been defiled instead of sacralized.
Like he hadn’t just saved her from the grasping hand of his family’s legacy.
He gave her a restrained smile as he turned to go to his bedroom, no longer sure of what to say to her.
The doors between their rooms were thrown open and when he pushed aside the heavy embroidered tapestry to walk through that small cobwebbed hall into his bedroom, he thought of his great-grandfather taking the reverse path to come to his wife in the middle of the night.
They would have to give her to him now.
He slid his arms into a crimson shirt and began doing up the engraved iron buttons. Discarding his jeans, he put on pressed pants instead, with a black belt to accentuate his slender waist.
Nadine was still in bed when he came back, with her hands laced over her middle. Keeping the sheets pressed to herself, her face was turned towards the window. He stepped deliberately on one of the boards, making it squeak, and she turned to look at him.
“I can’t take you to dinner like that.”
“You want me to eat with your psychotic family?” her voice was dulled.
“I think there’s enough blood in the water already.
If I keep you away too much, they’re going to think I’m hiding you.
” Odessa had sent over one of her dresses for Nadine to wear and he picked it up from the vanity, giving it a few casual shakes to straighten the rumpled fabric as he scrutinized the cut.
“Besides, you’re going to have to keep up your strength to keep up with me, Nadine. ”
“Yeah,” she said unhappily. “You might take advantage of me.”
Cal rolled his eyes and lobbed the dress to her in a casual underhand, though the words stung.
She grabbed the dress and turned her back on him to pull it on, seeming to forget the mirror. She and his sister were not the same size, but it wasn’t uncommon for Odessa to buy things without trying them on, more attracted to colors and fabrics than the fit.
He watched her wrestle with the dress, trying to add decency where there was none.
He preferred the none.
Stepping forward unasked, he took the laces from her nervous fingers and began lacing up the corseted bodice, pulling just hard enough to cinch the fabric. After tying off the laces, he ran his knuckles down the exposed skin of her back, which made her shoulders bunch.
The shortness of the garment highlighted the length of her legs, her tapered waist. She took great pains to make herself invisible to the eye and this dress stripped away those defensive layers.
“Does killing excite you?” she asked, staring straight ahead.
“I suppose you’ll just have to find out, little sparrow.”
She backed from him, and in that short, risque dress, Cal found himself struck by the desire to chase.
To see her hair flying, and the flirtatious kick of her skirt as she ran like she didn’t want to get away.
He could imagine it as vividly as if it was happening right now, which made the sudden fear on her face all the more jarring when he blinked to clear the images from his head.
“What’s the difference between a sparrow and a deer?”
“Oh, Nadine. Must we?”
“I want to know.”
The stubbornness in her voice let him know that this time, the subject would not be dropped. Cal sighed, scrubbing at his face. “My father has a saying—perhaps he’s said it to you. ‘Dumb as deer.’ Yes?” he prompted, already knowing the answer.
She stared at him, mouth open.
“You can fuck a deer and shoot a deer and it will make a fine trophy, but you would never make one the mother of your child, You can breed a deer and not a sparrow. It’s as simple as that.”
“I—that’s one of the most repulsive things I’ve ever heard.”
“Just be thankful you’re not a deer,” Cal muttered.
Nadine shook her head frantically. “Do you . . . eat people?”
“What?” The word was sharp as it left his lips. “Jesus, no. What the hell do you think we are?”
Nadine looked at him with an expression that said exactly what she thought he was, and if it weren’t so fucking atrocious, he might have been amused.
Cannibals.
That was what she thought they were doing out there in the woods.
“Fuck.” He looped his arm around her waist, pulling her to his side. “No more questions. Not to me and especially not to them. Now come to dinner—and no, it isn’t people,” he added grimly, “in case that was your next one.”
As he led her down the stairs, he remembered, quite against his will, Ben’s wedding and how Noelle had looked as he’d led her down the aisle.
The sunlight itself had seemed to turn cold as she walked into Ravensgate’s shadow, and when light fractured on the horizon, going from orange to vermilion, her hair had turned as red as blood.