Chapter 16
C H A P T E R
S I X T E E N
unholy benediction
They know.
That was his first thought. That his family, with their penchant for sniffing out betrayal, had noticed their absence from the main house, and someone—Ben—had taken it upon himself to follow them down to the basement.
God only knew what they’d overheard, or what they’d decided to make of it. It didn’t take a lot for his family to close ranks, and he was already in deep breach of confidence.
“Don’t scream.” The words were cold and composed. Distanced. He sounded like his father. Nadine’s head whipped towards him, shocked. “Go get one of those wine bottles I showed you earlier and bring it here,” he ordered.
“B-but—”
“Shh.” Cal gave her a shoulder a squeeze with numbed fingers. “Go.”
“You’re going to use it to open the door?”
“No.” Cal didn’t elaborate, using the beam of his phone to illuminate the path he wanted her to take.
She steeled herself, drawing in a miserable breath before descending back into the darkness at his command.
Her fingers gripped the stair rail like she was trying to strangle it, her body shaking so hard that he could see it in her shadow, which had become tattooed over the dust-covered racks of wine like a photograph that had become affected by double exposure.
Poor little misery. What had he gotten her into?
Seeing her move amongst all those hanging carcasses prepped from the slaughter made him remember Noelle and that fatal night, and an uncharacteristic sensation pulled at his ribs, making it hard to breathe.
He shook it off, straightening against that memory of acrid smoke and death. Never, he swore.
No one was going to take her from him. He wouldn’t lose another girl to the woods.
She yanked a bottle out of the rack, sending up a cloud of dust that she half-stumbled from, running up the stairs with her fingers strangling the neck of the bottle. Her eyes had an animal shine in the milky light and she reared back from him when he reached out. “No!”
“It’s just me,” he said redundantly. “Did you get the bottle?”
“Y-yes.” She tried to hand it to him. “Here.”
“Hold onto it.”
“But what are you—”
She broke off with a cry when he slammed his fist against the door, making it jump on its ancient, weathered hinges. All his anger, that pent-up frustration—Cal took it all out on the solid pine heartwood with a fury that was nearly primeval in its intensity.
Eventually, one of the servants answered the door.
“Can a man not go into his own cellar for wine without being locked in?”
“I don’t know how it happened.” The servant sounded shaky; either he had been ordered to close the door himself or he knew who really had and feared reprisal. His face paled further as he met Cal’s stony look. “It must have blown shut and latched itself.”
“Latched itself,” Cal repeated, arching his brows at the obvious lie.
The servant took a step back. “I—I’ll check the mechanism right away.”
“Yes, you do that. God forbid any other guests find themselves locked in.”
Inwardly, he seethed at the farce of it all. The lines had been drawn: he, on one side, his family on the other. Just like a slamming door. The message was clear. If he were to continue on this path, he was going to be thrown in with the prey in the dark.
“That was not an accident,” he said, once the servant had slinked away. “Someone thinks you know something and I suspect I know who. I suggest that you don’t prove them right by forcing me to compromise you more than I already have, Nadine.”
“They think you told me about Noelle.”
“Yes.”
She considered that, cradling the wine bottle to her chest. “B-but you tell your brides everything anyway, right? Eventually? That’s what you said about Ben. You said he was supposed to t-tell Noelle everything and he didn’t.”
“You’re not a bride.” Not yet.
They were walking deeper into the house, up the staircase with its creaking planks and the unsmiling portraiture of his various ancestors. Back to their interconnected rooms and the hallway that bound them as effectively as a jess.
He saw in Nadine’s eyes a latent understanding for the necessity of the prop in her hands and the reason for all of his angry bluster. Forgiveness did not come with it but there would be plenty of years down the road to earn that back—if he could get her through this alive.
She held up the wine, drooping and exhausted. “What should I do with this?”
“I suggest you enjoy it,” he said, frustration making his voice cold.
All he wanted was this small, tender thing; to keep it safe and close. He had asked for very little from his family, and he had given plenty of himself. He had played by the rules, abided by the dictates of his blood, and even now, they would deny him this.
Perhaps that had always been his father’s intent and he had simply been too blind to see it. After all, even Ben, his favorite, had been forced to give up that which he claimed to love.
Cal thought again of that night when his father had ordered Ben to kill the deer—Jessica.
A young tourist he had lain with at just seventeen, drawn to the yearning in her eyes that offered everything and demanded nothing.
Seeing that same gentle face rendered lifeless, frozen into a death mask of horror and betrayal, had condemned him to over a decade of meaningless hook-ups that did little to ease his solitude and a loneliness he saw as his penance.
Maybe that should have been the night he shook off his family’s so-called tradition. He had pursued a career in law thinking that perhaps he could find a loophole that could break him of this curse, but in the end, his family’s control had proven too strong.
His father thought him weak. Sometimes, he felt weak.
Sometimes, he wanted to be.
That night, he let himself into Nadine’s room, slipping into bed beside her. The sheets still smelled like what they’d done earlier, and she was warm, solid and yielding in his arms.
Cal leaned forward and buried his face in her hair, breathing in the sweet scent of soap and the saltiness of her own sweat-damp skin.
“No,” she murmured, hoarse with sleep.
“Darling.” He gave her a squeeze. “Come back to me.”
“No.” Straining against his arm, she moaned, “I’m not a deer. No.”
He covered her mouth with his hand and felt sharp pain as her teeth sank into the fleshy web between his thumb and forefinger. “No,” she wept, muffled now. “Please.”
“Go back to sleep.” He took his hand off her mouth, rubbing his cheek against her face. “It’s just a dream, little sparrow.” Nothing can hurt you here.
She let out a rough breath, heart throbbing against his hand.
“Just a dream,” he repeated. “Daddy’s here.”
Her body, which had begun to relax, tautened with apprehension as he brushed her bare thighs, skin burning against skin. “I hate you,” she said, sounding more like herself.
Cal paused. “That doesn’t matter. Sleep, my sparrow. Sleep with me.”
Come, bear the burden of my cruel and vicious love.
The sound that escaped her wasn’t quite protest as he reached down to explore her folds.
“No,” she said, but there was a hitch in it, and when he increased the strumming pressure of his touch to a hard stroke and pressed his mouth to her neck, her thighs parted to give him access and she surrendered with a soft moan, sinking back against his chest.
He caressed her cheek in approval as her cunt stopped fluttering around his fingers, the muscles relaxing as her breathing hitched and slowed. He wiped his fingers on her thigh and tugged down the hem of her shirt demurely before hugging her more firmly against him.
“Good girl,” he told her.
???????
The shift in the air was palpable, the festival drawing nearer. Nadine seemed to feel it, too. He caught her slinking through the halls, hovering near the doors. She jumped when he approached her in the foyer, stepping out of the portrait hall like a wolf cornering his prey.
“I know what you’re thinking and it won’t work. You can’t leave now, little sparrow, and you’ll be killed if you try. The sheriff’s keeping an eye out for you now and trust me, he’s all over. One misstep, and that pretty white throat will belong to my father.”
As it always did, the reminder of her situation caused her to draw back from him in retreat.
She was softening towards him. By very faint degrees, she allowed more and more of his trespasses. Sometimes he woke up with her wrapped around him like clinging moss, her long limbs entangled with his own, her cheek resting against his chest, over his heart.
He could not quite admit how much he longed for these moments, or how much they meant to him. In a house starved of warmth, they both craved the flame of each other’s tenderness.
He was just not certain it was enough.
A knock sounded on the door. Cal looked up, and his first thought was impatience—which shifted to anticipation when he realized the sound had come from the tapestry door.
“Enter.”
Nadine pushed the door open. She was wearing another one of his sister’s confections. This one tied at the waist, clinging to her ample frame, her round, soft belly. His eyes lingered there, imagining her heavy with child.
She could be with child already.
“There’s no need to knock, you know.” Cal lowered the highlighter. “That rule is mostly for my sister. I leave the door unlocked for you.”
“Why?” She strode forward, rigid and angry. “It’s your brother who likes to watch.”
Fuck. Ben. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out about that. I knew it would upset you.”
“Do you think?” She folded her arms in that damnably distracting way of hers. “He saw you—take everything.”
“I am sorry for that. I guard that memory rather jealousy, you know.” He could almost see it now, desire unencumbered by terror. “A breathless Nadine surrendering to me by candlelight, wearing nothing but the night itself—glorious. If I could make him unsee it,” he said, “I would.”
“I think he saw us outside the civic center, as well.”