Chapter 16 #4
“Sparrow.” He paused, frustrated, when the words for reassurance didn’t come.
It was a particular cruelty, he thought, being denied the healing balm that would ease the pain of one’s own careless ability to wound.
With a sigh, he twisted off the cork of the wine bottle and poured them each a full glass. “Here.”
Nadine took a long, deep drink, and then set the glass down roughly, spilling a bit of wine onto the topsoil.
She unzipped her sweatshirt with the same carelessness, revealing the thin cotton dress that delineated her body with such clear precision that no imagination was required for mapping out the lush topography beneath it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking another drink of wine, longer than the first. “I’m just not hungry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He was transfixed by the sight of her in the sunlight, her mouth stained a dark berry from the wine. Before she could protest, or prostrate herself further, he got to his hands and knees, half-knocking her back. “Just kiss me.”
From their first kiss in the square, she had surprised him with her fierceness.
Her kisses had teeth, her gentle nature buttressed by stark, unwavering loyalty.
Hers would be a feral love, he thought, rolling her straining nipples beneath his thumbs before undoing her dress, grabbing fabric in large handfuls in his hunger for bare skin.
“I love this on you,” he breathed, tracing a finger down the line of her throat, and admiring how perfectly the lines of her body melded beneath the skin, like an utterly exquisite frieze of sunlight, shadow, and bone. “I think about that night all the time.”
She threw an arm over herself, covering her breasts. “Is this what you do in the woods?”
“Sometimes,” he responded.
He drew back to undo his own shirt buttons, before pulling it over his head. She was looking at his bared torso with unexpected heat.
“Women out here think I’m an animal.” He tossed the shirt aside, planting his hands on either side of her body. “They want me to fuck them like one, and I used to oblige, but that gets old as you get older. Especially knowing what you and I know.”
“You’re lonely?”
“That’s one word for it.” He looked at her arm. “Lift your skirt.”
She blushed as she reached awkwardly for the hem, rucking the fabric up to her thighs.
He did not move, or offer to help, and the gentle friction of her body moving against his as she removed her underwear was such sweet torture that he would have let her toil longer if he weren’t already fit to burst.
With a rough sound too urgent to be a laugh, he tugged her panties the rest of the way down before gripping her hands in his and hoisting them over her head, drawing her as tautly as a bowstring. He kept her there, pinned beneath him, while he reached for his fly.
“I promised you wildflowers, Nadine. Maybe they’re not what you expected—but then, neither am I.” He gripped his cock loosely, watching her face. She was tense with anticipation, her eyes tracking every slow, deliberate stroke of his fist.
Exhaling roughly, he nudged himself against her, sliding through her slick folds until he met the warm, yielding core of her. On his knees with the sun gilding his eyes, and the trees spiraling above them like a green cathedral, fucking her felt like finding god.
A loud crack had her jolting against him. Cal bit back a curse as he was knocked free, bumping up against her inner thigh. In his surprise, he released her, and she reached down for her skirt, yanking it down to cover herself. “What was that?” she gasped. “It sounded big.”
“Probably a deer. This is the time of year when they birth their young. It makes them shy.” He recaptured her wrist and pressed it back against the ground. “Just like you.”
Her eyes swept the trees nervously. “Are you sure no one’s here?”
Cal knew he couldn’t promise that. This was his domain, this green church of the wilderness, but it was entirely possible that his father had had them followed.
Blood had spilled here before, but he had been younger, less tested.
“Relax,” he said instead. “You’re perfectly safe with me.” He laddered kisses down her ribs, over skin like raw velvet. “I’ll protect you.”
Her eyes slipped closed, her body lifting into his kiss as his lips closed over her nipple.
He suckled hard enough to bruise before kissing his way to her other breast, roughing its rosy crest with his tongue in a slow, heated kiss, before giving it a hard bite that made her groan.
Her fingers slid into his hair as he lavished his tender cruelty against her flesh, pain and pleasure strung like jeweled beads upon a chain.
As a bird crashed through the branches overhead in a flash of orange, Cal shifted down her body, eager and impatient.
Her stomach jumped at the first touch of his mouth.
She tried to cover herself again, and again, he batted her hands away with another chastising clip of teeth.
He kissed her belly, the smooth opaline expanse broken only by the well of her navel; he dipped his tongue into it before biting the downy skin beneath.
Her fingers bit into his scalp when she felt his breath between her legs.
He bit playfully at her inner thigh, following that dimpled crease to the juncture between them covered in silky brown curls, which made her whimper.
Cal spread her as wide as he could and bent his head, voracious in his willingness to devour.
She moaned at the first lash of his tongue against her clit; it was a punishing kiss, rough and textured, honed by years of need left unfulfilled.
It made her buck against his face, pulling at his hair hard enough that he felt a ripple of pain move across his skull like scattershot.
Without yielding, he slid two fingers into her cunt, plunging them deep, coating himself in her arousal as he worked her over with his tongue and teeth.
She obliged him beautifully, writhing beneath him, hips flexing as she sought to gain control over the pace, but Cal pushed down against her, not bothering to be gentle.
Pleasure made her unfurl beneath him like an exotic orchid in full bloom.
One of her hands was on her breast again, but now she was moaning softly, fingers moving in time to his thrusts.
He was painfully hard now, pre-come spilling over his crown and down his shaft as he took in her flushed face and dripping cunt, her nipples kissed sore and red.
“You’re going to love it, Nadine,” he told her roughly.
“You’re going to be begging me to have you every possible way, and I’m going to punish you by obliging.
” Her eyes lifted to his, heavy and pleasure-drunk.
“You raise my blood, little sparrow. You, and only you. And if you knew what that meant, you’d fucking run like hell. But you won’t, will you? Not now.”
“Cal, I—”
“You won’t,” he said. “Because if you do, I’ll find you—and I’ll catch you. I won’t put you into the green book, Nadine, but I’ll fuck you until you think you’re dead.”
Then he finished her off, making her scream so loudly that she startled the birds from the trees. “Oh god,” she cried out, and he thought, Yes, darling—for you, in this place, I am.
When it seemed as if she could stand no more, Cal plunged his cock into her on a single stroke, until her breath left her body and her belly cradled the sharp just of her hipbones and her heart was knocking against his chest like it wanted to leap inside.
He ground his hips once, listening for the catch in her throat and—yes, fucking there.
That was the sound that haunted his dreams.
After so many times together, her body could sheathe him like a glove crafted from silk and sea; her fingers wore grooves in his shoulders every time he grazed her still-tender clit, her face torn between pain and rapture as his thrusting cock stretched her to fullness and his arousal slicked her passage, allowing him to more precisely control both depth and speed.
She didn’t need a ring when she wore his marks like a troth.
Groaning, he commanded, “Give me your throat.”
Nadine turned her head obediently, and he sank his teeth into her on the next hard stroke, reaching out for her hand and caging her fingers beneath his as he branded her with his seed in this forest of ghosts, with the taste of her blood in his mouth like an unholy benediction.