Chapter 17
C H A P T E R
S E V E N T E E N
bound to his infernal heart
The darkness of Ravensgate was absolute. In the absence of twinkling city lights, it reigned unchallenged, absorbing both sight and sound like a supermassive black hole.
Under the mantle of that very darkness, Cal lay in his sparrow’s bed, running his fingers through her hair as she slept, weaving the feather-soft strands into an idle plait before loosing it once more, over and over, until he wearied of the exercise and bent to kiss her throat.
How different would things be if she had come to him? If he’d had time to win her at his leisure like coaxing a shy creature from the trees, to give her some of the tenderness she craved?
Nadine stirred in response to his touch, her moan of protest going ravaged as she realized she was no longer alone. Turning to face him with a rustle of sheets, her breaths became unsteady. “It was you.” Her voice crackled. “You’ve been sneaking into my room.”
Cal let the words take substance, growing sharp and pointed like stalactites clinging to the mouth of a stubborn cave. “You say my name in your sleep.” He took his hand from her, resting it on his stomach instead. “Did you know that?”
“They weren’t good dreams.” She spoke defensively, clutching the sheets to her chest as if they could shield her from her own desires.
“Not ever?” He leaned forward again. “Not even the ones that leave you gasping?”
“They were nightmares,” she said, though she didn’t sound as certain this time.
“Well.”
Cal recaptured the lock of hair he’d been playing with, winding it around his finger. She shot upright, grazing him in the process, and her bare arm against his torso elicited a cascade of sensation that was like ice sliding down a parched throat.
“I’d rather be in your nightmares than not have you dream of me at all, Nadine.”
She didn’t reply, but she didn’t have to.
He knew the depths and flavors of her silences like he knew the cadence of her breaths and the tastes of her body.
He swung his leg over her thigh, kneeling astride her hips.
Clasping her fingers, bracketing flesh with bone, he pinned her hand to the bed with one hand, the other reaching into his pants to slide himself free.
A shudder tore through him as he slid into her familiar heat, and her hand gripped his involuntarily, nails biting into his knuckles the way they sometimes wore into his back. “I just want to make you feel good,” he rasped. “Let me do this for you, little sparrow.”
Let me give you all of me.
Her thighs squeezed his sides, urging him to a faster pace, the way she had in his clearing, but Cal took his time. It didn’t feel like there was enough of it lately to just—enjoy her. Slowly.
She fell asleep in his arms, one hand splayed over his bare chest. Her lashes were a fringed curtain, slightly darker than her hair.
Freckles spilled over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks in careless clusters, as if someone had thrown a pinch of cinnamon into her face.
As she was lost to sleep, her fingers stirred through the coarse hair dusting his pectorals.
The casual possession of the act sheared through him with a frisson, sharpening his lust.
It made him imagine a future where both of them were older, wrapped in nothing but each other and the afternoon breeze. It made him imagine . . . safety. Stability.
Love.
Suddenly painfully awake, Cal dragged himself away.
The festival was in two days. He did up the button of his shirt with fingers made cold and clumsy, robbed of their warmth despite the building humidity of the day that could swiftly make the interior rooms swelter like a greenhouse.
With a flash, he recalled the night that Nadine had run from him, skirting the edges of the woods so that their fronded shadows ghosted her fleeing form, like outstretched talons trying to snatch her back into the dark.
He could still taste the clean sweat beading on her skin when he bent his head to her neck, the desire that dripped like honey when he took her over his knee.
He had staked too much on her to lose.
Cal stepped out into the misty morning, taking a moment on the steps to breathe in.
Then he went to the garden to clip some of the hellebore.
Birds sang from the nearby trees, but the bronze animal castings were still and silent from their pedestals, their blind eyes watching him, unseeing, as he gathered the blossoms in gloved hands.
Thomas was still preparing that morning’s breakfast when Cal stepped in, dropping the flowers on the sideboard where his mother sometimes made arrangements. He looked at them with the same disdain that one might look at a rat.
I promised you flowers, he thought, watching the unsmiling butler begin to arrange the flowers in a crystal vase he’d fetched from one of the cupboards. I always keep my promises.
“I made a list of what she can have,” Cal told the man. “She’s to take all of her meals in her room. Don’t let her argue, and if she refuses, lock her in.”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas paused, then said, in a rare demonstration of overt editorializing, “Your father won’t like this.”
“Then don’t tell him. For both our sakes.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said again, and Cal fought the urge to correct him.
The foyer was quiet now. Even the sounds of Thomas’s domestic bustlings were muted through these solid timber walls.
It was a deceptive silence; like the stillness of a fairy ring linked below-ground by its mycorrhizal network, his family busied themselves somewhere deep within this house.
As Cal headed out to the carriage house, he saw a light in one of the upper-story windows flare to life, as if to signal his departure.
Some of the old signage still remained from the landslide, warnings now covered in dirt and mud.
He didn’t have to go all the way to the city this time, but the road to the Plata County courthouse was congested with the usual mid-morning traffic.
His father liked to tell people that they had saved this town, but its isolated nature stymied new growth.
How many of these cars held visitors for the festival? Every year, it seemed, the Running of the Deer’s numbers grew and grew, even as the population stayed relatively the same. His father tracked these metrics obsessively, eagerly, like a cat selecting from a pool of mice.
He dropped off the paperwork at the courthouse, deftly avoiding small talk with the bored clerk, and then drove to meet with one of his local clients.
They discussed wills and probate, his lips moving by rote, but his mind kept drifting back to The Unicorn Room and the woman he had left there, vulnerable and alone.
He really hoped she’d heeded his warning.
“Mr. Cullraven?” the elderly woman seated across from him looked at him with apprehension. He found he could not even recall her name. “Are you listening? You seem distracted.”
Cal forced his attention to return and gave her what he hoped was a pleasant smile. “I’m listening. Please continue.”
When he finally got home, the house was dark and his family was nowhere to be seen.
Smells of cooked meat still persisted in the halls, though, and when he went to the kitchen to get himself a tumbler for his rum, he could hear the clatter of the staff washing plates. Dinner must have just concluded.
Such menial drudgery, and yet—utterly necessary. All those backstairs and hidden hallways had been built to ensure that the house ran as seamlessly as a clock while the Cullraven family did their work.
It was true, what he had told Nadine. He had never approved of his family’s lingering claim to divine right.
On some level, he supposed he had even known that what his father and brother were doing was evil, but it was also what they had always done.
He’d never cared to see their traditions for what they really were until Nadine had spoken the truth out loud.
Because he did care for her, in spite of what she thought.
Her softness, her sadness, her bitter, wretched irony.
Every word that passed through her sweet lips unfailingly captured his attention, conjuring up yet another link in the chain bound to his infernal heart—he felt the pull of it even now, drawing him to her.
She might never love him, truly, after all the things he had shown to her, but he would chase the pale shadow of her affections to the ends of the earth.
Cal poured himself a stiff shot as he began to get undressed, but then his computer chimed with an email notification.
He turned to it with an exhausted sigh. Reaching for his laptop, he noticed it was vaguely off-center from where he’d left it last. Several other things, too, seemed out of place now that he looked more closely: the drawer was open as far as its lock would allow and his drapes appeared to have been disturbed.
Had the servants been in here cleaning or were his father and brother searching for more evidence of his treachery? His eyes went to the tapestry door but—no, his sparrow was hiding from him again, pretending at an icy fury that would only melt in her bed at night.
His typing grew faster as his agitation stoked higher and hotter, chair creaking beneath him as he leaned forward, assuming a predator’s crouch. He told himself he was displeased with the email he wasn’t reading from the client whose will he still had yet to review. But that wasn’t true.
As always, it came down to her.
He knocked back the shot, the first of what would probably be many, and then heard from the doorway a fluting, tremulous voice: “Daddy, I want to be your sparrow.”