Chapter 17 #2
The words could have been cobbled from the wants he denied himself even from within the hostile architecture of his own imagination.
Hearing them spoken aloud, by her, was temptation itself, and temporarily robbed him of speech.
He could only stare as desire raced through him like a voracious wildfire, scorching from within.
She was wearing an oversized flannel shirt, left open at the throat.
Her gold necklace gleamed at her collarbones, drawing the eye.
On her fuller figure, the fabric rode high, just grazing the tops of her thighs.
Her long legs were completely bare, her knees bruised from their tumble in the glade.
When she shifted her weight, he caught a glimpse of white panties.
She gripped the hem with her nervous fingers, molding the fabric to her body.
“You’re drunk,” he said, recognizing the flush in her face and the way she was swaying on her feet.
A better man would have taken her to bed and left her there, but Cal stayed where he was, leaning back in his chair.
Bites trailed down her throat like falling petals.
He could just make out the edge of one he’d left on her breast.
She gave him a look that raked him the same way her fingers did, and had his cock throbbing when her gaze lingered on his spread thighs and the unmistakable tenting of his fly. “I thought it might be better,” she said, just above a whisper.
“Oh?” His voice was calm, but only just; the promise of satisfaction gave his elocution the bladed edge of tempered steel. “What would be better, Nadine?”
She bit her lip, meeting his eyes again. “When you chase me.”
His pulse accelerated, charging like a rampaging bull—he could hear the roar of it in his ears, feel it in the warmth that gripped him low in his belly like a hand that had gone tight-fisted with need. It was desire that bordered on pain and he craved it more than anything.
The leather armrest beneath his fingers was as supple as skin yielding to a bruise.
She watched his hands on the chair and a tendon in her throat jumped as he flexed his fingers deliberately.
Beneath her shirt, her chest rose and fell rapidly, making her gold necklace flash and gleam in the dim light of his bedroom.
“You want me to chase you, little sparrow?” She took a step back, just one, and Cal lifted from his chair, shifting his weight to his heels as he readied himself to spring. “But what if I want to do more than that?”
He was on his feet almost before she started to run—but she did run, shirt riding up to expose her backside, covered by the skimpy cotton panties that he’d already decided to rip off of her.
She flew through the small hallway like a dart, with a speed that would have been impressive if it weren’t keeping him from what he wanted.
She tried to shove the door on her side closed, but Cal flung it open with one shoulder, sending her stumbling backwards from the force, arms pinwheeling. Another button loosened on her shirt and she clutched it closed as she edged back, her face alight with erotic terror.
Cal let her get as far as the door before springing again, gripping her by her thick waist and hoisting her up, over the bar of his arm, leveraging one hand under her substantial backside.
Her body jiggled beneath the flannel and he could already feel her heat.
With a growl, he adjusted his grip and she let out a gasping little scream as he let her spill backwards into a bridal carry, exposing an obscene amount of cleavage.
Her necklace swung back to smack her in the cheek, making her blink, as if stunned.
“You know what I want from you,” he said.
“Everything,” she panted, resigned, breathless.
His smile was all teeth. When he set her back down on her feet, she swayed again, holding onto him for support. He kept his hand at the small of her back, even as he nipped at her deliberately with his feet to herd her to where he wanted her now—
Her bed.
Cal crushed his mouth against hers and felt the small, rippling vibration of her moan.
Her fingers gouged into his shoulders as he slid one large hand into her open shirt, cupping a breast. He felt her breathing quicken in harsh puffs as he rolled her nipple between his fingers before using the sharp point of his knuckles to press against one of his bites. Hard.
She gasped again, arching into him until her hips were molded against his jutting erection.
He thrust in response, grinding his hips against her until he could feel how soaked she was, even through their clothes.
Breathless himself now, Cal took his hand out of her blouse and ripped at his fly.
Then he yanked her flimsy cotton panties to the side so urgently that fabric tore as he notched himself against her dripping cunt, before sliding home.
Nadine hitched her thighs around his waist, pulling him deeper as he entered her—slowly, much more slowly than he needed, wanting to make this a proper claiming.
She milked him with each delicate contraction of muscle, squeezing his buttocks on every thrust with those long, endless legs, as if spurring him on to an even more efficient form of brutality.
Greedy sparrow, he thought, approvingly.
What a little hellcat. He bit her through the shirt, teeth sinking into fabric into skin.
She yipped, head falling back when he ripped her panties the rest of the way off so he could fuck her without resistance, breathing so roughly against her shoulder that he felt the condensation from his own breaths beading on his face.
Fuck, the things she did to him—the things she made him feel—
It will never be this way with anyone else, he thought. My poor sweet love.
Nadine looked up at him with a dazed, desirous expression as he pulled out, his cock slick and glistening.
He pushed her back against the bed, taking in the sight of her: lips swollen, chest flushed and heaving, pearlescent streaks of come branding her slit and thighs.
He fell against her, bracing himself against his forearms, sliding through her wetness to glide down from her cunt to her perineum—all the way down to her anus.
She clenched instinctively as she understood what he wanted, the fear returning.
“I want you this way.” His voice was unrecognizable, ringing with the ease of possession that had long since eluded him in this heavy house of death. “I want you every way. Even if it hurts. That’s what it means to be a sparrow, Nadine. It means submission—and surrender. To me.”
Her fingers dug into the sheets, bunching them.
He thought she might refuse, as Noelle had refused her husband, forcing him to confront the fact that he would rather see the back of her than hold her forever in lifeless eternity.
But then she pushed back, lifting her hips to accept him: a silent, unspoken offering of her willingness to be sacrificed.
That was the moment that he become completely, unequivocally hers.
Cal growled again and pushed, spearing her open on his cock. She whimpered loudly, cords of muscle standing out in stark relief as her body twisted beneath his. It sounded like pain. It probably was. But she gasped out, “I’m yours, Daddy.”
He kissed her, feverish, parched by the sort of desire that could only be quenched with satisfaction.
She struggled to match his pace, his ardor, his eagerness, fucking him like it would be the last time.
She had never been such an active participant in their coupling and it gave their union a doomed and desperate intensity that threatened to subsume him whole as her body rocked beneath his.
He reached between them to rub her clit and she bucked into his next thrust, the small gesture causing him to bottom out. Cal stilled, his stomach tensed against hers, savoring the feel of her stretched to fullness, the tremors of her body like rippling aftershocks.
Nadine sobbed when he pulled out this time, scratching him so deeply that he pictured his skin coming unseamed in long furrows, revealing garnet beads of blood.
It had the feeling of a ritual and as he took his brave, beautiful sparrow and made her his in every way that mattered, Cal thought he might have finally gotten a glimpse of what had driven his great-grandfather for all those years of brutal rapacity.
In each violent conquest, he must have been searching for something that had even a fleeting taste of this gifted surrender.
“Cal,” she cried against his mouth. “Daddy. Please.”
His kiss was a siege of gentleness, a tangled meeting of teeth and tongues.
He pulled the collar of her shirt aside to admire the marks he’d left, smoothing his thumb over the yellowed edge of a bruise blooming at her throat.
“You’re all mine,” he told her, with no small amount of satisfaction, and she tilted her head, offering the unmarked side of her neck.
He would have given her anything, then.
Even his heart, pulled bloody from his chest.
He came inside her with a fury that left both of them panting against the sheets like survivors of a disaster. Cal collapsed on top of her, cradling her head in his arms. She let him, her eyes slipping closed into something too wary to be sleep.
When he was able to force his passions back into retreat, Cal pulled on his pants and went to get her a glass of water and a warm towel.
She was still there when he came back, lying unmoving as he cleaned between and around her thighs, propped up on one arm to watch him with a guarded, curious expression.
“You’ve never been more beautiful,” he told her, as he tossed the soiled cloth into the wastebasket and rejoined her on the bed.
His weight dipped the mattress and rolled her against him, where she nestled easily into the crook of his arm.
She leaned across him to set the glass on the nightstand, wincing a little as she did.
He was sorry for that. But part of him—the darker, wicked part—was pleased to see the effects of his claim asserting themselves so visibly.
She toyed with her necklace. “Am I a sparrow?”
“You’re my sparrow,” he confirmed. He leaned forward, resting his chin on the crown of her head. Her hair still smelled sweet. “My sweet little sparrow. I would have chosen you that first day if you hadn’t run away. But I enjoyed trying to catch you.”
Nadine nodded and sank back against him the way she used to do only in the dark. Her shirt still gaped open and he buttoned it tenderly, recentering her necklace in the hollow of her throat, which elicited a sleepy little hum of contentment.
The festival was tomorrow and she had chosen—
Not the knife, but him.