Chapter 3 Calder #2
End this. That’s what the family code demands. Yet my hands move differently. They smooth the quilt higher, tucking it around her like I have the right. There’s a tightness in my throat, wrenching tighter with each second, choking me with my own betrayal.
This quilt isn’t going to keep her warm enough. I ease it open and spot the blood on her clothes from our altercation in the house.
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath, then step away to dig through the trunk at the foot of the bed until I find a clean shirt—one of mine, soft cotton and worn.
Stalking into the bathroom, I pump the water pump, say a prayer for it not being frozen over in the well, and soak a rag in the basin.
I wring it out, return to her side, and kneel near her face. There’s blood smeared across her mouth, and her cheek, where I pressed too hard to silence her. It looks wrong on her. Like I’ve taken an angel and dipped her in sin.
I drag the cloth gently across her skin, wiping it away until her soft creamy face is clean.
She doesn’t stir, thankfully. Gently as I’m able with my calloused and scarred hands, I peel off her clothes, quickly, and efficiently, but damn do I feel every brush of her soft skin against my rough palms. She feels too good for the likes of me, but it doesn’t make me stop.
If anything, it makes me want to touch her more.
To explore places I know no other man has touched or seen before.
Before I act on my fantasies, I cover all that smooth skin in an old long-sleeved cotton shirt.
The hem swallows her thighs, sleeves hanging loose over her delicate wrists.
My scent clings to her now. She looks small in my clothes, claimed by cotton, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
I push her honey-blond hair away from her face and shake my head.
How we got here?
It’s funny, up until a year ago, Saint was just another girl in Black Hollow Creek to me.
I should’ve realized the kind of trouble she would become when I saved her after her fall, but I didn’t.
Our circles rarely crossed. My father did business with her father at the church, and I collected payment once a month.
Saint had just graduated from high school, she was young, innocent, sweet.
Even the year between the time I helped her to the hospital and her birthday I’d managed to brush her out of my mind.
She was nothing I was interested in. A child.
Then the night of her eighteenth birthday happened. For the first time I noticed her—not as the preacher’s daughter, not as some kid I’d seen around town—but as a woman.
I knew giving her a ride home was a bad idea but I couldn’t just leave her at The Rusty Nail.
When she climbed into my lap, and pressed her soft mouth against mine, she overtook me.
Her touch melted the ice inside me, it unlocked something in my chest that I wasn’t even aware had frozen over.
If I think about it long enough, I can still catch a hint of her sweet vanilla scent, can still feel the weight of her body when she moved against me—innocent and desperate, grinding herself down like she didn’t even understand what she was asking for.
Hell, I don’t even think she realized she’d done it. She definitely didn’t know how much that tiny offering undid me. More than any woman at the bar who’d tried to flirt with me.
I drag my thumb across the bare skin of her thigh, remembering how her core felt pressed to my cock, her breath hot against my cheek, and her eyes… Christ.
Wide and bright, shining with trust I hadn’t earned, with temptation she didn’t even know she carried.
I clamped down on her hips hard enough to leave marks, holding her still when every part of me wanted to drag her closer.
I wanted to see my finger prints indented in her creamy flesh, watch her face as she experienced pleasure for the first time, and feel the tight clench of her pussy as it choked my cock.
I even wanted to leave love bites on her throat so every fucker in this town knew she was mine. I wanted to ruin her softness, wanted to tear the innocence out of her and take it for myself. The hunger was violent, brutal, a need that scared me almost as much as it consumed me.
For a split second, I let her believe it. Hell I almost believed it myself. It was a damn miracle I stopped myself from taking her right then and there. It took every shred of restraint I had to push her away before I lost control.
I know I shattered her heart, cutting her with cruel words, hoping, thinking that would bury the moment. I wanted to forget her and wanted her to forget me. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t forget her. That kiss, that sound, the look in her eyes—it marked me.
A year later, I still burn for what I didn’t take.
I drag a hand down over my jaw, chest tight with anger and need now.
She made me betray my family.
She made me want, when wanting is weakness.
The memory of that night, of her soft creamy skin, reignites desires I’ve spent months trying to extinguish. A familiar ache presses against my zipper, its presence hard and demanding. Anger and lust swirl in my gut fighting for control. If only I could hate her.
Instead I’m weak for her, so fucking weak.
I reach for her before I can stop myself, my thumb dragging over the soft line of her cheek.
If she were awake right now, she wouldn’t let me touch her like this.
That thought unravels something ugly in me but doesn’t stop the desire from building.
An entire year of pretending I didn’t care.
I trail lower, down her throat, slow enough to feel her pulse against my fingertips, my eyes tracing a path to the hem of the T-shirt. The cotton does nothing to hide her from me. She’s wearing simple cotton panties and a bra beneath my shirt, and even that is too much.
Weak. She’s your weakness.
I pull my hand back like I’ve been burned and stagger away from the bed. The cabin feels too suddenly small, the walls closing in. I need distance. Space. Anything to break the magnetic pull she has on me even while she’s unconscious.
The bathroom is ice cold, the stone floor’s chill biting through my boots. I brace both hands on the edge of the sink basin, head hanging low, and force myself to breathe. It doesn’t help. She’s still there—in my head, under my skin, and wrapped in my shirt like she belongs to me.
My hand moves to my belt without conscious thought, undoing the buckle with fingers that shake from restraint, not hesitation. I shove my jeans down just enough to free my aching cock, and the relief is immediate and damning all at once.
Fuck, this is wrong. I know it. I just don’t give a fuck. I’m not a decent man—never have been, never will be. Maybe that’s why she wanted me in the first place. Perhaps she saw the monster and mistook it for something worth saving.
I wrap my hand around my length and groan, low and rough, the sound swallowed by the dark.
My other hand braces against the cold stone wall as I work myself with punishing strokes.
In my mind, she’s awake. Looking at me with those wide blue eyes—half fear, half something that looks a lot like need.
The image plays out in my mind, her beneath me, gasping my name.
Her small hands on my chest, her nails sinking into my skin leaving marks.
The fucking sounds she’d make when I touched her, when I finally claimed what I’ve been denying myself for a year.
Would she fight me? Claw and bite? Would she beg, voice breaking on my name?
Or would she go quiet, wide-eyed, lips trembling the way they did when she kissed me?
The thought tears through me, sharp as a blade.
I pump faster, harder, my breath catching, jaw clenched so tight it aches.
Every fantasy is a betrayal—of her innocence, of the line I shouldn’t cross.
Doesn’t matter. I’m so far gone that whatever moral line existed has been obliterated.
I’m tempted to go out there and touch her, but I stop myself.
It might not stop at touching, and while I’m a bad person, I draw the line at rape.
I glance out the door, my gaze catching on the line of her slim but muscular thigh, the curve of her cunt under her white panties.
What would it be like to see her virgin blood on my cock?
Would she bleed a lot? A little?
Fuck. I grit my teeth against the tension in my balls.
Release hits me hard and sudden, violent in its intensity.
I grit my teeth as I spill into the basin, shoulders shaking with the force of it.
The beat of my heart hammers in my ears, followed by the ragged sound of my breathing, and for a second it’s bliss and nothing else.
Then reality barrels back into the room, reminding me of what a fucked-up situation this is. I clean up quickly, splashing icy water on my face, on my hands, washing away the evidence but not out of shame. No. Just to clean up.
A bitter thought twists inside me, sharp as glass: this is why I pushed you away. I tried to save you. Tried to keep you clear of me, of this life. Doesn’t matter. Guess God had other plans.
I layer her with a couple more blankets, then I stomp out to my truck to retrieve a pair of handcuffs. I have to stop her from escaping and this should do. I cuff her right wrist to the iron headboard, the click sharp in the silence.
Insurance. Not mercy.
“You’re a weakness. My weakness,” I rasp, my voice raw with anger and disappointment. “I can’t afford to keep you, but I also can’t afford to kill you.”
On the small dining table are paper and pen.
I scribble down a note for her and place it on the nightstand beside the bed, along with a bottle of water and a protein bar.
She’s going to be raging mad when she wakes up, as she should be, but I’d rather face her rage than see her eyes shine with tears.
After that, I build a big fire in the hearth, hoping it will last her until I can come back.
At the very least, she won’t be cold through the night.
Before I leave, I grab the bucket I usually use for ash and set it right next to the bed for her to use.
She won’t be able to use the toilet while she’s handcuffed.
I pause in the doorway, satisfied with myself and how I’m leaving her. She’s going to be okay. With one last look, I force myself out into the night, the cold mountain air burning like penance in my lungs.
Even as I drive away from the cabin, putting miles between us, there is no escaping the truth that clings to me like a shadow.
Saint is mine.
Completely.
In every way, shape, and form, and as fucked up as it is, there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that.