Chapter Ten
Crow
The greenhouses were at the perfect temperature this afternoon, but I was checking the temperature and humidity in all of them anyway. I was fooling myself by saying I had to be careful with the plants so they would thrive for my next harvest. I knew the real reason I was checking things that didn’t need to be fucking checked.
Worthy.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He’d been perfect, slipping into flight with just my touch. I had loved every time he would moan or whimper. His voice was so fucking sexy. He’d reacted nicely to the sweet treatment at first, then the flogger had elicited an immediate and unmistakable reaction. I had wanted to flip the flogger just once to see what he’d do feeling that slightest little sting on his flesh. I’d resisted. I had a plan to seduce my little Worthy and was going to stick with it, no matter how tempting it might be. I knew he wanted what I did but now wasn’t the time.
It wasn’t the time, but I’d decided to push him just a little further than the flogger to see what he’d do. Miscalculation was something I rarely did, but I’d seriously miscalculated my reactions and almost pushed myself too far with my decision.
He’d reacted immediately to the feel of my knife on his skin. His dick had sat up like a puppy begging for a treat as my gaze followed my favorite serrated hunting knife slide over his pale skin. When I pushed the tip against his skin and pulled it down his body, that slight red line mimicked the line of blood I wished I’d left on him. The idea that he wanted it just as much as I did was almost more than I could resist. I was worried if I let my hand guide the blade into his skin now, I might not have wanted to stop. Worthy’s visceral reaction to my blade touching his skin had been my wildest fantasy come to life. I got lost in my ultimate fantasy in that moment. The chance to see his blood flow for me was such a soul-deep temptation, I was surprised I’d been able to step back and not cut him...yet.
That would have been a disaster.
While trimming some of my plants, moving pots from one greenhouse to another and checking the misting system, these mindless tasks allowed me to seriously think about what the fuck I was doing with this man asleep in my house. After two hours mulling the situation, I came to one conclusion.
I wanted him. Simple as that.
This was the answer to every wish I’d ever had. He was a good person, firmly on the white side of my moral scale. I was in no doubt about this. He had been through all kinds of hell in his short life, but he had prevailed. Strong-willed in everyday life but submissive to me, was a combination I found appealing. The fact that he craved blood and pain at my hands was the nail in his coffin. I wasn’t prepared to let him go. However, he was going to have to decide to stay here on his own. I wouldn’t imprison him. I wouldn’t be like his bastard cunt of an ex.
No, I was going to give Worthy everything he wanted. I’d seduce him with his needs and fulfill his desires to the point that he would never want to leave me. He would begin to understand life would be a hollow shell of loneliness without me and what I could give him. When I was done with him, Worthy would beg me to let him stay, and lay his life in my care voluntarily and without reservation.
That was my plan. Whether or not I was able to make it happen successfully would be my hardest job yet. I’d never failed in anything I set my mind to. I refused to let this be the first time I wasn’t successful.
Walking back to the house, I decided to let Worthy sleep for a while, then serve a good dinner and maybe have a movie night. I’d show him I could benormalwhen the circumstances called for it. Maybe I would serve wine with dinner, too. I loved the fuck out of a tipsy Worthy.
My hand was on the back doorknob when movement to my right caught my attention. Looking toward the woods, I saw a low limb on one of the fir trees swaying slightly. There was no wind today, the air was deathly still. I realized no birds were singing at the moment, not even the crows were making their croaks from the nearby trees.
I palmed my knife from the sheath on my belt and carefully but quickly walked toward the now still branch. I never had company here. No one but my colleagues knew where I lived, but there could always be a chance I’d been found somehow. Unlikely, but it could happen.
Once I got to the limb, I looked at the ground, checking for footprints in the thin grass. Seeing nothing, I moved the limb to check under the tree to see if there were any signs of a trespasser. Once I was completely under the tree, I let the limb move back out of my grasp, and it swayed as it had done a few minutes before. Whoever or whatever had moved it, would have moved it just like that. I had a very bad feeling about this situation.
It was going into late afternoon, and even though there was a good amount of light in the yard, under the thick canopy of fir trees, I was suddenly surrounded by the gloom of twilight. I stayed still, breath shallow and still as stone, and only allowed my eyes to scan the woods. Nothing was moving and there was still no noise from the wildlife. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t like this at all. Why was it so quiet?
A rush of wind suddenly blew past my arm accompanied by a loud cacophony of limbs breaking and leaves rustling from a thicket of brush behind me. I was ready in less than a second, raising my knife to either throw it or stab my attacker, but the attack never came. A massive buck flew past me, so close I felt the brush of his tawny hide on my bare arm before he rushed deeper into the woods and disappeared in the gloom.
Jesus.
I took a cleansing breath, then put my knife back into its sheath. The birds were starting to sing again farther in the distance, decreasing the ominous feel to the gloom from minutes before. The adrenaline was making me jumpy. In my profession, I’d learned to suppress the effects it had on my body, but this time, it hit me hard. Shaking off the feeling, I left the woods and returned to the house. My home was my safe haven. The thought that someone was watchingMYhome pissed me off.
Going through the motions of making dinner, I took out a nice sweet white wine from the wine cooler and opened it, gulping down a few swigs straight from the bottle. The jitters were hard to get rid of, once they took hold. Even though I kept looking out the back window, thinking I saw movement, I decided I was being paranoid because of Worthy being here and ignored it, chalking it up to the local animal population. I’d seen that buck before, grazing in the yard and down by the stream. Even with the back of my neck still tingling, telling me something was wrong, I ignored the warning and returned to making dinner. I only had one thought as I put the chicken in the oven, copious amounts of wine with dinner sounded like a great idea.
I had no idea that the decision to ignore my intuition would soon be a fatal mistake.
* * *
“I wantto try something else with you, Crow. You said I needed to ask...I’m asking.”
One week. It had been one week since I’d almost cut Worthy and had to pull myself back from that edge. We’d settled into an odd routine in the days following. We never talked about what I’d done or how he reacted. Dinner that night had been pleasant, and we’d watched a comedy to keep the mood light.
Worthy was a very intelligent man, so it was a pleasure just to sit and talk with him on my back porch or settled on the sofa at night. We talked about art, religion, politics, and the paranormal. Being an introvert myself, Worthy’s enthusiasm for his passions pulled me out of my shell where nothing or no one else ever had. Our conversations flowed from one subject to another, never finding silence or awkward moments. We settled into this comfortable friendship with only one unspoken rule. He never asked about my job, and I never asked him about his time with his ex.
He had a deep love for animals, and it took no time for Snow to be his constant companion. She still slept with me at night, but in the evenings, when we watched TV, she split her time between our laps. The odd thing was, I wasn’t even jealous. I thought it was adorable that my rescued kitten loved my rescued person. I wanted to pet them both and give them treats.
I had allowed Worthy to email Megan and tell her his phone broke, but he was fine. She seemed concerned about the phone, and then she wanted to know how the cottage was suiting him. He had to tell her he was traveling, but he was doing great. He emailed her several times a day for days in a row, and she started to be more comfortable with the situation. She made it known he should get his own computer or a new phone because she didn’t like him using coffee house computers, but his reassurances finally worked, and she let it go. With a final email to tell her he was going to go camping for a week or two to get his head straight, he said goodbye.
