(eventually I’m going to get tired of letting you run)
“Nadine—”
“You were in the mine.” She began to struggle beneath him, pinned at the hips by his slowly softening cock. It was like being suffocated; she could not breathe. He was still inside her and she couldnot breathe. “You fucking bit me.”
“Fuck.” His fingers bit into her wrist so hard she felt pain.
“Get off me! Getoffme!”
“Be quiet, Nadine.”
“Fuckyou.”
“You don’t understand what you’re fucking dealing with,” he hissed.
“You’re right, I don’t understand. Is this what you like to do in those woods, Cal? Knock girls unconscious so they can’t fight back and then bite andrapethem? Yousickfuck.” She shuddered again, as a sob ripped through her. “Let me go, you bastard, or I’ll scream the whole house down.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was bitter. “Do that, Nadine. Find out what happens to little sparrows who don’t heed the shadows when the ravens start circling. It’s a fine thing to do if you don’t care for your neck.”
“Fuckyour sparrows,” she cried. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go to the police.”
Cal leaned back from her, and she felt the slickness of what they’d done trickle down her thighs, already cooling. He tucked himself back into his pants. “You’ll die.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He leaned over her—which made her back away despite the sharp twinge in her belly—to pick up his shot glass, which she violently refused after he held it out to her first. Shrugging, he took a deep drink, eyes fluttering in a way that reminded her of a hypnotized serpent. “You’ll die. Is that what you want, Nadine?”
Nadine stared at him. He stared back, emptily, and then his eyes dropped to her open shirt. To her heaving chest.
“It isn’t whatIwant.”
She looked away and began buttoning up her shirt as fast as she could, not even noticing that some of the buttons were crooked or missing. In her periphery, she saw him take another drink as he watched her dress.
Die, she thought, fingers trembling.Does that mean he’s going to kill me?
Cal looked . . . resigned. As if he’d already accepted whatever fate he’d condemned her to, and no amount of pleading could turn him from it now.
Fear twisted a cold knot in her stomach.
“Can you at least take me to the drugstore?” she asked, near tears now. “Please?”
“No.” He didn’t sound happy about it, and if she had been slightly less devastated, she might have recognized that. But she was, so she didn’t. All she could hear was her own panic.
“But you didn’t use protection. What if I get pregnant? What if I—”
She broke off at the dark, speculative look on his face.
“Youwantthat,” she whispered, appalled.
“I said I didn’t sleep with sparrows,” he said wearily.
She slapped him. She slapped him hard enough that some of his drink sloshed over the edge of his glass and spattered his pants.
Cal glanced at her and then took another drink of what remained in the glass. The movement made her flinch, even though he’d never hit her.
Hehadhurt her, though, several times. Badly.
Her sore cunt throbbed a little, like a reminder.
