“They’re pretty.” She had dropped to her knees, sitting at the very edge of the blanket’s edge, which she refused to look at. “But they look a little like they’ve been stained with blood.”
Cal took some sandwiches and a bottle of wine out of the backpack, arranging them in front of her. “Some people believe they house the spirits of the dead.”
“If that’s the case, there must be a lot of them here.”
“There are. Though, I never really thought about it that way. I suppose if there’s a forest that’s going to have its ghosts, it’d probably have to be this one.”
She hugged her knees, looking at the food. He nodded at it.
“I checked the ingredients myself. They’re perfectly safe.”
Nadine picked up a sandwich with a limp hand. “Because you care so much?”
“Sparrow.” He paused, frustrated, when the words for reassurance didn’t come. It was a particular cruelty, he thought, being denied the healing balm that would ease the pain of one’s own careless ability to wound. With a sigh, he twisted off the cork of the wine bottle and poured them each a full glass. “Here.”
Nadine took a long, deep drink, and then set the glass down roughly, spilling a bit of wine onto the topsoil. She unzipped her sweatshirt with the same carelessness, revealing the thin cotton dress that delineated her body with such clear precision that no imagination was required for mapping out the lush topography beneath it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking another drink of wine, longer than the first. “I’m just not hungry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He was transfixed by the sight of her in the sunlight, her mouth stained a dark berry from the wine. Before she could protest, or prostrate herself further, he got to his hands and knees, half-knocking her back. “Just kiss me.”
From their first kiss in the square, she had surprised him with her fierceness. Her kisses had teeth, her gentle nature buttressed by stark, unwavering loyalty. Hers would be a feral love, he thought, rolling her straining nipples beneath his thumbs before undoing her dress, grabbing fabric in large handfuls in his hunger for bare skin.
“I love this on you,” he breathed, tracing a finger down the line of her throat, and admiring how perfectly the lines of her body melded beneath the skin, like an utterly exquisite frieze of sunlight, shadow, and bone. “I think about that night all the time.”
She threw an arm over herself, covering her breasts. “Is this what you do in the woods?”
“Sometimes,” he responded.
He drew back to undo his own shirt buttons, before pulling it over his head. She was looking at his bared torso with unexpected heat.
“Women out here think I’m an animal.” He tossed the shirt aside, planting his hands on either side of her body. “They want me to fuck them like one, and I used to oblige, but that gets old as you get older. Especially knowing what you and I know.”
“You’re lonely?”
“That’s one word for it.” He looked at her arm. “Lift your skirt.”
She blushed as she reached awkwardly for the hem, rucking the fabric up to her thighs. He did not move, or offer to help, and the gentle friction of her body moving against his as she removed her underwear was such sweet torture that he would have let her toil longer if he weren’t already fit to burst.
With a rough sound too urgent to be a laugh, he tugged her panties the rest of the way down before gripping her hands in his and hoisting them over her head, drawing her as tautly as a bowstring. He kept her there, pinned beneath him, while he reached for his fly.
“I promised you wildflowers, Nadine. Maybe they’re not what you expected—but then, neither am I.” He gripped his cock loosely, watching her face. She was tense with anticipation, her eyes tracking every slow, deliberate stroke of his fist.
Exhaling roughly, he nudged himself against her, sliding through her slick folds until he met the warm, yielding core of her. On his knees with the sun gilding his eyes, and the treesspiraling above them like a green cathedral, fucking her felt like finding god.
A loud crack had her jolting against him. Cal bit back a curse as he was knocked free, bumping up against her inner thigh. In his surprise, he released her, and she reached down for her skirt, yanking it down to cover herself. “What was that?” she gasped. “It sounded big.”
“Probably a deer. This is the time of year when they birth their young. It makes them shy.” He recaptured her wrist and pressed it back against the ground. “Just like you.”
Her eyes swept the trees nervously. “Are you sure no one’s here?”
Cal knew he couldn’t promise that. This was his domain, this green church of the wilderness, but it was entirely possible that his father had had them followed.
Blood had spilled here before, but he had been younger, less tested.
“Relax,” he said instead. “You’re perfectly safe with me.” He laddered kisses down her ribs, over skin like raw velvet. “I’ll protect you.”
Her eyes slipped closed, her body lifting into his kiss as his lips closed over her nipple. He suckled hard enough to bruise before kissing his way to her other breast, roughing its rosy crest with his tongue in a slow, heated kiss, before giving it a hard bite that made her groan. Her fingers slid into his hair as he lavished his tender cruelty against her flesh, pain and pleasure strung like jeweled beads upon a chain.
