A shudder tore through him as he slid into her familiar heat, and her hand gripped his involuntarily, nails biting into his knuckles the way they sometimes wore into his back. “I just want to make you feel good,” he rasped. “Let me do this for you, little sparrow.”
Let me give you all of me.
Her thighs squeezed his sides, urging him to a faster pace, the way she had in his clearing, but Cal took his time. It didn’t feel like there was enough of it lately to just—enjoy her. Slowly.
She fell asleep in his arms, one hand splayed over his bare chest. Her lashes were a fringed curtain, slightly darker than her hair. Freckles spilled over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks in careless clusters, as if someone had thrown a pinch of cinnamon into her face. As she was lost to sleep, her fingers stirred through the coarse hair dusting his pectorals. Thecasual possession of the act sheared through him with a frisson, sharpening his lust.
It made him imagine a future where both of them were older, wrapped in nothing but each other and the afternoon breeze. It made him imagine . . . safety. Stability.
Love.
Suddenly painfully awake, Cal dragged himself away.
The festival was in two days. He did up the button of his shirt with fingers made cold and clumsy, robbed of their warmth despite the building humidity of the day that could swiftly make the interior rooms swelter like a greenhouse.
With a flash, he recalled the night that Nadine had run from him, skirting the edges of the woods so that their fronded shadows ghosted her fleeing form, like outstretched talons trying to snatch her back into the dark. He could still taste the clean sweat beading on her skin when he bent his head to her neck, the desire that dripped like honey when he took her over his knee.
He had staked too much on her to lose.
Cal stepped out into the misty morning, taking a moment on the steps to breathe in. Then he went to the garden to clip some of the hellebore. Birds sang from the nearby trees, but the bronze animal castings were still and silent from their pedestals, their blind eyes watching him, unseeing, as he gathered the blossoms in gloved hands.
Thomas was still preparing that morning’s breakfast when Cal stepped in, dropping the flowers on the sideboard where his mother sometimes made arrangements. He looked at them with the same disdain that one might look at a rat.
I promised you flowers, he thought, watching the unsmiling butler begin to arrange the flowers in a crystal vase he’d fetched from one of the cupboards.I always keep my promises.
“I made a list of what she can have,” Cal told the man. “She’s to take all of her meals in her room. Don’t let her argue, and if she refuses, lock her in.”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas paused, then said, in a rare demonstration of overt editorializing, “Your father won’t like this.”
“Then don’t tell him. For both our sakes.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said again, and Cal fought the urge to correct him.
The foyer was quiet now. Even the sounds of Thomas’s domestic bustlings were muted through these solid timber walls. It was a deceptive silence; like the stillness of a fairy ring linked below-ground by its mycorrhizal network, his family busied themselves somewhere deep within this house. As Cal headed out to the carriage house, he saw a light in one of the upper-story windows flare to life, as if to signal his departure.
Some of the old signage still remained from the landslide, warnings now covered in dirt and mud. He didn’t have to go all the way to the city this time, but the road to the Plata County courthouse was congested with the usual mid-morning traffic. His father liked to tell people that they had saved this town, but its isolated nature stymied new growth.
How many of these cars held visitors for the festival? Every year, it seemed, the Running of the Deer’s numbers grew and grew, even as the population stayed relatively the same. His father tracked these metrics obsessively, eagerly, like a cat selecting from a pool of mice.
He dropped off the paperwork at the courthouse, deftly avoiding small talk with the bored clerk, and then drove to meet with one of his local clients. They discussed wills and probate, his lips moving by rote, but his mind kept drifting back to The Unicorn Room and the woman he had left there, vulnerable and alone. He really hoped she’d heeded his warning.
“Mr. Cullraven?” the elderly woman seated across from him looked at him with apprehension. He found he could not even recall her name. “Are you listening? You seem distracted.”
Cal forced his attention to return and gave her what he hoped was a pleasant smile. “I’m listening. Please continue.”
When he finally got home, the house was dark and his family was nowhere to be seen. Smells of cooked meat still persisted in the halls, though, and when he went to the kitchen to get himself a tumbler for his rum, he could hear the clatter of the staff washing plates. Dinner must have just concluded.
Such menial drudgery, and yet—utterly necessary. All those backstairs and hidden hallways had been built to ensure that the house ran as seamlessly as a clock while the Cullraven family did their work.
It was true, what he had told Nadine. He had never approved of his family’s lingering claim to divine right. On some level, he supposed he had even known that what his father and brother were doing was evil, but it was also what they had always done. He’d never cared to see their traditions for what they really were until Nadine had spoken the truth out loud.
Because he did care for her, in spite of what she thought. Her softness, her sadness, her bitter, wretched irony. Every word that passed through her sweet lips unfailingly captured his attention, conjuring up yet another link in the chain bound tohis infernal heart—he felt the pull of it even now, drawing him to her.
She might never love him, truly, after all the things he had shown to her, but he would chase the pale shadow of her affections to the ends of the earth.
Cal poured himself a stiff shot as he began to get undressed, but then his computer chimed with an email notification. He turned to it with an exhausted sigh. Reaching for his laptop, he noticed it was vaguely off-center from where he’d left it last. Several other things, too, seemed out of place now that he looked more closely: the drawer was open as far as its lock would allow and his drapes appeared to have been disturbed.
Had the servants been in here cleaning or were his father and brother searching for more evidence of his treachery? His eyes went to the tapestry door but—no, his sparrow was hiding from him again, pretending at an icy fury that would only melt in her bed at night.
