No wonder your sister kept you from us.He spread his fingers, watching the color in her face spill over her cheeks and across her nose.You poor fucking thing. You’re just begging for someone to eat you up.
Her hand trembled in his like she’d heard his thoughts. If he hadn’t been holding her closely, Cal suspected she might have pulled away purely out of instinct. But they were standing chest to chest, close enough that he could feel the pounding of her heart beneath her dress.
“Sorry,” she said, as she stumbled against him. Her hand twitched in his when he maneuvered her back into place. “I’m not very good at dancing.”
“Don’t apologize.”
She did look at him then, her eyes surprisingly intense. They weren’tjustgrey, he realized with a start; motes of teal speckled their depths and thin yellow bands ringed her pupils. When she blinked, the centers of her eyes seemed to expand until they swallowed up all of the other colors.
He smiled. “I like your dress.”
Nadine blushed. “I like your, uh, pin. Is that a crow?”
“It’s a raven.” He traced his fingers up the laced back of her dress and saw her straighten as if shocked. “So you’re Noelle’s little sister. Nadine, wasn’t it?” He swung her around easily, bringing their hands up as he dipped her back, pretending not to notice the jostling of her breasts beneath the satin drape. “She made it sound like you were still in play clothes.”
“Well, I’m not,” she said, in a voice more like the one she had used with her sister. “Clearly.”
“Clearly,” he agreed, and when she blushed again, she doomed herself. He ran his thumb along the edge of her hand, making her breath catch audibly as her nipples hardened. If the mere brush of skin on skin could undo her, Cal suspected that he could make this skittish, sensitive woman come to pieces if he took her to bed and showed her a bit of sweet torment.
He suddenly found himself wanting to do that very badly.
“Is that all she said about me?” She was restless, pulling at their hands as if to ensure that she still could. Was she staying in Argentum? he wondered. Or had she banished herself to the outer edges of the woods, giving herself plenty of space to retreat? “That I’m her little sister?”
Distracted, he pulled her back against his chest. “She also mentioned that your parents were dead and that she often feels lonely.”
A loneliness his brother took great care to remedy nightly, he did not add.
Nadine flinched and Cal relaxed his grip, holding her more decorously than he wanted. She relaxed an inch, soothed but cautious as he smoothed his fingers over her knuckles.
“Will you be staying with us as well?”
“N-no.” Her eyes flicked to their joined hands and then away. “I live with my aunt in Pineview. I’m finishing college up, um, right now actually. It’s my last year.”
That put her around twenty-one. Seven years his junior. He opened his mouth to ask again where she was staying, but was interrupted by a sudden flurry of wings. It was one of the little orange fox sparrows that lived in the woods. Desperate to escape the raven following behind in close pursuit, the small bird propelled itself between them.
Cal yanked Nadine to the side as the raven spread its blue-black wings, launching into a predatory dive that drove them both apart. Its talons closed over the sparrow’s body, raising an agonized cry. Blood and feathers scattered. Several guests looked up in alarm, covering their heads.
“What wasthat?” Nadine gasped, staring up at the birds.
“A raven needs a sparrow.” Cal watched the larger bird subdue its prey before flying away with its limp prize as it let out a triumphant caw. “They thrive on them.”
Nadine gave him an odd look as the orchestra, which had paused briefly in the sudden clamor, began to play Passacaglia by Handel and Halvorsen.
“Caledon,” a woman called out, forcing him to turn his head. Recognizing one of his mother’s socially mobile society friends, he managed to affect a look of bland politeness as her manicured fingers closed around his arm. “I almost didn’t recognize you in that monkey suit.”
He glanced back just in time to see Nadine slipping away towards the bar. Towards his sister.
Who was watching him back. She winked before tilting her head towards Nadine and raising both her eyebrows and her drink in an elaborate pantomime that had his eyes narrowing.
“Howisyour mother?” the woman asked, forcing him to return his attention back to her elegantly made-up face, which couldn’t quite stand up to the broiling heat. His suit was beginning to feel rather claustrophobic, as well. “I haven’t heard from her inages. She sure keeps to herself.”
“She’s well,” he said. Or as well as she could be. May was never a good month for sparrows.
“You know, Cally—” her voice turned sly “—I have a daughter about your age.”
“And I’m sure she’s lovely.” He stepped back, quickly. “Excuse me.”
“I’ll tell Corrinne that the four of us ought to get lunch sometime,” she called after him. “You’d absolutelyadoreAlyssa. She’s just finished backpacking in Indonesia.”
