“I would come to you, little sparrow.” Tracing the plush swell of her lower lip, he whispered, “Would you want me to?”
Animals would sometimes play dead in the wild to escape a predator. It was called thanatosis, or tonic immobility: a preternatural stillness designed to make their would-be hunter lose interest. As he continued his gentle caress, Nadine stood as still and frozen as a statue.
“You’re shaking.” He leaned closer and felt her jerk involuntarily. “Just like a little bird.”
It was her eyes that were her undoing; they were large and dark, the pupils blown out with the wanting she could not quite bring herself to deny. It was her eyes that made him bend to kiss her, seizing her mouth the way he had in the square. He lowered his hands to her hips and filled them with woman and fabric alike, moving up her torso in a heavy dragging motion until smooth silken skin yielded to rough lace beneath his callused palms.
He pinched her nipple, which made her yip, so he did it again—harder—before flipping the cup of her bra down and exposing her breast. Then he gave it a squeeze, rolling his thumb over its center in a hard circle that made her moan into his mouth.
Cal heard a growl leave his throat, low and possessive. That was apparently too much for her. Her desire morphed into panic when he caged her against those exposed beams, using his larger frame to keep her pinned.Poor sparrow. He capturedher mouth, biting at her lip as he exposed her other breast, shuddering at the textured feel of her in his hand.
He didn’t want to release any part of her body, but he made himself take his hand away so he could yank down his zipper. It was like a releasing a pressure valve; he groaned, bringing her hand to the weeping crown of his swollen cock and folding her fingers over his throbbing flesh. She stared at him, fear and confused desire in her eyes. With her blouse pushed up and her bra tugged down and her lips puffy and red from his teeth and his beard, she looked—ravished, his brain supplied.
“That’s all because of you.” He thrust, grinding his hips into her loose grip in what felt like a shallow mockery of the friction he craved. “Still want to torture me, Nadine?” Another thrust, harder this time. This one brought them chest to chest, close enough to feel the warmth of her bare breasts against his thin dress shirt. “I might have some suggestions.”
Nadine twitched, tightening her grip on him, and Cal exhaled harshly as her fingers rubbed over his extremely sensitive cockhead. It was as if she’d set off flares beneath his skin: white-hot bursts of heat sparked in his belly, behind his eyes.Yes, he thought, nearly delirious with pleasure.Do that.Touch me. Excite me. Give me the fight that I crave.
“I—” Nadine’s eyes tore away from her hand and went to his. She was shaking in a way that he could feel but she couldn’t seem to find the words she wanted.
That was unfortunate. He wanted her talking—begging for his mouth on those eager little nipples, screaming his name as he claimed her inch by inch, hole by hole. They could find out together how deeply he could take her when she sat astride him, her heart beating for him. Her lips shaping each pleasured sigh. His in every way, from come to breath to blood.
Nadine shook herself, melting beneath his arm before he could close his hands over her again and drag her to bed. Then she was pulling her clothes back into place with frantic movements that might have been entertaining if he weren’t standing there with his cock out and throbbing like an open wound.
He tucked himself back into his pants with a labored sigh and she darted a quick, unhappy look at him. He recognized that look—she’d looked at him that way in the car, just before she’d begun to cry. It had moved him to comfort then; it softened his ire now, even as his skin felt pricked by small dots of fire that turned every graze of clothing against his skin into a constellation of agony. Returning her gaze, he said in an effortfully level tone, “Eventually, I’m going to get tired of letting you run.”
Nadine pushed her hair out of her face. “I’m sorry you thought I wanted that.” She swallowed, visibly trying to compose herself. “And now, I’d, ah, l-like to see the garden.” She gave him another look. “Please.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” He brushed the dust from his clothes, sending plumes of it rising up like smoke into the shadows. “I suppose I did promise to behave. More fool I.”
Her discomfort was palpable as they left the little hall, using her room to get back to the main corridor. Her eyes kept going to him, like he was a meter she didn’t fully trust to explode. Did she think he was angry with her? He wasn’t. Disappointment was part of every hunt, after all. It just made the final conquest all the more satisfying.
They went by his father’s rooms and her head inclined towards it. When his parents weren’t out making rounds with their various social sets, his father spent the evenings in his room or his mother’s. He had told Nadine this, hoping to puther at ease, but as they went past the parlor, filled with its many trophies of the wood, his father wasthere, leisurely turning the pages of a newspaper that Cal recognized immediately as the Plata County Times.
“Taking her out into the woods, are you?” he remarked, shifting the paper with a crackle.
“No,” said Cal. “The garden, actually.”
“Just don’t let her get away from you.” His father noisily turned another page, making Nadine flinch. “She’s a quick little thing. You should have seen her run last night.”
It was the worst thing she could have done, so of course she’d done that.
Cal nudged her towards the picture hall, which opened out into the solarium. “Through here,” he said, coolly authoritative, doing his best to ignore his father, who was watching them closely.
“I expect I’ll see you at dinner,” he said. “You are family, after all.”
And there’s more than enough blood to bind us all, isn’t there, Father?
The solarium was a cruel joke, built in the darkest part of the house and shaded by the tall redwoods. His mother had given up tending any plants here long ago and Odessa’s few attempts at nuturance were withered limply over the sides of their expensive pots as if they had died trying to crawl free from their respective prisons.
“What was that about?” Nadine asked.
“Nothing.”
“It didn’tsoundlike nothing.”
“My parents are very old-fashioned. When we bring women to this place—” he paused, considering his words carefully. “—it gives them certain expectations.” He looked at Odessa’s decaying pothos, starved of love and life. “My father is very eager for me to settle down,” he lied.
“And you don’t want to?” There was a little inflection in her voice, which she was usually careful to limit. She was trying to hide her interest and not doing a very good job.
