He heard a subtle creak, just barely audible over the drum of rain against the glass, their commingled breathing, and Nadine’s soft moans.
Cal turned his head, braced on his forearms and knees, and noticed with narrowed eyes that the door to the library was now open. Another bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, throwing the shadows into relief, and just before the darkness flooded back in, he caught a glimpse of a departing silhouette fading back into the gloom like a melting shadow.
And then Nadine’s fingers skirted along his nape.
He grabbed her hand—but not fast enough. He felt the sting of sweat in the wound just as her eyes met his, wide, shocked, and very, very afraid.
“Oh my god.” Her wrist went limp in his grip. “Oh my god.”
“Nadine—”
“You were in the mine.” She began to struggle, like a butterfly in its death throes, trapped in a cyanide jar. “You fucking bit me!”
“Fuck.”
“Get off me!” She began to beat at his chest with her fists. “Getoffme!”
“Be quiet, Nadine.”
“Fuckyou,” she shrieked.
“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? Yousick fuck.” The vicious words splintered into a wet sob. “Let me go, you bastard, or I’ll scream the whole house down.”
A chill iced his spine at the thought of Nadine being dragged from him as Noelle had. “Yes. Do that, Nadine. Find out what happens to little sparrows who don’t heed the shadows when theravens start circling.” He glanced at the path his brother had taken, a dark note entering his voice. “It’s a fine thing to do if you don’t care for your neck.”
She clapped her hand over where he’d bitten her. His come was cooling where they were still joined. “Fuckyour sparrows. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go to the police.”
Cal leaned back, eyes on her face as he slid out of her slowly. Deliberately. But she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He had claimed her, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. With a rueful grimace, he tucked himself back into his pants. “You’ll die.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” She scooted back on her arms as he leaned towards her—not for her, but for his beveled glass, which she rebuffed with a violent shake of her head when he offered it to her first. Cal took a deep drink. “You’ll die. Is that what you want, Nadine?”
Her eyes were huge. She stared at him, her chest still heaving, until she realized that was where he was looking, and then she covered herself with a furious gasp.
“It isn’t what I want.” Cal took another drink as she dressed herself. Her fingers were trembling so badly that she stumbled over the buttons of her dress. Several thoughts seemed to be going through her mind, but she was trying to hide them from him.
A line in her jaw tightened and she glanced down, the tenseness fracturing into despair. “Can you take me to the drugstore? Please?”
Thinking of the rockslide, Cal answered, immediately, “No.”
“But you didn’t use protection,” she protested. “What if I get pregnant. What if I—”
Her voice died in the gloom.
“You want that,” she said, covering her stomach. She looked . . . sickened. That tore at him. He’d been wrong. She hated him, hated this. She would never forgive him.
Cal turned back to his drink. “I said I didn’t sleep with sparrows,” he said quietly.
He felt the pain before he’d fully registered that she’d struck him. It wasn’t a hard blow—he’d suffered worse—but he had not been expecting it, and caught the full force of her slap on his jaw. He felt the kiss of wetness through his pants and realized his drink had spilled, soaking into the fabric.
When his eyes narrowed, she cowered as the first Cullraven bride likely had. Backing off the couch until there was nowhere left to back as if he were a wild animal she couldn’t bear to take her eyes from. He saw her tip, and struggle to right herself as she stumbled like a newborn foal across the slippery parquet floor.
She flinched when he raised his glass to his lips and downed the rest.
“I thought youlikedme,” she sobbed.
