She cried out as he began feeding the papers into the fire. “No! What are you doing? Those are mine! She wrote those tome—”
“I’m doing this for your own good, little sparrow.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over her quiet sobs. The flames warmed his cold fingers through the grate. This felt like killing Noelle a second time, the blackening vellum even giving off the scent of burning hair.
Cal stood taller, locking his shoulders.
“I’ve grown rather fond of you, you know. And I know it hurts now—our kind of love always does. But I can still be gentle, even when I’m being cruel. Poor darling.”
“Fuckyou, Cal.”
“Yes, and you were very good at it.” He ran his hand over his bare chest and watched her follow his fingers. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m going to do to you now?”
Nadine didn’t respond but that was all right because he didn’t expect her to. Closing the fire cage, Cal brushed off his hands and approached her slowly, watching her grow stiffer and stiffer in her seat. Bracing herself—for what? Did his poor, tame little sparrow think he was going to take her out back and shoot her?
She belonged tohimnow.
She flinched when he knelt between her legs, bucking involuntarily. Meeting her eyes again, Cal leaned forward, his head bowing over her right shoulder as he reached around her waist to undo the knots binding her wrists.
She smelled like the outdoors, like soap and clean sweat, and something inherentlyher. He inhaled against her hair, breathing it in. Breathing her in. Wanting to fucking devour her.
Nadine sprang out of the chair—but he had been anticipating that, too. With a low sound of reproof, he dragged her back into her seat and kissed her, punishingly. She was breathing hard through her nose, keeping her lips pressed tightly together against the tender assault of his kiss, and the nudge of his tongue against the seams of her mouth. There was a small vibration in her throat, where his hand was cradling the underside of her jaw: from the look on her tortured face, whatever noise she was making was a far throw from approval.
Cal knotted his fingers in her long, wavy hair, until he had a generous loop wrapped around his knuckles to use as a lead. Tugging from the base of her scalp, he tilted her face up towards his, baring the pale expanse of her throat. “Kiss me back.”
“Fuck you,” she said again, keeping her mouth movements as small as possible in a show of stubbornness he quite admired. “You’re just going to kill me anyway. Just like Ben killed Noelle.”
“I don’t want to kill you.” He brushed his mouth along her trembling lips, giving the lower one a slight tug. “I want to keep you. Would you like to be my sparrow, Nadine? All you would have to do is submit to me, fuck me—love me. And in return, I’d take care of you. Forever.”
A sliver of eye appeared. Tears trailed down her cheeks when he took his hands away, resting them just over the small of her back through the barrier of the wooden chair.
They were close enough for their bodies to touch. He could feel the heat from her thighs, where they rested on either side of his ribs. And no matter how stiffly she held herself or triedto duck her shoulders, her worn shirt was ungenerous in its modesty.
“You’re a monster,” she said. “You’re all monsters.”
Cal made a soft sound and her eyes flashed up at him with a resignation he knew better than to mistake for surrender. She would fight him and he would let her, and when she was beaten, he would hold her close and let her imagine herself victorious in her resistance before taking her apart.
“If you’re going to force me,” she said, “just get it over with.”
“Force you to do what?”
She set her jaw and kept her eyes averted.
“I see.” Cal caressed her jaw, allowing her a small flinch before firming his touch and bringing their faces level. Tracing her chin and the stubborn jut of her lip, he murmured, “I think I’d rather have you beg me for it.”
“No.” With a suddenness that surprised him, she spilled over the back of the chair, stumbling backwards as she struggled to right herself. “You can’t make me do that for you again.”
Cal got to his feet, brushing off his jeans. “Can’t I?”
She looked up at him with horror and this time, it was clear what she was imagining. Chagrined, he sat on the edge of her mattress, tracing his mother’s embroidery as he had so many times before, imagining her careful hand before her softness was crushed to impotence.
“You can choose how I have you,” he said, “just like how you can choose to be my sparrow. But all roads lead to me, darling, so I really do suggest you make the right choice. You won’t get a better ally than me in this house.”
Nadine stood frozen in the center of the room beneath the windrose. The open window stirred a lock of hair across her throat in a gesture that seemed premonitory and threatening.
Straightening, he gave her a thin smile, not quite inviting. The one he wore in court. “I promise I won’t think less of you for giving in to me.”
She looked at the door and Cal tensed, digging his fingers into the mattress as he prepared to spring. The creak of his weight shifting had her whipping back around.
“You won’t h-hurt me.” It sounded like a question.
