The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t always close my eyes.”

  “You do.” Unrelenting. Cruel. And yet still his fingers remained tangled in her hair, stroking slowly, trailing tingles against her scalp. “In the alley, for one moment, your eyes were open—before you turned away, so you would not have to see. When I touched you, when you responded to me, you closed your eyes so you would not have to feel pleasure. When I enacted my penance, you closed your eyes so you would not have to see me suffer. And when I killed that man, you closed your eyes so you would not have to watch him die.”

  “Anyone would close their eyes to that!” she flared. “Who wants to just…wallow in suffering? In pain, in horror?”

  “But pain isn’t the only thing you close your eyes to.” The weight of him moving closer, shifting the sheets, pricked her with the breathless wariness of hunted prey. His fingers snared in her hair, trapping her; with each stroke he wound her hair tighter and tighter around his hand. “You close your eyes to things you want. Things you’re afraid to want.” And the possessive, silky stroke of his voice captured her as he leaned into her, his bare chest a thing of simmering stone against her arm, her shoulder, and breathed into her ear. “Who made you so frightened of your own body?”

  “No one!” She watched him from the corner of her eye, frozen. Her rapid breaths were too small, too tiny, too thin to fill her up. “You don’t know me!”

  “I know enough.” His fingers curled in the sheet. Her protection. Her shield. And slowly but insistently, he began dragging it down, the cool cloth kissing and stroking over her skin with every inch gained. “You close your eyes to your own desires.”

  “No.” She held tighter to the sheet. “I…I have no desires.”

  He made a husky sound low in his throat, then tore the sheet away. It slipped through her clutching fingers like water, and for one moment she was naked, exposed, cold in the prickle of air on every shivering inch of her skin before he replaced the sheet with his body: covering her, wrapped around her, his weight bearing her down to the bed. He tumbled her onto her back and slid astride her, covering her with his toned physique, crushing her underneath the inescapable pressure of everything he was and everything he promised to be.

  “Lying, firefly, is a sin.” He bent over her. His hair tumbled in a curtain around them, blocking off the light and trapping her in the dark with him, with the menace and promise and strange allure in that glowing, commanding fox-gold stare. “Close. Your. Eyes.”

  Don’t do it, the last vestiges of common sense inside her warned. But common sense was small and quiet in this dark space between them, with the strength of his thighs flanking her and something hard pressing against her belly through his jeans, something she realized was his cock and that hard pressure was for her. She swallowed thickly, fear curling tight in the pit of her stomach. Fear. That was all it had to be, and yet fear was a cold thing, a thing of ice that would melt if exposed to the heat of this trembling thing within her.

  Don’t, her last hope of rationality whispered again. Don’t.

  She closed her eyes.

  Priest’s voice washed over her in a physical sensation, a low groan of pleasure. His heat sank closer. His naked chest weighed against her naked breasts, and her nipples tightened with a deep ache that shot all the way down as skin met skin and his breaths drifted over her lips.

  “Firefly.”

  She trembled. She couldn’t breathe, tiny inhalations that did nothing but make her lightheaded and fill her with the scent of something musky and needy, every little panting breath cooling her lips and heightening their sensitivity until she was electroshock-aware of every hint of space vanishing between them. Every moment that brought him closer, closer, until his mouth hovered over hers and she couldn’t hold back a soft, nervous sound, her lips parting, wondering how it would feel, wondering if the taste of him would disgust her or drown her in something she could never escape.

  She waited for his touch. His kiss. But it never came, that warmth moving away from her mouth…only to descend on her jaw instead, landing like a butterfly made of flame. His lips skimmed along her skin, tracing as if mapping her contours through the contact. His cheek brushed hers, the graze of stubble rawly electric. Her breaths bottled up in her throat and she mewled low, struggling to hold herself still when she didn’t know what he was doing, what he wanted from her, how to respond. Especially when his mouth drifted down to her vulnerable throat, each touch of his lips coaxing her pulse into a wild and frenetic beat, sizzling over her skin.

  Then his lips parted. His teeth closed gently against her throat.

  And he bit down.

  Just enough for her to shiver as hard edges sank in to vulnerable flesh; just enough to torment her with the pressure of his teeth and the heat of his mouth and the roughness of his tongue; just enough to melt into the inherent dominance in capturing her like a mating beast and holding, sucking against the skin, pinning her flesh above and below the collar to remind her how subserviently she was bound. The sensation shot through her in a liquid burn, rolling through her veins, and she arched, gasping sharply, her hands fluttering up to tentatively curl against the breadth and strength of his shoulders, desperate for something to hold on to.

  “Priest,” she whispered shakily. She was so confused. Such a simple touch shouldn’t rock her so deeply, affect her so feverishly…should it?

  “Shh,” he soothed, and she hissed as even his breath caressed her, cooling the wet slickness against her throat. “Don’t be ashamed, firefly. You are so very sensitive…and it is so very beautiful.”

  “It’s not.” She shook her head. “It’s…it’s shameful and dirty.”

  “Dirty, yes. Shameful, no.” His knuckles grazed along her jaw. “It’s a gift, to have the capacity for such pleasure.” That touch trailed down, over her throat, her shoulder, down her arms. “Be soft for me, Willow. Save your strength to fight for your life…and do not fight this.”

  She didn’t know what he meant by this, not until his fingers curled around her wrist and lifted it over her head. He pressed her arm down into the pillow; something soft wrapped around her wrist; she snapped her eyes open, staring up at him with a roughly indrawn breath.

  “Wh-what are you—”

  “Hush.”

  She tilted her head back and watched as he wrapped a long strip of thick black ribbon around her wrist; he coiled it again and again, then reached to thread it through the bars of the bed. But when he caught her other wrist, she stiffened, looking up at him, her mouth dry.

  “Why?” she managed to say. “You already have me. Do you think I can run very far?”

  “It’s not about capturing you.” He touched her lips, tracing his fingers over their trembling curves, enticing her with a shimmer-flutter warmth in the pit of her stomach; his eyes lidded, watching her with a quiet, consuming focus. “It’s about showing you the pleasure in giving up control.”

  She licked her tingling lips, only to catch a taste of the salt of his fingertips; heat raced through her flesh, fire in her cheeks. “You took control away from me.”

  “There is control, and then there is control.” He leaned over her and reached to pull another coil of ribbon from the shelves built into the side of the headboard; he unspooled the ribbon between his fingers, drawing it taut. “I could take everything from you physically, and still you would maintain control over yourself so long as you choose to. So long as you choose to hold that part that belongs to you and only you.”

  Her eyes widened. “And you’re asking me to…to give that part up to you? Willingly?”

  “No.” He began to bind her other wrist. “I am asking you to open that part to yourself.”

  He tied off the knot, leaving her with her arms spread, exposed with her back arched and her breasts lifted and nothing between them but the rough denim of his jeans. Even that was too much: the sharp scratching texture against her hips and thighs and belly, the heat of him soaking through the cloth, and she was te
rrified to close her eyes again when it would leave her alone in the dark with every heightened sensation.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” she whispered.

  “If you die tomorrow, would you rather remember this time with pleasure, or with fear?”

  Cold betrayal shot through her—irrational, illogical, and she grit her teeth and jerked at the ribbons; their cool silkiness stroked her skin, but they refused to relinquish their hold. “If I die tomorrow, it’s because you killed me.”

  “A possibility. Not a certainty. And yet you want me still.” He toyed with the trailing end of one ribbon, flicking it against the underside of her arm in tickles that struck her as starkly as tiny bites. “Why? Do you hope to touch my emotions by letting me touch your flesh?”

  “I don’t want you,” she hissed. “And you don’t have emotions.”

  He stilled—that stillness that fell over him when she had hit on something inside him, a spark that might light a flame under what she hoped was some kind of emotion. Compassion. She would even take pity right now, if it would save her life.

  But that keen gaze held no pity. Nor did the touch of a coarse, broad, callused hand as it fell to rest in the center of her breastbone, fingers splayed, their tips barely grazing the upper curves of her breasts.

  “You do,” he said softly. “And I do.”

  Yet she wondered what emotion other than sadistic pleasure could be driving him, when he stroked over her chest, molded his hand over her breast, and kneaded, overflowing his fingers with the fullness of her until they sank into her flesh, rolling her nipple against his palm. She gasped out a cry as raw shocks tore through her each time that pressure dug in enough to stop short of pain, leaving only a dull, heated throbbing counteracted by the electric scrape of roughness against her nipple. With a whimper, she twisted, pulling on the ribbons, but only ended up caged and writhing against his body until, through his jeans, his cock dragged against her stomach and nudged up against her ribs.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he breathed, bending over her until his hair washed cool over her breasts and licked the tips of her nipples in teasing flicks.

  “This…this is sick,” she gasped, arching, only to cry out as he circled her nipple with his thumb, teasing at it with his thumbnail. “Twisted.”

  “Firefly,” he rumbled with a slow smile, lips curling into something dark and promising and hungry, “I happen to like it sick and twisted.”

  She started to snarl something at him. Snap at him to untie her, that she wasn’t like this, wasn’t a sick monster like him, didn’t want these shameful, dirty things.

  Then he dipped his head and took her nipple into his mouth, and she lost all ability to speak.

  Her self-control came unspooled as he toyed her nipple in little circles with his tongue, caught it in his teeth, drew on it with a suction that concentrated every point of sensation in her body down to that single heated bud of flesh. She struggled, jerking against her bindings, yet she didn’t know if she was trying to escape or so fucking lost she couldn’t hold still, her body crying out in protest of such pleasure, something so personal and intimate that it shouldn’t be for him and yet he coaxed it from her as if he knew her inside and out. He cupped her other breast, rolling and kneading it, and she whimpered, pleading, pleading for it to stop, pleading for it to never end.

  His pleased growl came out as an animal sound, vibrating against her flesh, as he shifted his weight and nudged his knee between her thighs, parting them until rough denim pressed against her folds and she tried to close her legs but he was in the way—too much, all of him too much for her when his bulk spread her so wide and left her exposed to that stroke, that pressure, that friction against slick flesh as he deliberately pushed against her. She pulsed as if he was pushing emptiness into her, hollowing her out with an awareness of that hunger that could never be sated, that painful sensation of contracting inner walls seeking to tighten around something that wasn’t there. Willow keened in the back of her throat, closing her eyes and turning her face away, pressing her overheated cheek into her upper arm, but she couldn’t escape the wildness rousing inside her, coaxed from its lifelong sleep by his weight, by his touch.

  “Oh—oh God—” Broken gasps, as she twisted her hip and tried to stop herself from rubbing against his knee, but it only made her want more. Her body wouldn’t listen to her, hips rocking, chasing another sharp, biting burst of pleasure that slithered itself under her skin and tightened her flesh. “Why…wh-why am I…”

  He released her nipple with one last gentle scrape of his teeth, one last flick of his tongue, before leaving cool air to sear and tighten on her skin. “Sometimes we find what we want in the strangest places.” His voice was pure sin, raw and hungry and rolling over her like dark molasses, swallowing her into its clinging heat. “All you have to do is tell me no.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Halos of light glowed around him, and she thought once again of Lucifer—and if he was Lucifer was she an angel, hovering on the verge of being tempted from heaven? What he offered her was damnation itself; if she gave in to this she would never be the same, fallen into the kind of needy, hot, hungry darkness that would make her a stranger to herself, the kind of desire that had always skulked around the edges of every moment when her clothing pulled too tight against her skin or someone brushed her in just the right way in passing and for a moment she wanted to…to…she didn’t know. She’d never known, not really, only that it was a full-body urge that made her yearn for something.

  Something Priest was offering her now, if only she would choose.

  “I…I…”

  Priest tilted his head, and skimmed his fingers down her body. Everywhere he touched sparked like a live wire, tightening and shivering, and she could have told the print of every whorl in his fingertips from their tattoo on her flesh; she sucked rushing, desperate breaths through her teeth as he ventured lower, lower, until his fingers threaded into the fire between her thighs and stroked in silky touches and found wet skin and heated folds. He seared her, tracing up and down, up and down, tormenting and taunting until her gasps turned into high, hitching cries that she could taste on her tongue, and they tasted like raw, impure lust. A sweet burn kindled in the pit of her stomach, and that emptiness howled, and her thighs trembled and spread for that touch that melted her to liquid everywhere he brushed.

  “Say no,” he insisted, breathy and rough—and then slipped two fingers inside her.

  “Priest!” she cried, arching off the bed. His fingers were so long, so thick, and they delved where none had ever touched before; she’d never known anything like the sensation of someone inside her, stroking her from within and twisting with a serpentine touch. The ridges of his knuckles, the rough abrasions on the tips of his fingers…they searched deeper than her body could possibly hold, reaching places full of trembling, vulnerable, terrible secrets that he laid bare and exposed with his every touch.

  “Say no, firefly,” he breathed, and even without opening her eyes she could tell he was watching her; those fox-gold eyes were as raw and intense as the touch of his fingers, and the force of his desire to consume her was a third presence in the bed, wrapping her body in a shroud of overstimulation. He thrust his fingers deeper—then took up a slow, hypnotic rhythm, sinking into her only to draw out…then in again and again and again, as inexorable and unstoppable as the tide, and just as hard to fight when she could only let herself be buoyed and carried and then dragged deep. “Open your eyes to what you want. Say no…or say yes. Make a choice.”

  She shook her head fiercely, then nearly screamed as his thumb pressed and circled and massaged against her clit, his fingers still working inside her until she was nothing but knots of pleasure twisting up one after the other after the other and binding her so tight. If she said yes, she was a dirty, dirty thing full of red, red fire; if she said yes she gave up control. But if she said no…

  If she said no, he would stop—and that
howling emptiness would never go away, that hunger so deep and so unsatisfied.

  “I…I can’t,” she whimpered.

  “Is your fear of what you have denied yourself so great?” He caught her nipple in his fingers, rolled, tugged, and that pulling sensation combined with that penetrating, rhythmic plunge to meet somewhere in the deepest center of her body and tear her to pieces. “Greater than your fear of me?”

  Something was different, on the next stroke of his fingers inside her. Something tighter, stretching her wider, and a spark of pain shot through her as he added a third finger. Harder he thrust, and oh God oh fuck she was so fucking wet but even that couldn’t make it hurt less, not when she’d never taken so much as a single finger before and she wasn’t ready but she was when every time his fingers sank in she clutched up tight inside as if trying to grapple on to him and keep him. The pain only made the pleasure more exquisite, and she lost herself in mewling, inarticulate cries, curling her toes in the sheets and fighting herself not to give in to the fluttering, tense sensation building hotter and hotter, tighter and tighter.

  “Have you always been this way? So sensitive. So responsive.” That silken voice mocked her, touched her, enveloped her in a compelling, seductive darkness. A touch more pressure biting down on her nipple, an added spice of pain, and she struggled to gasp in desperate, scouring breaths when her lungs didn’t want to work. “Or is this the accumulation of years of denial? How long have you been an ember smoldering within yourself, Willow? How long have you been fire, pretending to be ice?”

  She hated him. She hated how he knew her; how he saw through her, saw the years of desperation, how often she’d fought to keep from melting through the thin veneer of her own skin. And she struggled not to answer him, even as he seized her voice from her and pushed it into higher and higher cries that nearly became screams with each invasive rush of pleasure.