The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  “Willow,” he gasped, hoarse and husky and demanding. “Fuck.”

  Then he caught her hair, dragged her back, pinned her in place, imprisoned her as he jarred her body down to her bones with one last vicious thrust.

  And, nearly blind with the madness of it, she came. Because of him. For him. For herself. For everything she had ever craved and denied. That craving was in her blood now, in her bones, and she was wholly a creature of its wants.

  And it rewarded her so sweetly, when she gave in.

  When she succumbed, and let herself bloom into exploding red flame.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IN HER HALF-CONSCIOUS DAZE, Willow was hardly aware of Priest untying her, then carefully removing the nipple clamps. The audio on the video cut off, leaving only silence and the ringing in her ears. She was so wrung out she could hardly stand to move her sore, muscle-locked limbs, and let him maneuver her like a doll as he stretched her out gently, kneaded his fingertips into her aching shoulders and calves and wrists, soothed her with soft whispers in Italian, words she couldn’t understand but that came close to lulling her from shock into sleep.

  But when he pulled the gag out, carefully slipping it past her teeth, she whimpered as her jaw strained and tried to lock; wincing, she worked it from side to side.

  “Carefully,” he said, and pressed his fingers to her mandible joints on either side, massaging gently. “Let yourself rest.”

  She opened her eyes and peered hazily up at him; through her lashes he glowed, a thing of sunfire and gold. She wanted to shout at him. To scream at him. But her mouth didn’t want to move, too tired, and she didn’t protest when he stretched out next to her, gathered her into his arms, and rested his chin to the top of her head.

  She was trembling. Trembling and broken, everything in her hollowed out to make room for the red, ravenous monster that had possessed her. She curled up and hid herself against him, burrowing into his chest. He was the one who’d done this to her—but he was the only shelter she had, and she would take what she could.

  “I’ve upset you again.” His voice was a soft thing, sighing over her hair. “I always seem to upset you when I challenge your preconceptions about yourself.”

  She couldn’t speak at first, several tries to force her uncooperative mouth to move, before she muttered, “It’s not your place to challenge me. You…you aren’t going to somehow awaken me like you’re some fucking grand sexual guide showing me my true place in the world. That shit is for books.”

  He made an amused, rumbling sound. “So it is. And yet is it so wrong of me to want to show you pleasure?”

  “You know exactly how warped this scenario is. Don’t ask me that.”

  “I won’t, then. But you cannot deny you enjoyed that. Perhaps too much.”

  She stiffened. “That’s the problem. It’s too much.”

  “Explain.”

  “I shouldn’t have to!” she exploded, her simmering frustration hitting a boiling point. She pushed shaking hands against his chest and glared at him, then balled her fingers into weak fists and slammed them against him to zero effect. “Why? Why does everything with you have to be like this? It’s—it’s always too much. These extremes. You have to push the limits to too much, until everything is this constant storm of intensity with you. Constant. The fear, the hatred, the pleasure—enough for a life wrapped into a few days. Enough for a dozen people charged between us. It’s like you saw the world painted in normal colors and couldn’t stand it. You needed technicolor, and to know the world in shades other people can’t even feel.”

  “You say that as if it is terrible, and yet describe it as if it is…”

  “As if it’s what?”

  “Euphoria,” he breathed, as if answering a prayer.

  “It’s too much,” she insisted, then buried her face in his chest again, mumbling. “You’re too much.”

  “Mm. And all you feel for me is hate?”

  “How could it be anything else?” she demanded. “In two days you’ve done nothing but torment me, terrify me, threaten me…how can I do anything but hate you?”

  His broad hands curled against her back—possessively. “A thin line, bella. A very thin line.”

  “And my life is walking that line like a tightrope.” She shook her head, burrowing into the hard muscle of his pectorals. “How can you expect me to feel anything for you when you keep me helpless in your thrall?”

  “But you do,” he said, simply and yet with utter calm certainty.

  “No.”

  “You do.”

  “No!” Desperate denial—but was she denying him, or herself?

  “Why do you protest so violently?” Every word coaxed, soft and spoken into her ear like the devil on her shoulder and no angel to save her. “Because it has been but two days? Romeo and Juliet came to love in the space of a glance.”

  “Romeo and Juliet died.”

  “My life has no longer a lease than yours.” He tilted her face up with a soft touch, and kissed her lips with an even softer one. “I live with intensity, feel with intensity, because this may be all the time I have left to know every emotion I might have had, were I to live as others live.”

  “And yet you act as if you feel nothing,” she whispered, looking up into those strange golden mirrors of eyes that threw back nothing but her own reflection.

  “Those who show the least often feel the most deeply, firefly. Scar tissue is a deep and unchanging thing, but underneath it, blood still flows. Romeo and Juliet did not look at each other and think ‘here, now, is a love as deep as knowing that what is meant to be, will be for eternity.’ They looked at each other and saw a chance to dance in the fire, and hope that they would not burn to ash.” He smiled faintly. “Risk, Willow. Risk is a part of life. Some are simply more willing to jump into the flames, blind and with both feet.”

  “That’s how you end up miserable and ruined.”

  “And sometimes, it is how you discover something transcendent.”

  “So this life of intensity…this is transcendent to you?” She recoiled. “You say you do what you do for the innocent, but you enjoy it. It’s about the pleasure of it. Admit it. Just like it was about the pleasure of tormenting me.”

  “Perhaps.” He inclined his head. “Perhaps not.”

  “What happens when killing bad people isn’t enough anymore? What happens when there aren’t any bad people left?”

  His brows drew down in a lowering thunderhead. “There will always be evil in this world.”

  “I guess there will be.” She laughed bitterly, choking on the taste of it. “When you get to decide what’s evil and what isn’t.”

  “I would rather have the power to do something, than sit by and do nothing.”

  “That’s just it!” she snapped. “You have the power. You have never in your life not had power. Do you even know what it’s like to feel powerless?” When he said nothing, she pounded her fist against his chest as if trying to break through his walls to find the bleeding emotion buried underneath. “Do you?”

  She’d expected a glib answer, something devious turning her own words back on her and making her examine herself in a way she’d never wanted to see herself. She hadn’t expected him to pull away from her, depriving her of his warmth as he slid fluidly from the bed, stood, and opened the cabinet inside the headboard. From the shelves he withdrew two pair of handcuffs, and tossed them on the bed followed by two keys that jingled as he dropped them atop the headboard. Then a bottle of a clear, pale golden oil. Lubricant. Then a…a…oh God. A sex toy, something that looked like a cock but with an array of straps around it, fitted to a contraption similar to panties but with a thick, ridged bulb protruding up from the center.

  “Show me,” he challenged.

  She stared, shrinking back and clutching the sheets against her chest. Her stomach turned over hard in a nervous flutter. “I…wh-what?”

  “You want me to know what helplessness feels like? You want me to feel pow
erless?” He tore his shirt off and tossed it aside. Golden eyes glinted as his hands fell to his jeans. “Then show me. If you hate me so, then punish me.”

  His jeans fell away, leaving him naked—gloriously, beautifully naked, and if she had ever thought he was once an angel, she now thought he could be nothing else with the agile, powerful perfection of a body toned and sculpted for sheer, raw brutality paired with grace and finesse. He prowled toward her, slinking onto the bed on his hands and knees, and for every inch he closed between them she retreated with her pulse pounding until she perched on the edge of the bed and he leaned into her, eye to eye, watching her with a strange and angry heat she didn’t understand.

  “Show. Me,” he commanded, soft and refusing to be denied.

  Her only answer was an inarticulate squeak. That was all she could do—squeak, staring at him, dumbstruck as he pulled back, stretched out on his back, and snapped one of the pair of handcuffs around his wrist before lifting it over his head and locking the other end to the remaining intact crossbar of the bed. The other pair of handcuffs, he caught in his free hand and offered to her, dangling from his fingertips in a clear invitation.

  She stared from the handcuffs to the bottle of lube to was that a fucking strap-on to the inhumanly beautiful man cuffed to the bed. He couldn’t…possibly mean her to…he couldn’t.

  “I…I…”

  “Isn’t this what you want?” he asked. “To hurt and shame me the way I’ve hurt and shamed you? Can you not even make a choice in this?”

  She tensed. Something rebellious sparked inside her.

  “Fuck you,” she snapped, and snatched the handcuffs from him.

  Still her hands shook, as she fitted them around his other wrist and guided his arm up, then locked the other end to the crossbar. Oh…oh God, was she really going to… But he was watching her, that challenge sparking in his eyes, and she fretted her hands together, kneeling next to him and picking up the bottle of lube, eyes wide, staring at the instructions on the back.

  “Am…am I supposed to just…on my fingers…?”

  “No.” His calm remained steady, fox-gold eyes drilling into her with avid intensity. “Perhaps for someone else. Not for me. If you want me to understand…” He arched his body in a powerful ripple of sinuous, bronzed muscle, jerking against the handcuffs until they rattled. “…don’t make it easier for me. Take me, firefly.” A twist of his hips, and those long, elegantly powerful legs spread. Baring himself. Offering himself to her, with his cock pulsing hard against the ridges of his stomach and dripping wet, clear threads to glisten against his skin. “Take me.”

  Her mouth dried as she stared, taking him in. There was something obscenely wrong about this: about this controlling, dominant, powerful man willingly putting himself in this position, and offering himself without shame. Without hesitation. Without needing to justify his masculinity, when she’d never seen anything more masculine than the raw, feral beauty of him spread out on display with so much pure physical strength caged and given freely. Something strange twinged inside, a thing she recognized as the needling teeth of desire and yet different, a hazed heat that scared her with its sudden intense need to possess.

  This wasn’t like her.

  But then she hadn’t been like her since he’d captured her and spirited her away.

  Licking her lips, she picked up the strap-on, pulling at the straps, trying to figure out how it fit, clumsy when he was watching her so consumingly and waiting for her in this taut, laden silence that trembled as much as the pit of her stomach. She twisted carefully to fit her legs into the straps, pulling it up—but it wasn’t until the bulb pressed against her that she realized it was meant to go inside her, anchored in her flesh with the curved ridges seated against her clit. She shivered, taking a deep breath, then pushed—and curled forward with a cry as it parted her with a sweet, lancing pain, slipping in and sinking into place to lock inside her with a sensation of fullness she’d never experienced with his fingers or his cock or the other toy. Its round, swollen shape stretched her entirely differently, hitting spots that made her whimper and want to spread her legs every time she so much as moved.

  Oh God, this was going to break her as much as what he’d done to her, and she almost wanted to stop, but some fierce, angry part of her pride wouldn’t let her. The hard silicone cock jutting between her legs, protruding from the softness of her thighs, gave her an odd thrill, a sense of power, and she bit her lip as she poured the strange, silky-slick lubricant into her palm, then stroked it over the length of the cock, making it gleam. Every stroke made the bulb end move inside her and dragged the ridges against her clit, and she keened softly, twisting her hips and grinding down against it, wondering if this was anything like what a man felt when he touched himself with his thighs spread wide and his cock thick and heavy in his hand.

  “Enjoying yourself?” Priest rumbled.

  Willow froze, opening her eyes, looking at him dazedly. Her senses ran high and hot, nearly drugged, lost, but now she understood. Now she understood the heady power in having someone spread beneath her, willing and offering themselves, offering to let her hurt him without even any prep. Still she hesitated, as she crawled across the bed with that hard thick bulb rolling inside her and her breaths hitching and her breasts hanging heavy and too swollen, too full. She sank to kneel between his spread legs, resting her hands on her knees, watching him; his eyes were heavy-lidded, sultry, those full, soft lips so fucking inviting, and she didn’t understand these hot, hungry cravings inside her.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered.

  “Do what feels good, firefly.” Enticing, soft, luring her in. “Do whatever you want to me.”

  Willow took a deep breath. She was awkward, so awkward, when she’d never even considered anything like this in her life. Never considered a man could want this: a woman arched over him, pinning him to the bed, taking him just as he’d taken her. The knot in her throat was choking her, a mix of trepidation and desire, and if she didn’t do it now she never would. She slid her hands down his thighs, rolling herself forward onto her hands and knees with her palms flanking either side of his waist; she angled her hips, nudging at him until he lifted himself, positioned himself, and his soft hiss and the sharp rise and fall of his chest told her she’d found the right spot. She lifted her gaze to his. Molten gold captured her, held her, guided her as she rolled her hips—and sank into him.

  She’d expected his gasp, his low, strangled growl, the way his body jerked and arched, powerful corded muscle bunching in his arms as he pulled on the rattling, clanking handcuffs. She hadn’t expected such tight resistance, pushing back against her and twisting that bulb inside her until the ridges ground against her clit and she was panting, keening, rocking her hips against it with the silicone cock buried only an inch or two into Priest. She almost couldn’t make herself try again, when it only pushed the other end deeper into her and rubbed right up against a perfect point of sensitivity inside that exploded every time she moved. But she wanted. She wanted to see Priest undone; she wanted petty revenge; she wanted…everything.

  And she wouldn’t stop until she took him completely.

  Slowly, she ground her hips—back and forth, working the silicone cock in and out of him in tiny increments while he writhed: serpentine and fluid, all that bulk turned liquid and sensuously erotic. Soft hitching sounds caught in the back of his throat, half snarl, half sigh, part pleasure, part pain; she grit her teeth and rocked her hips harder, working with that bit of yield to force deeper. She was rewarded by a low, sharp cry, deep and husky, and she did it again. And again, finding her way by inches and by explosive jolts of pleasure, watching his face fixedly as those princely features drew tight with pain and then went slack with bliss and his strange masculine loveliness. In him she saw herself; herself as she’d been on camera, herself as she’d surrendered with such abandon. He gave himself in the same way as she filled him, forced him, took his body until their hips rested f
lush and they fell still, silent and panting as they looked at each other in the trembling quiet between them.

  “Willow,” he whispered, and lifted his hips.

  “I know,” she answered, and bent over him to claim his lips.

  He kissed her with a softness and a hunger that brought madness, and that madness flowed in her veins and compelled her to move. She caught his leg under the knee and spread him wider, higher, so she could lay against him with their bodies hot together and those tight coiling abs stroking against her chest and his cock caught between her breasts, its slick heat dripping against her skin and dirtying her in such devilish and delicious ways.

  On her first thrust he arched, and she nearly screamed, biting at his mouth as the bulb moved and twisted and scored inside her, violent fire-spark pleasure crashing around her in a storm. And she couldn’t help but do it again, just to hear those guttural cries in the back of his throat, just to make him twist and move helplessly underneath her. First she was short, sharp, erratic—but then she found a rhythm as if it had been burned into her ancient bones and waiting to be awakened, found the way to move to bring them together in liquid flow and ebb until every time she gave him punishment and pain she gave back pleasure to herself in equal measure, stoking that painful sensitivity until she was animal with it, uncontrollable, digging her fingers into the sheets for some kind of stability as she slid and rocked and writhed against him. Maybe she’d never know that tight-slicked heat from the inside, closing around throbbing flesh…but she didn’t need it when she had that tandem burst of scorching sensation, when she had the strange, skin-stripping intimacy of Priest underneath her, strong thighs moving restlessly against her sides, pulse jumping hard against his throat, his pale hair spread around him like an angel’s wings, erotic submission in every shudder and every gasping cry.