The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  Until it stopped.

  Without warning, it stopped—and if she had hated him before, she hated him a thousand times over when he released her nipple, slipped his fingers from inside her, left her empty and pulsing and unfulfilled, the ache inside her so deep it was a gnawing pain that would devour her from the inside out. She could have sobbed; the animal within was ravenous, and savaging her with its insatiable hunger. She couldn’t stand the lack of touch, couldn’t stand how the imprint of him still seared inside her. If he wanted her to beg, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  As long as she didn’t say yes, as long as she didn’t say she wanted this, she could keep some of her dignity intact.

  But the grating snarl of a zipper drawing told her he didn’t want her to beg. No…that wasn’t why he’d stopped. And she opened her eyes, watching him in a haze through her lashes as he unzipped his jeans, slid them down, bared his cock. She’d never…she couldn’t stand to look at it, not when it was so fucking thick and hard, a cruel thing that looked as if it would hurt her, a viciousness that would invade her and take possession of her body and touch her even deeper than his fingers. Fear washed over her like a chill breath of winter, and she closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut, turning her face away and telling herself she would hate it. She would hate it and then she’d find the strength to say that no and fuck, please let Priest be the man he claimed to be and this would be over before she lost herself completely.

  The rip of a condom wrapper, too loud with her sight cut off. Then he was moving over her again—and the heavy pressure of his weight was a comfort. A shield. All the things it shouldn’t be, yet she clung to that small, fragile sense of security when his cock pressed against her inner thigh, burning hot and threatening to sear right through her flesh.

  “Willow,” he whispered, and touched her cheek. “Firefly.”

  Reluctantly, she opened her eyes again. Looked up at him. Nearly shrank back from him, when he was watching her with something that bordered on obsession, something dark and consuming and possessive, as if he had captured her to keep her, to own her. Her heart thumped too hard, pain a hot coal inside her chest.

  “Tell me if I’m hurting you,” he rumbled. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

  Don’t, the rational part of her mind cried. More, the dirty thing inside her begged. And when he arched over her, when he rolled his hips, when his cock nudged against her folds, a scream built in the back of her throat as she curled her fingers against her ribbon bindings and braced herself for pain.

  Pain that never came.

  She’d thought it would hurt like ripping, hurt like breaking, tearing flesh and blood everywhere, as if virginity was a thing to be broken apart and crushed and taken from her. Instead there was only a tightness, perfect and breathtaking and burning hot, and a silky sense of his flesh flowing into her, molding to fit her every inner crevice and fold, fitting all her dark places and filling her empty spaces, not taking but giving. That breathy, erotic cry couldn’t possibly be hers; she wasn’t this wanton, wasn’t this wild thing, wasn’t someone who could arch underneath a stranger, a psychopath, a man who held her life on an ever-thinning string and languish in this pleasure as he cleaved her deep and joined them together.

  She dissolved into the moment he sank in completely; dissolved into the moment he locked into her, sealing their bodies together like forge-melded iron, pressed against something so deep inside his breaths were her breaths, rolling through them both and swelling and pulsing at her inner core. His mouth fell over her throat, her shoulders, kissing and biting and marking her with his need; his chest crushed against her breasts, his weight a thing of power and dominance pinning her to the bed. For a moment they breathed together, held together; for a moment they trembled together, the taut, bronzed muscle of his body rippling with a tension that jumped from him to her like electrical current.

  Then he moved, and she raised her voice in a broken scream.

  Nothing in her imagination could have prepared her for this. For the slow, slick glide of his cock inside her; for the sheer control that radiated from him with every deep, tight snap of his hips, every languidly powerful thrust. She had no choice but to move with him each time he filled her; each time he violated her from within; each time he left her awash with tight-coiled pleasure only to torment her with that moment of vacancy that told her she was everything she’d been terrified of. And sex was everything she’d ever feared:

  Complete loss of control, until her body was a willing puppet in his hands and she melted helplessly each time he pulled her strings.

  And he knew how to pull to make her whimper, make her sob. Knew when to slow and draw it out until every agonizing inch of him burned in excruciating detail against her flesh. Knew when to punish her with sharp, brutal thrusts that lifted her body from the bed and jerked her against the restraints. Knew when to knead her hips and grip her thighs. Knew when to bite down around her collar to make her dissolve into a whimpering mess of submission and neediness, with her legs wrapped around his waist.

  “Firefly.” Hoarse, husky, broken with the cadence of his breaths and the cadence of their bodies, growled against her throat. “Look at me.”

  She opened her eyes. He was a shadow over her, a demon, a monster, a beast, and she his victim; the sanctification of the rosary swinging between them couldn’t save her. He looked down at her with those fox-gold eyes never wavering, swallowing her whole, burning through her and holding her and pulling her deep. Pulling her into something she didn’t want. Something like communion, binding them together not in something holy, but in the most depraved depths of this sin he’d coaxed from her and branded on her body until she was dirty, dirty.

  Dirty thing.

  She could taste it on her lips as the sweat slicked between them.

  Dirty thing.

  Feel it in the pulse and contraction of her inner walls as he dug his fingers into her ass, cupped her, lifted her into increasingly erratic strokes that spread her folds so wide and teased her clit with the thick ridges of veins in his cock.

  Dirty thing.

  Hear it in the pounding of her blood, in the slam and roll and rock and sway of her heart, moving to a primal rhythm that belonged to the animals, the monsters in the dark, the wildlings and the beasts.

  Dirty, dirty thing.

  And she couldn’t escape it as that pounding, hypnotic rhythm took her high, lifted her into a dizzying spiral, spread her open as vulnerable as a sacrifice to this dark and unholy god above her, her soul for the taking and already damned. There was no hope left for her. No choice left but surrender.

  And her vision went red, then white, as she lost herself. Lost control. Lost any hope of ever being free, as pulses of vicious pleasure roared through her like starbursts and pulled her into hell’s sweet and dripping inferno.

  “Firefly,” he breathed, his back arching as he rutted deeper, harder, fighting the sharp contractions that had taken over her body, until something passed over his features, something like torment and bliss, as he shuddered and arched his back and groaned. “My firefly.”

  I’m not yours, she thought dimly, past the burning of her blood.

  She wasn’t.

  But the last piece of her that belonged to herself was gone, and she didn’t know who or what she was anymore.

  * * *

  THE HORROR DIDN’T SINK IN until he’d collapsed atop her, enveloping her in his heat and a scent that her panicked mind was calling brimstone, the Devil’s own sulfur, and she had delivered her own fucking self into temptation when that temptation was still half-hard inside her and her thighs were sore and stretched and aching.

  “Oh…oh God,” she whispered through numb lips, her voice cracking. “What have I…what…wh-what did I…”

  Priest pushed himself up, looking down at her with the sated laziness of a predator after a large meal, golden eyes lingering on her with a satisfaction and possessiveness that made her want to scream. “As I said…fear can be
a powerful aphrodisiac.”

  “I…I don’t do this. I don’t have sex with strangers. With psychopaths.” The words rabbited out of her in a panic, her blood cold and thin. “You—you—how did you make me—”

  “I did not make you do anything.” And as if to punctuate his point, Priest reached up to pull at the knots holding her bound to the bed. “I asked you to say no, Willow.” First one knot slipped free, then the other, before he dropped his gaze to her again, considering. “Perhaps there is a part of you that you did not know existed, until now.”

  The moment her arms were free she curled them up against her chest, wedging them between herself and his weight, some kind of shield—anything to protect her from the enormity of what she’d just done. She tore her gaze from his, glaring to the side. Glaring at the portrait of the artist on the wall, and burning with shame when his stare asked:

  Who are you, now?

  Who are you, now that you’ve become dirty and filled with nothing but wanting?

  She closed her eyes. “If there is a part of me like that,” she choked out, “I don’t want it.”

  “We all have a dark side.” He brushed her hair back, his touch loathsomely gentle. “It is simply a matter of what we do with it.”

  Her retort was silenced as he separated their bodies—and now came the pain as his cock slipped out of her, dragging against swollen soreness and leaving behind a rasping burn like fever. She cried out, tears pricking in the corners of her eyes, and curled in on herself, shaking. He murmured soothing sounds and gathered her close. He had laid this at her feet with such detachment even after everything he’d done to her, yet he offered warmth in his embrace, tenderness in his touch as he wrapped his arms around her and whispered wordless, comforting nothings into her hair. She wanted to pull away, but when she had been cast adrift, unsteady and a complete stranger to herself, he was familiar enough that after a shaking moment she buried her face in his shoulder and made herself breathe until she could calm down.

  He said nothing. In a way she was glad, even if silence left her alone with her thoughts, with the stark and ugly awareness of what she’d done. She was so confused—when she didn’t know if this was rape or coercion or something horribly, horribly fucking wrong with Willow when she’d wrapped her legs around him and had every chance to say no but hadn’t.

  Was that her fault, or his?

  Or was it more complicated than that?

  How could she have let him? She’d never thought even once about what her first time would be like, when the prospect was so strange and terrifying—but she’d always assumed it would be with someone she loved, someone who would understand she needed to take it slowly, explore, get used to the idea and learn to accept the sensitivity of her own body.

  Not a stranger, a cruel and terrible beast, a captor who practically held a knife to her throat and counted down her every last breath.

  “That word is wrong, you know,” she whispered against his shoulder. Anything to break a silence that weighed as heavy as a thousand stones. “Aphrodisiac. Aphro. From Aphrodite. Love.” She swallowed against the knot in her throat. “You don’t have to love someone to have sex with them.”

  “No,” he agreed softly. His fingers splayed against the small of her back, holding her, keeping her close. “But it happens.”

  She shook her head, clenched her eyes shut, hunched and hid herself against his shoulder. “Not here. Not now. Not us.”

  “Are you saying you could never love me?”

  “What?” She lifted her head, staring at him. “I…what? What the fuck is going on inside your head?” The weighty fullness in her chest hovered on the edge of bursting, threatening to split at the seams and let out a torrential rush of emotion that like hysteria, crazed and fragile and slipping from her control. “God, what the fuck is going on inside my head? I’ve known you for less than twenty-four hours! You…you…the things you do to people…God, you want to kill me, I can’t…all of this…” She took rapid, panting, shallow breaths. “This is a surreal crackshow. It is. I’m still not sure I’m not dreaming.”

  Throughout it all he only watched her, listening, his expression grave and strange. And even when she trailed off he said nothing; she searched his eyes, looking for…fuck. Anything to make this less bizarre. Anything to make the wounds inside her hurt less, bleed less. But she found only quiet expectation and something like understanding, as if a thing as alien as this man could ever understand why she was cracking apart into an unstable, erratic mess.

  “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?” she asked.

  “No. It is not.”

  She looked up into that impassive, beautiful face, and tried to see who he’d been before…this. But all she saw was a void, even with his features softened with pleasure and satisfaction. Maybe there was nothing but a hollow behind the mask of the killer. Maybe he was papier-mâché, a shell constructed into the shape of something with nothing underneath but the barest framework to hold it all together.

  “I don’t think anyone could ever love you,” she whispered.

  Nothing in his expression changed. That chilling absence remained, his voice dead and devoid of even the heat and warmth with which he’d whispered my firefly as he said, “And you call me cruel.”

  “You know what you are.”

  “I do.” His gaze lowered, flicking over the collar around her throat, before rising to her eyes again. “And you may be right.”

  “Has…no one ever…?”

  “Not that I know of, no. As you said, sex is not the same as love.” Yet his hold tightened on her with a touch of possession, his hands heavy on her body. “But I loved someone, once.”

  She tried to imagine him loving someone. Tried to imagine him in love, but couldn’t see it. “What happened?”

  “She never knew. She was a friend, and did not wish to be anything more. So I let it be at that.” His lashes lowered in dark, pensive sweeps. “And then she died.”

  Her heart tried to conjure up an ounce of pity, of sympathy; she crushed it as best she could. “…do you ever regret that?”

  “That she died? Every day.” But he wasn’t looking at her, his gaze distant, trained somewhere over her head. “Not telling her how I felt? No. How would that have saved her life?”

  “She could have died knowing she was loved, at least.”

  “She did,” he said, and sighed. “She knew her friends loved her. Her unit. That is just as powerful, firefly.”

  “That’s…not something I would expect to hear from you.”

  “Even a monster had a life, once, that made him what he was.”

  “That’s the kind of rhetoric used to get murderers and rapists out of life sentences.”

  His gaze cleared, focused on her. “Not I.”

  “No?”

  One heavy arm unwound from around her. His hand slipped between them, brushed her aching breasts, then caught the rosary, running along the beads. “When the time comes, I will plead guilty and take whatever judgment is handed to me.” His eyes darkened. “When the time comes.”

  She only looked at him, taking him in, trying to understand. Every time she thought she was closer to figuring him out, he only confused her more, tangling her every which way until she found herself doing and saying things that weren’t herself but were still every inch the self she’d tried to deny for her entire life. That self, that secret self, was comforted. Comforted that if he could love one woman, if he could touch her so carefully and say tell me if I’m hurting you, all you have to do is say no…he might find it in himself to spare her.

  “Priest?” she sighed.

  “Si?”

  “You’re really strange.”

  He lofted a brow—then chuckled, rough and deep. “So I have been told.” He drew the covers over them, then, giving her another shield to hide beneath, another layer of safety that she grasped onto gratefully. “Sleep, firefly. You can ask more of your bizarre questions when you wake.”

  �
��Mm.”

  She nestled herself into him, her thoughts cloudy and quiet. She could blame exhaustion for why she wasn’t moving, fighting to get away from him, but it would be a lie. Maybe she really was like her mother, a needy little clone.

  “It was my mother,” she said into the silence, and Priest stirred.

  “Hm?”

  “You keep asking who made me afraid of my body,” she said, opening her eyes, staring blankly at her curled fingers. “It was my mother. She was never around. She used to be a trapeze artist in my uncle’s circus, and I guess she never got the wandering out of her blood. But when she was home she was so focused on her own body that I…” She didn’t know how to explain. “I started associating everything about women and sexuality with her. And because she was selfish and cruel and flighty, sexuality and all of that got tangled up with the bad things until they all left the same horrible feeling. Like if I had sex, I was dirty and would turn into the kind of nasty, cold person my mother was. It made me sick.”

  “Ah.” He stroked his hand over the curve of her waist, her hip. “Do you feel sick now?”

  “I should.” She should be doing a lot of things that were slipping from her grasp. “But I don’t.”

  He pressed his lips against her scalp, his smile curving, stirring her hair. “Perhaps you are strange too, then.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, and willed herself to close her eyes. “Maybe I am.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE WAS GONE WHEN SHE woke.

  She hadn’t felt him leave, but the bed was empty, the sheets cold enough that body heat had faded long ago. Even as silent as he could be, she couldn’t sense his presence, that dominating force of being that commanded awareness of his existence in any space he occupied. She pushed herself up on her arms, then curled against the headboard, closing her eyes and wrapping herself up in the blankets with a shiver. The collar was still around her throat, the leather absorbing and trapping her body heat until the rough texture burned. She ran her fingers along its edges to the back again, then traced her fingers over the lock. The key was probably with him. She tested the O-ring, but it wasn’t coming loose; inside the leather was something hard, probably metal banding, and the O-ring felt like it was welded to it. No hope of snapping it off the easy way.