Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales (10 page)

“Thank you.” I repeat Cecile's words to her master, because it doesn't matter that he took the stone now that I have it back.

As I wrap my hands around it, holding it to my breast, Master Raven slips out the window again. He's back after just a few moments, but he's not alone. A body flops heavily against the sill as Raven dips into the room and lets it fall to the floor.

“Mayor!” I gasp.

He's bound hand and foot. Gagged too. Blood still seeps from the knife wound I gave him for his trespassing. His eyes are wide as his gaze shifts from Master Raven to me. I watch confusion shadow the relief in his expression, and I congratulate myself on having thought to draw my corset closed as Cecile left the room.

“Why is he here?” I demand.

“Little thief,” says Master Raven. But he doesn't mean me. His gaze is fixed on the mayor, who, tall as he is, looks a feeble creature, bound and gagged at the feet of his dark captor.

The mayor's flesh goes from peaky to plum.

“People forget there are eyes above,” continues Master Raven. “Slinks around your house, this one. Has for years. Took it in the dead of night when all were sleeping. He's taken other things too.”

Master Raven turns to me, and I'm suddenly aware he's standing close. His wings unfurl and lift; the little wind stirs over my skin. He reaches out a hand, and I hold myself still though I'm now afraid. His long finger moves close and he gently strokes a dark, spiral curl dangling beside my face.

“I don't take things that are dear,” he says. “Only things unwanted. Forgotten.”

All I can do is stare at him.
Slinks around your house,
he said. He knows where I live.

“Take what belongs to you,” he continues, holding my gaze, “and go.”

My eyes flutter down to his chest, where I can see his heart working behind the clock, steady and sure. I lift my hand and he tracks the motion, flinching as I touch the raven on his breast. “What will you do with him?” I ask.

His gaze flickers to the mayor. “I have no use for him. Have you?”

I can't help smiling at the question. He's so serious. “None.”

“Then I'll return him. You as well, if you like.”

Studying his fine cheekbones and chin—the perfect paleness contrasting with the black waves that flow back from his face—I imagine what it would feel like traveling in the way the mayor just has. The cool of the air. The warmth of our bodies pressed together. The hard muscles of his arms bound across my belly and breasts.

But I shake my head.

His dark eyes glitter at me, head angling to one side. “Then I will call Wilkes to lead you out.”

I shake my head again.

He takes a step closer, reaching for my chin. Lifting it so our gazes lock. I feel the flow of that wordless exchange, like the liquid energy of two rivers crossing currents.

“You have what you want.” His voice is rich and low. “Take it and go. I won't ask you again. I have…
restrained
myself thus far.”

These last words send a hailstone sliding down my rain gutter, but I swallow and hold his gaze.

I reach between us and slowly open my corset. My breasts spill out against the flesh and leather of his chest. The glass covering the timepiece over his heart chills my skin, hardening my nipples. I reach for his hand and lift it, closing it over one breast.

But he lets go, grasping my wrists instead. I yelp as he drags me to the center of the room, next to the stairway. He grabs the handle of a wheel mounted to the railing and spins it. A tangle of leather and chains lowers from the shadows of the high ceiling to the floor beside us. My heart falters and I slide a step toward the stairway, but he pulls me back, binding one wrist to the railing with a leather cord.

Watching his hands and fingers work over the mass of hide and metal, I tug at my tether. He slides buckles and clips, untangles and rearranges, and try as I might I can't puzzle out what he's doing. Finally he pauses, studying his handiwork a moment before rising to face me.

He grasps the front of my corset, pulling me close. With jerky motions he loosens it until it falls to the floor. Then his hands move to my hips, and he tears at the fabric of my skirt, finally dropping the taffeta corpse over the railing where it floats down into darkness. I stand in nothing but my boots and the wide leather belt, its skirt suspenders tickling my thighs.

“Please,” I murmur, and I'm not sure if it's because he senses my fear or doesn't that for the first time, he smiles. His teeth are even and white, and it chills and pricks my flesh.

Again his hands are moving, deft and sure, and cords and chain links slide across my flesh. Before I've figured out what he's doing, the wheel is spinning again and my body rises from the floor. I dangle at waist-height beside him, suspended in a complicated web of restraints that tug my arms backward and chest forward, my torso bending as if in flight, legs spread wide so I feel the cool air against my moister tissues.

Leather bands like the ones that cross his chest now encircle my breasts, lifting them high, and chains pinch my waist. But even with all of gravity working at my weight, I feel supported, and there is no real pain. Not yet.

Master Raven dips a hand between my breasts, running his fingers lightly down my belly and between my legs as he walks the length of me.

A groan rises from the man on the floor as our captor slips a finger inside me. How easily it goes, slick as I am from the feel of my body splayed open for him, cool air licking at my pussy and nipples. Leather pinching, chains biting.

I gently rock in my restraints, luxuriating in the feel of his hot palm pressing against the exquisitely sensitive mound of flesh. I arch and thrust, taking my pleasure from him, but he withdraws his hand.

He moves away, hauling the mayor up from the floor, and suddenly he's gone again.

I listen to my breath and the clinking of the chains as I hang in this unearthly suspension of time and matter. When will he return? What will he do to me?

I listen for the others, but all below is silent. The game has changed in some important way, but I don't yet understand. I think it may be that it
isn't
a game anymore. I think for him, it never was.

Nor for me. I have opened to pleasure—both taken and given it—for the first time in my life. But when he touches me…it opens a boundless night. A darkness that's both void and filled. I want to dive into it, navigate its depths, lose myself in its shapelessness.

And I want to run away.

Too late for that now.

He has returned. This time as he glides in through the window he closes it, sealing out the attentive breeze. I expect he'll come to me at once, but instead he lowers himself onto a stool before one of the workbenches, wings folding and sinking behind him.

“Master,” I whisper. But he doesn't answer. Just starts tinkering with the glittering objects on his workbench.

I flex my body, forcing the blood back into sleeping limbs. The movement shoots heat between my legs, reawakening desire.

Curling my hands and straightening my arms, I raise my body in the harness, accidentally disturbing a chain so it slips between my legs. Cold links bang gently against my clit, and I can't contain a hungry cry. I dance in my restraints, torturing myself with the too-gentle glide of metal on warm, wet flesh.

“Be still,” he orders, leaving the workbench and standing before me. He holds something in his hands—a device of some kind. A circular metal band with attachments. Gears, and other things I can't make out—
extrusions
of some kind.

My body swings to stillness, and I hold my breath. He disappears behind me and I feel the metal band close around my waist. I feel a series of gentle tugs, and then suck in my breath hard as something slides into my pussy. It's made of something rigid, but covered in something soft and wet. I feel pressure against my opening—his fingers pushing and settling it inside me.

My tissues clench around his device, pleading. But his device is deaf and dumb.

I wait, my breath staggering and stuttering, hips beginning to jerk at nothing. At the air.

Then I feel a gentle pressure between my buttocks, and a second extrusion slides inside me. This happens quickly, and the initial panic and sting are immediately soothed by the coolness of the lubricant-slick metal.

Clenching and full, I give a long, tremulous moan. Moisture seeps around his device, spotting the floor beneath me. Hard breaths force their way out of me.

“Master,” I mutter, pathetic with desire.

He sinks to the floor before me, raising his face to mine. His hands close over my breasts, lifting and squeezing. His lips part as his thumbs roll over my nipples. I thrust my chest forward, and again my body clenches at the fullness between my legs.

“There's no keyhole here,” he muses, still studying and kneading my breasts. “They are part of the puzzle in a way I don't yet understand. I must take some measurements and make calculations before I can more fully integrate them.”

I have no idea what he's talking about, but the sound of his voice—the professorial distracted murmur, coupled with what he's doing with my breasts, prodding and scrutinizing, oblivious to my body's pleading…I feel myself on the edge.

“We have time,” he finally pronounces.

He moves behind me, and again I feel gentle pressure and this time the click of a winding mechanism.

The clicking itself is enough to finish me, but then the extrusions between my legs begin to
vibrate
. My body goes taut, and I scream with shock and joy. He's before me now, gripping his cock, holding it for me to see. He takes my head in his hands and I open my mouth.

Hands in my hair, he slides inside me, every keyhole filled. I open wider, loosening my jaw muscles, and feel the head of his cock in my throat.

He rocks against me and I sway in my harness, hips pumping at the awakened device, its extrusions drilling away inside of me.

I feel his hot ecstasy in my throat, and as his head tips back, mouth dropping open, I clench hard over the vibrating rods, pouring a muffled cry over his cock as he yanks my lips against his belly.

The device sleeps, and I almost do by the time he lowers me to the floor. He rolls me onto my back and begins a long process of unbelting and unlocking until finally I lie naked and free. His taste is in my mouth, salt and earth, like a soup my mama makes from forest mushrooms.

My legs tip open, and still my desire drips from me, pooling at the base of my buttocks.

“Master,” I whisper.

He stands over me, staring down. “Poe,” he replies.

My soggy brain works at this a moment before I realize he's telling me his name.

“Little thief,” he says, full lips hinting at a smile.

My heart flutters. “Pearl.”

He turns away from me, returning to his easel. I stare at his back as he scrawls more numbers, lines, and figures.

“What are you doing?” I call softly.

“Improvements,” he mutters into the thought clouds thickening over his head.

I want to feel irritated, but I feel the smile spreading over my face. “You're onto something with this. You'll make your fortune.”

His body stiffens, and he slowly turns. His wingtips lift, as do both of his brows. He takes a couple of steps toward me and I sit up, trembling.

“Fortune?”

“You're an inventor, aren't you?” I ask.

“Yes. But I invent things for my own amusement.”

“I see,” I reply, not really preferring this explanation. I cross my arms over my chest and stand. “I'm glad to have been amusing, Master Raven.”

Dark lashes flutter in his expressionless face, and I turn and retrieve my corset. Before I can see past the hot tears to work the laces, I feel his hands on me.

He turns me roughly to face him. “Explain.”

I lean away from him, but my arms are gripped in his talon-like hands. “Explain
what
?”

He lifts a finger and rubs a tear over my cheek. “This.”

I frown at him. “No.” How can I explain what I myself don't understand?

He blows out a gust of angry breath and makes a growling sound in his throat. He gives me a shove as he releases me. “Have you not had pleasure here? From Wilkes and Cecile. From myself.”

“Yes,” I say stiffly, heat stealing over my cheeks.

“I've done my best to understand you. To work you open and release you. Was I wrong to do this?”

“I…” I stare at him. Take in the genuine confusion in his darkly handsome face. “Wrong, no. But I…I have not come for your amusement,” I finish petulantly.

“You have come, have you not, for your stone?” he asks, beginning to lose patience.

I nod.

“Do you not have it?”

Another nod.

He shakes his head in bafflement. “I have tried but failed utterly to understand you.”

A light flickers on in my brain. A tiny hope at illumination. I step closer to him. “Are you saying…do you mean to say that all of this has been because you want to understand me?”

“For what other reason?” he bursts, exasperated.

I soften and smile, and I reach to touch his face. He flinches away, but I persist until I feel his smooth skin under my hand.

“You have given me pleasure. You yourself, your invention. Unlike anything I've known before. But if you want to understand me, we have to start again.”

Resignation settles his features, and he gives me a solemn nod. “Yes, of course.”

“Tell me why you took Cecile,” I say gently, smoothing the hair above his brow.

“I had a need. I burned.”

“Then why didn't you take
me
? I was your captive, to do with as you pleased.”

He frowns, studying my face. “I hadn't understood you yet. I needed to stop the fire. It distracted me from my work.”