Nightbird: Book 3 of the Gilded Cage trilogy Read online

  “That’s enough!”

  Shaking, I raised my head to find Ryker standing there, anger coming off him in waves.

  “You're fucking killing her,” he growled at my father.

  “Ryker!” Michael growled at him.

  “I’m not letting this happen,” he went on. “You’d better fucking let her go.”

  My father laughed in his face. My eyes were so swollen and heavy they were already starting to shut. But not before he kicked me one last time, right between the ribs, delivering a blow that would break me.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness on that podium, never finding out whether Ryker had been the one to stop my father’s murderous assault, the beating my little sister would have gotten had I not stepped in her place.

  * * *

  I awoke with pain shooting through every limb and every nerve in my body. I was dizzy from the hurt and sick because of the crunch of my own bones when I moved.

  I thought I was alone in the room until I heard the smallest hint of sound in the room, a soft sound of breathing that made me look at the foot of my bed.

  My little sister sat there, her broken dolly in her hands and her eyes fixed on mine.

  “Are you dying?” Vlada asked me in English.

  I shook my head, every motion filling me with pain. “I’ll be okay,” I told her.

  “Why did Papa hurt you?” she asked, and her lip wobbled.

  I knew then she already understood. “He gets very angry sometimes,” I explained shakily. “And he was going to hit you, but I didn’t want that to happen.”

  She crawled closer and placed her broken dolly next to me on the bed.

  My eyes filled with tears, knowing just how much it meant to her. She couldn’t fall asleep without it, but now she was giving it to me as if I deserved it more than she did. She pressed a gentle kiss against my cheek, the one that wasn’t cut from the broken cheekbone. Then she got on the floor, slowly leaving the room.

  Once she was almost at the door, she turned to look at me from over her shoulder, her eyes fearfully finding mine. “Ophelia,” she said softly. “I don’t have to marry that old man, right?”

  I stared into her eyes.

  One blue, one brown.

  So young.

  So innocent.

  “Net, Vladislava,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

  She gave me a trusting smile and left me and my broken bones to spend the night wondering whether I’d just lied to her for the first time.

  Chapter 4

  Kain

  I watched her sleeping like I had so many times before. There was something magical about it, seeing her so fucking vulnerable and exposed, truly without a choice when she wasn’t conscious.

  I was a sick man because of her, maimed with the need I felt for her, but even though she made me sicker, it was better than anything else I’d ever felt.

  I was in love with Ophelia Sokolov.

  Watching her.

  Fucking her.

  Using her.

  Taking everything she loved and replacing it with only her Master.

  I lived to make her give up control. Loved to make her hurt. But most of all, I loved how she submitted to my whims and desires so damn freely, like this exact arrangement had been what she’d been craving all along.

  Kneeling for a dominant man. Servicing his every need and demand, providing not just a set of three warm holes to fuck, but a compassionate soul and a loving heart in return.

  She was it for me, the soul mate I thought never existed, the one that had not only changed my world but shaped it, too.

  She was plagued by nightmares.

  Even now, her mouth twisted in a frown and she let out a soft whimper as she tossed and turned in our bed. I didn’t let her sleep in the cage anymore. I couldn’t bear my hands off her for longer than a few minutes.

  I wrapped my fingers around her neck.

  “Wake up, dolly,” I told her. “It’s just a dream.”

  My fingers pressed down, squeeze gently in morbid fascination. When her eyes flew open and she sobbed, I let go of her.

  “What is it?” I asked her. “Another bad dream?”

  She practically crawled onto my lap, burying her face in the crook of my shoulder. “I’m afraid to go to sleep,” she admitted. “Every night I dream of her… of Vladislava.”

  “It’s okay, dolly,” I told her gently. “Do you want Master to hold you until you fall asleep again?” It was a rare moment where I felt I could be gentle for her. Give her the care she needed, take baby steps and not just go in for the fucking kill. “Dolly,” I whispered into her hair, my mind full of ideas on what to do with her. “Tell me what you need me to do. Tell me what would make it better.”

  She turned her eyes to mine. They burned brightly in the darkness, making me want to forgo all my gentle thoughts. I wanted to, no, needed to hurt her. Almost as badly as she wanted me to do it.

  “Make it go away,” she said. “Only for tonight, make me forget. I don’t want to think about what we’ll find. I just want to be with you.”

  Her lips found mine, desperately twirling tongues meeting in her mouth. I kissed her deeply, needily, taking from her mouth what she owed me, what I needed to survive.

  She came alive when I treated her like this.

  Treated her like property.

  As if she’d been made for a lifetime of serving a Master.

  “Let me take care of you.” I turned her on her back.

  Her eyes were on mine as she pulled her knees up, baring that sweet pink cunt to my hungry eyes. She was only wearing a black lacy nightie matching the color of her hair, and the sight of her in it, nearly naked, filled me with lust.

  “Hold your legs up,” I ordered her as my fingers touched her clit, making her mewl in need. “Hold them up so I have access to my favorite hole of yours.” She did as I told her, and I toyed with her clit, pushing and playing and pinching and tickling her until she was a mess of tangled limbs, messy hair, and my name a whisper on her parted lips.

  “Master,” she breathed, “put them inside me.”

  “Inside your cunt?” I asked her, and she threw her head back, moaning from the exquisite torture. “You want my big fingers inside that dripping little hole, dolly?”

  “I do.”

  “How many?” I wanted to know.

  “Four."

  It was too many.

  Enough to hurt, to damage her. Yet she wasn’t backing down, and now, holding her legs under the knees, her little fingers parted her shaved pussy, showing me the way inside her honeyed entrance.

  I groaned, sticking out my hand and outlining her leaking hole with my pointer finger.

  “Feels good,” she told me, her eyelids heavy as she looked at me. “Push it in. Please, Master.”

  I pushed it in, meeting resistance when I got down to my knuckle. I braced my other hand on her ass and forced a second finger inside her, making her gasp out loud.

  “Open up for me,” I told her. “You need to open up for your Master, so he can make it all better from the inside.”

  She moaned and parted herself open even more. I stretched her pussy out with my fingers, feeling her walls giving in, slowly inviting me deeper and deeper inside her. There was a black hole between her legs, fucking mesmerizing with its depth and secrets. And God, I wanted my whole fucking fist in her. Stretching her. Gaping her. I swore to myself I’d do it soon.

  A third finger slipped inside her, eliciting even more moans from her slightly parted mouth.

  “More,” she begged, and I found it impossible to resist her siren cry for it, always more, always begging me, even when I was breaking her.

  I forced a fourth finger inside, and she threw her head back, a sound between a moan and a scream tearing itself from her mouth as I started fucking that tight bald pussy faster and faster.

  “I’m gonna come,” she told me breathlessly, and I grinned down at her.

  “No, you’re not,” I reminde
d her. “Not until I allow it. For now, just keep fucking riding my fingers.”

  “But Master—”

  “No. Fucking ride and shut the hell up. Don’t you dare come.”

  She gave me a murderous glare before sinking down on my fingers, filling herself to the brim and moaning the sweetest sound I’d ever heard as she did it.

  “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much.”

  “No, you don’t.” I laughed easily. “You fucking love me. And you love that I can make you do this.” I curled my fingers inside her, and she gasped, gripping onto the sheets for dear life.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered. “Stop, please….”

  “Never. I’m never going to fucking stop this, dolly.”

  Expertly, I applied pressure to the top of her wall, pushing and massaging the spot I knew would make her into a dirty little slut. She knew it too, even though she hadn’t done it before. Her own body was disobeying her, bending to my will, desperate to please me. She was mine, for better or for worse, to do with exactly as I pleased.

  “Are you going to squirt on my fingers, dolly?” I asked her, cruelly reminding her that her body’s helpless spasms hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Are you going to come for your Master?”

  “N-No,” she managed to get out.

  “No?” I repeated, stopping the motions of my fingers pumping inside her. “Did you just say no to me, dolly?”

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m sorry, I won’t say it again.”

  “Better not,” I warned her with a growl before continuing my assault on her helpless pink cunt. “Now come for me. I’m giving you permission, dolly. Fucking soak my fingers.”

  She tried to stop her own orgasm, but we both knew she was past the point of no return. She shivered as I applied the pressure again, touching the spot I knew would make her gush like a little whore. Her fingers dug into the sheets, and she squealed for me before I pulled my hand out. I stuck all four fingers down her throat, and she gagged on them while her pussy finally let go of the juices it had been keeping from me.

  I watched her squirt for the first time with the eyes of a cruel Master who was going to make her do it again and again until I was fucking pleased with her.

  And I loved it.

  “Good fucking girl,” I praised while she licked her own juice off my fingers. “That’s right. Get them nice and clean.”

  She started whispering something, my name or Master or something else; it was too muffled to make out the actual word. But it made me harder, my cock swelling so much in my pajama pants I thought it would tear right through the fabric.

  “I fucking love making you come before my dick’s even inside you,” I told her. “Now let’s see how that orgasm feels when I’m fucking your sweet little pussy.”

  She didn’t protest, just tossed and turned on the bed before I pinned her down by the wrists. Her hungry eyes found mine, begging for the release she needed so fucking badly, the release I was ready to give her.

  “You want to be fucked?” I needed her to answer in the affirmative.

  When she nodded, my grip on her wrists tightened.

  “Speak,” I ordered. A part of me wanting to humiliate her, make her say it aloud. The other part of me just needed the goddamn consent. Since what happened, since I’d broken her, I needed to know she wanted to play my twisted games. I needed her to be a willing participant.

  “Fuck me,” she begged me. “I need your big, thick cock ramming all the way inside my pussy. I need to come for you again, Master. I need cock, not fingers. Your cock.”

  “Beg,” I ordered again.

  “Please, Master. I need it. I can’t live without it. Just feed it to my pussy. Let me have it. Let me milk it. Let me drain it for you.”

  Her words became a mantra as I climbed on top of her, positioning my cock at her entrance. Her lips found mine, and I tasted her pussy from where I’d fed her with my fingers. She was so fucking sweet, somehow still managing to taste like honey.

  “How come you taste so good, dolly?” I licked at her lips like a man possessed. “How come your pussy tastes like fucking sugar?”

  “Just for you,” she told me deliriously. “I want you to love it, Master. I want you addicted to the way I taste, smell, feel— Fuck!”

  I pushed myself inside her as the words spilled from her mouth, letting the blind moment of lust take over. Nothing else existed, just us and the need to be joined together in the most primal way known to man.

  That’s what I was. A red-blooded fucking caveman, intent on having her for every meal until the rest of my goddamn days. I wanted to fill my mouth with Ophelia’s honey, my nose with the grapefruit scent of her hair, my fucking hands with the feel of her silky skin. Yes, I was a man possessed, obsessed and overtaken by the pure need to dominate this sweet little thing, this breakable dolly, her tight cunt calling out to me, her body begging to be used.

  “You fucking love it,” I told her as I started moving inside her tightness. “You love being treated like an object, don’t you, dolly? You love feeling like a little slut for your Master?”

  “I do,” she admitted shakily. “I love being your slut. I love it. I love you. I love you, Master.”

  “I love you, too,” I got out through gritted teeth.

  Her eyes found mine in a desperate dance of doubt and submission, needing to know whether I meant it.

  I did.

  I nuzzled her neck, filling my nose with the scent of her while I started fucking. The usual thoughts filled my brain. The need to breed her, to truly use her for what she’d been intended, to give her body what it so desperately craved.

  Yet it was something I’d never be able to provide. I couldn’t give her a child, no matter how often I filled her pussy with my seed. She wouldn’t be a mother, not with me, and if it wasn’t with me, it would be never.

  I felt my world coming apart at the seams, but it was too late. My cock throbbed, and I needed to come. I grabbed her neck, my fingers lovingly touching the hollow of her throat. “Want it?” I asked huskily, and she nodded, always so fucking eager. “Come with me. Right now.”

  Her back arched off the bed as she did as I instructed, coming with me in a torrent of muttered whispers and soft little moans. I pumped my useless seed inside her, hating myself for not being able to give her more, but too overtaken by the sensation of being inside her to worry about my shortcomings.

  I held her close after I filled her up, my fingers at her entrance, gently holding in what I’d put into her pussy.

  She took my hand and pulled it up, taking my fingers between her lips and sucking off our juices. “I love you, Kain,” she told me, and I smiled down at her.

  I’d never been happier than in that moment, even with all the shit we still had to go through. To have my little night bird was to be happy, and to hold her after I’d taken another shred of her innocence made me feel fulfilled.

  "I love you, too, Ophelia,” I whispered in her long, raven locks. “Now and fucking forever."

  Chapter 5

  Ophelia

  The grass was soft and wet under my feet. It was early morning, and Kain was still sleeping in our bed. I’d woken up from a nightmare yet again, but this time, my interrupted sleep hadn’t woken him up. I decided to wander in the gardens while I waited for him to wake up.

  Kain had builders come a few weeks prior, and now we were protected by a stone wall that walled in the estate. It was beautiful, made of multi-colored stones that made me feel like I was in a fairy tale. I loved it, and I knew he’d had it built that way to please me.

  I trailed my fingers over the stone, touching the little nooks and crannies that were naturally present in the material. Suddenly, they wrapped around something wedged between the stone.

  I stopped and turned around, going back to the spot where I’d felt something in the wall.

  It was a small piece of paper wedged into the wall and hidden from the naked eye. I could only find it if I touched the
stone, and I repeated my previous motion to find where exactly the scroll was hidden.

  Pulling it out, I found a small note tied with a rose red ribbon. I smiled to myself, thinking Kain had set up a surprise for me. Slowly, I undid the ribbon bow and opened the piece of paper. But the words on it were not from Kain. It wasn’t a love note.

  It was a warning.

  Every princess needs to come home sometime. Is it almost your time, Princess Ophelia?

  Except it was written in Russian, the alphabet reminding me of what I’d almost forgotten.

  I hadn’t spoken Russian since my eighteenth birthday, save for the occasional curse word. I was still fluent, but seeing the letters written down reminded me of just how much I was starting to forget.

  Not just the language, but the memories of my family, of what I used to have. Mamochka, Vladislava, Papa… all those things I’d pushed to the back of my mind to try and force myself to forget.

  The note had been put there on purpose.

  The paper fluttered from my fingers, and I watched it land on the grass. Then I hastily picked it up. I couldn’t just leave it.

  I recognized the handwriting, too.

  It was my father’s.

  I ran away, having put the note away. I couldn’t bear to look at the note for a second longer. Half delirious, I made my way back to the house only to be stopped by a firm hand on my forearm.

  “Where are you going, dolly?”

  I looked up into Kain’s eyes. Adoration made them look so much gentler, though now his irises were tinged with worry for me, unsure of what had happened to me on the property.

  “Home,” I told him, and he pulled me in for a tight embrace, holding me close.

  “Where is home?” he whispered.

  “With you.”

  He pulled back and kissed my lips, possibly more gently than he ever had. I relished the kiss, deciding on the spot not to tell him anything about the note.