Page 13 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
I nod against his chest, everything wet from tears. “Please,” I manage to say. “Please.”
And then I hear footsteps into the room.
Chapter 6
St. Sebastian
Present Day
* * *
“You found us,” I hear Rebecca say as I walk in behind Becket. The white square of his collar seems to glow in the gray light of the makeshift playroom, and I try not to compare the rain-dotted gleam of his dress shoes to the mud-flecked leather of my boots.
“Would it sound too ominous to say we followed the screams?” Becket asks.
“Hello, Saint,” Rebecca says after she sees me.
I nod politely in response, and then I see Auden and Proserpina, and I feel it like a fist in my chest, squeezing and squeezing, making it hard to breathe even as it sends hot, excited blood to every far-flung corner of me. My fingers tingle and my knees bend like they’re preparing to touch the floor. My lips buzz. My dick fills and swells against my zipper, keening for the tight embrace of Proserpina’s body. For the cruel grip of Auden’s hand.
Proserpina once asked me if I had wanted to be her or Rebecca that time in the library—did I want to be the one receiving the pain or the one giving it—and truthfully, despite what I’d wanted Auden to do to me when we were teenagers, I really had always thought both. I thought I was just a switchy boy, and that eventually I’d be on both sides of the crop, so to speak, given enough time and the right opportunities.
I don’t think that anymore. After seeing Auden’s face as he spanked Poe, after seeing his mouth red with her blood, after he held me by the throat in the shower and made me come . . .
I have no desire that’s apart from the desire to be used by him. The desire to serve Proserpina’s pleasure however she wants.
And so seeing Poe in his arms, the visible portions of her back and ass all red and welted and angry, seeing how she sobs quietly against his chest as he cradles her with a tenderness wholly at odds with the spoiled prince I once knew—yes, it makes me hard. It makes me want to tend to Poe, it makes me want to be Poe, it makes me want to be there between the two of them, cradling Proserpina myself while we’re both cradled by Auden.
You said you’d die on the spot. Did you?
Yes, St. Sebastian. I did.
I’m not going to be cradled by Auden any time soon, I think. I pull the top ball of my lip piercing into my mouth so I can feel the slight pinch in my lip, as I always do when I’m longing for Auden.
I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn to see Delphine coming into the doorway, her face pale and her hair uncharacteristically messy and pulled into a bun on the top of her head. “Sorry, I’m late,” she says to me, Becket and Rebecca. “Just finished talking to Mum and Dad.”
“We’re done anyway,” Rebecca says, casting an assessing gaze over to Auden and Poe, who are completely absorbed in each other right now. Then she turns to look at me. “But she needs fucked.”
I blink.
“Why?” Becket asks. “She looks like she’s in no state for it.”
I can’t decide if I agree with him or not—it does look like she just needs to be cuddled until she sleeps—but I was also in the chapel with her last night, and in the shower too. I’ve seen what her need looks like, seen how inflamed she gets after she’s been given mastery and pain.
“I’m telling you, she needs someone to have sex with her, and I think it should be someone she’s already had sex with. Like Saint.”
“Or me,” Delphine says, and I think I catch a frown whispering across Rebecca’s lips at that, but the room is too dim to tell.
“I don’t want to sound imperceptive,” Becket says, “but why does it matter? And shouldn’t she get to choose?”
“She will,” Rebecca says. “But I also think she’d say yes to anyone right now, and I’m not sure she’ll wake up tomorrow morning and thank us for taking advantage of that.”
“Ah,” Becket responds.
“It should be St. Sebastian,” Auden says. I hadn’t thought he was listening, but apparently he was, and now he’s looking at me from across the room. When our eyes meet, I feel it deep into my bones.
Why does he have to be so handsome? Why does he have to have eyes the color of every ache I’ve ever had?
“I’ll do it,” I say.
