Page 31 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
e what I really think.
No.
No and no and no.
She drops her hand with a sad noise, and pathetically, my hips chase her touch. After having felt the heaven of her cunt, the delicious hell of Auden’s rough fist, is it any wonder I’m struggling to go back to satisfying myself? Nothing is as sweet as servicing Poe with my erection. Nothing is as primally powerful as being at Auden’s mercy.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispers. “Not until the three of us figure everything out.”
She’s right, I know she’s right. Even if she wasn’t, I’d do everything in my power to make her happy because her happiness is as necessary to me as air. So I swallow down the discomfort of my full, aching cock, and walk her home.
And then I spend the next hour at home before my shift fucking a toy over and over, draining myself a full three times before I have to clean up and walk to work.
It’s still not enough, and I’m beginning to wonder if Poe is leveraging my unslakable lust on purpose, because at this point, I’d agree to almost anything. Including talking to the man I hurt, and who tried to starve my mother in return.
Chapter 12
Eight Years Ago
Auden began to touch St. Sebastian in small but possessive ways.
At first, the touches started with a politely uttered may I? before each one. Before he’d take St. Sebastian’s elbow to show him something—may I—or before he dunked him in the river—may I—or before he brushed dirt and grass off his back—may I, may I, may I.
The asking bothered St. Sebastian for reasons he wasn’t sure he entirely understood.
Finally, one lazy evening out on the moors—St. Sebastian preferred the moors to the village, less chance of running into the scowling boys there—he told Auden, “You can stop asking before you do that shit. I know you like doing it.”
Auden, who’d been holding a half-empty wine bottle up to the sunset and watching the colors it made, made a patronizing noise. “Obviously, I like it or I wouldn’t do it. The crucial question is if you like it.”
St. Sebastian was sitting with his back to a large rock, the wind whipping at his clothes and hair. It flapped and blew and gusted noisily enough that it made honesty feel safer somehow, like if he could barely be heard, then he was protected from the consequences of what he said.
“You know I like it,” he whispered. “You know I do.”
Auden looked over at him with one of those stares that made St. Sebastian feel like his every thought was scrawled in marker on his forehead. Then Auden looked away. “It’s not good to touch people without asking first,” he said philosophically, going back to his wine and tilting the bottle this way and that.
“What happens if I want you to stop asking?”
Auden kept watching the wine, but St. Sebastian knew that he wasn’t thinking about sunset palettes or claret pantones anymore. “Why,” Auden asked carefully, “would you want me to stop asking?”
What could he say?
Because I want to touch you without asking? Because I want us to have a right to each other?
Because I want to feel like I’m yours?
No, he wasn’t ready to say any of those things, so instead he said, “Just consider right now blanket permission for you to touch me or whatever, okay? I’m saying yes, you may for the rest of all time.”
“No one says yes for the rest of all time, that would be insane.”
“Well, I am.”
Auden dropped the bottle with a huff, seemingly not caring that it landed on its side and began spilling into the grass. He turned to St. Sebastian. “No, you’re not. I won’t let you.”
“You won’t let me?”
“I’m trying to be good,” Auden said. “I’m trying to stop. And this is not helping.”
“Stop what?”
