Page 32 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Auden gestured at himself. “Stop this, stop the things I want. Stop myself.”
St. Sebastian didn’t understand. “Stop yourself from what?”
Auden didn’t answer. He just bunched his eyes shut.
“What if,” St. Sebastian proposed, “I give you my yes, but I promise to tell you the minute I don’t like it and I want you to stop. How about that?”
Auden opened one eye. Then the other. “Like a safe word.”
St. Sebastian, who knew about safe words from all those furtive internet searches, was shocked that Auden knew.
“I read a lot of fan fiction,” Auden said at St. Sebastian’s surprise. And then, “It’s not important. Look, I like how we are together. I like the idea of touching you. But I’m worried I’ll get carried away; I’m worried . . . ”
St. Sebastian nudged his hand when he didn’t keep going. “Worried that what?”
“Worried I’ll scare you off,” Auden finished quietly. Ruefully.
“Let’s just see,” St. Sebastian said. “Let’s just try it and see.”
So they tried it.
For the next week, Auden touched St. Sebastian however he liked and as often as he wanted—which turned out to be quite often, as St. Sebastian learned.
Auden would tug on St. Sebastian’s longish hair to get his attention, or hook a finger in St. Sebastian’s belt loop to steer him in a shop, only dropping his hand when someone else came into the aisle and replacing it the moment they left. He’d insist on sketching St. Sebastian while they rested or lounged—or he’d do it while straddling St. Sebastian’s lap as he had that first Sunday in the graveyard, so he could “get close enough.” One memorable afternoon, he made a game with their supplies from Thornchapel, playing keep away with the food until St. Sebastian, out of curiosity, finally agreed to Auden’s terms of surrender, which involved Auden feeding St. Sebastian the sandwiches by hand and having St. Sebastian drink from his own water bottle, which he’d tip to St. Sebastian’s lips at exactly the moment St. Sebastian found himself thirsty.
He traced the lines of St. Sebastian’s mouth with his finger—repeatedly, religiously. He’d tug off St. Sebastian’s shirt—always slow enough for St. Sebastian to say no, which was slow enough for St. Sebastian to get impatient and tug the damn thing off himself—and then Auden would spend what felt like hours consuming St. Sebastian’s stomach and chest and back with his eyes, often without even the pretext of sketching.
St. Sebastian had never felt so adored, so worshipped—never felt as interesting or as sexy—as he did as the lord of the manor’s obsession. He was delirious with the feeling of it, drunk with it—
And yet he was frustrated as hell, because they hadn’t kissed.
Why hadn’t Auden kissed him? It wasn’t as if St. Sebastian had been able to hide the jerking breaths he took when Auden touched his mouth, or the way his nipples gathered into tight little points when Auden ran his pencil over them. And there was certainly no hiding what happened to his cock nearly every moment he spent in Auden’s presence.
Surely Auden knew St. Sebastian wanted to be kissed. Surely.
And surely Auden wanted to kiss him, right? You didn’t caress boys you didn’t want to kiss, you didn’t watch their nipples harden and the muscles along their ribs and stomach judder under the skin with each shaking breath if you didn’t want to taste their lips on your own.
Then one day Auden coaxed St. Sebastian to Thornchapel with promises of some new Xbox games, and after they’d played for hours, they’d snuck some wine into the walled garden and sat on the edge of a fountain with their feet in, watching the blooming lavender and baby’s breath bob in the breeze. And with his linen pants rolled up to his knees and his hair flopping just so, Auden looked like something off the cover of a book, he looked like the dictionary entry for handsome, perfect rich boy.
Just looking at him made St. Sebastian’s heart ache.
And he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, go another moment without knowing what it felt like to kiss Auden Guest.
“Auden,” he said. Just that. Just his name, because he didn’t know what words to say next and he didn’t know that he ever would.
&nb
sp; Except then he did. “I want you to do more than look at me and draw me,” he managed, the words pushing out of him. “I need you to kiss me like you touch me, as if . . . as if I already belong to you.”
Next to him, Auden froze, bottle dangling from his fingertips.
“Please,” St. Sebastian said on a swallow.
A broken groan.
A moment voltaic with possibility and with the heavy, burning charge of potential rejection—
And then St. Sebastian hit the bed of lavender and baby’s breath, Auden atop him and staring down with blazing eyes, his sides heaving violently.
