Page 136 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Those forest eyes flash. “Is this the truth, St. Sebastian? Because you know what I want you to give me.”
Forever, stubborn boy. Only that.
“Right here it’s the truth. Right now.”
His eyes glitter in the gloomy light of the storm. “Only for right here? Only for right now?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Probably.”
He sucks in a breath like I’ve just hit him, but when I reach up to touch his face, when I start to speak, try to explain that I really don’t know, that I don’t know what’s supposed to happen when we want each other this much but we’re also bound by a tie so strong it will never loosen, it will never set us free—he catches my hand and shoves it down by my head. And when he finally enters me, he does it with an angry, possessive thrust that has me crying out. He fucks me like I’m his worst enemy, like I’m prey that dared to run, and I love it so much that I can’t even regret the anger, because I’m angry too. Does he think that I’m any less furious at fate than he is?
Does he think he’s alone in wanting this always?
I meet him with all my fury, all my primal, uncontrollable need. My body doesn’t care that he’s my brother, neither does my spirit, and out here in the thorn chapel, we give each other everything despite it all. Vicious rolling in the grass, and bruising kisses, and slow, writhing grapples that always end with him winning, just like I want them to.
It’s like Beltane, but more—more honest, maybe, more raw. There’s more than love here, there’s pain too, there’s frustration and anguish and a marrow-deep knowledge that wonderful things can’t last, they never last.
Even here.
I come first, my entire body clenching in one giant fist of pleasure, and then all of it, every bit of it rushing down and out my swollen, jerking length. Hot pearls of seed fly out of me, painting my stomach and my chest, one of them landing at the top of my sternum and then slowly rolling down to the hollow of my throat.
Auden watches its progress with avaricious thirst, and then he curls his lean frame over me to touch it with his mouth, to kiss it away. I moan at the soft press of his lips, and at the ticklish tease of his tongue, and my cock surrenders even more fluid, pulsing once or twice more and leaving me utterly, utterly limp.
Which is just how Auden likes to use me, and use me he does, like I’m his own personal plaything, his sex doll. An offering sent to a king as tribute. He’s wedged so tight, even with me sated and loose-muscled, and sweat mists along his forehead as he has to use his strength to work himself in and out of me. To seek more friction, more heat, more St. Sebastian.
Lightning sparks up the sky above him, and for a moment I can’t breathe.
With his eyes like the trees and his face set in an expression of elemental dominion, and with the sky dark and electric behind him, he barely seems human at all.
And when his stomach seizes and his hips slam forward and Auden finally roars his conquering triumph, the sky roars right back at him, a thunderclap so loud that I feel it in the ground against my back. He fills me endlessly, just as the thunder seems to roll on endlessly, both me and the earth trembling as we receive it.
His eyes burn into mine the entire time, and I know what he’s thinking, even if he doesn’t say it aloud.
Mine.
The thunder eventually rolls off, his cock goes still inside me. He lowers his mouth and wordlessly fits it against mine. We kiss I don’t know how long like that. Softly, silently. Because what is there to say?
Nothing’s changed. That’s the thing about being brothers.
It can’t be changed.
I hear it before I feel it. It’s a slow hiss in the trees. A heavy, sporadic patter on the altar and the wooden platform I built for Imbolc. Drops in the grass.
Auden tears away from my mouth with a curse.
“Auden—”
“I know.”
But he doesn’t move right away, and part of me knows it’s because moving will break the spell. When we pull apart, when we put on our clothes and leave the thorn chapel, reality will come back. The things we pretend to forget here we’ll have to remember. The sins we’ve committed we’ll have to answer for.
But the rain gives us no choice. It splashes onto Auden’s naked back and shoulders, onto his hands planted in the grass. I think he would stay even then, but when the rain starts falling into my eyes and I have to blink it away, something in his face softens.
“Come on, stubborn boy,” he says, getting to his knees and helping me up. “Back to the house.”
The rain drops insistently on his open sketch pad, and I shove my T-shirt over it until I can find his bag and slide the sketches inside. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him draw like this—for fun, for color and light and all the things he used to care about until architecture school ironed it out of him—and I can’t bear to see his work ruined, not even a little bit.
Auden steps next to me, holding out his hand. He’s dressed now, but his hair is hopeless. “Thank you,” he says softly, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Here.”
