Page 16 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“You want me to fight you for it?” murmurs Auden, licking a warm trail down my neck. He gives me a quick, sharp bite, and I give him back a reluctant groan.
“You want me to chase you again? Because I’ll do it, you know I will. And when I catch you, we can play another game.”
“Like rich boy, poor boy?”
I don’t know why I say it, I don’t know why I’m provoking him when I should push him away, but here I am, digging at our old wounds as if we don’t have a brand new one that can never, ever heal. Maybe I’m trying to remind myself that Auden was always a spoiled prince, that beneath that noble face was always an ignoble rapaciousness, and we have too much between us ever to overcome. Betrayal and money and blood.
He gives a low snarl against my throat, and his hands come up to find my wrists, gripping them so tightly that I can feel the imprint of every single finger. “I’ve already told you that you’d regret playing that particular game with me,” he says, and he ducks down to bite my collarbone through my shirt—hard enough that I make an embarrassing squeak that’s half pain, half delight.
How can he do this to me? He shouldn’t be able to do this to me.
He shouldn’t be able to make me hard and desperate and so bitterly enamored—he’s a liar and he’s selfish and it’s so, so wrong now. In fact, it’s always been wrong. From the very beginning, it’s been wrong. That kiss in the thorn chapel when we were children, the grinding, fumbling embraces of that one teenage summer . . . yesterday, in the woods, with crushed bluebells damp under my back as the wild god claimed me as his own . . .
From the moment we met, we were a wickedness. A sin and a tragedy.
Auden lifts his face from where he’s bitten me, and I get a glimpse of cheekbones and long lashes before his mouth is full and lush on mine, demanding everything he’s ever demanded from me: my soul, my body, my future, and my past.
Everything. He’s demanding everything, and right now he’s kissing me like even everything won’t be enough.
“We can play so many other games, St. Sebastian,” he says as he pants into my mouth. “We can play enemies again if you want. Lovers. Sluts. Husbands.”
Husbands.
The word sinks through me like a stone through water, its meanings rippling out with cold, rhythmic pain.
We can only ever play husbands. Because we can never be husbands.
Siblings can’t marry.
And he knows that.
Fury fills me, and shame, infecting me everywhere. “What about brothers?” I say against his lips. “Do you know that game, Auden?”
Auden goes completely still against me, his lips still molded over mine, his exhales becoming my inhales as we stay there panting and rigid. It’s as if I’ve stopped time, as if I’ve turned the amber-colored light in the room into amber itself and we’re both suspended in it. Choking on it.
I feel him take a deep breath. The shuddering, slow kind. “St. Sebastian,” he says.
I try to yank my wrists free, but he doesn’t let me, and he doesn’t pull away. Our mouths are still touching and so are our clothed cocks. I can feel the heave of his tight stomach against mine.
I finally manage to turn my head to the side, rolling it against the wall and hating how much I miss the feel of his kiss.
“St. Sebastian,” he says again. A bit wildly.
“How long did you know, Auden? I know it must have been before Beltane, but how much longer before? Before Imbolc? Before Proserpina came? Before Christmas even?”
“No,” he says quickly, “no, not then, not before Imbloc, nothing like that.”
“But you did know before Beltane.” Before you caught me and claimed me. Before you made me swear never to leave you.
He takes a minute to answer.
Finally: “Yes.”
I struggle to get free again. “Let me go, you fucking wanker.”
“No,” he replies, as easily as anything. “Not unless you use the right words.”
I turn my face back to his, stunned. He’s leaned back so he can study my face, but my hips are still pinned by his and my wrists are still trapped high against my chest.
