Page 18 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“You can’t.”
“But I want it,” he says, and with his eyes like that and his voice so low, there’s no mistaking what it is.
“You can’t want it,” I whisper, and his grip tightens on my wrists as he pushes them out to the sides until my arms are spread on either side of me and my wrists are pinned to the wall. It’s like I’m about to be crucified, like I’m already on the cross, but without the nails and the thorns, because Auden himself is all the nails and thorns I’ll ever need.
“Oh, can’t I?” he says. “Because I do, St. Sebastian, I do want it. I need it. I don’t care what that makes me, I don’t care what that means for my immortal soul. I’ve known you were mine since I kissed you in the thorn chapel, and I’ve known that you wanted to be mine since you let me bite your lip until it bled.” His eyes drop to my lip piercing now, and I can feel how much he wants to pull on it and kiss it. I can feel how much he wants that labret running along his shaft, how much he’d love to see it gleaming in the dark while he fucks me. “You can run away all you want, but it’s too late. You already swore to me. I’ve already known what it was like to have your heart in my hands, and it’s simply too late.”
He ducks his head enough to move his lips over mine—something both more and less than a kiss—something like a promise made with touch instead of words.
And fuck me if I don’t want to promise something right back.
“It can’t be too late,” I whisper. “Even if you did wait to tell me until you got what you wanted.”
Auden doesn’t lift his mouth from mine, and I feel his words as much as I hear them. “And what did I get, my little martyr? What do you think I wanted?”
I wish so much I weren’t still hard as I answer him. “You wanted to fuck me.”
“No,” he says, tugging on my lip piercing with his teeth. “I wanted what I still want.” He kisses me again. “I want forever, stubborn boy. Only that.”
I let him kiss me. I let him kiss me as he fucks against me, clothed and slow, and I let him kiss me as he keeps my wrists pinned to the wall like a sacrifice. I let him because letting him makes me feel like myself in the best possible way. I let him because letting him feels like living, even when it also feels like dying.
Maybe I am a little martyr. And he’s my Diocletian, my emperor and my persecutor both. I’d let him martyr me as many times as he wanted; he’ll never stop wanting.
He murmurs the words again, in between slow, silken strokes of his tongue. Little Martyr.
It was meant to be, I think dizzily, kissing him back and earning myself one of those low groans I love so much. Auden was born to torment me, and how can I resist such a thing? Such a tormenter? Even if he is tied to me by blood as well as desire?
My mother named me for a tormented man, after all.
My mother.
The memory of her sears through me like fire. Her words that summer. Tell this boy you have to stay home, and then don’t see him again.
Suddenly I can’t think, I can’t breathe. I can’t even be.
Panic and shame thud through me.
Mamá.
She would be so horrified to see us right now. Crushed and queasy and despairing.
I rip away from Auden’s kisses, gasping for breath. “May I,” I choke out, hating myself and hating Auden and hating Ralph and hating everyone and everything in the entire world, everything everything. Hating the words because the words sound wrong, just like they sounded wrong coming out of Auden’s mouth all those years ago. And yet they have to be said, they have to, because if they’re not said, if I let Auden keep kissing me and fake-crucifying me, I’ll never let him stop. I’ll let my own brother do hellish things to me and I’ll love every second of it—and every second of it will infect me, until all my memories of my mother are flecked with spots of rot and shame. Until I can’t look at myself in the mirror for fear of what she’d see if she were alive to look at me.
“May I,” I murmur again, and Auden’s still so close, close enough that he could easily recapture my mouth, and part of me wants him to. But the other part of me is noticing with some alarm that Auden hasn’t let me go yet, he hasn’t backed away. He hasn’t even lifted his lips from where they hover near my cheek. And his hips . . .
Even now we are pressed together so tightly that I can feel every thick inch of him. Hard and wanting.
Everything I know about kink, everything I’ve ever read or heard, dictates that when a submissive says a safeword, the Dominant should spring back like a vampire leaping away from the sun. Or a tempting virgin.
But Auden doesn’t do that.
Instead, he closes his eyes and takes in a shuddering breath, agony sketched all over his face. His entire frame is shivering against me, like the effort it’s taking to keep from devouring me whole is more than he can bear, and for a moment, I think he’s going to give in. I think he’s going to take me, safeword or not, and I hate that it thrills me a little that he might do it.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice breaking over the word. “Please.”
He sucks in another quivering breath—one that ends on something sounding like a sob—and then he abruptly shoves himself away, wheeling around to face the window as he runs a hand through his hair. The fabric of his henley clings to his shoulders and sides, and I can see the heave and quiver of each rapid breath as he drags it in.
“Auden,” I start, but he gives a sharp jerk of his head, still facing away from me.
