Page 23 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“Touch me,” I whisper, going farther down until I feel the heat of his erection against my fingertips. Until I can fill my hands with his cock and tug gently upwards.
He stiffens but he doesn’t relent. In fact, he barely reacts at all—just a small tensing of his stomach and a little hitch in his breathing.
“You’re made of stone,” I accuse.
He smiles against my mouth and pulls back enough that we can look each other in the eyes. “No. Not stone.”
Becket’s hands find mine, and he moves me like I’m a doll, cinching my skirt and curling my fingers around it and then placing my other hand against his heart. “This heart,” he murmurs, pressing me back into the shelves, “beats and pounds every minute of the day so that I can exist to love. I was created to love. And I know no other way to love than with my entire body.” His hips are against mine, and I can feel the dangling ends of his belt against my thighs. “I know no other way to love other than to be consumed by it, to throw my entire body on the altar of it. I want the blood in my veins to be burning with worship. I—” and here he drops his lips to my ear “—want—” and he finally pushes against me like that, sending the taut curve of his maleness pushing into my cunt “—ecstasy.”
I shudder as he pushes against me again—expertly, not penetrating me but teasing me, the tempting pressure of his erection sending me writhing against it. But every time I chase him, he moves with me, keeping us just at the edge of joining.
“I want nothing between me and what I love,” Becket whispers into my mouth. “Between you and me. Between me and God. Ecstasy always.”
I moan. “Becket, please—”
“But we can’t live day to day consumed by love,” Becket says, as if I hadn’t spoken. He cups my breast and slides his other hand into my hair. “So I have to keep my love at bay. I have to deny myself the full force of it.” His cock pushes against me, but still he refuses to let me impale myself on him, even though I’m wet enough that he’s slid past my inner folds right to my very entrance. All it would take is one nudge. One tilt.
“Denial,” Becket murmurs to me, closing his eyes, “is the imprint love leaves on the world. It is love’s fossil. Its sign. Sacrifice is the heart of love.”
It’s the same voice that exhorts a flock to return their hearts to their god, and it seems to fill the cavernous library, all the way up to the plasterwork arching above us and all the way down to the gloomiest leather-scented corners.
Sacrifice is the heart of love, I repeat to myself, the words thrumming through me. I think of Estamond’s torc and the black roses covering the door. She who became the Thorn King so that the men she loved wouldn’t have to. Because she couldn’t think of any other way to keep them safe.
“Sacrifice,” I say, and rock myself against him, “sounds like a lot of work.”
“Sometimes,” Becket agrees, “it’s far too much.” And then he pierces me fully with his broken denial, driving me right to my toes.
My head falls back as he thrusts inside, and even at this angle, there’s a stretch and fullness that has me gasping. He has my bottom filling his hands as he lifts me higher and can finally stroke in all the way to his thick, golden base.
“Oh,” I mumble, feeling Becket’s invasion now, and the Beltane sex a couple of nights before along with it. Becket is too gentle for real sadism, so the lingering soreness is all the roughness I’ll get. I hold on to it, I savor it. Use it to remind myself that I’m Auden’s May Queen, his and Saint’s little bride to be wedded by the Beltane fire. I don’t need pain to come—just kink, and being loaned out to a desperate priest is kinky enough—but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the reminders of Auden and Saint’s rough use of me don’t help me get there. And fast.
“Becket,” I say, and then I forget what I was going to say because Becket pins me against the side of the shelf again and gives me a taste of that mysterious expertise of his, stroking in and out of me until I can barely breathe for the climax building in my belly.
“You’re magnificent,” he says, his face so close to mine. “You’re heaven. You feel—so—good—” The smooth strokes of his hips grow jerky and abrupt, and I swear I feel him swell inside of me, bigger and harder than ever.
He’s going to come.
A small firecracker of panic flares and pops in my mind. I just started taking birth control pills yesterday, and I’m supposed to use a back-up method of contraception for seven days after starting to be on the safe side. Shit, shit, shit.
“I’m not—don’t come inside me,” I say, hoping it’s not too late, hoping he won’t be mad. “I should have said something earlier, I’m sorry, but—”
I forget that he’s a priest; I forget that he’s my priest, and the look he gives me as his hips go still is as patient and understanding as any shepherd’s. “Don’t apologize,” he murmurs. “I should have asked. Are you close?”
I nod.
“Do you want me to stay inside you while I make you come? There might still be some risk even then, but I’ll keep myself from coming.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
I’m too horny to be a hundred percent safe right now. Mostly safe sounds good enough to my pussy. “Yes, I want you to stay inside.”
He needs no other encouragement, fingertips digging into my ass as he starts working me against him—not with short thrusts, but with deep, grinding rolls—strokes for me, not for him. Almost immediately, the earlier panic is replaced by pure, urgent pleasure.
“Is this okay?” I pant in his ear. “Will you be okay?”
“Do you mean,” Becket asks, his voice near-guttural with need, “will I be able to keep myself from pumping my release inside you once you go over the edge? Or will I just give in and give you everything I’ve been feeling all these weeks?”
