Page 25 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“Why was that?”
I want to bury my face against Auden’s thigh forever. “He feels very strongly about me.”
“Ah,” says Auden. He tugs at my hair so that I have to look up at him. His eyes are soft.
“So you know then,” he says. Gently.
It takes a second for his words and their unspoken meaning to sink in. “You knew Becket loved me.” I try not to sound accusatory, I really do, but it’s hard. “You know how he felt.”
“Loves and feels,” Auden corrects, and then with an effortlessness that belies the strength of his lean frame, he hauls me easily onto his lap and pushes an impatient hand up my skirt. “It’s very much a present emotion for him, I believe.”
I try to look at him, but it’s impossible from this angle. “You’re not jealous—ohhh, oh, oh—” Auden’s clever fingers have found the heart of me, and they delve easily inside. I’m still wet and open from Becket, and there’s nothing stopping Auden from adding a second finger after a moment, and then a third.
I twist and groan on his lap, the stretch almost too much and still not enough, and so I try to fuck myself on his fingers, bracing my hands on the armrests for leverage. I know it must look beyond undignified, me with my legs splayed and my dress up to my waist and my mouth dropped into an O of surprised, submissive pleasure, but I don’t care. And given the hard male arousal underneath me, I don’t think Auden cares either.
“Of course I’m jealous,” Auden says, nipping at my earlobe as he fucks me with his hand. “Some days, I want to lock you away like fine china. I want you on a leash so I can keep you curled at my feet wherever I go, and I want you kept in a faraway tower where only I can have you. Because I’m selfish and mean, and I want your bright eyes and sweet body just for me. But I don’t really need to be jealous, do I?”
“You—you don’t?” I manage to say.
I can feel his smile curving against my neck. I know this smile. It’s probably the same smile his ancestors wore when they began ranging and ravaging their way into Dumnonia. “It’s my fingers you’re currently screwing this curvy little body down onto, and this weekend, it will be my bruises you wear. It’s me who claimed you by the fire, and it’s me you love. You’re mine, little bride, and you have been since you were a girl.”
His words are like his fingers—pressing and probing into secret parts of me. My head drops back onto his shoulder. “I have been yours since then,” I whisper. “Saint’s too.”
For just the briefest second—too brief for me to react—Auden’s breath catches behind me. And then he’s back to exploring my pussy, and when he speaks again, he doesn’t mention Saint.
“You’re wet,” he says. His voice is low and dark and cool. “You’re wet from Becket.”
“Yes,” I say. “Are you—are you very angry with me?”
“Am I angry t
hat my little slut acted like a little slut when I wanted her to?” The hand not working me open slides up my thigh and brushes over a streak of dried semen. “He didn’t come inside you?”
He sounds disappointed, like he’d loaned out a prized sports car to a friend and they came back having driven under the speed limit the entire time.
“I only just started the birth control,” I say. “I’m supposed to be extra careful the first week, and—”
He gives me a little nuzzle—nothing but gentle affection, as if he doesn’t have three fingers jammed inside me and didn’t just call me a slut. “I forgot about that. I’m glad you were safe then.”
My heart swells until I think it might pop like an overblown balloon. I knew before Thornchapel that I needed love like this, that I needed it rough and tender and mean and sweet, all jumbled together like a wild garden. But now . . . now I know it like I know nothing else. I need Auden, I need Saint, and I need love to be like this.
I don’t know why.
I was the little girl who tied ropes to her wrists just to feel the scratches and itches of it while she played. Maybe I was made for a raw, scratchy love from the very beginning. Or maybe I grew into it the same way that certain flowers push through the brambles to bloom.
Who can say?
“Becket took it on the chin,” I add.
Auden traces a fingertip up my thigh. “By the looks of it, I’d say he took it between your legs.”
I laugh, which sends me clenching around his fingers—and we both make noises at the same time, mine a gasp of surprised pleasure and his a hoarse kind of growl.
“I need to fuck you,” he says on an exhale, pulling free of my body and banding an arm around my waist. He lifts me up just enough to reach into his pocket to retrieve a condom and unbutton his pants, and then I’m perched on his knees while he prepares himself. I can’t resist sneaking a look over my shoulder, catching a glimpse of expensive fabric rucked up the firm planes of his stomach and the taut, swollen head of him already glistening with latex.
“Come here,” he growls, even though I’m arguably already here, and then I’m hauled squealing and laughing to where he wants me. And once I’m facing him and straddling him, he uses his fist to angle his organ upward and then orders me to sink down.
“Slowly,” he cautions. He fists my skirt in one of his elegant artist’s hands, lifting it to my hip so that everything below my waist is exposed to him. “I want to watch.”
