Page 27 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Maybe not even after Imbolc.
Instead, he merely lifts his eyes to mine and nods, like it was something he already knew. And it’s as h
e’s nodding, as he’s tacitly admitting that the thing which started as a game between bored friends has now become something vividly and frighteningly real—it’s then that I reach my peak, lost in his eyes and the whisper of the waiting forest outside, waiting and rippling with cricket-green leaves for its king.
I move against him harder, faster, urging my climax on and on and on, and it’s so much deeper and stronger and meaner and longer—it’s the kind of orgasm that possesses me, like everything below my belly button is no longer my own, it belongs to the wild world outside, it belongs to the wild god I’m riding. And I forget, I always forget, how much the pure rush of dominance gets him off, how watching someone else obey him is heady delirium, because the moment I finally come, he lets out a soft, tattered sigh. His cock swells big, so big, that last impossible bigness before the end, and then he releases into the condom with long pulses that make his stomach and thighs flex and tense against me.
He only watches at first, chest heaving as he thickens and starts spending, but after the first few surges, he crushes me to his chest and holds me tight as he fucks his way through the last of it—hard, hammering thrusts that shouldn’t be as powerful as they are given his position, and yet he does it, lifting his hips and me with every single one.
I cry out against his throat, my climax still stuttering on, and he is relentless with me, fucking until we’re both panting and sweaty and until he’s made sure that I’ve milked him of every last second of pleasure.
When he stops, I stay slumped against his chest a moment, listening to the pounding of his heart beneath his sweater, sighing through all those sweet aftershocks. He cradles me close and kisses my hair, and after a few minutes, he pulls carefully free and perches me on the edge of his desk while he takes care of the condom and sets his clothing to rights. Then he tugs me back into his lap, and I curl up there, feeling small and content.
Auden begins stroking along my back, soothing, possessive strokes, and I close my eyes. “What should I do about Becket?” I murmur.
“Do you love him?” inquires Auden. His voice is neutral, but there is a stillness to him as he asks the question. I have the distinct sense that while Auden didn’t mind loaning me out for pleasure, he’d feel a lot differently loaning me out for love.
“No,” I say honestly. “I don’t.”
My Dominant loosens a little beneath me, his voice more open when he says, “Good. I can share a lot, Proserpina, but I’m not able to—well, the problem is, I’m fundamentally possessive when it comes to you.”
“And Saint,” I add for him.
Auden draws in a breath. He lets it out very carefully. “And St. Sebastian,” he says finally.
“Should I have known? About Becket?”
“I think it’s been growing slowly over time—slowly enough it would have been easy to miss.”
“But you knew.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
Auden sighs. “Becket told me once after Imbolc that he dreams of you—those strange God-dreams of his, you know. He dreams of you in the middle of everything, you in the very heart of the thorn chapel. After that, I began noticing the signs. Long looks. Prolonged quiets after you would kiss him hello on the cheek. I don’t resent him for it, even if I’d fight him bloody and bleeding if he tried to take you away.” He holds me tighter, in what seems like an unconscious reflex.
“The thought of you two playing together—it’s quite sexy to me,” he says, “and more pertinently, I think it is very sexy to you, and nothing gets me off like getting you off. He is one of my closest friends, and I trust him implicitly to cherish and adore you. But I cannot stomach the idea of you being in love with anyone other than me and St. Sebastian. If it happens—if you love someone else—you must tell me. Please. I’ll accept it, but it will gut me, and I deserve to die on my feet. I—”
It’s my turn to clap a hand over his mouth. I squirm in his lap until we’re facing each other, and then I tell him the truth. “You and Saint have ruined me,” I whisper. “More and more, I think it was that day when we were children. There was never any hope after that. It could only ever have been you two.”
Auden blinks, looking bewildered and haughty and relieved all at once, in that way only rich boys are able to pull off, and I remove my hand.
“And I know St. Sebastian feels the same way,” I reassure him. “He’ll never stop loving you.”
“Oh,” Auden says, softly, as if I’ve hit him. “I don’t know about that.”
A story—pages and pages of it—moves through his eyes, the shadows of a hundred hundred thoughts, the sparks of a thousand thousand unanswered prayers, and I am suddenly, acutely aware of how evasive he’s been about St. Sebastian all day. Acutely aware of our silent text thread, of my dark phone, of our missing lover.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Tell me right now.”
Auden closes his conflicted eyes and swallows. And when he starts to speak, his voice is threaded with so much pain it hurts to hear it.
“Twenty-four years ago, my father had another son. Six weeks ago, I learned his name.”
Chapter Seven
Delphine
