Page 29 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
The hem of her coat sways a bit as she stands in front of me and I deduce that she’s taking it off. Even though I know she’s fully clothed underneath it, that small disrobing has heat simmering along my skin.
But can I love her?
Could I really? Already? After years of thinking she was so full of herself just because she was a certifiable genius, after years of assuming I’d marry Auden—because, honestly, who wouldn’t marry Auden?
The coat disappears; I hear it drop onto the footstool behind me.
“You look so good, pet,” she says, her voice almost a purr, it’s that low and breathy. “Whenever I needed to come, I’d think about this. About how you’d look on your knees for me.”
I don’t say anything, even though I have loads of words bubbling and popping on my tongue. Like popping candy, but made of bad ideas instead of sugar.
What if I love her?
I think I might love her.
Rebecca strides over to a low sofa—elegant, unfussy, modern, exactly her style—and sits. Even with my eyes on the artfully battered hardwoods, I can sense the perfection of her, the slow grace in which she lowers herself and slants her legs to the side instead of crossing them.
“Come to me,” she says, still in the wonderful, breathless voice. “Hands and knees.”
I’m still in my own jacket, I’m in heels and a suede skirt so short that it pulls up around my bottom when I lean forward to crawl. Nothing about what I’m wearing is comfortable to crawl in, and nothing about it is explicitly sexy—except it is actually very sexy to be forced to crawl mere moments after walking through a door, to know I look this slutty and debauched with my skirt up around my hips and my Saint Laurent heels sliding across the floor as I slouch toward the sofa.
Maybe I should be asking, why this? Why is this such a fucking turn-on? Why is my cunt already wet and aching to be touched when all I’ve done is crawl? But it feels like the answer is right in front of me, parting her legs and digging her fingers into my hair. I nuzzle the inside of her knee—silky and warm—and risk a glance up at her face. Her eyes are hooded, liquid and hot under her sinfully long lashes, and her mouth is pressed together in a way that’s lush and stern all at once.
“I didn’t say you could touch me yet, did I?” she says, tugging on my hair.
“No, Mistress.”
“Hmm.”
I dare another nuzzle, and those eyes hood even more.
“Delphine,” Rebecca warns.
I can’t help but smile at that, so I press my face into her knee to hide it. She’s wearing a short romper today, the kind with an immaculately fitted bodice and skirt-like shorts underneath, and the fabric has slid down her thighs enough to expose a sleek expanse of leg. Her skin is so soft-looking, so smooth. The way the light falls in the flat, I can see where the muscles under her skin curve and pull, making a subtle path right to the heat between her legs. I can’t help myself, I lick that path, just to feel it under my tongue, just to taste her and maybe show her where else my tongue could be if only she’d spread her legs a little farther apart.
Rebecca doesn’t react to my naughty tongue, no gasp or jump or tensing or anything, it’s like licking a living statue. And when I look up at her, I realize I’ve made a very, very big mistake. Those eyes are hot with more than ordinary lust now—there’s now irritation and excitement and a simmering cruelty that I just know is about to boil over.
I’m smiling so big now that there’s no point in hiding it.
“You’re so much trouble,” she breathes. Her fingers tighten in my hair. “So much fucking trouble.”
It’s what she said in the car on the way here. That I was a brat, that I was spoiled, that she’d have her hands full with me. But then, just like now, the way she said those words—brat, spoiled, trouble—made it sound like I was a Christmas gift all wrapped up for her, like I was the kind of thing she’d bite her pillow thinking about at night, and then we’d both grinned at each other, like we’d just learned the most marvelous secret.
We talked about a thousand other things—safewords and boundaries and limits—but that was what I kept coming back to: I’m a brat. And Rebecca likes it.
She likes me. And I think I love her.
When she says I’m trouble, I nip at her wrist and dimple at her, and then giggle as she yanks on my hair in reprimand.
“Oh you think it’s funny, do you?” she says, but there’s a twist at the edges of her mouth, like someone about to take a bite of a dessert they claimed just seconds ago they didn’t want.
“I think a lesson might be in order,” she says, regaining some of her sternness with a struggle. “But first . . .”
She finally does what I’ve been yearning for her to do since I got to my knees, and uses her slender fingers to draw aside the fabric between her legs. She’
s wearing narrow lace knickers—so narrow that they barely cover her sex—and from this angle, I can see her secret places. Bare, soft, and already wet.
“Why you wear cheeky knickers when no one can see them, and then the ugliest shoes that everyone else has to look at, is beyond me,” I say, which earns my upper arm a sharp pinch.
