Page 4 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“He deserves to die because he is the Thorn King,” Esau pronounced, his voice as firm as his hold on her. “It’s his fate. If I were born to be the Thorn King, then it would be my fate as well.”
With some private shame, Estamond had to admit that Esau was much better suited to the role of wild god than her quiet Randolph. If some quirk of fate had meant that Esau had been born a Guest, if he’d been given the torc and asked to wed himself to the land, then what a king he would have become. Uncanny and wicked and wild. Not just a Thorn King, but a king of thorns.
“But if he will not kneel to his fate, then one of us must become the thorn king in his place,” Esau continued. “The door must be closed, even if it has to be with a substitute. Here and there, king and door.”
King and door. They were words she’d grown up with, words as unmovable and unchangeable as the wild god carved onto their hearth. Part of a song so old that no one knew when it had first been sung.
Here and there, king and door,
Cup and spear, corn and war.
She stopped struggling now as she realized it was pointless to fight this. To fight the Kernstow legacy. To somehow stave off the hungry heart of the valley.
“Even after our inheritance has been denied us, it’s always fallen to the Kernstows to make sure the Guests abide by the rules of the land,” said Esau. “And it’s up to us to close the door if they won’t.”
Estamond’s head fell forward against his chest. He smelled like heather and rain and home. “Just not Esra,” she whispered. “Not him. Please.”
Esau was still furious, but she could hear the truth of his next words in his voice. “I would never let it be him, Essie. And for what it’s worth, you know Mother wouldn’t either. She’s seen something for him in the spoons—something about his descendants. He’s the future of the Kernstows now. He’s all we have left.”
It was unwise to tell him what she told him next, but Estamond had never been wise. “You should marry, Esau. Find a wife or even a sweetheart. Get babes on her.”
His hands tightened so hard around her arms that she let out a squeak, and then those hands were on her back and in her hair, pressing her so tightly to him that she could feel every tensed muscle and every inch of his erection. “There’s no one but you,” he vowed. “There will never be anyone but you. And you will be mine again, my own, and you’ll never leave me again.”
“Esau . . . ”
His mouth and nose were in her hair. His hands shaped to the curves of her hips and bottom through her dress. “You don’t need him,” he rumbled. “If you simply do what needs to be done, then you’ll have won the thorn chapel back for our family, and we’ll be together again.”
Turbulent longing tangled and pulled with horror; she would never do it, never, never—but oh, how she’d missed this. How she’d sometimes ached for this, ached for Esau’s fury and possession. His greedy hands and animal growls. Randolph was sweet and kind and true, but Esau was her very own heart, her very own soul. Their hearts were made out of each other’s. So were their bodies and minds.
Even the wild god himself would struggle to compete with that.
Estamond’s body didn’t hide the truth from her brother—it never could—and before long, Esau’s mouth was hot and urgent on hers. He handled her like a doll—not a precious china doll with silk clothes and curls made of real hair, but like a rag doll. Like she was his thing to drag over the hills and clutch in the dark, and even though her tender core twinged and her milk-full breasts ached, she relished every second of it.
Esau was taller than her, stronger than her, angrier than her. With very little trouble or effort, he had her inside the house and on his wool-blanketed bed, his teeth on her throat and his hand up her skirts. With a hot, wet flush, her milk let down, hard enough to soak through her nursing corset and dress.
Esau’s eyes narrowed. “Is that for him? For one of his brats?”
Estamond narrowed her eyes right back, and she was tempted to hiss at him like a cat. “For one of my brats, yes.”
“The child should be mine,” he breathed against her skin. “All of your children should be mine.”
“I was always supposed to be the May Queen, Esau. I was always supposed to be his.”
Esau grunted low in his throat, his hand dropping to his trouser buttons. It was inevitable between them, once again. Two bodies that should have never separated to begin with.
“I only just stopped bleeding,” she told him as he moved between her legs. “I still hurt.”
“I won’t go in,” he said. “But I have—to—touch—”
The moment his bare organ pressed against her slick opening and then rode up to grind against her, Estamond forgot nearly everything. Her mother’s note, the impending Lammas feast, and very nearly the tiny babe still sleeping in a maid’s arms in the cozy Guest carriage waiting for them on the road.
True to his word, he didn’t penetrate her, but it was still fucking, there was no denying that. She came hard and keening, and Esau followed her, liquid heat surging out of his tip and onto her intimate skin, and then he collapsed over her, still rutting gently as he slid his arms tight around her. She was his rag doll once again.
“I hate that Mother made you marry him,” he murmured.
“No one made me do anything,” she said. “I love him.”
“Yet you’re underneath me.”
