Page 69 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
The air around Auden burns brighter, hotter, and both Poe and Saint feel it. Poe turns and smiles at her king, who can’t hide his interest. Saint wishes he’d already ordered a drink so he could down it now.
“If all of us can go,” Poe says, “then we’d love to.”
Orthia’s is neither glamorous nor grimy. It’s in a converted warehouse next to the Kansas River, underlit, under-furnished, but meticulously clean. It’s laid out with all the composition and Feng shui of an exterior door expo—curtained stalls that can be either private or public run through the warehouse in two long corridors; there’re plastic totes crammed with assorted items stuffed into corners and behind tables; and someone sits in a folding chair at the front door and officially makes them members of what, for legal reasons, is considered a social club. In the remaining space, there is a makeshift bar, a low stage surrounded by leather benches and chairs, and then plenty of equipment scattered about, for people to play with in full view.
It’s where they’re at now, Poe and Delphine stripped to their underthings and cuffed side by side to St. Andrew’s crosses, while Rebecca and Auden peruse the impact play implements like children inside a toy store. Becket claimed jet lag and didn’t come, and Saint hovers at the edges of the scene, restless and annoyed with himself. He knew there’d be no place for him here, he knew that he wouldn’t be the one cuffed to a cross and made to endure Auden’s cruelty, and yet still he came. Why? Is he so masochistic that he’ll use anything to hurt himself, even watching Poe get something he’ll never, ever get again?
Apparently, yes.
Which would surprise nobody, he supposes.
The warehouse is dim, pounding with music that can only be described as music for people who wish they were vampires, and so Saint doesn’t bother to hide his expression as Auden finally selects a flogger and then steps up to Poe to whisper in her ear. He doesn’t bother to muffle the groan he makes when Auden bites Poe’s shoulder and then has to visibly adjust himself. He doesn’t conceal a single thing as Auden starts flogging the woman they both love—lightly at first, and then harder, and then faster, until Poe is shivering. Until Poe’s body has started twisting with delicious confusion, until she both shies away and chases the sensation, unsure of what she needs.
Auden’s sure though. He changes floggers, something heavier now with sharp, angled tips. It’s not the kind of flogger that will make you bleed, but it’s not too far away from that kind of flogger either. The first hit has Poe’s knees buckling, and her moan carries over all the heavy bass and snarling female vocals, hitting Saint right in the stomach.
She’d moaned like that this morning, but so softly it was barely audible, after Saint slipped into the airplane bathroom behind her and fingered her so slowly that by the time she orgasmed, a flight attendant had come by and straightened their seats. Later tonight, he’d come too. Even if it means fucking her on the twin bed while Auden watches.
No, he reminds himself. Brothers.
But it’s so hard, because he has no practice being a brother, and neither does Auden, and anyway, what happens when two brothers are in love with the same woman? Surely there’s some leeway then?
Watching, maybe? Helping? Maybe even being inside her together?
Which makes it sound like Poe is a toy to be shared, which that’s not it at all (except when that’s the game she’s playing with Auden). But she is the single unbrotherly ribbon tying them together, and so sometimes Saint finds himself trying to reach Auden’s body through hers. Searching out every small cruelty Auden’s marked her with and then kissing it, worshiping it, murmuring litanies of prayer into her skin.
These past five weeks living with Poe and Auden, he has been deliriously happy . . . and also tattooed with so much yearning on the inside of his skin that he wonders how no one else sees it.
Well, Poe had seen it. At least once.
That day had been a hot one, and they’d spent the morning in the laziest possible way, splashing in the indoor pool. He’d been watching the way the water slid and sluiced over the lean corrugations of Auden’s chest and stomach, he’d been marking the dark hair trailing from Auden’s navel down into the waistband of his trunks.
He was miserable. And then a laughing Auden had pounced on Poe and playfully guided her hand into his swimming shorts. There’d only been a glimpse, a flash really, of a hard cock, straight and proud and jutting up with male arrogance, but then Poe wrapped her hand around it.
Auden’s gaze had met Saint’s, his eyes loud with all the things they’d agreed not to say.
It should be you here too, those eyes said. It should be you both.
Saint abruptly couldn’t exist in that pool a single moment longer. He muttered an excuse and then fled up into the hills. He sat staring down into the trees wearing nothing but damp trunks and unlaced boots until Poe found him and sat down next to him. Her hair was still wet and her cheeks were flushed, and Saint had wondered if Auden had fucked her before he let her leave.
But she said nothing about Auden when she spoke. Instead, she asked, “Am I enough?”
Saint had looked at her then, feeling horror and guilt and panic, and she’d held up a hand. “I’m not trying to coax compliments out of you, or plea for proofs of love. I don’t want to be that girl, okay? I just need to know the truth. Because right now I have half of two men, and if it wasn’t hard en
ough watching you both suffer, it’s compounded by the fact that I can’t heal it for either of you. I’ll never be him, Saint. And I’ll never begrudge you loving him or missing that part of your love, but I also have to be enough on my own. I won’t settle for anything less.”
“Poe—”
“And before you ask, I’ve just had this same talk with Auden,” she said. “I don’t mind being in between, St. Sebastian. But I can’t be instead of.”
Her eyes had been a blazing green then, like an alchemist’s fire, and he’d pulled her into his lap, he’d kissed her, he’d told her the truth—that she was enough, that she was everything, she was an infinity of love and his infinity was sewn to hers. But that it was the same with Auden too, and even in this new life of brotherhood—sharing days, dinners, drinks by the fire, seeing each other in the hallway, reading in the garden with a bottle of wine passed between them—he still missed that last piece of their love. The piece they agreed to bury together.
Except it wouldn’t stay dead, and Saint didn’t know how to fix that. Maybe he never would.
Poe had nodded then, understanding. She, too, had a heart made for two people. Only her love was permitted, while theirs was a sin of blood.
He’d reached under her dress and found her naked underneath it. He’d freed his shaft and had her ride his lap under the golden May sun until they’d both felt like themselves again.
And so the three of them had managed to cope, managed to share a house and a life for the last month. Managed to share all the parts of love, save for one.
