Page 75 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Delphine can’t help but enjoy the moment. Rebecca so rarely cuddles, and even when it does happen, it’s usually when she thinks Delphine is asleep.
“That was proper good,” Rebecca says, kissing Delphine’s shoulder. Her hand rests on Delphi
ne’s belly and it’s still wet from her climax.
“Brilliant,” Delphine agrees. Rebecca kisses her shoulder again, and then nuzzles her neck, and Delphine thinks she couldn’t be happier, that life couldn’t be better.
“You could do this more, you know,” Delphine says without thinking.
“Fuck you with my dick? Yes, please.”
“No,” Delphine laughs. “The snuggling. The nuzzling. I like being nuzzled.”
Rebecca sits up with a sigh, bending over her lap to work the toy cock out of its harness. “I’m not that person, Delph. You know that.”
Auden was.
Emily might be.
The disloyal thoughts rip through her so fast she can’t stop them. She blinks up at the ceiling. “Do you think—could you be that person?”
Rebecca’s silence stretches into eternity, and then she asks, carefully, “Do you want me to be?”
Delphine doesn’t know. She wants her to be Rebecca, no one else. She also doesn’t know how much longer she can love someone who doesn’t love her back.
Toy cock freed, Rebecca stands up and zips up her jeans. She sticks the toy in her back pocket while she sets to work freeing Delphine’s wrists and ankles from the cuffs. She looks like a rebel from the 1950s—jeans, leather jacket, moody scowl—but instead of a comb in her back pocket, she has a dildo. A random, demented part of Delphine’s brain thinks it would make a hilarious Instagram story.
“I’m not asking you to love me,” Delphine finally says, after she’s completely freed. Rebecca handed her a glass bottle of water and then retreated to the corner, where she’s sitting on a spanking bench and putting her fallen shoe back on her foot. At the word love, she lifts her head, like a deer scenting a wolf.
“Delph . . .”
“I just—I don’t want to be the fat girl you boff and then nothing else. Sometimes I’m scared that I’m like a novelty for you, just another kind of girl on the checklist, and that you’re already sick of me, and I know even just saying this out loud is going to upset you, but I can’t help it. I have to know—could you ever love me?”
Rebecca’s eyes are no longer hot. They are cold. So very cold.
“This is the scene talking,” she says, standing up. “Hormones. You’ll feel better in an hour or so.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Delph, enough.”
Delphine stands up too and ducks quickly for her clothes before Rebecca can see her face. She doesn’t want Rebecca to see her cry. Not these kinds of tears at least, the unsexy kind.
Rebecca seems to realize that her tone was too sharp and walks over to her submissive. “Pet, look—”
“It’s fine,” Delphine says. Her hair is a curtain around her face as she scoops her things off the floor. She reminds herself that she chose this with her eyes wide open. She chose the woman who used to have a new submissive every night.
She wanted to be easy, right? Why can’t she just be easy?
Be easy.
“It’s fine,” Delphine says again, keeping her voice lifted and as cheery as she can. She straightens up and tries for a smile. “We should probably get back to the house though. The funeral is so early in the morning.”
Rebecca takes a step toward her. Stops. “Do you—do you want help getting dressed?”
“Actually,” Delphine says, her throat already clenching shut and her eyes burning. Be easy, be easy. “Maybe you could ask Emily what we need to do to clean up? Just to hasten our exit?”
Rebecca is a good Domme, and so Delphine can tell she’s reluctant to leave. But she’s too polite—and maybe too relieved—to fight Delphine on this. With a nod, she pulls the curtain aside and steps outside their stall. And the minute she leaves, Delphine sinks down to the floor and cries, alone and as silently as she possibly can.
