Page 96 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
The world outside has darkened even more, and the roses falling over his messy hair and elegant hands are more black than red. Just like the roses around the door in the chapel.
I think of Estamond—a woman who had a child with her own brother, a woman who never refused sex or pleasure or fun, but who also paid the highest price so no one else around her would have to.
“The difference is in what you do,” I answer. “Not how you feel.”
“In my choices then.” A small, sad smile pulls at his mouth. He reaches for me. “Come here, wise girl.”
I come, settling onto his lap and practically purring at the contact.
“I trust you,” I tell him, tilting my head up to kiss his throat. “I trust you even if you don’t trust yourself.”
His arms tighten around me. “I don’t deserve that.”
“You do.”
“Promise—Proserpina, you have to promise me something.” His voice is that of a man harrowed. A man sacked like an ancient city. “If I ever go too far, if I ever really hurt someone the way he hurt people—you have to promise me you’ll leave. I mean it.”
I stiffen and try to sit up, but he won’t let me, he keeps me against his chest. “You know you won’t,” I say. “I know you won’t.”
“You have to promise,” he begs. He sounds pillaged and ravaged and more than a burning city now, he’s a world on fire. He presses his face into my hair. “Please, little bride. Please don’t let me hurt you. Please don’t let me hurt St. Sebastian. If I turn into my father, you have to go away from me.”
“We have safewords for that,” I say. “Neither Saint nor I would ever let you get that far. We wouldn’t even let you start.”
“Promise,” he insists. “Promise to leave. I have to—I have to know you’ll keep yourself safe, that you won’t make excuses for me, that you won’t linger just to be hurt again. Please, Proserpina.”
I know the man whose arms are around me, and I know his heart. I know he would never hurt someone the way his father did.
“Of course, Auden,” I murmur. He finally lets me turn, and I brush my lips over his firm, sculpted mouth, sighing as he opens to me. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Proserpina
“If Auden doesn’t let you come soon, I’m going to be the one to die,” Saint says. He keeps his voice low because he’s about to leave for work, and the renovation crew is periodically coming through where we’re standing with their mysterious reels and unlabeled buckets. “How much longer is this going to last?”
“I don’t know,” I say, too miserable to even whine about it properly. Auden’s denied me climaxes before, but never this long—a week since that rainy evening in the tower—a week of fucking, spanking, all kinds of kinky sex, all kinds of fun orgasms for him and none for me. I’m not even allowed to come with St. Sebastian, which Saint is not happy about. And not a little jealous of.
He misses being Auden’s. He even misses the misery.
Saint opens one of the front doors, letting in a world of green and gold. Thornchapel in summer. Birds sing in the trees, and there’re so many bees buzzing around the roses on the front of the house that the air itself thrums with them.
“It’s too bad we’re not doing anything for Lammas,” Saint says, stepping out. I follow him as he walks toward the lane leading to the village. “You could use it more than ever.”
“Are you still upset we’re not doing a rite in the chapel?”
One shoulder comes up, drops back down. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
I look over at him as we walk. The trees are so thick and leafy that only ripples and dapples of sunlight make it down to us. They glint off Saint’s lip piercing and off the dark, dark brown of his eyes. “You don’t believe in anything,” I point out. “Not God, not church, not magic, and not . . . whatever we do in the thorn chapel.”
He stops.
“Why do I have to believe in something to want to do it?” he asks me. We’re standing on the narrow bridge over a small rill, and he keeps his eyes on the water as he speaks. “Isn’t wanting to do it enough of a reason on its own?”
“Sure. But it’s not a very strong reason.”
His phone goes off: an alarm letting him know his shift is in twenty minutes. St. Sebastian is many things, but he is never late for work. He silences it without pulling it out of his pocket.
“How about this,” he says, lifting his eyes to mine. “If I believe in anything, it’s this place. It’s the t
