Page 9 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
My father and I circled the site in silence. All around us was a landscape of olive and umber; the sun was relentless, the breeze was sparing. It felt impossible to believe that this was counted as part of the Fertile Crescent. After growing up in England, a place so damp and green that things just grew whether one wanted them to or not, this place seemed almost barren. Which made the temple all
the more striking.
Why here?
Why this place?
“I feel God here,” my father said finally. The excavated site had been roofed and ringed with a walkway, and by this point we were leaning on the railings, staring down to where the pillars rested in their mess of stones and dirt.
I looked around then, at the stark, sloping hills and the dry valley below. It seemed like a godless place—and yet, strangely I could feel the thread of divinity as well. It was thin and distant, it was as dusty and unused as the buried temple structures themselves, but it was there.
A lone note from a forgotten song. A footprint baked into the earth.
“I think I feel it too,” I said, a bit eagerly, and then my father had smiled at me.
He had never become cold, my father, even after my mother finally made good on her ultimatums and moved back to Ghana, and even after our summer at Thornchapel, when I would sometimes find him dialing a number on his cell phone only to hang up before the call could connect. But even though he wasn’t cold, he was undoubtedly cool. He had begun to hold himself back, bit by bit, more and more each and every year, until he was a man of walls, a man of locked doors and drawn curtains. I no longer saw him angry or sad—when we went to visit Ma in Accra, he was unfailingly polite, he was kind, he would even be affectionate in a perfunctory sort of way. But I also no longer saw him happy; his happiness faded into pastel-tinted childhood memories, and the reality of living with him—of bringing my marks home to him, airing my petty grievances, bandaging my scraped knees, and later mumbling my requests for money to buy feminine hygiene products—was a reality shaped by his dispassion and reserve.
So to have seen him smile then . . . it felt like more of a birthday present than seeing the oldest known designed landscape in the world.
It wasn’t until later—much later, actually—as I was back home in England and preparing for uni, that I realized I’d felt that thin thread of the divine only one other place in my life. There was another place that was hidden and strange and holy.
I’d lived there for a summer.
It belonged to my best friend.
It practically called out for a gardener, a keeper, someone who would patiently unravel all its secrets, not as archeologists do, not through digging and scraping. But through tending. Through planting. Through growth.
And I knew then, as I know now, that I was always meant to come back to Thornchapel. Not because it was meant for me.
But because I was meant for it.
Chapter Two
Rebecca
I wake with a kitten tucked into my side.
Outside, the sky is the kind of sweet blue that comes only a handful of times in an English spring, and inside my room, everything is orderly and quiet and in its place. Except for the kitten. She’s very much out of place—sleeping with a leg thrown over mine and her face nestled into my shoulder. Her hair is everywhere, and she’s snoring softly, sweet little breaths that puff warmly against my skin. At some point, she’s twisted her fingers into the silk of my nightgown, as if to keep me from leaving.
From this angle, I can only make out the dark fans of her eyelashes and the pert snub of her nose and the coral-colored bow of her upper lip. She’s like a doll, like the perfect doll Sara Crewe is given in A Little Princess, except Delphine is also a doll I get to pet and kiss. A doll I get to pose and lick and fuck.
Her hair really is fucking everywhere. Shining gold and silky, spilling over my chest and shoulder and stomach. It’s long enough that wisps of it tickle the exposed skin of my thighs. Just a few years ago, this would have irritated me beyond measure, but today the only irritation I feel is frustration that I can’t play with it too much without waking her. I have to settle for stroking it away from her face, for sifting it through my fingers and then letting it fall back to my stomach again.
When she’s awake though, I’ll pull it. I’ll tug on it until she whimpers; I’ll use it to guide her mouth between my legs. I’ll wrap it around my fist, and then I’ll let it go again so I can watch the light play over its aureate waves as she eats me.
My cunt gives a kick at the thought, and then a second kick as I realize I can feel her cunt against my thigh. Even unconscious, she’s got it pressed needily against me—as if she fell asleep seeking some kind of friction or relief. I let myself indulge in a fantasy: rolling Delphine onto her back and sliding my fingers into her before she’s all the way awake. Letting her wake up with me kneeling over her, already getting her halfway to an orgasm by the time she flutters those honey eyes open.
A hungry ache settles just behind my clit, and a matching ache curls low in my belly. I want to fuck her like she belongs to me . . . but she doesn’t belong to me. Not yet.
As much as we’ve fooled around here at Thornchapel, as many small, beginner-level scenes as we’ve done in this room, I haven’t truly made her mine. I haven’t asked her to be my submissive for real. I haven’t invited her to my flat or invited myself to hers. I haven’t asked to meet her parents as her girlfriend, and I haven’t ever even hinted that she should meet mine as the same. I haven’t taken her to the club.
I haven’t told her she makes me feel like my lungs have shrunk and my heart has grown into a quavering, defenseless, easily bruisable thing.
No, I’ve fucked her here at Thornchapel, as if Thornchapel is its own club, its own world, with no consequences or connection to my life in London. I’d say I used her, except I’m not entirely sure that she’s not using me right back, and sometimes I’m not entirely sure I’m the only reason we haven’t become something more. I can never forget that we used to hate each other—I can never forget that up until three years ago, I thought Delphine the worst kind of brat, the worst kind of spoiled rich girl. And after that fateful week at my flat, I still thought her a brat, but a brat I jerked off thinking about more times than I’d like to admit.
Brats need to be broken and tamed, a little voice tempts.
If you made her yours . . .
