Page 129 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“It’s undoubtedly special,” Auden disagrees, flicking a glance up at me from underneath his lashes. “Because it’s ours.”
And he’s right.
He continues his work, and I watch him, feeling strangely restless as I do. It should be soothing, reassuring, doing t
his thing we did when we were sixteen. Him drawing, me watching, the summer heat settling in my bones as I lounge next to him.
But instead I feel like I did when I was sixteen, which is gashed and ragged with wanting him. Wanting his mouth on mine, his body against mine, his fingers wrapped around the part of me that aches for him so, so much. I watch him while he draws like I’ll be allowed to have him if only I look hard enough. If only I memorize perfectly the fine cut of his jaw and the graceful, aristocratic swoop of his nose. If only I can recreate in my mind the faint lines on his forehead as he works, the infrequent blinks, the impatient flicks of hair out of his face. The firm, almost sensual wrap of his fingers around his pencils, the balance of abandon and precision in his movements as he draws. The sound of his breathing against the breathing of the hovering storm, as if they were one and the same.
I’m playing with the ring on my thumb as I watch, spinning it in slow circles, wishing it was him playing with it instead. Wishing it was another kind of ring on a different finger. Wishing that I wasn’t so painfully, excruciatingly aware of how it will never, ever be a different kind of ring.
“If you don’t stop looking at me,” says Auden after a while, “I’m going to do something about it.”
“You don’t like being looked at?”
Auden sets down his pencil and puts his hand over where I’ve been fiddling with my ring. “I like being looked at too much,” he says.
Our eyes meet, and I think the weight of his hand over both of mine is enough to press me right into the earth. Like I’ll be pushed through the grass and the dirt and the rocks and right into the molten heart of the planet just by the gravity of his touch.
“I like looking at you too much,” I admit in a whisper.
His eyes drop to my mouth, then to my throat, then down to where his hand covers mine. The thing between us is like a storm all on its own, a storm that won’t break, that can’t break. It can’t ever, ever break, and yet if it doesn’t, I think I might die from it.
Auden’s voice is soft when he speaks. “We’ve been good, St. Sebastian. Haven’t we?”
Those words are like brands on my heart, like silk sliding over my cock. My entire body erupts in goosebumps.
“Yeah,” I say, the word coming out like gravel. “We’ve been good.”
The tip of his finger finds the family crest stamped onto my ring and rubs over it slowly, slowly. I think of the mercies and cruelties that fingertip has given me. Caresses that curled my toes and bruises that made me thrash.
I never understood the phrase ignorance is bliss until now, I always thought it better to know, it should be better to know . . .
I wish I didn’t know now. I wish I knew nothing about it. I wish he would thread his fingers through my hair and kiss me like I was his, because I would still be his if I didn’t know the truth. We’d be in paradise together instead of in hell alone.
If you’re already in hell, why not be there together?
You could trade longing for guilt and loneliness for shame.
But then at least you wouldn’t be apart.
I know it’s for my sake that he forbears. I know it’s because he loves me that he keeps his love hidden away.
But what about me? For whose sake am I doing this?
Mine?
My mother’s?
I don’t know anymore. And I still know it’s wrong to want him so much, but I can’t stop, and maybe if I gave in—just once—just a little—just enough to feel better—
Auden’s eyes lift back up to my mouth, and I know he’s looking at my lip piercing, I know he’s imagining taking it between his teeth and tugging.
I know he’s remembering what it feels like on his cock.
“This is hard,” he says. “It’s always hard, of course, but right now, all I want is to—”
He stops before he can speak aloud whatever it is that’s tormenting him.
