Page 132 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“St. S—”
I put my hand over his mouth, and he goes completely still underneath me. Never, not in twelve years, have I done something like this. Never have I taken charge of his body, never have I taken what I wanted from him. And never has he let me. Never has he let me straddle him, silence him, slide a hand into his hair and twist, as I’m doing right now. Just enough to make him grunt against my palm. Just enough to make him swell even more in those Lake Como shorts of his.
The sensation of topping him is almost as forbidden, almost as reckless, as the knowledge that it’s my brother I’m touching like this. It thrums through me like scotch, like the storm, like a thousand thousand sins, like nature itself.
I can’t stop it. I won’t stop it.
All storms must break, after all.
Chapter Thirty-One
St. Sebastian
With a twist and a shove, I have him angled away from the wall and flat on his back in the grass. Pencils spill everywhere and thunder pounds through the air, and we both ignore it all, our eyes only on each other.
“What are you doing?” he asks again, this time in a voice that’s rough. Almost angry. “We don’t do this. We don’t do it because this is how you wanted it to be. We haven’t been—it’s been for you, St. Sebastian.”
He’s right and I don’t care. I don’t care right now.
I swing my leg back over his hips, bracing my hands on either side of his head. It feels strange to be over him, and wrong too, but it’s the kind of wrong that makes me hard—and it’s that kind of morning, anyway. The kind of morning when anything can happen. So why not this?
“You wanted to imagine it,” I say, dipping my face to run the tip of my nose along his jaw. “So let’s imagine it.”
“W-what?”
I’m gratified by the quaver in his voice. By the flush in his cheeks and the relentless bar in his pants, which even now strains against his zipper. “You wanted to know what the Thorn King felt? I can help you.”
“St. Sebastian . . . ” It might have been a dismissal or a protest, I don’t know. But whatever it was going to be dies on his lips when I collar his throat with my hand.
His slow swallow against my palm might be the single sexiest thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. The squeeze of the muscles in his neck. The graceful roll of his Adam’s apple.
“A torc,” I say, tightening my hand the tiniest bit. “He would have worn a torc.”
Auden’s lips part. He draws in a shuddering breath.
And then he nods, closing his eyes.
I’ve never felt Auden’s neck like this. There were times—brief, stolen interludes—when I was permitted to caress him, allowed to explore his body, but it was never like this. Never me with power over him.
I sit up so I can circle his neck with both hands, with thumbs on either side of his throat. I can trace the knob of his larynx and the curved ridge of his windpipe. I can settle my touch in the sickle-shaped notch of his collarbone. Everything that keeps him alive—all the air, all the blood—all of it can be spanned by my fingers alone.
It’s a humbling, terrifying realization. To know he’s nothing but oxygen and carbon and hydrogen like the rest of us. It feels like a lie. Because how could it be true?
How could a wild god be this vulnerable?
I lift my fingers away and run them down his chest, down the tight furrows of his stomach to the waistband of his shorts.
“He’d be naked too,” I say, “or mostly naked.”
Auden raises an eyebrow at me. Even flat in the grass, he manages to look haughtily amused. “Oh, is that so?”
“It is,” I confirm, even though I actually have no idea and why would I? All my information about human sacrifices and kings come from novels and low-budget fantasy movies. But it makes a kind of sense to me—if the point was to sacrifice the king while he was still hale and strong, then wouldn’t all that health and strength be on display?
And anyway, I just really, really want to take his shirt off.
He gives me a look like he knows what I’m up to, but he doesn’t stop me, he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t point out that this is a very, very dangerous game for us to play. He simply arches his back when I push the hem of his shirt up to his chest, he curls his shoulders off the ground when I tug it over his head.
I toss it to the side when I’m done, and then it’s my turn to be distracted. By the firm lines of his chest, by the etched muscles of his stomach. By the flat coins of his nipples, which I run my fingers over.
