Page 26 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I obey his will and lower myself onto his sheathed cock as he leans back and studies the sight like he’s going to paint it one day. It nearly kills me to go slow—my orgasm with Becket has done nothing but made me hornier it turns out, and I’m craving the rough bite that a fast ride would give me—but I know disregarding a direct request from Auden will have me ass up over his lap and spanked until I can’t breathe. And then he’ll punish me for real and refuse to let me come. Which will kill me at this point. So slow it is.
Auden watches me work with a composed expression, his gaze unreadable and distant. Only the trembling of his hands where they grab my hips gives away his eagerness—at least until I’m fully seated against him, my clit flush against the abdominal muscle right above his cock and his desire spreading me wide, wide open.
Then the trembling is all over—his thighs and his belly and his breathing, and his eyelids flutter, as if he wants to close them but can’t stop looking at the place we’re joined.
“I’d give up everything I own for this cunt,” he says. And then a wicked smile cuts across his face. “If it weren’t already mine, that is.”
His words are more effective than a thumb on my clit; I drop my chin to my chest and remind myself to breathe as my belly hollows at his coolly obscene observations. It’s so close to what Becket said earlier—I’d give up everything for this, for you—but it might as well be miles apart in meaning.
Becket wants to belong to me. But I already belong to the filthy architect-prince with the lazy smile and the forest-colored eyes.
And when Auden flicks those eyes up to me, I see the full force of his shameless want, of his crude hunger—all of it underpinned by another hunger—the same I saw twelve years ago when he kissed me for the first time. A hunger for my very heart.
And oh, how I want it to be eaten.
I feel a small flush of guilt that I can’t match the same surge of desire for Becket’s unselfish decency as I can for the person currently leaning forward to bite at my breasts through my dress. Although I don’t think it has anything to do with Becket or decency, and everything to do with Auden. And with Saint.
If Becket were all I knew, he would be the most mesmerizing light I’d ever seen. But he’s not all I know. I’d met two bitter and beautiful boys in this house and tumbled into a new life. A life that was all stars and shadows, glimmers and gloom. And I was done for.
“Make yourself come on me,” Auden says. “While I listen to every single thing Becket did to you.”
So I tell him. I tell him about the kisses and the hard thigh between my legs for me to rock against. I tell him how Becket teased me with his cock until I begged for it, and how I came after he talked about coming inside me, even though we both knew he wouldn’t do it, not after I asked him not to. I tell him how Becket ended up finishing and making a mess on the bookshelf.
“The wooden part,” I clarify, my breathing coming in short bursts. “I never would have let him—on the books—biological debris—”
“Good. Biological debris on the books was my chief concern,” he says in a grave tone.
I almost think he’s serious until I see the faint dip of a suppressed dimple, a quivering crenel that he tries and fails to hide, and then he’s grinning up at me. I swat at him, and he catches my hand, laughing.
“You’re a good librarian, Proserpina, even if you do need to be fucked twice a day to keep you happy enough to work.”
His voice is teasing, happy, but his words give life to one of my real fears, now blown to full life since everything that happened on Beltane. “Auden,” I say, hips slowing. “I mean, sir. Maybe…maybe I should look for another job. I don’t know that I should be your employee now that we’re actually together; I don’t want you to feel obligated—”
Auden claps his hand over my mouth, eyes narrowed. “No,” he says firmly. “You can quit because you’re bored or because another position sounds more fulfilling or because you don’t want to be here anymore. You quit because you can’t stand the sight of me or my house. But you don’t quit because you think I feel obligated to pay you. I pay you because you’re good at what you do, because you came personally recommended, and because in the four months you’ve been here, you’ve done incredible work. I’ll write anything into a contract you’d like, but you don’t get to leave just because you think you should.”
I try to speak against Auden’s palm, and he sighs but loosens it anyway so the words can come out. “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. I’ve spent the day sleeping and playing instead of working.”
“I know you have narcolepsy. And I wanted you to play. Do you really think,” he asks, pushing his hips up so I feel him deep, deep in my belly, “I’d rather you be scanning books than doing this?”
“But—”
“My god, you are stubborn,” he replies. Another sigh. “Can’t you just pretend that we’re opening a very twee and painfully overpriced shop on a high street somewhere? Or an apple orchard where we charge schoolchildren to come and visit? People in love own businesses and work together all the time.”
“But we’re not working together,” I say, unable to let this go. “I’m working for you.”
“Okay, we’re going back to the hand,” Auden says. And sure enough, the hand comes up to cover my mouth again. “You’re not in my library right now, you’re on my lap, and that means different rules, so shhhh. I love you and you belong to me, and once I’m finished using you, we will slide back into real life and make sure the terms of your employment make you comfortable. But in the meantime, please understand this: I. Trust. You. Inherently, explicitly, completely. I trust you with my house, with my old books, with my money, and now with my St. Sebastian. I trust you with everything, and I inflexibly and pertinaciously believe that our respective work is made better by us being kinky and playful and in love. Now, you still haven’t come, and that was the only command I gave you, which means I’m very close to bending you over my desk and fucking you that way so I can spank you as I do it. Can we be very done with this now?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, ducking and burying my face into his wonderful-smelling neck. The shift in angles rubs me both inside and outside in just the right way, and the next words come out husky. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by doing as you’re told,” he says, just as huskily, but he turns his head enough to kiss my cheek. Lingering and warm. “I haven’t got all day, little one. I’ve got to get to London at some point, you know.”
“I know,” I say, sitting up so I can properly fuck him some more. And also so he can see my little pout—which is mostly to be cute, but it’s also a genuine thing, because when he’s gone, the whole house feels like it’s made of yearning. Even the trees outside seem restless when Auden is away.
“Little brides miss their lords when they’re gone, hmm?” Auden says, leaning back again and hiking up my skirt so he can watch as I fuck him.
“Everyone misses you,” I whisper, watching his face as he watches my cunt. His eyes are hooded, a faint flush on his cheeks, and every now and again he pulls his lower lip between his teeth, as if he’s biting me in his mind. “Thornchapel misses you.”
Four months ago, he would have scoffed or spat at that. He would’ve had some bitter, careless response, made some obscure or tenebrous pronouncements about Thornchapel’s future or his own, and then changed the subject. But not today. Not after Beltane.
