A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(100)

His thoughts are back in that tiny shower stall, crammed in with Proserpina’s tiny, curvy body and Saint’s sculpted one. His thoughts are on the swollen silk of Poe’s cunt as he plucked an orgasm from her like ripe fruit off a tree.

He’s never done that before, made someone come, and in the last two hours, he did it twice. And fuck if it wasn’t the best thing he’s ever felt, someone coming all over his hand, someone buckling and moaning and spilling everywhere because of him. It’s as good as spanking. As good as kissing every cut on Poe’s hand and then dressing every little wound. As good as feeling St. Sebastian’s lip ring against his mouth.

His thoughts are also still on the ritual, on the sex, on the fire. On the thorns. He thinks about Delphine, who’s no longer his, and his heart jolts, and he thinks about Proserpina naked in the firelight and his heart jolts harder. He thinks about how he felt walking the path up to the clearing, about the strange, near-violent clarity that came to him as they moved through the ancient motions of the ceremony.

He feels different, although he can’t exactly quantify how. He’s still being ripped apart from the inside by the same thorns, but it’s as if they’ve finally found a place to take root. A place to anchor themselves. He doesn’t understand them—his needs, his hurts, the hopes he’s forgotten how to name—but it feels like, for the first time, they understand him.

And that’s something he didn’t have before Imbolc night.

By the time he gets back inside the house, he feels resolved to one thing at least—it’s time he figured things out with Proserpina. It’s time he courted her, if such an old-fashioned word can be permitted. He’ll go in and he’ll snuggle her for the rest of the night, and when she wakes up, he’ll tell her everything. About the things he wants, about what he wants with her. She told him what he’d have to do to earn her—now he’ll tell her he’s ready to begin.

As for Saint, he has no illusions things will change. There’s too much past between them for a kiss and a hand job to make any difference now. Which is fine.

Just fine.

Saint’s hurt him enough for one lifetime—although honestly, Auden can’t think of a single way Saint could hurt him any more than he already has.

Wet things deposited and rain boots pulled off, Auden makes his way upstairs to Poe’s bedroom, his heart easing with each step. He knows it’s too soon after Delphine, but he’ll figure it out. He’ll do as he has done and take things slowly, he’ll speak transparently, let Poe take the lead—

A low cry reaches his ears, a low cry coupled with heavy, masculine grunts, and Auden freezes.

It’s coming from behind Poe’s door, and even though he knows, he knows immediately, he still forces himself forward to the door and he opens it, just a crack, to witness the scene within.

St. Sebastian is braced over Poe, rutting fiercely between her legs. And she’s rutting just as fiercely back—arching her back and whimpering deliciously. They’re fucking.

God.

They’re fucking.

And he’s about to close the door, he really is, when Poe comes.

He’s seen her come on someone else’s hand, he’s seen her come on his own—but this is different, and he can’t tell if it’s jealousy or shock that makes it that way, only that it does. Only that it reverberates through him with something more potent and dangerous than arousal on its own, and he can only barely fight off the fantasy of banging the door open, striding inside, and taking both of them in hand.

He’s hard before the first cry even leaves her mouth; the heel of his palm is grinding against his erection before the second cry even starts.

He could do it, he knows. He could shove his way in there and—

No.

No.

He drops his hand and closes the door as quietly as he opened it, and then he turns around and slumps, his cock throbbing and his heart pounding and something hurting so pitilessly behind his ribs and up in his throat that he nearly drops down to his knees.

No, this is not his bedroom, that is not his bed. The two people inside are not his, although by God if they were, he’d spend every minute of every day making them know it. He’d fuck and spank and bite and tease until they were his by right, until he’d earned them. Like he was going to earn Poe, before.

Before just now.

Before he knew she wanted someone else.

Tears prick at the back of his eyes, and he feels like an idiot. Foolish for thinking lovely, perfect Poe was interested in him, as spoiled and thorny as he is, and foolish for thinking Saint didn’t have the power to hurt him anymore. He rubs at his throat, his chest, his face. He tries to take a deep breath, but it seems to stop somewhere right below his collarbone, not making it down into his lungs.

He won’t have the chance to earn Proserpina Markham after all.

Down the hall, Rebecca’s door opens and she emerges in a silk robe, saying something over her shoulder to someone inside—presumably Delphine.

She turns to go to the bathroom and then sees Auden against the door.

“What are you doing?” she asks at the same moment a broken, telling moan echoes from out of Poe’s room. Her face lengthens in sympathetic understanding, and she comes forward and loops her arm through Auden’s and pulls him away, down to the very end of the hall.

“You okay?” she asks him, bending her knees to catch his eyes because he can’t seem to lift his head.