A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(25)

It eases, however, around his friends. Delphine and Rebecca and Auden, Poe now too, if he can count her as a friend, and he hopes he can. It eases around St. Sebastian, whom he leaves the church unlocked for, whose lip ring glints as he bows his head and murmurs empty prayers.

Yes, around them, the zeal dims, and he feels like a different version of himself, the version he might have been if the zeal had never found him. He can be naughty and fun, smart and lively. He can feel comfortable with the desires that burden him, the desires that overwhelm him when they walk hand in hand with the fervor of his faith. With his friends, he eats and drinks and keeps late hours, with them he is only a human and not a saint.

But he’s not with them tonight, and so there’s only been a plain meal of unbuttered bread and broth. He’s done push-ups and sit-ups until his muscles shake with exhaustion. He’s prayed the Rosary, the Chaplet, his various devotions, and spent time in silent, contemplative meditation with his Lord.

At nine, he finishes his prayers, checks the side door of the church to make sure it’s unlocked in case St. Sebastian wants to come in. St. Sebastian, the unbeliever, who still comes in and prays and kneels and sighs. Who sits and stares at the tabernacle as if he expects God himself to crawl out and apologize to him.

Becket the priest reads for thirty more minutes in bed, a book of Celtic mythology he ordered online last week. It’s a secret fascination of his. He tells himself it’s purely academic.

When he goes to sleep, the zeal comes for him in his dreams. It shows him dying kings, dying gods, rain pattering on the summer-spread leaves of Thornchapel’s forest.

And Proserpina in the middle of it all, haloed and radiant. Waiting.





There’s an old warehouse in Peckham, and in that warehouse is a trendy flat, and in that flat there’s a woman in bed asleep. She’s on her stomach, naked and without a cover, and her bottom is a thing of beauty. Bruises, red and purple like Valentine’s Day flowers, have turned her backside into a postmodern canvas of torment and affection. The arnica gel on her skin shines in the glow from the window.

Rebecca watches tonight’s submissive sleep for a moment, then slides out of bed to walk to the windows and stare down at the empty street below. It’s wet from an earlier burst of rain. An indeterminate clump of litter has caught against the curb, and there’s a fresh spray of graffiti on the building opposite that she hasn’t noticed before.

It looks cold.

She loves her flat, wedged as it is between a car mechanic’s and an art gallery. She loves the little neighborhood it nestles in—she loves the impossibly hip restaurants and speakeasies cropping up between the African food shops and the tattoo parlors and the upstairs churches.

The inside of her home is both a hymn to natural light and an adoration of the city at night—the walls are more glass than brick, and from almost any place in the flat, Rebecca can look up and see the sky. She can access the fresh air and the wind and the rain, something she likes to do often when she’s folded into the city’s fussy, concrete arms.

She accesses them now, stepping out onto the balcony Auden designed for her when he helped her renovate the flat. It was his first project out of school, and though it feels like a million years ago, it was only three.

Only three years for her to know what forever feels like.

She knows why that is, but she’s not going to admit it to herself, at least not tonight. Just like she’s not going to examine why she took a curvy blond sub to bed either, not when she’s tried so hard to stay away from the blondes, not when she’s made sure any white girl she plays with has red or brown or pink or blue hair.

She can tell herself the truth about this at least: the idea of white-gold hair brushing against her thighs is like a kick to the chest. She thinks of it and then she can’t breathe.

Rebecca leans against the railing and lets the wind nip at her fingers and toes, and she tries to pretend that tomorrow she will be back in control. Tomorrow, when she goes to Thornchapel, she will know herself again, and in that knowledge there will be no room for wanting the person she also hates.





On the other side of the Thames, Delphine debates whether or not to stay with her fiancé for the night. She stays often, she adores his high-ceilinged townhouse with its combination of newly fitted skylights and original features, the place he bought after his father’s death for a fresh start. She doesn’t adore her own flat, a glassy, soulless cove in a City high-rise. There is a spa and a swimming pool, however, and a view that is almost worth the millions of pounds the place cost her parents.

It makes for good Instagram pictures.

Truth be told, she wants to stay the night with Auden, and so she agrees. She loves him, of course she does, and she reminds herself of this as she changes into a borrowed T-shirt and brushes her teeth. If she didn’t love him, then why would she keep a toothbrush at his house? Why would she have consented to marry him?

He saved her life once, and how could she not love the boy who saved her life?

Auden showers while she changes, and then he climbs into bed with her still warm and damp, and clad only in boxer briefs that cling to the sinful curves of his tight ass and strong thighs. That reveal the heavy, lazily thickening shape of his cock.

He wraps her in his arms, his chest to her back and one of his legs sliding easily between hers. She knows that he does it so he can snuggle her close without also pressing his erection into her bottom. It’s thoughtful, because Auden is thoughtful. It’s gentle because Auden of all people in the world knows why she needs gentleness.