A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(37)
“Right,” I say back. There’s something violent threatening to shiver through me, and if I let it, it will shiver my body right apart. I’m so aware of Saint behind me watching us, of him seeing my reaction to Auden, and I hate it, I hate that I’m so stupid, I hate that I want two people at the same time—hell, five people, if I’m being honest—although it’s only Saint and Auden that make me feel like my very life depends on touching them. I hate that they can see me wanting them; I hate that all the wild desires curling through me like vines have become so tangled and thick.
I hate that at Thornchapel, I’m both not myself and more myself than I’ve ever been.
“It’s just a game,” Auden whispers to me, his hand sliding around to cup the back of my neck. “Just a kiss.”
Please, God, let this kiss be just a kiss.
My hands come up against his chest, almost of their own accord, spreading against the soft cashmere of his sweater and the warm, firm lines of his chest underneath. His hand at my neck slides up through my loose hair to cradle the back of my head, and it feels so good I want to purr. Maybe I even do purr a little, because the hesitation that had been written all over his face disappears in an instant. And in its wake is the same hungry ownership I saw in his face when we were children.
I want to tell him to tighten his fingers in my hair, I want him to wrap his other hand around my throat so I can feel the pressure of his touch against my pulse. I want another wedding, another crown of flowers, I want to be his in all the bruising, sighing, sparking ways I can.
He dips his face low and pauses for the barest second. In that pause, I see his eyes are the perfect fusion of my vivid green and Saint’s deep brown. A starburst of emerald around the black pools of his irises, ringed with a dark coffee that reaches inward in ever-lightening shades to mix with the green. His eyes are hypnotic, his eyes are everything.
His eyes are like windows to summer and winter all at the same time.
The pause ends in the space of a single breath, and then he lowers his head all the way down and we kiss.
Chapter 12
The touch of his lips on mine is the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt.
More powerful than caning, than flogging. More powerful than suspension or bondage, more powerful than having all of my senses denied me or being so overwhelmed with sound and noise and touch that I want to cry.
Auden’s kiss is all of it. Every single bit of it.
Like being hurt and loved all at the same time.
His lips are firm, but they’re not sure. They’re not certain. There’s hesitation in each brush of his mouth over mine, his hand in my hair is shaking, and I can feel every rigid muscle in his chest quivering under my palms. Like he’s as terrified as I am.
Like he knows this kiss is not just a kiss.
His lips part ever so slightly, and mine follow suit, and then there’s the flicker-fast silk of his tongue against the top of my lower lip. I don’t know what he tastes there—Scotch, most likely—but whatever it is has him giving a soft, tattered sigh against my mouth. His fingers in my hair tighten to the point of pain, his other hand finds my upper arm and grips me tight, tight like the way I want, tight like the way I crave, and I’m yanked in even closer. Suddenly, he’s in all of my senses, his body pressed so completely against mine that I can feel his erection against my belly and the fast heave of his chest against my own. I can smell that pine and pepper and lavender smell of him, a smell that should be feminine, but it’s not, it’s so very masculine, and on him it seems like what Thornchapel itself could smell like. Forests and flowers and danger.
Then there are those noises that seem torn from the very heart of him—quiet and urgent and meant only for me.
Then there’s the taste—scotch like myself, and underneath it, mint.
And then there’s the sight, because when I dare to peek through my lashes at his face, I see him already watching me with winter-summer eyes.
And it’s as our eyes meet that he truly invades my mouth. His tongue flutters past my own in a touch so erotic that I whimper into him. He angles my head farther back, tilting my mouth to where he wants it, and then for a heady instant, I forget everything, everything. There’s only this, only this intimate touch, only this kiss like he wants to kiss my very dreams out of me. There’s only him, and only me, and only Thornchapel around us—
A shattering crash breaks us apart, our kiss ending abruptly as everyone jumps to their feet. Only Auden’s hand still on my arm is a testament to what we were just doing, to how lost I was only a second ago. That and my lips, which buzz and tingle from the memory of his.
Well, okay, those two things and the heat gathering wet and low in my cunt, because he kissed me the way someone kisses the person they’re about to fuck. And my body is screaming at its abandonment, protesting its loss.
I press my thighs together under my skirt to try to soothe away the ache.
“It sounded like glass,” Becket says, surveying the tables and our drinks.
“It was glass,” Rebecca says. “I’m sure of it.”
Saint has already gone to the library doors to look over the windowed corridor connecting the library to the hall. He disappears, and then there’s the sound of tinkling glass and something clunky dragging across the flagstones. He trots back in, sleet caught in his black hair and across his wide shoulders.