A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(58)

It must have been Rebecca. For some reason, that makes Delphine smile, thinking of Rebecca pausing budget calculations or parsing environmental impact studies so that she could tuck Delphine in. And then she thinks of Rebecca spanking Poe, of the slaps and cracks that echoed through the room, and her smile slowly fades. She digs her teeth into her lip, spreads her legs ever so slightly under the blanket. Just enough that she can feel the empty air against her swelling clit.

All this time when she couldn’t wake her body up enough to want sex, was it because she was wanting the wrong kind of sex? She’d been imagining something gentle and patient and sweet with Auden, and every time she imagined it, it felt like the imagining was more than enough, like she’d choke on it.

But she didn’t choke on anything when she watched Rebecca and Auden spank Poe, she didn’t choke on anything at all except how much she wanted to be Poe just then. How much she wanted just to cry and feel things and then have someone kiss her and tell her what a good girl she was.

She should ask Auden to spank her. That’s what she should do. That would be the sensible thing, and she knows he wouldn’t judge her for asking. In fact, after watching him spank Poe, she has to wonder if he wants her to ask, because the way he looked when he was spanking their friend was the way a sinner looks at the cross. Like salvation was just within reach.

But Delphine doesn’t go ask him, even though she knows he’s probably awake by now. Instead she takes a final peek around the hall to confirm that she’s alone, and then she moves her hands deeper under the covers and begins to rub herself.

When she closes her eyes, it’s not her fiancé’s voice she imagines, but a woman’s, and it’s not his hand cracking pain along her backside, but Rebecca’s. And when she’s finished, she’s limp and warm and full of questions she’s not sure she’s ready to ask herself.

She holds up her hand and stares at her engagement ring as it glitters in the faint, gray light.

She stares at it for a very, very long time.





It’s unthinkable that Abby should try to come in with all this weather, so the impromptu Imbolc planning committee fends for itself with cheese toasties and leftover soup. Auden brings the food into the library where everyone is clustered over the old ledgers and around fresh notebooks, and he has a moment looking at them when he feels something so powerfully right that his heart flips over inside his chest.

Maybe it’s the nostalgia of having everyone in one place again, or maybe the excitement of the ritual is starting to seep into his blood too, but whatever it is, he has the sudden and fierce urge to give them something, anything and everything, just to keep them all here like this, under his roof and nestled close. Even St. Sebastian.

Even St. Sebastian.

He thinks of Poe, of how her firm, plump bottom felt against his hand, and then he wonders what it would be like to do the same to St. Sebastian. To have the only person who ever hurt him worse than his father draped over his lap and trembling. Would he be hard?

Would Auden be hard?

Yes, yes of course he fucking would be, because everything he’s kept locked up inside of him is just spilling out now, tearing free of him, and it won’t be long before his tattered hungers make themselves known . . .

No. God, no, what is happening to him? Of course he won’t do that, he’s stronger than that. He has to be.

He finishes delivering the food to the gratitude and cheers of all, and then he murmurs something about finding his own laptop before he strides out of the room to collect himself.

To the tower he goes, his frozen aerie, and he sits on a trunk and shoves his face in his hands, his sides heaving. He can’t stop this ache, this need, for two people who are not the one person he is supposed to ache for, and it’s killing him. He has to burn it out of himself somehow, dig it out if it won’t be burned, and soon. He refuses to hurt Delphine, he absolutely won’t do it; she’s the last person in the world who deserves that after all she’s been through.

And yet . . . and yet when he thinks of Poe’s soft mouth yielding under his, of feeling her squirm in his lap with her mewling little cries while her cunt grew wetter and wetter . . .

With a groan, Auden gives up. He slides the clasp free of his trousers, zips them down, and hooks a thumb in the waistband of his boxer briefs to allow his cock to push free. He doesn’t play games with himself—he never does—but he imagines making Poe play games with him. Imagines spanking her until she’s wet and crying, and then pushing her off his lap so he can pin her to the floor and push his cock into her pussy. He imagines St. Sebastian there too, imagines Saint’s soft lips around his dick, the metal ball on his lower lip stroking against his shaft while Poe watches . . .

He’s about to erupt . . . he can feel that point of no return just within reach—

There’s a creak on the stairs; a man’s hand appears on the railing and then a head full of ink-dark hair—

It’s too late. Auden’s erection gives a thick, swelling throb just as St. Sebastian fully emerges into the tower, and cum pumps in hot, fast spurts all over his fist. Pulse after pulse of it, dripping from the plump tip and then to his fingers, and while he comes, he can’t help stroking himself a little bit more, can’t help the quiet grunts that tear out of his throat from the sheer fucking relief of it all.

St. Sebastian looks like a man who’s just fallen into a trap, like any movement could mean some bitter and untimely end, and Auden can’t help but savor it a little as he rides out the last few squeezes. He wants to see St. Sebastian at the edge, at the limits of his endurance, and then he wants to see St. Sebastian ragged and thrashing with the need to come. He wants to be the one to ease that need, but he also doesn’t know what that means because he hates St. Sebastian, he’s hated him for years—