A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(64)

I take a seat again, so I can put my hand over Saint’s on the table. “Maybe there’s another option other than it tearing us apart?”

He sighs. “What would that be?”

“It brings us closer together.”

A slow ripple moves through the room as everyone processes this.

“Maybe,” I continue, “maybe we do this and we’re better for it. It won’t be a door, but a link. A bond. A knot tying us together.”

“I vote yes,” says Rebecca suddenly, surprising us all. And then she makes a face at our surprise. “Well, Poe had a point about the spanking, actually. It reminds me of kink, of some of the more ritualized kink scenes I’ve done. And thinking of it like that . . . it makes a certain kind of sense to me. Not logical sense, like Becket was saying. Like an intuitive sense, I suppose. A mythological sense.”

“I say yes, obviously,” Delphine votes.

“Me too,” agrees Becket.

“And me,” I say. I look over at Auden, who’s still facing the window, and then over to Saint, who’s chewing on his lip ring. “But it has to be all of us. We all have to agree.”

Saint shifts, scowls a little around where he’s pulled his lip piercing into his mouth. “I guess,” he mumbles.

“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement,” I say.

“Yes,” he says, louder this time. “I’m saying yes. But I’m also saying—asking—for this not to hurt us. I don’t want to not belong again.”

And then his cheeks flush very dark indeed, and he scowls even deeper, as if it cost him everything to be so honest with us. I reach down and squeeze his leg in encouragement, and to my surprise, he traps my hand there and laces his fingers through my own. The firm heat of his thigh through his jeans sends warmth everywhere through me, up to my cheeks and down to my cunt. It feels so private, so intimate, to have my hand against his leg, to be touching him under the table, and I flush as deeply as Saint does as I try to keep my mind on our conversation and not just the supple stretch of male thigh pressed against my palm.

It’s just Auden left now, and I feel certain he’s going to say no. He’s going to say no because this is madness, or because it’s not emotionally safe for any of us, or because Saint said yes. He’s going to say no because he can’t stop fighting Thornchapel, he can’t bear for it to have any more influence over him than it already does.

He’s going to say no because his imaginary kingdom never included muddy, holy, fire-lit sex in the woods.

He finally turns to face us. His hands are at his sides, and his eyes are downcast, their dark lashes revealing only a small, hooded glimpse of tormented hazel.

But it’s not the posture of someone defeated or reluctant; it’s more like the stillness of a prince waiting for the touch of his father’s crown on his head. It’s the restraint of youthful power and deep anguish—a deceptive calm held only through his strength of will while he decides what he’ll do. And we’re all in captivity to it, all of us enthralled and possessed as a muscle ticks in his cheek and his lips press together in finality.

I squirm in my seat at the same moment Saint pushes my palm harder against his inner thigh—like we’re both undone by Auden when he’s like this, like we’re both ready to crawl for him, to offer ourselves to him.

We’re the imaginary kingdom, I think dizzily. It’s us. And he’s the king.

Auden looks up, meets every single one of our gazes, holding mine and Saint’s the longest.

“Yes,” he says simply. Finally. “Yes.”





Chapter 19





We still haven’t decided who will be the bride or the lord, and when Rebecca suggests we wait until the morning to pick, I think we’re all slightly relieved. It was hard enough to choose to do this in the first place—so having to wade through all the snarls of emotion and desire strung between us feels nigh on impossible right now.

Abby comes in from the village and makes us a dinner of roast chicken and potatoes—both sprinkled with some mysterious, addictive combination of herbs and salt. It’s delicious; delicious enough that the relative silence around the dinner table feels natural and not awkward. But after the excuse of food is over and it would normally be time to go to the library and drink, it becomes apparent that we aren’t sure what to say to each other, what to talk about. Tomorrow, we’ll experience something that none of us have ever experienced before, and there’s both tremulous excitement and shaky nervousness running through us all.

Becket is the first to leave the table—he has to have everything ready for his weekend Masses, and he’ll join us in the early evening, after the Saturday service. Rebecca mutters something about getting ahead on work, and closets herself in her room with her laptop and her drawing tablet.

Auden mutters much the same, and is gone only seconds after Rebecca.

“I should go too,” Saint says. “I promised Uncle Augie I’d polish up a written bid for him by tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I say, wanting to protest but not knowing how. He should go, he should help his uncle, and yet I want him to stay. I want to touch his thigh again. I want his thumb on my shoulder making those slow, distracting arcs.

He stands—Delphine glances up from her phone only long enough to mumble a goodbye—and then I stand too, and offer to walk him out.