A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(69)

He takes a step forward, his slippered feet nudging against my own slippers, his legs pushing against the blanket. “Afraid that I’m going to hurt you?”

I nod.

Another step closer, and now his legs are flush with mine, his body warm and hard against me. He trails his open hand down the dark sweep of my hair, and then slowly wraps the length of it around his fist. I whimper at the discomfort in my scalp, at the pulse of heat between my legs.

“What else?” he murmurs.

“I’m afraid I’ll like it.”

The admission only hangs in the air for a second before I’m being pulled down, inexorably down, until I’m kneeling in a pool of soft blanket. He’s still holding me by the hair.

I shouldn’t let him do this, I shouldn’t be at his feet and damp between the legs when I can still recall the tickling brush of Delphine’s mouth over my own.

He’s not yours.

“I’ll confess something, since you confessed to me,” Auden says.

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid of the same things you are, Proserpina.”

My lips part, but no words come out. I don’t know what to say, or if I even know what to hope about what he means by that.

His voice is gentle as he murmurs, “I want to hurt you so much that I dream about it sometimes.”

I breathe in a shaky breath, meeting his powerful stare in the dark.

“I’ve wanted to hurt you since we were ten years old,” he adds. “Sometimes I hurt with wanting to hurt you.”

“What else are you afraid of?” I ask, echoing his earlier question. He gives me a fond smile, a sweet, crooked-lipped smile. Like he’s indulging me by letting me ask such a thing, and we both know it, and suddenly I want to cry at how good that feels. To be indulged at the same time my hair is wrapped in his fist.

“I’m afraid of you letting me hurt you,” says Auden.

“Why?”

“Because then I’ll want to do it for the rest of my life.”

We stare at each other for a long time, my hair pulled taut in his fist and his eyes glittering at me, and nothing can matter right now except us, nothing has ever mattered except us, and my hair in his fist and his body towering over mine. And if he wanted to pin me to the ground and shove his fingers into my mouth, I’d let him. I’d let him do anything.

I’d let him love me.

I’d let him make me fall in love with him right back.

I’d admit that I’m already in love with him.

He doesn’t pin me though, he doesn’t stick his fingers in my mouth or yank me close to his visible erection. He carefully, deliberately squats down so that we’re at eye level, and then he uses his other hand to cup my jaw.

Something hard and metallic pushes against my skin.

“You deserve better than me,” Auden says. We’re now so close that even in the darkness I can see his eyes are rimmed with red. I can see a faint line in his cheek I’ve never seen before—a tiny scar that only reveals itself when the shadows are swirling just right. “You deserve someone who already knows who they are.”

“I know who you are, Auden Guest,” I tell him softly. “I can know for the both of us.”

I reach up and tuck my fingers under his palm to peel it away, making sure not to drop whatever he was holding against my skin. I pull his hand down and look at what’s cradled there. In the moonlight, a delicate ring glints with diamonds and antique filigree. An engagement ring.

The same ring that was on Delphine’s finger earlier tonight.

“What happened?” I whisper, looking up from his palm to his face.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so sad. Or so beautiful.

He loosens my hair with a sigh, stands, and helps me to stand as well, taking care to arrange the blanket back around my shoulders so I won’t be cold.

“I think it’s fairly obvious what happened,” he says, some of that bitter, rich-boy drawl creeping back into his voice. “Delphine’s decided to call off the engagement. Probably the sensible thing to do, given all that I’ve told you tonight.”

“Oh Auden,” I say. His hands are still fussing with the blanket, and I see the effort it takes for him to let go of me. Like if he lets go of me, he’ll sink right through the floor and into hell.

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

“No,” he says. “I’m not.”

“Do you—do you need anything?”

His jaw works to the side a little, but when he answers, his voice is more rich boy than ever. “I think you just gave it to me.”

A horrible, awful feeling sneaks up through my heels, it crawls up my stomach and chest and balls up in my throat. The kneeling and the hair pulling and the secrets . . .

I whisper, “Tell me you didn’t talk about hurting me because you wanted to prove something to yourself. Or to Delphine.”

“What does it matter?” he asks. “It doesn’t make any difference either way.”

There’s so much ugly embarrassment inside me that I think I might split open with it, like a dress with a cheap zipper. “It always makes a difference,” I say quietly. My chin is starting to tremble now. It’s doing the thing, as Delphine would say. “It makes the difference between us sharing and you using. I thought we shared. But instead—”