A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(75)

“Incompatible because you’re a genius and I’m just a blond on Instagram?” Delphine doesn’t sound accusatory or defensive, only curious, and something about that makes Rebecca’s chest ache. Like Delphine is so used to being told she’s silly or pointless that she’s accepted it herself.

“You’re not just a blond on Instagram,” Rebecca says. “And my IQ is only part of me, not all of me. No, I only meant that you’re bossy and I’m bossy, and we both like having our own way too much.”

“You could spank it out of me,” Delphine offers with a laugh, standing up.

“Maybe I will,” Rebecca says, and Delphine laughs again, but Rebecca doesn’t. She means it.

She wants it.

But she still doesn’t like Delphine, she’s certain of that—or mostly certain, at least. This incessant craving for her is just an itch, that’s all.

Just one of those itches that you have for three years, and which burrows its way into every thought, feeling, and hunger you have.





Rebecca guides Delphine out of the maze, and Delphine is grateful, because she thinks she only found the center on her own through sheer luck and she probably wouldn’t have found her way back out again. She’s only been through the maze a few times in her life, and only ever with someone else who knew where they were going, so it’s nice to have Rebecca leading the way.

No, it’s better than nice. It’s good. Fun. Rebecca sometimes puts a hand on Delphine’s back to guide her past corners where the hedge has gone a little scraggly, or sometimes she’ll just tug impatiently on Delphine’s coat when she thinks Delphine isn’t walking fast enough, and now that Delphine knows Rebecca likes to spank people, she sees it everywhere in Rebecca’s behavior. She’s been doing a lot of research since her talk with Poe, watching a lot of porn and reading lots of books and forums and internet posts, and so she wonders about all the things Rebecca must do for fun. If she does more than spank people, if she flogs them and paddles them and ties them up and drips hot wax on their skin.

She wonders if Rebecca fucks them after. If Rebecca’s ever wanted a sub of her own.

Not just a friend to spank for the night, but someone who would crawl for her all the time, who’d be available for her use always and in all ways.

It could be her. It could be Delphine.

Delphine could be available for her use always and in all ways.

As soon as she thinks it, she flushes again, but thankfully, Rebecca doesn’t seem to notice, and when they get to the house, Rebecca darts away faster than Delphine can say anything else, although she’s not sure what she would say. Hey, I know you hate me, but please spank me and whatever else comes to mind?

Hey, I think I may have ended my engagement because I can’t stop thinking about you hurting me for fun?

No, she couldn’t say that. Not that it matters, since Rebecca vanishes.

But Delphine feels better for having talked with Rebecca; she feels stronger, happier for having her coat tugged and her skin saved from the hedges by Rebecca’s careful guidance. It was as if Rebecca was thinking, if you get hurt, it’ll be by my hand and nothing else.

Rebecca probably wasn’t really thinking that. But Delphine thinks she would like it if she had been.

So, with her better and stronger self, and her nose still red from the chill and her eyes still swollen from crying, Delphine goes to find her ex-fiancé in the one place he likes best to hide.

Auden’s in his tower, head bowed, hands braced on a windowsill as if he can’t hold himself upright without support, and Sir James Frazer is a sprawl of fur and dream-twitching paws on the floor. There’s a laptop and a couple sketchbooks on a trunk, as if he’d tried to work earlier, but he’s still in the same wrinkled clothes he was wearing last night and his hair is tousled in uneven tumbles, which doesn’t seem like a good sign.

Delphine’s throat tightens. She hates that she’s done this to him, she hates that she’s made someone she cares about so sad, and yet—can’t he see this is for the best? Not just for her, but for him too? She saw him when he was spanking Poe, she knows that there’s something inside him aching for their friend—not to mention the fact that he’s obviously still in love with St. Sebastian, despite what St. Sebastian did to him. He wants two other people as much as or more than he wants her, and everyone knows it.

So surely he feels freed? At least a little?

“You were very kind last night,” Delphine says to his back.

He doesn’t turn to face her. “Why wouldn’t I be kind, Delphine?” he asks. “I love you. Of course I’d be kind.”

“I hate doing this to you,” she says. “You’re just so good.”

At that, he finally turns. Anger and hurt are everywhere all over him, in the knots of his tensed, furious muscles and the tremble of his hands by his sides and the fast blink of his long eyelashes. “I am not good,” he says in a low, shaking voice. “I am not good and I am not kind. Please don’t say that about me.”

“You are good,” she counters. “A good man wouldn’t have agreed to wait to have sex with his fiancée, and you did, you did agree. And it’s been two years and I still wasn’t ready, and you’ve never pushed me once. You’ve been so patient.”