A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(78)

He doesn’t though. He says the thing he stopped Saint to say. “What if everyone else picks us, St. Sebastian? You and I?”

“Us for the ritual?” St. Sebastian asks. “Like one of us is the bride?”

He laughs, as if Auden made a joke, but Auden doesn’t laugh back.

Saint sobers.

“I’m okay with that,” he says, his words quick but quiet too. “Are you okay with that?”

“You really think it would be a good idea for us to fuck?” Auden asks. “Really?”

Saint shivers again, like Auden’s chill is finally succeeding where the damp, Dartmoor night couldn’t. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Saint whispers. “Tonight is just a game.”

“People keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it true. And you better believe that if I fuck you, it’s going to mean something.”

“Like what? Revenge? Possession? Finishing what you started eight years ago?”

A low noise rumbles in Auden’s throat—a rough, animal noise. “All of it.”

Saint bites his lip again, and now Auden can’t help it, he just can’t, no matter how much he should hate the boy who hurt him all those years ago, no matter how much he should be mourning Delphine. He twists his other hand in Saint’s shirt and wrenches his pierced Judas up to his mouth.

The kiss is a crash and their lips meet in a collision of flesh and teeth and metal. There’s breath and taste and ferocious, feral energy, as if they’re trying to fight each other, trying to eat each other, and they only have this moment to do it in. And then Auden yanks Saint even closer, one hand moving to thread through Saint’s dark, silky hair and the other hand dropping to the unbelievably tight curve of Saint’s arse, kneading the flesh there as if it already belongs to him. Auden’s just that little bit taller, just enough that Saint’s swelling organ has nowhere to go but against the base of Auden’s own erection, and he wants to stay like this forever, devouring St. Sebastian’s mouth and rubbing his cock against St. Sebastian’s cock and listening to every helpless noise Saint makes as he does.

He wants to.

He also wants Proserpina.

He wants both of them so much he thinks he might be entirely made up of want, he thinks all his thorns are finally puncturing through his skin and out into the real world and everyone will see and they’ll know. His darkness and his light and all the twines and ravels of his depraved, thorny heart.

He breaks off abruptly, terrified of that, terrified of himself. Terrified of how St. Sebastian makes him feel.

He releases his old enemy and Saint staggers back, wiping his mouth and looking stunned.

“What . . . what was that for?” Saint asks in a whisper.

Auden doesn’t have an answer.

“It could be us,” Saint says. “If it’s us, we could be okay. We could be . . . you know. Good. It could be good.”

Fuck, fuck it could be. Auden can picture it, can see Saint’s bared skin, a darker gold than normal in the glow of the fire; he can see the curve of Saint’s backside and the velvet throb of his erection as it beads helplessly with pre-cum at the head. He could pin Saint down and slick up his arse while the others watched, he could push into him with his forearm on the back of Saint’s neck and the fire warm on their skin. He could wrap the thorns around his and Saint’s hands until their story was written in blood from both of them, not just Auden’s blood alone. He could make Saint feel once, just fucking once, how much it hurts to want him.

It hurts so much.

It hurts more than stitches, than bleeding. It hurts more than breaking.

If Auden hurts any more with it, he’ll die.

“It can’t be us,” he manages to say. “It can’t.”

And before he can see how much his words hurt Saint, he turns away and starts back for the house.





Chapter 23





No one looks at the bowl on the table.

“I think it’s the best way,” Becket says finally. “I’ve thought about the consequences of us picking ourselves, and I think this might give us more freedom. To feel like the choice was taken away. And I think it will also free us from arguing about virginity as an abstract patriarchal concept for another hour, because this way the bride can be anyone. So can the lord. And we’ve all said we’re clean, so there aren’t any health worries to affect our choice either.”

We’re in the library right now, all fresh and showered, because the Consecration called for a ritual cleansing beforehand, and no one had been ready to suggest we actually bathe each other, which somehow feels like an even more intimate act than sex. So separate showers it was, and now we’re in warm clothes with our lanterns on the table and raincoats draped across chairs. Half-Christian as the ceremony is, our supplies aren’t what I would have expected from the handful of times I’ve been in the new age shop in Lawrence, Kansas. There are no ceremonial knives or wands, no ornate chalices or bowls of salt.

And we couldn’t find robes, which is just as well, because even though the rain has stopped, there’s no doubt that it’s going to start up again.

Becket has helpfully printed up a paper script of the ceremony for each of us, cribbed from the Consecration and Dartham’s book, and those rest in a neat stack next to long, whippy cuts of roses wrapped in tissue paper. Our thorns.