A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(83)

“Undress, Proserpina,” Delphine says as she takes several steps back to give me space, and it’s not part of the ritual really, she’s just giving me my cue. But either way, the words send a reverent shiver through me. I’m about to undress as I’m playing a goddess-turned-saint and then I’m going to bind myself to the lord of the manor with thorns and then I’m going to lay down between the fire and the altar and spread my legs for her.

I’m shivering hard enough that I’m fumbling with the zipper of my coat, and after a long minute, I feel someone come up behind me and reach around my waist. I look down to see Auden’s long fingers easily finding the tab of my zipper and tugging it down, and then his hands are peeling the coat from me, laying it in a neat fold on the ground.

He helps me with my sweater next, his cool fingers brushing against my bare stomach as he pulls up the hem, and then his hands carefully smoothing out my hair after I’m free of the soft wool. And then he does something even more unexpected as I shiver there in my bra, and he gets to his knees in front of me.

“Auden,” I whisper.

In the orange-red light of the fire, it’s impossible to tell if his eyes are more green than brown when he looks up at me. “Let me,” he says. “Let me do this.”

I can’t speak. All I can do is nod.

I don’t know if he’s atoning for what happened last night or if he merely wants to help the girl who’s about to bare so much in front of so many, but either way, there’s something powerful in the way he reaches for my boots and slowly works them free of my feet. Something that’s not submissive at all, even while he’s doing an act I’ve always associated with submission. I try to imagine Emily or any of the other Dominants at my old club doing this, willingly kneeling in the cold mud to pull off someone else’s muddy boots and I just can’t. Many of the Dominants I know don’t even like it when their submissive walks ahead of them down a hallway.

But that’s not Auden. His shoulders are still wide and strong as he works the second boot off, his power and restraint evident in every careful tug and pull. He still looks like a prince, still moves like a prince, and when he glances up at me to check on me, there’s nothing but command in his gaze.

It’s like all the bitterness, all the entitlement, everything that came with being the heir to so much money and the recipient of so little love, is burning away here by the Imbolc fire. Inside our circle, by the altar, surrounded by friends and enemies and priests, he’s being purified. He’s returning somehow to the boy who stood at this altar twelve years ago and yanked both me and Saint into a wrenching, unforgettable kiss.

And so when he finishes with my socks and stands to unbutton my pants, I have the only reaction I can to the force of his presence, and I bow my head. Like I’m before a throne.

Auden’s fingers are deft with the button and zipper of my jeans, and then he ducks his head to mine so he can whisper low in my ear, “How can I serve this goddess right now?”

My breath is stuck somewhere in my chest and I can’t get it out. “I think you mean ‘saint’,” I finally whisper.

“I don’t serve saints. And anyway, you’re a goddess.”

“So? You’re the real lord of Thornchapel.”

“Not tonight,” he says.

God, the things I want with him. The things I’ve wanted for years and years. The dreams I’ve had . . .

I turn my face just enough that it brushes against his—my smooth cheek against his hot, stubbled one. I hear his breath catch, feel his fingers curl around my waistband as if to steady himself.

I look past him to see the others, all of them talking in a low group on the other side of the circle and giving Auden and me privacy while I undress, and I feel a curl of bravery. “I want to know what you want,” I tell him.

My bravery is rewarded.

Auden’s breath is warm on my ear and on the corner of my jaw as he speaks. “Here’s what I want, Bride of Thornchapel. I want to touch your cunt. I want to slide my hand down your panties and then push my fingers into you. I want to see if you’re wet. I want to know if you get wetter when I’m inside you.”

I try to breathe, I really try, but his words heat my blood so much that everything seems impossible. “Oh?” I manage.

“Yes, oh.” He pushes his face farther in, burying his nose in my neck. “I want to touch you as if you were mine.”

My heart tumbles around all over my chest; if I thought I was breathless before, it’s nothing compared to now. The word mine out of those charming, crooked lips, the word mine murmured against my skin . . .

“As if you were the lord tonight and I was your bride, or as if I was yours outside of here too? Because you must know by now what it takes for me to belong to someone. For me to be theirs.”

“One must earn you,” he says softly.

“Yes. Someone would earn me by seeing to my needs, indulging me, pushing me to be smarter and kinder and braver. They earn me by hurting me when I ask for it and taking care of me after, they earn me with tenderness and pain and love and depravity. I’m not saying I can’t do anything else—” I think of Saint as I say this “—but if someone wanted to catch me and keep me for good, that’s how they’d do it.”

“Proserpina, if you knew how much I wanted that, you’d run straight out of here.”