A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(88)

Both drive her wild, make her writhe and make her skin glisten with the fine, misty sweat of good sex, and then Rebecca leans down and brushes her hair from her damp forehead.

“Do you want Poe’s fingers?” she asks softly. “They might make you come, if she puts them inside you.”

For the first time since I crawled between her legs, I feel the wrong kind of tension steal over Delphine. Her thighs stop quivering and go stiff; her belly freezes along with her breath. All from the idea of my fingers inside her.

“I—I don’t—” her voice is panicked, distant-sounding, as if she’s getting smaller and smaller inside of herself. “I don’t think I can—”

“Shhh,” Rebecca soothes, moving closer and dropping kisses on Delphine’s forehead. “Shhh now. This is for you, this little slut is all yours to use however you like. You don’t have to have anything you don’t want, ever, ever. Not while I’m here, not ever again.”

I look up just in time to see the look Delphine gives Rebecca and the look Rebecca gives her right back. A look full of fierce determination and utter trust, made hot and sparkling by the light of the fire.

How can these be the same two women who fight literally all the fucking time?

That’s the power of kink, I guess, or maybe even ritual space. The outside world and the past don’t have to exist here: there’s no logic but the here-logic, the now-logic, and nothing else matters.

Rebecca keeps her eyes on Delphine as she reaches over and flicks my arm. The message is so clear she doesn’t even need to speak it aloud. Back to work, little slut.

I return my hands to Delphine’s thighs so I can gentle her and soothe her as I lick and suck. So that she can feel cherished and treasured as my tongue and lips—and yes, even the careful tugs and scrapes of my teeth—coax her tighter and tighter and higher and higher.

She comes with a long, low moan that pulls deep strings in my belly, her thighs closing around my ears and her hands shoving into my hair and holding me fast to her, as if I would move away when she’s contracting so sexily against my mouth, when she’s giving me more and more of the tart-sweet taste of her.

After Delphine gradually comes down, her body relaxing into a stretch of satisfaction, Rebecca urges me back to where I was. I nestle between Auden and Saint, who are near-identical pillars of male torment right now, hard and flushed-faced.

“Do you want fingers?” Rebecca asks, leaning down so that only I can hear the question.

“Yes,” I whisper eagerly.

“Do you know if you still have a hymen?” she asks, still very quietly. “Her fingers may hurt, if you do. There might be blood.”

I can actually feel my eyes light up as she says this, and then she rolls her eyes.

“I forgot who I was talking to,” she mutters to herself. “Fingers and hurt it is.”

I lay my head back onto the blankets, closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. I don’t know what to expect or how to feel, but I do know the way I felt with Auden’s hand in my panties was enough to push me to the brink. I’m not even sure how I’ll handle anything more.

Warm fingertips brush hair away from my forehead, and I open my eyes to see that Saint has moved to his side next to me, leaning on one elbow and searching my face while he carefully caresses any tickling hairs away from my skin.

“Are you ready?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” I say. “Are you?”

He takes a moment to answer, and in that moment, the fire jumps, and I see his coffee-hued eyes steeped with shameful lust. “I am. I’m more than okay.”

Delphine has moved between my legs now and I hear Rebecca murmuring to her—encouragement or instructions, I’m not sure—and that’s when Auden gently turns my face away from Saint’s to his.

“Your mouth is still wet from her,” Auden tells me.

“Yes,” I say.

He doesn’t answer in words. He presses his mouth to mine, and dances his tongue over my lips until he’s licked off every bit of the woman he never had a chance to taste for himself. And then he parts my mouth with an insistent kiss and kisses every trace of Delphine Dansey right out of me.

I’m breathless when he finishes, breathless from the kiss itself and the jealousy behind it, from his ragged need and the expression of pained gratitude he gives me when he’s finished.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “I needed that.”

My heart twists—for him or for me, I’m not sure which—and I’m relieved to see that Delphine and Rebecca were so wrapped up in their soft conversation that they didn’t notice anything unusual between Auden and me, they didn’t notice how he kissed me as the farewell he’d never get to give Delphine herself.

Saint notices though. “What’s going on?” he asks Auden and me. “Between you two?”

Now’s not really the time to tell him that Delphine dumped Auden, so I only answer the question he asked. “Nothing’s going on,” I say, and I mostly mean it.

“Nothing yet,” Auden murmurs in my ear and I snap my gaze over to his. His eyes burn with meaning.

“Shut the fuck up, all of you,” Rebecca interrupts in a pleasant voice, finally done instructing Delphine. “Poe, spread your legs.”