A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(98)

He already knew where Ralph would lay them down too.

Ralph’s eyes had narrowed then. “Don’t. Test. Me,” he’d hissed. “I could still call the police. It’s only for the sake of your father that I won’t.”

The hand clutching the flowers had been shaking though.

Ralph Guest was afraid. And Becket knew why.

“I know what you did,” he told the older man. “I know what you did here.”

“You don’t know anything,” Ralph said uncertainly. Fearfully.

“I know what you did.”

Ralph’s fear crystalized into anger, and he’d taken one threatening step toward Becket, which was all it took to send Becket running, scrambling up steep hills through the woods until he emerged onto a footpath, back sweaty and palms covered in mud from how often he’d fallen.

He’d been too frightened to return for years, too frightened even to think of it; only taking the collar had given him enough sense of safety to return. And by then, Ralph was too sick to terrorize anyone any longer, even people trespassing into the chapel ruins.

In the here and now, Becket walks back to the altar and the tree. It’s too dark and wet to see much, even with the flashlight, but he knows the exact spot he’s looking for.

The spot where Ralph Guest would have laid down his flowers.

In the dark and the cold, still smelling like smoke and mud and spilled Prosecco, Father Becket Hess gets to his knees.

And he prays.





Rebecca decides to admit it to herself.

She liked tonight.

She liked it more than she had any right to and far more than she thought she would. She liked the sex, of course, even if she wasn’t the one having it, and she liked the cool, wet night all around her, the trees and the grass and the thorns and the rain. She even liked the ritual, though she doesn’t know if she’d ever admit that to anyone else, and anyway, she was just responding to the orderliness of it, the feeling of being with her friends and marking out a fresh start.

Who wouldn’t respond to that?

Unfortunately, and most troublesomely for her, the part she liked best about tonight is currently naked and wrapped in her blanket, with clean blond hair spilling every which way across her pillow.

She can still hear the sweetest word in the world coming from Delphine’s lips. Yes.

Yes.

She relished every second of helping Delphine clean up, of bandaging her hand, of cuddling her to sleep, like she was playing house, but instead of house, the game was kink, the game was Your Very Own Submissive To Keep. The game was pretending this was their real life, where Rebecca could spend the evening whispering commands into Delphine’s ear, and then spend hours afterwards petting her and coddling her.

Rebecca stands up and walks to her window, unable to see much past the rain but not caring. She doesn’t feel ready to stop playing the game. In fact, her body is burning with unmet need, and while any good Domme has her share of scenes where she doesn’t come, Rebecca actually feels like the hunger has gotten worse since the night’s gone on. Like the ritual cracked her open, and now she’s going to be a wet, horny mess until forever from now.

She risks a glance back at Delphine, at the exposed shoulder and the high curve of a breast.

God, she wants to fuck. She wants to fuck so badly she’s shaking with it.

But she won’t wake Delphine up; she can’t. That would be beyond thoughtless, and strange anyway, given that whatever truce they’ve struck around the ritual is bound to be dissolved by morning. It’s safer to stay away, safer not to crawl over Delphine and pin her wrists to the bed and bite her neck until Delphine is begging to eat her mistress’s pussy . . .

Rebecca shudders, leans her forehead against the cool glass of the window.

Stop playing this game, she berates herself. It doesn’t matter that the very thought of Delphine’s soft, giving body makes her wet; it doesn’t matter that somehow with Delphine Rebecca forgets that she has to be perfect, that she has to work harder than everyone else, that she has to earn everything she wants two or three times over.

It doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t make sense, this game, and Rebecca doesn’t have time for things that don’t make sense.

No time at all.





Delphine wakes up with a stretch about twenty minutes later, one of those long stretches that one could do forever, and then she yawns and rolls onto her side. Last night she slept in the guest bed, and now she’s in a bed that smells like something clean and mossy and floral. A garden of a bed.

Rebecca’s bed.

Delphine looks across the room to see Rebecca standing by the window in a nightgown, all dainty spaghetti straps and thin red silk, with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed. Her hair is bound up in a satin scarf, exposing the slender swan curve of her neck and the exquisite wings of her shoulder blades, and she’s so pretty it hurts to look at her.

But Delphine keeps looking. She’s learning she likes it when it hurts.

“Come to bed,” she says. She doesn’t even know why she says it, except it’s the only thing she wants right now. She doesn’t want Rebecca far away, she wants Rebecca close. She doesn’t want Rebecca holding herself, she wants Rebecca holding her.

She’s too tired and too wrung raw by the ritual to pretend anything else.