A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(99)

Rebecca finally turns to her, and Delphine doesn’t need more light to know that her eyebrow is raised. “I give the orders in this room,” Rebecca says, but she sounds more amused than annoyed.

“Come to bed . . . please?” Delphine tries again.

Rebecca studies her for a long minute. And then with a sigh so big it moves her shoulders up and down, she drops her arms and comes to the edge of the bed. But she doesn’t climb in, she just sits next to Delphine and stares down at her.

“What’s wrong?” Delphine whispers. “Why won’t you get in bed?”

“Because,” Rebecca says mildly, “if I get into this bed with you, then I’m going to fuck you.”

Delphine’s mouth falls open as Rebecca adds, “And if I fuck you, then I’m probably going to want to do it again, and maybe a third time, and I think you need your sleep.”

Delphine shakes her head so fast she can hear her hair sliding over Rebecca’s satin pillowcases. “I’m not tired. I promise. I don’t need sleep.”

A small and tender smile pulls at the creased fullness of Rebecca’s mouth. “You do,” she says, but she can’t seem to stop herself from reaching down and tracing the place where the blanket covers Delphine’s breasts. And then she drags the blanket down, slowly, so slowly that Delphine has no choice but to feel every fiber dragging over her sensitive nipples.

Rebecca lets out a surprised exhale once Delphine’s breasts are exposed, as if she’s forgotten what they look like. As if she underestimated what seeing them would do to her. “Just for a minute,” Rebecca whispers, as if to herself, and then she’s straddling Delphine with long, lean legs, her nightgown bunching up around her waist as she dips her head to give one of Delphine’s nipples a mean, hard suck.

Delphine cries out—happiness, pure, pleasured happiness—and Rebecca claps a hand over her mouth and moves to the other nipple, sucking and pulling until Delphine can feel it in her belly, feel her clit jumping in response.

Rebecca nuzzles a breast, nips at it, then looks up at Delphine. “I want to fuck you,” she says plainly. “But it’s a bad idea.”

Delphine wants to whine and kick her feet, she wants to stomp around like Veruca Salt because she wants to be fucked and she wants it now. “There are no bad ideas tonight,” she says, trying to sound rational because she knows Rebecca likes rational. “We can just pretend we’re back in the clearing still. That this is part of the ritual and we don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Rebecca says. “We have one now. Either we fuck, we fuck my way, and we fuck a lot—and tomorrow we wake up ashamed. Or we go to bed like responsible adults and pretend this was all a dream.”

“Is this really a question?”

Another eyebrow from Rebecca.

When Rebecca doesn’t answer, Delphine says impatiently, “The first choice then, please. The one with fucking.”

“You have sex one time, and now you’re insatiable,” mutters Rebecca.

Delphine wriggles underneath her. “Yes. Can we do more sex now?”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Rebecca tells her. “And that I need to fuck you so badly.”

For some reason, this kindles warmth in Delphine’s chest in a way that all of Auden’s sweet and romantic sentiments never did. She beams up at Rebecca as if Rebecca’s just recited sonnets to her.

“You think I’m cute?”

“No, I only bite the breasts of women I don’t think are cute. Put your hands up above your head and cross them at the wrists.”

Delphine does as she’s told, and then smiles again. The feeling of her wrists crossed above her head is better than being handed a bouquet of flowers. She doesn’t know why. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe she should hate anything like this after what happened to her at Audra Bishop’s summer party.

But she doesn’t. She loves it. It’s like everything is starting to make sense now that she’s found this, and now that she’s here, she can’t help but think of course, of course it’s this.

Of course this is where I should have been all along.

And then Rebecca moves up to sit over Delphine’s face, lifting the silk nightgown and bunching it against the taut, dark skin of her belly. “This first time is going to be fast,” Rebecca says. “But I have to come now if I’m going to take my time with you later.”

And then all Delphine can taste and smell and breathe is Rebecca’s garden-smelling skin and the secret place between her legs, and she doesn’t think anything at all but yes, yes, yes for a very long time.





Auden gathers the wet blankets and dark lanterns, checks anything that was ever on fire tonight or that ever even thought about being on fire, and then makes for the path. Becket’s already gone ahead, murmuring something about needing to get back to the rectory and sleep a little before morning Mass. So it’s Auden alone who piles what he can into his arms and leaves the slow-misting ruins behind him.

All told, it’s not a pleasant walk. The blankets are sopping wet and cold as hell, and the three lanterns he managed to hook with his fingers are clanking together with an obnoxious racket.

But he barely notices. His thoughts are everywhere else.