Page 26 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Rebecca leans against the railing and lets the wind nip at her fingers and toes, and she tries to pretend that tomorrow she will be back in control. Tomorrow, when she goes to Thornchapel, she will know herself again, and in that knowledge there will be no room for wanting the person she also hates.
On the other side of the Thames, Delphine debates whether or not to stay with her fiancé for the night. She stays often, she adores his high-ceilinged townhouse with its combination of newly fitted skylights and original features, the place he bought after his father’s death for a fresh start. She doesn’t adore her own flat, a glassy, soulless cove in a City high-rise. There is a spa and a swimming pool, however, and a view that is almost worth the millions of pounds the place cost her parents.
It makes for good Instagram pictures.
Truth be told, she wants to stay the night with Auden, and so she agrees. She loves him, of course she does, and she reminds herself of this as she changes into a borrowed T-shirt and brushes her teeth. If she didn’t love him, then why would she keep a toothbrush at his house? Why would she have consented to marry him?
He saved her life once, and how could she not love the boy who saved her life?
Auden showers while she changes, and then he climbs into bed with her still warm and damp, and clad only in boxer briefs that cling to the sinful curves of his tight ass and strong thighs. That reveal the heavy, lazily thickening shape of his cock.
He wraps her in his arms, his chest to her back and one of his legs sliding easily between hers. She knows that he does it so he can snuggle her close without also pressing his erection into her bottom. It’s thoughtful, because Auden is thoughtful. It’s gentle because Auden of all people in the world knows why she needs gentleness.
He kisses the back of her neck. “Good night, Delphine,” he says, and nothing else. He expects nothing else, because he’s good. He’s just so good.
“Good night, Auden.”
And they slowly circle the well of sleep together. There’s no sex, there’s no kissing. No playful fondles or cupping favorite parts of each other’s bodies. There’s only this chaste snuggle, the way friends might snuggle, if one ignores the massive erection that occasionally grazes her backside whenever Auden shifts.
She and Auden have been engaged for a year—dating for another year before that—and it’s always been like this. They’ve never fucked. They’ve only ever kissed, and Auden’s been nothing but patient. He never pushes her, never asks for more, even though she knows he wants her. When he holds her, she can feel his muscles trembling with pent-up need, she can feel his hands shaking when they slide over the dip of her waist and the generous flare of her hips. Once she caught him masturbating to a picture of her in a bikini that she’d put on her Instagram.
It was so sweet and cute that she almost wanted to have sex with him right then just as a reward for being the most adorable fiancé ever.
But she simply can’t bring herself to, and she doesn’t know why. She’s been in therapy since . . . well, since it happened, and she carries out all her therapy assignments dutifully. She can masturbate, she can communicate. Whenever she looks at Auden, all she feels is safety and warmth. And when Auden looks at her, she knows all he feels is sweet, affectionate need.
It should be the easiest thing in the world to part her legs for him. She should have done it months ago. She wants to do it, in an abstract, intellectual kind of way. But whenever she imagines Auden tenderly making love to her, imagines his sweet kisses and gentle, careful hands, her body just refuses to respond. It stays asleep.
And she has no idea how to wake it up.
In London, the witching hour is no darker than any other time of night, something that should be comforting, and instead is disorienting. Auden rests his head against his study’s window and looks out onto the quiet Knightsbridge street below. The leafy square outside is kindled with pretty lamplight, and some of the other houses around have one or two windows glowing against the shadows. The ambient light of the city turns the sky into a haze of purple-gray.
At Thornchapel, the witching hour is so dark that he can’t even remember what the light looks like, what it feels like.
He’s come to his study to do something shameful, which is to slacken the hot ache in his body now that Delphine is asleep, and he closes the curtain against the glass so he can be alone with his sins.
It would be so much easier if he didn’t have these hungers so often, if they weren’t so fierce, if they didn’t continue tangling inside of him like ever-growing, ever-knotting thorns. He feels insatiable sometimes, he feels like he’s choking on the weight and the heat of his unending needs.
He needs to fuck. And he can’t.
Or rather, he won’t, he won’t ever do anything that could hurt Delphine.
He doesn’t settle in, he doesn’t need to, lots of practice has made sure of that. This is something he has to do at least two or three times a day, and he’s as embarrassed by it as he is helpless to stop it. He’s learned how to be fast and quiet. Ruthless with himself.
He loves Delphine, and so it’s her on his mind when his hand finds his thick, rigid organ and clenches a fist around it. But as always, his thoughts slide sideways, away from the sweet, passionate lovemaking he should be thinking about and back to the urges that afflicted him as a young man, the urges that afflict him still.
He wants to fuck and fuck and fuck, he wants to paint more bruises on Proserpina’s pale legs and he wants to pin St. Sebastian to the ground and screw an apology right out of him. He wants to share Delphine, he wants Delphine to share him, he wants to feel the sting of flesh against his hand when he spanks someone and he wants them to love the sting so much that they’ll do anything to have it again.
He wants to hurt and be hurt in return, although he wants the hurts in different ways.
He’s already hurting now.
He comes with a grunt and then an ashamed sigh. He comes feeling like he’s being unstitched at the seams. And tomorrow he’ll have to go to Thornchapel and see Poe and maybe see St. Sebastian again and have to pretend he’s not unraveling. Pretend he isn’t growing a tree of thorns inside his chest and that those thorns don’t have names.
Delphine. Rebecca. Becket.
St. Sebastian.
Proserpina.
