Page 42 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
He came from spanking me.
I brace up on my elbows and look at him over my shoulder. He looks stunned, lost, no longer the spoiled boy-king, but the wandering knight who’s just seen the Grail . . . only to have it disappear before he could close his fingers around it.
Those long, long eyelashes flutter as he closes his eyes and drops his head back against the sofa, and the silence around the room breaks when Becket says quietly, “Saint’s gone.”
Chapter 13
Somehow, Auden and I manage to extricate ourselves with minimal embarrassment. The dim room hides the evidence of the pleasure he took in my spanking, and when I stand and Rebecca helps me pull up my tights—checking my ass first to make sure I don’t need any other care—the expressions on Becket and Delphine’s faces are not condemning or concerned. Both of them look near drunk—pale skin flushed with hungry, glassy eyes—the expression of voyeurs with whetted appetites.
But I can’t sate those appetites right now. The only thing I want to do is find St. Sebastian and . . . well, I don’t know yet.
Just find him, I guess, and hope that I haven’t irreparably broken something.
The minute my skirt is back down, I’m padding quickly across the floor and out into the corridor, shivering against the cold air seeping in from the broken window. I wrap my arms around my chest as I go into the main hall and see that Saint has opened one of the big front doors and is about to leave.
“Wait!” I call out, rushing forward. “Don’t go!”
Saint stops, but he doesn’t turn and neither does he close the door, which sends the icy wind whipping through the high hall, and sleet bouncing against his feet.
So I shut the door for him, firmly, standing between him and it until he looks at me.
“What is it?” he asks tiredly.
“That’s my question to ask,” I say. “You should be riding with Becket if you want to leave. Not planning to slog home in the ice and wind in order to prove a point.”
He lets out a joyless bark of laughter at that. “To prove a point? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Well, isn’t it? You don’t have to pretend with me, St. Sebastian, I’m not afraid of your honesty. And I’m not new to people having ideas about the things people like Rebecca and I enjoy—”
Saint braces a hand against the door next to my head and stares at me with those dark eyes. He’s nibbling thoughtfully at his lip piercing, as if choosing exactly what he wants to say next.
“I’ve never done what you did in there,” he finally says. “Or what Rebecca did. I’ve never hurt someone, and I’ve never been hurt—for fun, I mean. For—” there’s the faintest flush under his cheeks now, “—for pleasure. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t wanted it, you know. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been craving it for years, that I don’t fantasize about it—”
He catches his breath; there’s shame everywhere through him, and it’s so delicious that I just want to lick it right off his body and make it my own. “Look at me, Poe,” he pleads, and when I search his face, he shakes his head and dips his chin. “I mean, look.”
I look down, and there’s the firm, heavy proof of his response.
Fuck. Me. I slump against the door, lust coiled so tightly in my belly that it almost hurts.
“Oh, Saint,” I murmur. “Was that because you wanted to be me? Or Rebecca?”
“I don’t know,” he says helplessly. “I always thought I wanted to be both, but then when I saw Auden's face—”
And here he cuts himself off for good, refusing to say more.
“Saint . . .” I try to nudge, but he seals his lips closed, looking like he wants to punch himself for even uttering Auden’s name aloud. The little metal ball underneath his lip is pulled tight enough that it dents the soft skin there, and I can’t stop staring at it. I can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to take that little ball between my teeth and tug.
In an ideal world, I’d be spanked again for taking such a liberty, but alas . . .
“I want to kiss you,” I blurt out and his eyes widen, then darken even more as his eyes dip to my mouth. “I’m sorry and I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I just had to tell you—”
His lips are hard against mine before I can even speak another word.
The kiss is desperate, grasping, gasping, with tongues and teeth, and everywhere touching, everywhere my fingers digging into Saint’s arms while his hands clutch and fist at my skirt. I can smell him, and he smells like Thornchapel too, except smoky and crisp somehow, the way a fire smells burning against a cold night.
The kiss is like fire too, consuming, roaring, volcanic. I feel wild, unstable—and Saint is even wilder than I feel, cupping my ass and shoving me up against the door, pinning me there as he plunders my mouth with vicious, fitful frenzy. His lip piercing digs insistently into my lip, and I want to die it feels so good, I want to worship it and write poems to it, and every time he moves his mouth, I feel its delicious little path over my lips; I chase after it with my tongue.
I circle my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, and the pain of my sore bottom against his palms is like heaven as we kiss and arch together, his erection finding just the spot to grind against, his chest pressing hard against my swollen breasts. I can’t breathe, I don’t want to breathe, and with my hurting ass and the rough, cold door behind me, I have such a perfect balance of pleasure and pain that I know I could come from this. My thwarted orgasm from earlier is tightening and tightening, it’s beckoning me, it’s begging me, and I’m ready to follow, I’m so very ready—
