Page 84 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
My bravery is rewarded.
Auden’s breath is warm on my ear and on the corner of my jaw as he speaks. “Here’s what I want, Bride of Thornchapel. I want to touch your cunt. I want to slide my hand down your panties and then push my fingers into you. I want to see if you’re wet. I want to know if you get wetter when I’m inside you.”
I try to breathe, I really try, but his words heat my blood so much that everything seems impossible. “Oh?” I manage.
“Yes, oh.” He pushes his face farther in, burying his nose in my neck. “I want to touch you as if you were mine.”
My heart tumbles around all over my chest; if I thought I was breathless before, it’s nothing compared to now. The word mine out of those charming, crooked lips, the word mine murmured against my skin . . .
“As if you were the lord tonight and I was your bride, or as if I was yours outside of here too? Because you must know by now what it takes for me to belong to someone. For me to be theirs.”
“One must earn you,” he says softly.
“Yes. Someone would earn me by seeing to my needs, indulging me, pushing me to be smarter and kinder and braver. They earn me by hurting me when I ask for it and taking care of me after, they earn me with tenderness and pain and love and depravity. I’m not saying I can’t do anything else—” I think of Saint as I say this “—but if someone wanted to catch me and keep me for good, that’s how they’d do it.”
“Proserpina, if you knew how much I wanted that, you’d run straight out of here.”
My heart pulls up into my throat at the same time my eyelids burn with tears. God, I want him. Want his pain and his care and his affection—
A thought intrudes, sharp and digging and unwelcome.
Remember last night? He doesn’t know what he wants.
“That’s the breakup talking,” I say, speaking the words aloud as soon as realization blooms in my mind. “This is your breakup talking right now—”
He silences me with one hand over my mouth and the other hand down my panties, and within an instant, he’s got two blunt fingertips teasing at my clit. Pleasure sears up every pathway, burning away every thought and every word I meant to say.
Fuck, that feels good. I can’t remember what I was accusing him of or why, because all I can think of is how good it feels to have him tickling over my secret curls and exploring all the places I fold or swell or both. No one has ever touched my pussy like this, no one but me, and I never knew how different it could feel with another person, how electric, how dirty and how good. I don’t even care that he’s confusing the hell out of me with all his post-breakup feelings, I don’t even care that he doesn’t know what he wants, I only care that he keeps doing this and making me feel that.
I buck my hips against him and whimper against his palm.
“Bite my hand if you want me to stop,” he says quietly, and I roll my lips inward so there’s no chance of me doing it accidentally.
He gives a dark chuckle at that.
I look again at our friends, who can’t hear us, but who can definitely see Auden’s hand over my mouth and his fingers in my panties, and they’ve stopped their conversation now. They’re watching us. My cheeks flush with shame, but it’s the kind of shame I like, the kind of shame that gets me wet and squirmy, and Auden notices.
“Ah, fuck, Poe,” he mutters, his clever fingers sliding even lower and discovering for himself how much I like the shame. “You like them watching? You like them seeing how much you need your cunt played with?”
I nod against his hand and he gives me that lopsided boy-king grin, the one I can’t resist, and then I nod even harder.
Oh God. I’m so fucked. All he’s ever going to have to do is smile at me and I’ll be his, no matter what.
“I’m going to finger you now,” he says. “Just a little. Just enough to make sure you’re ready for your groom tonight. Bite me if you want me to stop.”
No. No, I never want him to stop. I want him inside me, rubbing me, gett
ing his fingers dirty with me. I want to be his, even though tonight I’m already promised to someone else. And so since I don’t bite his palm, he begins. With enough tenderness to be sweet and enough prerogative to be interesting, he pushes the tips of his fingers inside of me, widening me. Spreading me.
“You’re so wet,” he whispers. “So fucking wet.”
He carefully pushes in and out, testing where I’m tight, pressing against something inside me that makes me moan in pain and then moan again as the pain dulls into pleasure.
I’m quivering so much now, making more noises against his hand, because I want him deeper, want him wider. I want his mouth on me, I want his cock wedging me open. I want it all, I’ve been waiting for too damn long, and I want it right now—
“God, I could play with you all night.” And with a regretful sigh—the kind of sigh one might make at leaving a good drink unfinished at night’s end—Auden slides his hand free of my pants and drops his other hand from my mouth. “Open,” he orders, and with an instinct I’ve never had a chance to use before, I part my lips.
He pushes his fingers inside my mouth—the two that were just inside me—and virgin though I am, I’ve watched enough scenes to know what he wants. I suck them clean.
