Page 90 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Delphine pauses but I shake my head at her. “Keep going,” I breathe. “I like to cry.”
I really do.
The pain is like stabbing or biting or—fuck, tearing—that’s what it is, I’m being torn open, and I know the moment it happens, because I arch my neck and let out a low scream, and the minute I do, my clit swells up and my orgasm swells up right along with it, ready to pop like a balloon. Delphine fucks me with slow, wide movements, her thumb finding my clit to rub it in time with the thrusts of her hand, and the pain has spun itself into gold now, into pure, glimmering gold. It feels so good to be fucked, so good like I never want it to stop; I want to be fucked forever, I want fucking to be my new job. I could stay poised in this moment for the rest of my life, with the fire jumping and the distant beat of drums thudding through my blood, and the memory of pain feeding the greedy pleasure building in my womb.
Everything is so tight, so urgent, and my lord braced over me and fucking me is suddenly the most necessary and natural thing in the world, and I’m so frenzied and delirious with the need to come that I almost feel like I’m floating, like I’m holding every orgasm that ever was and ever will be inside my body, and that when I come, I’ll flood the entire fucking world with relief and rapture and joy. The rain starts up again at that very moment, as if ready to flood the world with me, raining softly, softly, but with a proud, tossing wind that whips at the fire and creaks through the trees.
This is what I was missing, I think, feeling the blood and the pain and the weight of my temporary sainthood in my belly. This was the gateway all along.
This was worth waiting for.
A few things happen then, to make me flood the world, to make me uncup my saint’s blessing and spill it out.
The first is that Delphine, after a long, hungry look at where her hand fucks me, moves herself between Saint’s leg and my own so that she can push the wet and needy part of herself against my thigh. She rocks and grinds as her hand does the same, and when I catch Rebecca looking at her, I see a woman only the barest sliver of self-control away from taking what she wants. Like she wants to tackle Delphine and then devour her from top to bottom, which only makes me want to be devoured by both of them in turn.
The second thing is that Auden sits up, and he moves down so that he can watch everything Delphine does to me. His eyes trace hungry lines up and down my body, they blaze every trail that I know he wants to make with his own fingers, his own mouth, and then without warning, without preamble—he does. He does track his fingers up my leg, he does bend down so that he can kiss my thigh. And then he kisses Delphine’s wrist, the base of her thumb, kisses the flexing knuckles where her fingers meet her hand, he kisses higher up still. Until I feel the painted lines of his kisses all over my cunt, against the tight, wet places where Delphine’s fingers stretch me open. And he licks, nuzzles, bites, and samples me to distraction, winding me up and up and up, until he sits up again, his mouth swollen from kissing and stained red with virgin blood like a storybook vampire’s.
And the third thing to happen is that Auden Guest moves back against me and crushes my mouth in a kiss like no other kiss I’ve ever had, no other kiss I’ve ever dreamed of, because it’s ferocious and cruel and full of promises, and yes—it’s tinged with the metallic salt of my most intimate blood. Saint utters a low curse from next to me, something fast and reckless and vicious, and then joins him in our branding, carnal kiss, seeking out my taste from Auden’s lips as well as my own. Both men bend over me, their mouths fighting for mine, and maybe fighting for each other’s too, and it’s wet and open and raw and angry and claiming.
It’s our wedding kiss all over again.
Auden squeezes my thorn-throbbing hand, and it’s like someone pushing a detonator button. The pain runs through me like power through a line, sizzling right down to my cunt, and boom.
I blow.
I flood, I pour out, I bless. My body arches and contracts around Delphine’s hand, unearthly sounds are torn from my throat and I sob and thrash and moan as Saint and Auden kiss the sobs and moans right off my lips and then kiss them right off each other’s. At that moment, there’s no question that I’m a saint, that I’m a goddess, that something in me has awakened, and the rain answers my divinity in kind, abruptly roaring into a windy, fierce downpour as I scream my pleasure up into the night.
And right as the hardest, tightest, best orgasm of my life peaks, lightning splits the sky open and strikes a massive tree, sending it crashing down into the chapel and onto the altar itself.
Chapter 26
The tree is a problem for tomorrow, there’s no question about that. Our eyes are too seared from the flash to see properly, our ears are still ringing with the earth-shaking clap of the lightning hitting earth, and anyway, the trunk is still nipping with flames, although the rain is doing its best to put a stop to that.
It’s clear we need to get back to the house, but Becket insists we each have a nibble of cookie and a drink straight from the Prosecco bottle to finish the ritual. Rebecca makes sure Delphine and I only have the tiniest sips possible, but she makes us eat a whole cookie each and then shoves a bottle of water at us, like any good Domme monitoring for sub-drop would. And so, huddled under the noisy, flapping tarp, we still share our version of cakes and ale, watching the fire die and the wind yank angrily at the branches of the tree now half-laying across the altar. The blown-in rain sluices the blood off my left hand, and when I look over at Delphine, I can see by the guttering light of the fire that she has blood running from both her hands. Not much, but it’s definitely there, definitely visible even with all the sparks and floaters from the lightning strike chasing across my field of view.
It takes me a minute to understand why she has blood on her right hand too, but once I do, I blush.
Becket says we have to close out the circle, and so Auden throws a coat over me while Rebecca and Becket do the same for Delphine, and wearing nothing but my coat and my rain boots, I walk through the slicing rain with my friends. We douse the flames of each lantern if they’re still burning, and we thank St. Brigid.
We stop at the altar, but there’s no time to figure out where the other lantern went, if it’s crushed under the tree or what, because it’s now so cold, so windy, that it’s absolutely necessary for us to get back to the warm indoors. Auden and Becket make sure the big fire is completely dead, and then they make noises about coming back for everything in the morning, but I don’t pay much attention to anything they’re saying, because everything feels so blissful and unreal and marvelous.
I’m smiling when Auden takes my hand to lead me out of the ruins. The ground is now so wet that my rain boots come free with a sucking noise every time I lift my foot and they splash every time I set it down. Suck-SPLASH. Suck-SPLASH. It makes me feel like a little girl again, playing alone in my backyard while the rain dropped down and my mother graded coursework by the kitchen window. The memory makes me smile even bigger.
“What are you smiling about?” Auden asks, puzzled.
“Subspace,” Rebecca answers for me over the rain. “Walk with her back to the house so s
he doesn’t float off to the moon.” And then she takes Delphine’s arm and tugs her down the stone row, Delphine chattering happily all the while in a giddy, punch-drunk voice. Becket follows and steadies Delphine every now and again when she sways.
“Right,” Auden says with a sigh. “Come on, Proserpina.”
“Okay,” I say dreamily.
Saint appears like a ghost next to me, mud-soaked and watchful, as we leave the clearing and enter the woods. “Do you hurt?” he asks me in a worried voice. “You’re staggering a little.”
“I only hurt in the best way,” I smile, but even with all the endorphins and sex-chemicals crashing through my brain, I can still sense that I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow.
Saint gets out his flashlight, and it’s a good one, a strong one, the kind that a man who works with his hands owns, and it cuts a sharp cone of light over the path. Rain glitters in its beam, streaking in mesmerizing silver streaks, and I stumble when I try to reach out and catch one.
