I put the lipstick away and clean off my arm. Supper will be soon, and I’ll need a few minutes to prepare for the sight of Rebecca. Every time I see her, it’s like—I don’t even know—like the only response I can possibly have is dropping to my knees. Because she’s so perfect, so sharply beautiful, so deserving of worship, and any moment not worshipping her is a moment wasted.
Seeing her sitting in the grass with her braids gathered in a messy knot and her brows furrowed had me trembling to kiss her feet, so watching her eat and lick and swallow during supper might kill me—although I’d die happy at least. I’d die with a smile on my face.
I stand up, thinking maybe I’ll change for supper, and it’s when I’m restlessly grazing through the closet that I see it. The toy. Tucked in a discreet velvet bag and resting on a shelf next to the necklace Rebecca sent.
I think of her slender fingers in the grass, how the lithe, narrow muscles of her forearm lifted and flexed as she dug her fingertips into the earth. I think of her lips—naked except for a clear gloss, parted in thought—and I think of her dark brown eyes as she stared at me.
You’re still mine.
Could I still be hers even if she resents me for it? Refuses to love or forgive me in spite of it? Can you belong to someone if they’re not sure they still want you?
Do I even care?
I take the toy off the shelf, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m shimmying out of my boots and jeans and scarf, wearing nothing but my jumper and my knickers (and of course, the A-Go-Go on my lips). I climb onto the bed and lean back on the pillows, rooting around a little until I’m comfortable, and then I turn the toy on. It vibrates in my hand, a buzz so gentle it’s more tickle than anything else, and then I drag my phone over, pulling up the app that controls the toy. I can make it vibrate harder, I can make it pulse, I can toggle between where it vibrates internally and the slender branch that’s meant to lay flat against my clitoris, or I can have both vibrating at once.
Rebecca would have lube, or I would have been made to work my clit until I was dripping, or I would have been tied down and licked, but I find that I’m nearly wet enough to use it merely knowing it’s from Rebecca. Merely from the memory of her fingers in the grass and the gloss on her lips.
I turn the toy to its lowest setting and then slowly, carefully, ease it inside my pussy. A thick curve of it rests against a certain spot on my front wall, and the clitoral part is nestled between my lips, and the whole toy is designed to hold itself in place. I slide my hands free from it and close my eyes, savoring it, imagining that Rebecca is here with me. That she’s teasing me with it, laughing in that low mistress laugh she has when I whine about wanting to come. That she’s kneeling between my legs right now, her eyes on my cunt, a smile curving her lush mouth as she watches my breathing hitch and my thighs quiver.
That she’s waiting for the perfect moment to turn the vibration higher . . .
A deep surge of pleasure radiates out from between my legs, catching me by surprise and making me moan. I grope for the phone—I must have accidentally hit it with my elbow or something and adjusted the controls—and then another surge comes, as the toy kicks up in intensity. It’s almost too intense, but in the best way, and when I open my eyes to look at the app, I’m not sure yet if I’ll actually turn it down or leave it where it’s at.
Which is when I see that the app has changed colors, from a lavender to a deep, scarlet red.
Mistress R. is in control, the app tells me, and indeed, when I try to adjust the controls myself, they don’t work. She is the one setting the intensity, she is the one guiding the pace. I could pull the toy out, I could turn it off. I could text her and say, not to be a bore, but I don’t want you making me come whilst you still detest me.
But I don’t want to.
If this is all I get of my mistress—this and a necklace that glitters more than the Dartmoor sky at night—then this is what I’ll take.
And as if she knows I’ve consented, she sends me a text.
Press your knees together, the text says, and eager submissive that I am, I immediately obey, sucking in a breath as I discover why she told me to. The sensation like this is different—deeper—harder to move with or squirm away from. My thighs lock everything in place, and without being able to arch my back as easily, there’s no relief from the buzzing pleasure of the toy.
It’s inside me. It’s on my clit. Everything between my legs is one jangling knot of tension, all of it cinched so tight it nearly hurts.
Everything is her. This is her.
Her tension, her buzzing. Her will.
For the first time in months, Rebecca Quartey is making me come.
The orgasm slices through me like a hull through water, like a saber through a bottle of champagne, and I cry out as it shakes me and takes me, making every intimate muscle clench, turning my cunt into a starburst of bright, sharp bliss. I curl into the feeling, the immense feeling of it, because it’s not just a climax, it’s a climax given by her, and after the waves pass and my vision returns, I feel the tears sliding effortlessly out of my eyes.
I don’t know what I’m crying for exactly—joy or satisfaction or renewed longing or the knifelike loneliness of being the only one in the room—but the tears come faster than I can wipe them away.
If Rebecca were here, she’d kiss them away. Not to comfort me, but because she reverenced my tears the same way I reverenced her control. Because they got her wet when she knew she was the one to put them there.
The toy is still buzzing, too much now against my sensitive flesh, and I text her thank you before I drop my hand to pull it out.
The toy stops vibrating before I actually do it though, and then I see her reply.
Leave it in for supper.
I don’t pull it out. I think for a moment.
And then I leave it in for supper.
“I know this isn’t strictly door-related, but did you know there are records of plague in the Thorne Valley?” Poe is saying to Auden.
“Not the Black Death plague,” Becket cuts in. “Some sickness that overworked clerks nonspecifically called the plague.”
“It could have been the bubonic plague,” Poe counters. We’re sitting around the dining room table, having finished a scrummy meal of chèvre tart tatin and Cornish crab, and I am very, very aware of the toy inside me as a fresh bottle of white is opened and passed around.
The toy is not buzzing. It hasn’t buzzed once since I came down to find Rebecca already at the table, eyes glittering and phone in her hand, but I know it could buzz at any moment. I know with a swipe of her thumb, I could be trembling in my chair and panting through another insane orgasm, and the possibility of it, the denial and threat of it, is almost as delicious as the buzzing would be itself.
Even more delicious? The way Rebecca smiles every time she sees me twitch or stir in my chair. Which is usually when I see her look at her phone. I swear she’s handling it more than she ever does at the dinner table simply to tease me, to keep me wondering if she’s going to put me out of my misery and turn the bloody thing on.
“The first record you found mentioned it was the same sickness that came to the valley during the reign of King Stephen,” Becket says. “That’s too early for it to have been the bubonic plague, because that plague didn’t reach Europe until the 1300s.”
“Fine,” Poe says impatiently, “but lots of people did die. In plague-like numbers, one might say.”
“Any idea what illness it might have been?” Rebecca asks. She doesn’t look at me as she does—she keeps her eyes on Poe—but she traces the screen of her phone with one long finger.
I shiver.
“There are lots of sicknesses that have since disappeared,” Poe says, “so it’s hard to say if it’s something we’d even recognize or just some lost disease.”
“Lost disease?” echoes Auden.
“You know. Like the sweating sickness, and . . . okay, the sweating sickness is the only one I can
think of, but diseases in the historical record whose symptoms don’t match anything we know of today.”
“Ah,” Auden says. He runs his fingertips along an eyelid and then takes a drink of wine.
A quick, soft buzz, like a kiss, reverberates through my body and I gasp.
“Are you okay, Delly?” Auden asks, looking concerned.
“Yes,” I say quickly. The buzz is gone. Rebecca’s face is totally impassive—save for her eyes, which seem to dance. “Just realized I forgot to charge my ring light upstairs.”
This has the effect of immediately boring everyone at the table, and the conversation moves back to plagues. And as Poe and Becket start debating again, talking about the difference between the records in the early medieval period and the Restoration, the toy jolts inside me, a powerful pulse that has me squeezing my legs together and forcing myself to breathe.
Another pulse.
Another.
I can barely sit still now, the vibrations are coming so quickly and with so much strength. But she’s making them sporadic, clustered and then spaced in such a way that I can’t brace for them, I can’t find a rhythm and ride my way through them.
I dare to look up and meet Rebecca’s eyes—they are more than dancing now, they are positively saturnalian, and her mouth is curled in pure delight. As I watch, she catches her lower lip between her teeth and slides her finger across her screen.
Sensation explodes inside me, and I want to whimper, I want to moan. I want to grab the edge of the table and hold on for dear life, but I can’t, I won’t, I will see this game through if it kills me.
Acutely aware of my nipples poking through the silk blouse I’d changed into for supper, and very aware that I must be flushed and breathing abnormally hard, I keep my eyes on my lap and my hands on my thighs. I resist the urge to fuck myself on the toy—although it’s very hard not to fuck, because I’m basically sitting on it and every little move has it rubbing deliciously inside me—and I try to keep my trembling to a minimum.
And when the orgasm comes, as of course it must, I manage not to cry or laugh or otherwise give myself away. I close my eyes and breathe quivering, uneven breaths as my clit surges and my womb contracts and wetness slicks me down below.
It takes forever it feels like, eons and eons, but when the shudders finally leave me and my pussy relaxes around the toy, Poe and Becket are still talking about plagues and Auden is still idly rubbing his eye.
Rebecca is watching me over the table like I’m her next meal.
“Let’s do dessert in the library,” Auden finally says. “We can talk plagues in there and we need to make some decisions about tomorrow.”
Everyone accedes to this and rises to their feet, Auden going ahead to find Abby and let her know. Rebecca lingers and so do I, until we’re the last two in the dining room.
She takes measured, deliberate steps over to my side of the table. “I’m glad you’re in a skirt,” she purrs. It’s the first time she’s spoken to me directly the entire meal. “Bend over.”
I bend.
My skirt is shoved up and my knickers moved aside. My ballet-flatted feet are kicked apart and then her fingers are all over my slit, stroking where her toy meets my wet skin.
“I should fuck your mouth right here,” she says breathlessly. “I should push you to your knees and use those pretty lips and that pretty pink tongue. Would you like that? For me to use you?”
God, yes, of course I’d like that. I’ve thought of nothing else for nearly two months. “I’d like it better if I was wearing the necklace while you did it,” I say, and I feel her rest her forehead on my back, as if the mere idea has undone her and now she can no longer stand.
“Tomorrow,” she says against my silk blouse. “Equinox. If we all fuck, then I fuck you. You can safe out if that’s not okay, you can tell me no. But otherwise, you’re mine. Understood?”
My sore internal muscles clench around the toy, quickened back to life by her words.
Even if this is all I get of you, it will be enough.
It will be enough.
“Understood?” she asks again, and this time I answer.
“Yes, Rebecca. Understood.”
Chapter Eighteen
Auden
“I feel like you’re not listening to me.”
I adjust the phone closer to my ear as I walk down the wooded path to the chapel. I’ve got a roll of blankets under one arm and a jug of water dangling from my hand, and trying to balance everything while listening to Tally talk about pollen analysis is almost too much.
“I’m listening,” I say, awkwardly readjusting the blankets. “You said something about a pollen sample from one of the cists?”
“Yes, we took a sample from each grave—it helps us see what additional plant matter might have been put inside the graves along with the cremated remains. And we also took a sample from outside the graves too, for a sense of what flora was native to the valley at the time.”
“Ah,” I say. “So what pollen did you find in the graves, then?”
“That’s just the thing, my little country lord. We found the same thing both inside and out of them.”
Shafts of early afternoon sunlight dapple the path in front of me, and the trees are still full green, still heavy with summer. The oaks are holding on to their acorns, the rowans their berries, there’s no catkins dangling from the hazel or elder yet. The wild apple trees at the fringes of the path are still dangling with small, rosy globes.
But there is still an inhale in the air, a subtle shift—something saying summer is over. Something saying it’s coming.
I can feel it even when I can’t see it, and even as I think the thought to myself, an oak above drops a single half-green acorn onto the ground, as if to agree.
It’s coming.
Like the altar says—convivificat.
It stirs.
“So you’re saying the people in the cists weren’t buried with any plants around them,” I say to Tobias. The birch and beech and hawthorn begin to thin and the stone row comes into view. “So the pollen analysis was pointless.”
“First of all, you are breathing very heavily. Are you fucking right now? Do you have that pretty librarian in your lap while I’m trying to talk to you about important paleoecological things?”
“I’m walking, Tally. And if I remember correctly, you are the only one of us who’s spoken on the phone in flagrante delicto.”
“I was calling you for a good reason that night,” Tobias answers, sounding miffed. “I needed someone to take me back to St. John’s after my date ended.”
“Yes, but as I recall, your date hadn’t finished, and you were bent over the arm of a chaise longue while you were calling me like a cab service.”
I can practically hear the shrug I know Tobias is giving right now. “What can I say? I knew I’d be ready to leave once he was done. Those rowing boys never give as good as you think they will.”
“I was a rowing boy,” I point out, weaving through the stone row to get to the chapel. The roses have climbed all over the walls now.
“And you were tragically a virgin, as I recall. And if you are still a virgin after holing up in a gothic manor with all those very delectable friends of yours . . . and after being affianced to a genuine socialite-celebrity for two years, I will be greatly disappointed in you. Why am I talking about this again?”
“Because I’m walking,” I reply, going to the platform and depositing the water and the blankets. The others won’t be out for a couple more hours yet, but I spent the day getting everything ready for our impromptu ritual: water, blankets, wood for the fire. A coolbox full of beer and bubbles and the little cakes Abby makes for us. I imagine she thinks we eat them during breezy, Edwardian-style picnics on the lawn.
The problem is that nothing in the Record or any of our other texts mentions an equinox ritual. So we’re making it up as we go along. Some fire, some sex, throw in the proverbial cakes and ale . . . maybe it will be enough.
Maybe we can close the door.
“Oh, yes, that’s right—you called my pollen analysis pointless. Pointless! As if I would deal with the boffins at the lab for no reason, Auden, really. There is a point. And the point is that on at least six or seven separate occasions, your property has been covered in roses. Enough polleniferous rose material to leave a significant deposit on the record. Which is an unimaginable amount of roses, I would think. The lab people were certain they were wrong, and kept re-analyzing, but here we are.”
I stare at the door for a moment, and then I turn and look back at the entrance to the chapel. The roses haven’t left the ruins yet, but with as fast as they’ve grown inside the chapel, surely it’s only a matter of time . . .
“Roses,” I say. “Are you quite sure, Tally?”
“Positive. And here’s the intriguing thing—the roses aren’t a varietal the palynologists can identify. They’re definitely roses, that much is certain, but they don’t match any known rose on record.”
“Interesting,” I say. My voice rasps a little when I speak, and my eyes prickle. I wonder if I’ll cry another petal like I did the night St. Sebastian came back.
“Yes, Auden. It is interesting. Interesting as in there is literally nothing like this that I’ve ever seen or studied—or even heard of in a hotel bar at an archaeological conference, and you hear all sorts there.”
“It can’t be that unusual,” I say, although I don’t believe it. I’m staring at an ancient church covered in bruise-colored roses; behind me is a door that shouldn’t exist. I can make the trees move when I’m sad, and apparently I can weep rose petals like a miraculous statue.
Unusual doesn’t even begin to describe my ancestral home this year.
“Let me explicate to you, once again, dear friend, what I’ve found in your back garden. I’ve got eight graves in a valley when they should be on a hilltop. I have a mysterious chamber covered in carvings that is totally empty of remains, objects, or anything else that could indicate its purpose. I have a person buried with incredible wealth who appears to have been ritualistically murdered, and I have rose pollen everywhere from roses that apparently don’t exist anywhere other than in the Thorne Valley. And even then, it appears only a handful of times from the Restoration back to the Neolithic. You see the problem here, Auden.”
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 21