Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4)

by Sierra Simone

  How can they be real?

  We weren’t ever going to end up on a television program about contemporary poverty in Britain or anything, but there was no missing that money was tight in our household and had been since Richard Davey died. And while my grandfather’s business in Texas makes good money—very good money—my mother was prideful to the point of stubbornness about asking for help. If we could get by on our own, then we would. Even if it meant stretching every pound like it was made of rubber.

  And when Mamá died, there’d been so little to her name that I was able to buy a few rounds for everyone at the Thorn and Crown after I closed her accounts and that was it—and never, not once, not when we were in the shops getting food and searching for bargains, not when there were late notices on the utilities, not when our car refused to start or died in the worst places on the B roads of Dartmoor—not fucking once did she say, oh well screw this, I’ve got a metal box with thousands of pounds in it.

  Not. Once.

  I count the money with shaking hands. There’s nearly fifty thousand pounds here. Fifty thousand pounds. Money that would have changed her life—our life—and yet she’d just stuffed it into a box? She hadn’t let a single whisper slip about it?

  There’s more than just money in here though. There’s brochures—one for UCL, one for the University of Exeter, one for the University of Sheffield. Two for American universities. And there’s an envelope pressed between them, its sides creased as if it had once held money, but now it only holds a letter. A short one written in a tidy, assured hand.

  I was wrong.

  Forgive me.

  —Auden Guest

  I stare at that for I don’t know how long, and then by the time my reasoning has caught up with me, I’m already halfway to Thornchapel, my blood simmering and the box in my trembling hands.

  “St. Sebastian,” Auden says, coming out of his chair. He’s wearing a soft waistcoat buttoned over a thin jumper with trousers and bare feet, and he should look ridiculous, but he looks perfect, damn him. I’m too angry with him for him to look so handsome right now, and it only makes me angrier. How dare he look like a porny Evelyn Waugh character, how dare he give my mother money, how dare he never say anything about it?

  How dare he?

  “To what do I owe the pleasure—”

  I drop the box as loudly as I can on a table nearby. It makes a thudding clunk they can probably hear in Wales, but I don’t care.

  Auden stops walking toward me, his forehead wrinkled in—damn him again—adorable bemusement. “St. Sebastian?” he asks.

  I flip open the box, which had barely closed again around all the notes, and they spill over the edge and onto his expensive wide-planked floor, a pink and white scatter of guilt.

  His mouth opens. Then closes. “What is—” His voice is a little wavery at the edges, a little choked. He clears his throat with a small cough. “Where did you find that?”

  “In my mother’s office. This letter was in the box too.” I extend my hand—the note clutched there is now damp and wrinkled—but Auden only shakes his head.

  “No need,” he says quietly. “I know what it says.”

  “How long, Auden?” I demand. “How long did you give her money?”

  He looks like he’s considering lying, but I see the moment he gives up, his shoulders slumping a little and his hand going to his hair to pull at it. “I started two weeks after you came back, and I kept going until she died.”

  “But.” My words stop there. They stop at the but.

  Because the timeline wasn’t that, the timeline couldn’t be that.

  “I went to Cambridge to confront you about it,” I finally manage. “Three weeks after I got back.”

  “Yes.”

  “But.” My words are gone again. All the way gone.

  Auden sighs and sags against a low bookshelf. “Go ahead and ask. I know you want to.”

  “I hit you, Auden. Don’t you remember? I found you at that indoor rowing tank thing and I bloodied your nose in front of all your teammates.”

  “You did.”

  I nearly explode in his direction; I want to explode, I want to destroy him for lying, for hiding, for depriving my mother in the first place and making me come home from Texas. “Why?” I rage. “Why? Why did you allow me to hit you—spit at your feet—call you every name I could think of—why when you’d already started sending her money again?”

  There’s a solemnity in his face when he answers. “Because I deserved it, St. Sebastian. I deserved the bloody nose, the spitting, the names. I deserved to be punished. I did the wrong thing for wronger reasons, and I knew it even then. I knew it deeply.”

  “But you—” I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. “I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t have fought back—tried to defend yourself—explained. I wasn’t some tornado of anger that couldn’t be reasoned with, Auden. If you’d told me the truth, I would have listened.”

  “I know you would have, but you’re not listening now,” Auden says impatiently. “I deserved all of that and more that day at the rowing tank, and I craved it even. Just because I’d started doing the right thing didn’t erase the hurt I’d caused doing the wrong thing, and I—well. It felt craven to try to bargain down to a lower sentence, as it were. Your anger was justified no matter that I’d already laid a verdict on my own guilt and tried to make amends.”

  “How Catholic of you. But you never thought to tell me the truth since then? All these times we’ve fought about the money, you didn’t think to volunteer the fact that you’d given her fifty thousand pounds?”

  “No,” Auden says, straightening up and padding toward me in his bare feet, “and for all the same reasons. It felt childish and stupid of me to pretend that giving away money I could easily spare changed what I did. I imperiled your mother’s survival—or at the very least her independence—and I interrupted your studies and your life, and made you come back here. I earned your fury, and I don’t take things I’ve earned lightly. Not at all, St. Sebastian.”

  He stops right in front of me, and I want to hit him again, just like I did in Cambridge. I want to hit him and I want to drop to my knees, and I’m so fucking furious at him for being better than I’d thought, for being a better man than I believed he was, and all I want is to tear the world down around us so that I’m not so full of loving him and hating him and hating how much I love him.

  “Do you want to hit me again?” he asks curiously.

  “Maybe,” I say, although I don’t really, I think. I want to hit the money, I want to hit the wasted years and anger. I want to hit every wall that the last twelve years has erected between us.

  “I’d let you, if you wanted,” he says.

  “Whatever,” I mumble, glaring down at my boots.

  “Or you could let me do something to you,” he suggests.

  I snap my head up to look at him, and while he’s keeping a respectful distance between us, there’s nothing respectful about his carnivorous gaze or his flexing hands. There’s nothing respectful at all about that mouth, about the way his tongue wets his lower lip, as if already tasting me.

  “Like what?” I ask, despite myself.

  He lifts one shoulder in an elegant, cashmere shrug. “I could spank you. Bite you. Pin you to the floor and run my fingernails everywhere.”

  Heat gathers low in my stomach, stirring my blood and stiffening my flesh. “Oh?” I say, my voice more strangled than casual. “I thought you needed me to promise you forever first.”

  “I’ll make an exception today. You seem like you need it.”

  “Oh my God, fuck you,” I hiss, shoving his shoulder. “You’ll make an exception for me? Will you? How fucking benevolent, you fucking dickwad—”

  My words are cut short as his mouth comes down hard on mine—hard enough that I can taste blood from where our teeth cut into our lips. My organ is fully erect within seconds. My entire body aches for invasion and violence. It aches for possession.


  It aches for Auden.

  He slams me against the wall, something metallic rattling somewhere, my breath leaving my body in a sharp grunt, which he steals with his kiss, pushing his tongue into my mouth and stroking and stroking, seeking and seeking, until I’m so starved for air that sparks fizz at the edges of my vision and my knees go soft. Only then does he let me breathe, tearing his mouth away from mine with a vicious oath.

  “Please,” I whisper once I’ve found air again, once I can stand. My hands are on his jumper, searching underneath for firm, warm skin. “Please, Auden.”

  “I’m tired of being the thing you regret,” he says, his voice as hollow as it is rough with lust. “But I’m even more tired of not having you. I don’t think I can hold out any longer, St. Sebastian.”

  “Then don’t.”

  I don’t know who starts it—I never know who starts it—and does it even matter? But somehow we’re both moving, shoving and pulling at each other’s clothes, somehow the kissing has turned to fighting and the fighting has turned into what it always is at its core: Auden winning because I want him to win.

  We stagger over to his desk, still shoving and kissing and grabbing and biting, and then I’m shoved down, bent over his desk like a schoolboy about to be punished. My jeans are yanked down to my hips and a drawer is opened, and then I hear the click of a lube bottle.

  “Hurry,” I say. “Hurry.”

  “Because you’re worried you’re going to change your mind?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know—does it matter?”

  “It should,” answers Auden darkly. But he doesn’t clarify, and the only other clarification I get is a slick fingertip rubbing against my opening.

  I bury my head in my arms on the desk and groan, because this is something that never feels as good alone, this is something my own touch, my own collection of toys can never replicate. It’s not just the slipperiness or the touching itself—it’s the impatient way he does it, it’s the authority he does it with, the utter prerogative, like of course my arsehole is his, of course he has every right to fuck it in the middle of his own goddamn house. Of course I should be bent over for him, available for his use, whimpering at his irritable need as much as any sane person would whimper at a sensual kindness.

  No, a toy can’t give that to me. I can’t even give that to me.

  There is no preamble to him pushing in, there is no warning. There is only the absence of his fingers and then something broad and hot—and then the intrusion. Thick, too thick maybe, and unrelenting enough that I’m making all sorts of noises into the mess of plans and L-squares and liner pens on his desk.

  I hear a grunted fuck from behind me as Auden buries himself deep, and I’ll never tire of hearing him so completely undone, so unraveled and rough for me. All that studied elegance tumbles right away, and what remains is ferocious, hungry male. And if I’d known when I was a teenager and fumbling around on the internet to find out what I liked that one day I’d have the lord of the manor himself grunting behind me, then I’m pretty sure I would have been at Auden’s feet the very next time I saw him. I’m pretty sure I would have found him after Mass one Sunday and said I will do anything for you, please just let me.

  “So stubborn,” he’s murmuring now, but it’s not a soothing murmur, it’s an angry one, it’s a murmur like he could fuck me until the sun sets and still not be done punishing me for punishing him. “So pretty and so stubborn. You feel like heaven around me, did you know that? Pure hot joy. All this time you’ve denied us this, all this time . . . ”

  “You have,” I breathe. My fingertips are scratching at the plans on his desk, pens are rolling everywhere. “I wanted this, remember?”

  “That’s right, isn’t it?” Auden says, giving me a full stroke that nearly kills me. “You wanted exactly this. A rough fuck to scratch your itch. Something fast and mean to remind you of how it feels to be mine.”

  I’m given several more ruts, and even though it’s trapped beyond the edge of the desk and out of reach, my erection gives a sharp, sudden surge in response. I’ll come soon, just from his words and the fucking, and I can’t even care that it’ll be all over my boots and all over his floor. It feels right, necessary, like of course it should be as filthy as possible. Of course this shouldn’t be clean or sweet or romantic. Not when it started like this.

  “You could be mine,” continues Auden, his hand cracking along the curve of my arse. “You could, St. Sebastian. It’d be so easy. All you have to say is I don’t care what happens next, I’ll love you anyway. And then it’s done. You, Poe, and I will be together again, and I’ll fuck you any time you like, I’ll keep you in my office like a pet and use you whenever the fancy strikes, I’ll find a way to marry you and Poe and leave lovely little marks on your skin until we die. It could be us, St. Sebastian. It could be the three of us.”

  I open my mouth—but the words don’t leave it. I’m not sure why, if it’s because I’m scared or because there’s a sexy, posh boy fucking me like I’m the last lay in the world, or because I’m simply not ready until I have those test results in my hand, I don’t know.

  But I don’t speak.

  And Auden snaps.

  “Fine,” he seethes, his hips merciless and his hands cruel. I can barely breathe for how fast he’s jamming into me now, for how brutally he’s fucking. I can barely breathe for how that brutality stirs my body like nothing else. “That’s fine. I’ll use you anyway. And when you’re feeling me tonight and tomorrow, think about us. Think about the three of us. Think about what we could be if you would only promise to stay. Stay no matter what comes next.”

  “I just—need—to know—first—” I manage.

  “Then know,” he says in something like a snarl. “But you’ll still need to promise after that. No matter what changes, no matter if there’s a mistake. Because I am fucking tired of watching you leave.”

  His hand moves under the desk to find my trapped cock, and he doesn’t stroke it or play with it, he merely inspects it, testing to see if it’s wet at the tip. And then he’s back to fucking me with harsh, unrestrained thrusts. I have the feeling that if someone walked up here right now, he wouldn’t stop, he’d keep going, he’d make them watch as he extracted his due from me—

  “Auden,” I groan, “I’m going to—”

  “I know,” he says, and for the first time since he bent me over his desk, I hear something deeper and warmer than anger or lust. “I know, Saint.”

  He loves me.

  It’s not a secret. He’s never kept it a secret. Even when we were teenagers, it was there, radiating from his bites and his sketches on my skin, if not his words. But sometimes I’m still struck sideways by it, by the fact that Auden Guest loves me, by the fact that he loves me still. After everything.

  My balls seize up, tight, tight, and then something shears inside me, something critical and structural, and a lewd heat rushes up my cock as I cry out into the desk. Cum sprays from the tip, thick spurts of seed that land somewhere I can’t see, and it’s so dirty to come like this, so impossibly rude, to just ejaculate onto the ground like an animal, and I love it, I love that he’s made me do it, that he’s reduced me to this.

  Even as I hate that I can’t surrender to what he’s asked of me. Not yet.

  Auden crams me full one last time and lets out a low grunt that curls my toes. Then he’s filling me up, his cock swelling and pumping and swelling and pumping, until his grip loosens on my hips and I hear him draw in a tattered breath. One final pulse and he’s drained. He gives me a quick thrust before he pulls out—not for me, I know, but so he can feel his seed inside me, and then it’s done.

  We’re done.

  I don’t move for a moment, not until Auden pulls away completely, and then I stand up to see him holding out some tissues. We both clean up, and then after I’m put back together and zipped, I notice the floor under Auden’s desk.

  “I came under your desk,” I say.

  “It’s fine.
”

  “No, I should—” I crouch down and clean up my semen with a tissue and then stand. “Sorry about that.”

  “I said it’s fine.”

  “Auden—”

  He looks at me, and we’re so close right now that I can see every crypt and furrow in his irises—slender rings and radial threads of emerald, jade, coffee, and amber. Eyes like the forest outside. Except at the very edges, around the very outer ring, the irises have darkened to a color I’ve never seen in his eyes before.

  A reddish-black. The color of a deep, hours-old bruise.

  “Auden,” I say again, but this time it’s a question. This time it’s because worry has begun to crawl up the backs of my legs and up my spine.

  But he waves me away before I can say any of that. “Go,” he says hoarsely. “We’re done here.”

  “But—”

  He pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes. “No buts, little martyr, please. Not today. I asked, you said no, now we keep up this awful thing where the three of us are unlinked and apart.” He drops his hands, his eyes with their strange new color at the edges burning into mine. “And you know it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. Every time we’re with Poe together or separately, every time you and I are together or apart, we can feel the wrongness like . . . like—” He gestures at a window, in the direction of the chapel. “We can feel the wrongness growing, and I’m terrified that at some point, it’s going to be too late.”

  “I’m not asking for much,” I maintain. “I just want to know if Freddie is my father. I feel so sure that he is.”

  “Wait, then, if that’s what you want to do. But I will have a promise from you then.”

  “Of course,” I say, “of course I’ll promise then.”

  “Even if there’s a possibility the test could be wrong?”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  “If you say so,” Auden says, and I wish I could fix all the doubt I hear in his voice then, I wish I could smooth all the sadness away. I wish I could promise him forever right now; I wish I didn’t care so much what my mother would have thought.