It wasn’t until later—much later, actually—as I was back home in England and preparing for uni, that I realized I’d felt that thin thread of the divine only one other place in my life. There was another place that was hidden and strange and holy.
I’d lived there for a summer.
It belonged to my best friend.
It practically called out for a gardener, a keeper, someone who would patiently unravel all its secrets, not as archeologists do, not through digging and scraping. But through tending. Through planting. Through growth.
And I knew then, as I know now, that I was always meant to come back to Thornchapel. Not because it was meant for me.
But because I was meant for it.
Chapter Two
Rebecca
I wake with a kitten tucked into my side.
Outside, the sky is the kind of sweet blue that comes only a handful of times in an English spring, and inside my room, everything is orderly and quiet and in its place. Except for the kitten. She’s very much out of place—sleeping with a leg thrown over mine and her face nestled into my shoulder. Her hair is everywhere, and she’s snoring softly, sweet little breaths that puff warmly against my skin. At some point, she’s twisted her fingers into the silk of my nightgown, as if to keep me from leaving.
From this angle, I can only make out the dark fans of her eyelashes and the pert snub of her nose and the coral-colored bow of her upper lip. She’s like a doll, like the perfect doll Sara Crewe is given in A Little Princess, except Delphine is also a doll I get to pet and kiss. A doll I get to pose and lick and fuck.
Her hair really is fucking everywhere. Shining gold and silky, spilling over my chest and shoulder and stomach. It’s long enough that wisps of it tickle the exposed skin of my thighs. Just a few years ago, this would have irritated me beyond measure, but today the only irritation I feel is frustration that I can’t play with it too much without waking her. I have to settle for stroking it away from her face, for sifting it through my fingers and then letting it fall back to my stomach again.
When she’s awake though, I’ll pull it. I’ll tug on it until she whimpers; I’ll use it to guide her mouth between my legs. I’ll wrap it around my fist, and then I’ll let it go again so I can watch the light play over its aureate waves as she eats me.
My cunt gives a kick at the thought, and then a second kick as I realize I can feel her cunt against my thigh. Even unconscious, she’s got it pressed needily against me—as if she fell asleep seeking some kind of friction or relief. I let myself indulge in a fantasy: rolling Delphine onto her back and sliding my fingers into her before she’s all the way awake. Letting her wake up with me kneeling over her, already getting her halfway to an orgasm by the time she flutters those honey eyes open.
A hungry ache settles just behind my clit, and a matching ache curls low in my belly. I want to fuck her like she belongs to me . . . but she doesn’t belong to me. Not yet.
As much as we’ve fooled around here at Thornchapel, as many small, beginner-level scenes as we’ve done in this room, I haven’t truly made her mine. I haven’t asked her to be my submissive for real. I haven’t invited her to my flat or invited myself to hers. I haven’t asked to meet her parents as her girlfriend, and I haven’t ever even hinted that she should meet mine as the same. I haven’t taken her to the club.
I haven’t told her she makes me feel like my lungs have shrunk and my heart has grown into a quavering, defenseless, easily bruisable thing.
No, I’ve fucked her here at Thornchapel, as if Thornchapel is its own club, its own world, with no consequences or connection to my life in London. I’d say I used her, except I’m not entirely sure that she’s not using me right back, and sometimes I’m not entirely sure I’m the only reason we haven’t become something more. I can never forget that we used to hate each other—I can never forget that up until three years ago, I thought Delphine the worst kind of brat, the worst kind of spoiled rich girl. And after that fateful week at my flat, I still thought her a brat, but a brat I jerked off thinking about more times than I’d like to admit.
Brats need to be broken and tamed, a little voice tempts.
If you made her yours . . .
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Delphine stirs, rubbing her face into my breast and arching in a big, toe-pointing stretch like a pampered kitten in a sunbeam.
“What time is it?” she mumbles, not opening her eyes.
“Near noon,” I say, feeling a little guilty. I rarely sleep past six, even on weekends, and even though last night was Beltane and we were awake until near dawn, I still have the unpleasant suspicion that I’ve wasted time. I should have been working—I should have been catching up on emails or finishing the Severn riverfront proposal or planning a site visit to that boarding school in Wiltshire. I could have even gone down to the maze and made sure everything was ready for the hedge removal tomorrow. But I didn’t.
Work is a privilege. Work is a gift. My father has told me that almost every day of my life; it’s one of the unwritten rules of being a Quartey. We work. We will be the best.
And yet even the best is still not enough.
“Mmm,” Delphine murmurs, still rubbing her nose and jaw into me. She stops stretching and slides her leg over mine again, making more contented purring noises. She’s naked, and so I feel the brush of her intimate curls against my thigh as she snuggles close. I can feel the soft curve of her breast, and the plush give of her belly against my hip. Her mouth is so close to my nipple now that I can feel the warmth of her breath through my silk nightgown. “Let’s go back to sleep.”
“I have a better idea,” I growl, finally doing what I wanted to do earlier and rolling her back so I can climb between her legs and push her thighs as far apart as I want them. They’re soft and sweet and pinchable, and her cunt is a little heaven made just for me—a bewitching furrow that opens up to reveal a blushing hole the color of sweetness. It already glistens for me, and I’m reminded of being a child in a sweet shop, reaching for the shiniest, pinkest lolly I could find.
I fight off a shudder of delight the minute I feel her against my fingertips, tender and so very, absolutely wet.
Delphine hasn’t wanted penetration, so I keep my fingers outside, petting her and stroking her until she’s writhing below me, a flush crawling up her chest.
“I would have thought after last night, you would have had enough,” I tease, finally pressing against her swollen clit and enjoying the whine I get in return. “You’re turning into an insatiable little slut, aren’t you? My own little whore.”
God, even saying it feels so right. How much more right would it feel to have her with me always? To take her to the club and show her off? To be the woman whose task it was to keep her so flush in orgasms that she could barely walk without remembering what her Mistress was capable of?
I’ve been holding back, I know that. I’ve been keeping this at a distance, because the moment I let myself think about it—the moment I let myself recognize that this spoiled kitten is actually Delphine Elizabeth Dansey, who has millions of Instagram followers and a trust fund the size of a small nation’s GDP—the moment I acknowledge she’s somehow become my friend and I care about her and the idea of being without her someday makes me want to scratch and kick and scream—panic swells inside of me like a balloon, squeezing everything inside of me until I can’t breathe.
Girls like Delphine aren’t for people like me. They’re for people like Auden or Becket, for minor celebrities or business tycoons. They’re for lovers who are as famous or wealthy or pedigreed. Not for emotionless landscape architects.
And anyway, even if an emotionless landscape architect could be suitable for an heiress-turned-internet-star, Delphine is all wrong for me. She’s flighty and vain and so very, very coquettish and contradictory and dryly witty and secretly brilliant—and shit.
She’s dangerous.
God, so dangerous. She could break my heart. If I stopped being strong, if
I unbricked walls just for her that took years to brick up . . . If I let her into a place where no other person has ever, ever been, then she will step on my huge, quavering heart and she will leave bloody designer-shoe footprints on the floor as she walks away.
I will get hurt. She will hurt me.
But what if she doesn’t? the voice tempts again. What if you take her as a submissive, what if you trust her and then you’re happy?
That’s the thing they don’t tell you about strength, about guarding your heart and keeping yourself safe from being hurt: it’s fucking exhausting. I don’t want to be exhausted anymore.
I just don’t want to be hurt either.
What if this is a gift?
“Delph,” I say, still rubbing the juncture at the top of her thighs. “I want you to be mine.” The words come out so easily, so clearly, that I suddenly feel foolish for waiting so long to say them.
I hate feeling foolish.
Her gathering climax has her voice breathless when she answers. “Aren’t I already?”
“We’ve been playing,” I tell her, “but I want you to be mine. My submissive. I want to take you to my club. I want to do everything I want to you, wherever I want and whenever I want.”
She shudders at my last sentence, biting her lip and staring at me with huge eyes. “What would we have to do?” she asks.
“You’d stay with me when we were in London. You’d come to the club with me. We’d go on dates and anything else you wanted. We’d decide what rules we wanted to share, and we’d decide what our limits were. And then I’d fuck you constantly. Everywhere I could. Anytime I wanted.”
Her already-parted mouth parts a little bit more. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh.”
She comes suddenly, and I press a hand on her thigh and clamp it tight to the mattress so that she can’t hide my favorite bonbon-pink toy from me.
I watch her finish, and then I’m kneeling over her face, flicking her jaw impatiently until she opens her mouth and gives me her tongue to use on my clit. But it turns out I’m too impatient to let her flutter and lick me there—after a minute, I slide my hands into those Goldilocks tresses and hold her right where I need her.
“Suck,” I say, and she obeys, sucking me until the orgasm detonates in my belly, until I cry out and buck against her mouth, trying to chase every last dirty second of this, determined to feel more, more, more.
But I’m not—I’m not chasing, I’m not determined, I’m none of that because I’m everything else. I’m smiling and near-laughing and surprised at how good it feels, and I’m relaxed, and I want more in the exciting, delicious way of knowing that I will get more anytime I like.
I’m happy. I’m giddy, a little girl surrounded by bright, gleaming sweets once again.
I wish I could say all my orgasms are like this, but no, no, it’s Delphine. Goddammit, why did it have to be Delphine?
It could be good.
It could be so good.
What if this is a gift?
I move down to the mattress again, and then roll us both so that I’m cradling Delphine from behind. Her bottom is round and inviting against my hips, and I let myself fantasize about fucking her like this, with my fingers and then maybe with a cock.
I’d get a pink one to match her pretty pink cunt. I’d make her come so hard with it.
“What do you think, pet?” I whisper into her hair. “Would you be mine?”
My post-orgasm high slowly twists into real nervousness. Real fear. What if she says no? What if she laughs in my face?
What if I’ve spent the last six weeks thinking the only barrier between me and Delphine was my own fearful reluctance—when really it’s that she doesn’t want me? Doesn’t want to be mine?
What if she hurts me right now, right here in this bed, before I even have the chance to make the hurting worth it?
It’s on the tip of my tongue to take it all back, to tell her I didn’t mean it, I was joking or teasing or lying—even though I rarely joke or tease or lie. In fact, I’ve already pulled in a breath and loosened my arms around her, and I’m just about to say, forget it, Delph, I was only having a laugh, when Delphine says, “Yes.”
Yes.
“Yes?” I am so surprised I can’t think of any other words. “Really? You want . . . to?”
Delphine squeezes my hand and brings it to her mouth, giving it a kiss. “I’ve only been waiting for you to ask.”
She doesn’t sound recriminating at all; her voice is still the cheerful, elegant drawl of a girl who grew up with horses and a second family home in the Cotswolds. But that’s almost worse, because I sometimes worry that as spoiled and privileged as Delphine is—and even with as patiently and warmly as Auden loved her—she still doesn’t seem to expect enough from the people around her. I’ve been acting like a boy at uni, showing up for a shag and then ducking away before she can ask for anything else, and she would have been well within her rights to call me out on it. She would’ve had every right to ask me why I’d fuck her here but not in London—and then every right to be utterly unimpressed when I told her that I was terrified of being hurt.
It’s an unimpressive reason. I’m not even impressed by it.
Delphine moves so that she’s on her back and I prop up on an elbow to look down at her as she traces the line of my collarbone. I’ve swatted other lovers on the arse for less, but somehow when she does it, the only thing I want to do is smile. I let her keep doing it, which is probably worrisome. The risk of being an indulgent Domme with her is very great, because who could scold a sweet little sub for doing this? For touching me so reverently but also with such confident affection, as if she has every right to do so?
But as soon as I’m warm all over from this small affection of Delphine’s, I’m resisting again. I want to hide my face or roll out of bed or act like the things she does don’t have the power to excite or terrify me.
Should I tell her? Should I crawl over her and bury my face in her neck and confess? Explain that I don’t trust my own feelings and I never have, and yet at the same time, I’ve become such an apostle of fear that even something as simple as having a girlfriend feels impossibly brave? Worse than brave? Stupid? Because it is stupid, from a logical standpoint. I would be better off alone, better off not letting Delphine inside my heart where she could rake her manicured nails along the tender insides of its chambers. I would be safer without her, safer without the complication of having a sub-girlfriend-kitten who was also objectively beautiful and glamorous and dripping with old and new money both. Safer without maybe . . . accidentally . . . possibly . . . catching feelings for a girl I’ve spent so many years hating.
But as Delphine smiles up at me—such a shy, happy, open smile—I know there’s no way I can sour the moment with all of that. It would be dumping my own shitty problems onto her lap, and it wouldn’t be fair to her. It wouldn’t be fair to this perfect moment, when I asked her to be mine and she said yes.
The reward for being strong isn’t just for me. It’s for everyone else around me too.
“Let’s get you something to eat,” I say instead, kissing her mouth and then rolling off the bed. My feelings I tuck back away where they belong, and instead I allow myself the small and safe satisfaction of knowing I’ll get to take Delphine home with me this week, I’ll get to show her off to the world. I’ll get to fall asleep with her hair all over me and her fingers fisted in my nightgown—and if the feelings come back, well…then at least they’ll come back when I can soothe myself with her body.
After I take down my hair and dress, I go to the guest room where she’s been staying and bring her back some clothes. Delight wavers through me as I pluck out knickers and a bra and shorts so tight I know I’ll be able to easily trace the V of her cunt while she’s wearing them. I get to dress her now, if I want. I get to feed her and wash her and then make her sit at my feet while I work.
Just like the first night we fucked, it feels a little bit like playing house, but I don’t care a
nymore. I want it. Even if it’s a trick, I still want it.
When I return, Delphine takes the clothes with a pout, because she still wants to cuddle in bed. I do too, I’m shocked to find, but after the night we had of drinking way too much and fucking like insatiable teenagers, I know she needs to eat something nourishing and drink plenty of water.
“Abby’s not in today, so I’ll make you something,” I tell her. I don’t cook often, but I very rarely am bad at something once I decide to learn how to do it, and so I’m a dab hand in the kitchen. Cooking is chemistry after all, and I’m very, very good at chemistry.
Delphine just yawns a kitten-like yawn and steps into the knickers. I valiantly resist the urge to go over and cup her simply for the pleasure of cupping something that is now officially mine.
“I wonder if Saint wants something to eat too,” I say, trying to distract myself from Delphine’s body long enough to focus on the rest of the day.
“I think he left.” She yawns again. “I heard his car going off outside the window this morning, you know that rattle rattle noise it makes when you first get it going? A couple hours ago.”
St. Sebastian is definitely an outside cat. He comes and goes according to his own whims, on his own timetable, a solitary, wary boy who’s somehow all the more lovely and interesting for how solitary and wary he is. I don’t doubt that he left without telling Delphine and me. “Maybe he followed Poe and Auden to Exeter?”
“They went to Exeter?” Delphine asks, baffled. “Why?”
“To get levonorgestrel for Poe.”
Delphine just blinks at me.
“The morning-after pill,” I clarify.
“Oh,” Delphine says. Then, “Oh.”
I look at her, wondering what she’s thinking. What she’s feeling. It’s only been three months since she ended her engagement with Auden, and the thing that’s sprung up between him, Poe, and St. Sebastian in the last few months is . . . palpably intense. Even I feel a little jealous and I don’t have romantic feelings for any of them—nor have I ever. But if one of them was my ex-fiancé, even if I was the one who broke it off, I don’t know if I would be quite as calm as Delphine is being right now. I make a mental note to keep an eye on it, and then fight off the urge to smile because Delphine Dansey is mine to keep an eye on. And no matter how much it seems like a trick, no matter how scared or chary I am of it, I can’t lie to myself. I want to keep her, and now that I get to keep her, I want to keep her for a very, very long time.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 4