Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  Auden meets my eyes and I nod at him, answering his unspoken questions. It’s a sign of our friendship that he doesn’t ask the questions aloud—or maybe it’s just a testament to whatever it is that has him looking so pathetic.

  He finally answers, his voice filling the space as Delphine stiffens in front of me. “It’s only spitting,” he says. “Nothing bad. May I come in?”

  “Certainly,” I say graciously, untangling my fingers from Delphine’s hair to smooth a hand along her back. “Have a seat. I’m almost through here.”

  Auden shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it over a low bench by the windows before taking a seat next to me. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t want to sit where he can see Delphine’s heart-shaped bottom—that’s where I’d prefer to sit, if I wasn’t exactly where I was—but when he sits down and tucks a bit of stray blond hair behind Delphine’s ear, I think I know why.

  She flicks those honey-brown eyes over to him and he gives her an almost-smile.

  “Hi, Pickles,” he says softly. And I feel her lips curve up against me as her body relaxes.

  “Hi, Auden,” she replies. I tsk at her, and she corrects, “Sir.”

  “May I watch?” he asks her, voice still soft. “I’d like to.”

  She nods and closes her eyes, leaning her cheek against my thigh for a moment before she starts licking me again.

  Yes, I know why Auden chose this spot. He sat here so he could set her at ease, and it worked. He’s a good Dominant. He has the things that can’t be taught, the instincts, the right amount of cruelty and the right amount of compassion, and he knows how to oscillate between the two. Knots can be explained, flogging can be learned, all of that can be tutored into a willing student. But balancing arrogance with care? Being fully capable of both? That’s a rare thing.

  “She’s good at this,” Auden remarks, leaning forward to brush more hair off her face.

  “She is,” I agree as I tilt my hips up. She follows my lead and kisses me lower once again, her delicate, rich girl tongue stroking into my center. Delph and I have only been properly fucking for the last six weeks, and she’s still more eagerness than skill—but the eagerness is incredible, it’s fervent and wholehearted, and when she’s trying to please me, no matter what it is—kissing, tonguing, crawling, enduring—she does it with her entire self. Her body and her heart and her mind—every part of her is present and artless. Totally honest.

  She’s like clear water, like a tropical ocean, where one thinks the brightly colored bottom is only a few inches beneath the surface, but truly it’s so far down that one could drown trying to touch it. All of her is here, all of her is visible, and yet she’s the opposite of accessible, the opposite of easy.

  I think I could spend years diving down to touch the reality of her.

  “Give me your fingers, pet,” I whisper to her, and she obeys, glancing at Auden from underneath her lashes. It is a little bit like Thornchapel right now, the three of us here with a cool summer rain pattering at the glass, and I look over at my oldest friend, to where he’s shifting restlessly next to me. An erection swells against the front of his gray tweed trousers, and he impatiently presses the heel of his palm against it, as if it’s being impolite.

  I arch against Delphine’s fingers and against her clever tongue. “Getting close,” I say. My voice is hitching, and I can feel an orgasm coiled around her fingers inside me, gathering underneath her wet little kiss. Auden’s eyes on us are sultry and interested, and the hand on his erection has stopped trying to make it go away. He’s rubbing himself through his trousers now, slow strokes, and I reach over and pluck at the button holding his trousers closed. His eyelids flutter as my fingers brush over something thick and rigid.

  “Make yourself at home, Sir Guest,” I say.

  “I just—before I came here, Poe and I—” He shakes his head, even as his hips lift to chase my touch. “I shouldn’t need to again.”

  We are all of us consumed by whatever we woke up in the thorn chapel—we are all of us so full of appetite that we are snarling with it. Shouldn’t seems so far away, like a rule meant for children in the schoolyard, for beginners and initiates, for people who haven’t kissed and bled in the woods.

  “Who cares if you shouldn’t need to? It’s only us here.”

  “You’re a bad influence,” he says, but he pops his button open and slides a hand inside. Immediately his head falls backward against the sofa. “Fuck.”

  I almost don’t know where to look as I crest over the edge—whether to look at Auden’s hand moving inside his trousers or the gorgeous submissive between my legs, or even at the reflection of the three of us in the window, all splayed legs and arching throats.

  But Delphine looks up at me just as the climax hits, and it’s her eyes I see as I come. It’s her honest gaze shimmering like clear water all the way to the honey-sweet bottom. It’s her faith and trust and—and fuck, love—fuck—

  My hips twist and push as the first wave shudders through my cunt and up my belly, and Delphine responds in kind, more fingers, sucking harder, eyes warm and eager as she makes me come and come and come. Next to me, Auden’s freed his cock, which is pulsing in his grip and releasing onto his jumper with long jets of seed. Together, we are lost, lost, arching and pushing through the pleasure, and it feels like I’ve been coming forever, like there’s only ever been these waves, each one more deliciously harsh than the last, like there’s only ever going to be more; I’m set adrift on a sea of seizing, rippling sensation and I never have to leave, I never have to work or compete or shield myself ever again.

  Here is a small swath of vivid, vital heaven.

  Delphine’s eyes—those pretty, too-revealing eyes—keep me anchored to her as the climax gradually abates and I’m Rebecca in real life once again. Although I’m a much happier Rebecca now, after an orgasm from a beautiful submissive. My beautiful submissive.

  We’ll be able to do this every night—this and so much more.

  She’s mine now.

  “Well done,” I whisper to her, brushing her hair away from her face. At my touch, she sighs and leans her head against my thigh, closing her eyes. “Such a good girl. Such a good girl.”

  She practically purrs.

  Next to me, Auden is a rumpled ode to indecency, his sex exposed and pushing between the placket of his trousers. His charcoal jumper is spattered with his pleasure, and his long legs are still stretched out in front of him. He’s an immodest sprawl of muscled limbs and silk and wool—and the cock jutting up from it all only adds to the impression that he’s some kind of insatiable, deviant aristocrat. But he looks very forlorn for a boy who just came all over himself, and I remember how unhappy he looked when he came upstairs, as wet and sad as a puppy caught in the rain.

  “Would you like to change?” I ask Delphine. She’s still in her jacket and heels, and as much as I love seeing her with her skirt hiked up and her blouse gaping down to expose the swells of her tits, she’ll be more comfortable in cozy clothes.

  And she’ll be less tempting. Because if she’s on all fours in those shoes and that skirt for another minute . . .

  Delphine is already nodding against my thigh, and she gives it a quick kiss—and my cunt, which is a liberty she gets her hair pulled for—and then rises up to her knees and then to her feet. Auden and I are treated to the view of her soft thighs and her lavender silk covered cunt before she manages to tug her skirt back down. Auden’s cock gives a lazy stir at the sight of it, and her first instinct is to look over to me, as if to make sure it’s okay that he’s aroused by her.

  I’m not jealous of the history between the two of them—and I’m more than comfortable sharing her with Auden for sex—but I can’t lie to myself. That little flick of her eyes to me, that checking to make sure her Mistress approves . . . it’s deeply pleasing. She’s mine.

  She said she loves you.

  Panic spikes through my ribs with the memory of it. Panic and shame and—no. I refuse to acknowledge a
ny other feelings. They are not invited. They are not welcome. And they don’t mean anything anyway—they’re just the chemical signatures of a limbic system that doesn’t know any better.

  “Dress quickly and come back,” I tell her, my voice a little more steely than I’d like. I try to soften it. “Lean down a second, pet.”

  She obeys, her hair swinging down like a veil and hiding her face from everything in the world but me. I use a thumb to wipe at a small smear of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. She’s all smudgy and disheveled from having her mouth thoroughly fucked, but of course, since she’s Delphine, it looks enchanting. She could post a picture of herself exactly like this, and people would be heart-emojiing and wanking off to it in equal numbers.

  She catches my thumb in her mouth and gives it a hard suck.

  “Careful,” I tell her, even as my clit throbs in response. There’s something about her mouth, about the way her lips are always slightly parted that gets me so hot anyway. And with those full lips wrapped around my thumb, smeared with the same lipstick that’s still on my cunt—

  I lean forward and give her a swat on the arse as I pull my thumb free. “Go change before you get yourself into trouble,” I command, knowing full well that trouble is exactly what she wants.

  And me too, if I’m honest. I would very much like for her to be in trouble.

  But we have a guest—literally a Guest, looking more woeful than anyone tucking a satisfied cock away has a right to—and we also have the rest of the night. The week. The year.

  Maybe longer.

  She said she loves you.

  Delphine gets her bag and scampers off as Auden tugs his jumper off and drops it onto the floor. He’s wearing a white and gray tattersall shirt underneath, and he rolls up the sleeves to the elbow, exposing finely muscled forearms. He has the look of someone concentrating on a very small, very unimportant task so that he doesn’t have to think about anything else.

  And as I rearrange my knickers and romper and force myself not to watch the reflected glint of Delphine’s hair as she gathers her things and disappears into the bathroom, I think I know how he feels.

  She said she loves you.

  And that isn’t even the worst part. That isn’t even the dangerous part.

  You know what you felt when she said it.

  I clear my throat, even though there’s no reason to. Auden keeps fussing with his sleeves, his hair tumbling onto his forehead as he refuses to meet my gaze. But the thinness to his mouth and the shadows under his eyes are obvious no matter how much he makes his hair fall over his face.

  “Guest, you look like shit,” I tell him. “And you never drop by unless you’re hungry or bored. And I’ve seen your desk—you’ve got too much work needing doing to be bored.”

  “Maybe I’m hungry then,” he mumbles, still plucking at the tattersall stretched around the firm lines of his forearm.

  “Auden.”

  He sighs, scowls down at his sleeve, and then throws his arm to the side, as if the sight of his sleeve offends him. “I may have done something wrong.”

  It’s my experience that the less one says, the more one’s interlocutor ends up sharing, so I say nothing. And sure enough, Auden gets to his feet and starts pacing, speaking in short, agitated bursts as he walks.

  “I learned something. More than a month ago. About someone else. And I didn’t tell him at first, because I—I—” He stabs a hand through his hair and then wheels around to face me. “Do you have any gin in here or what?”

  Wordlessly, I point to a credenza that separates the living space from the home office space. Auden walks over and disappears from view, the clanking of bottles and glasses the only indicator of his continued presence. Finally, he emerges with everything he wants and he strides over to the kitchen, where he starts hunting for limes.

  I fold my arms and watch him puttering around, muttering to himself and savaging innocent limes, until finally he walks back over to me, a dark look on his face and a drink in each hand.

  I accept the drink, watching him over the rim of my glass as he starts pacing again.

  “So the thing is,” he starts, and then stops. “Well, okay. The way I see it—”

  He stops again. I tip it to my lips and then wince, because it’s practically all gin.

  Although it is a really decent gin.

  I take another sip.

  Auden takes a drink too, long, gulping swallows until the entire thing is gone and he’s holding an empty glass in front of my rain-streaked window. After a long moment, he says, without any warning at all, “St. Sebastian is my brother.”

  If I still had any gin in my mouth, I would be spraying it all over the front of my Stella McCartney romper. “What?”

  He looks over his shoulder. “Did I finally find something that can flap the unflappable Rebecca Quartey?”

  “I’m not flapping!” I protest, and then realize my free hand is doing exactly that: flapping at him. I tuck it under my thigh. “I’m just . . . processing. That’s all. He’s your brother?”

  Auden nods, looks down at this empty glass, and then goes back to the kitchen for more gin. “Half-brother.”

  “I don’t know if that’s any better.”

  Auden doesn’t bother with ice or tonic water this time and comes back in with a glass of room-temperature gin and a mangled lime wedge clouding up the center. “How can it not be better? We didn’t grow up together, we didn’t share a mother or a life or anything—”

  “You’re still related.”

  “But what does that even mean? We’re not breeding stock, Bex.”

  “It means something, Auden, because if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be here drinking all my Bombay Sapphire and moping at the rain. What did Saint say when you told him?”

  Auden frowns down at his glass. “Well, I didn’t tell him so much as he sort of . . . found out. On his own.”

  The hand comes out from underneath my thigh to flap at him—sternly this time. “Are you telling me that I didn’t tell him at first actually meant I didn’t tell him at all? You knew he was your brother and you didn’t think he needed to know? Auden Isaac Guest!”

  Auden takes a drink, and then says, in a voice that’s trying not to be defensive and failing, “I was trying to determine the best approach. I didn’t want him to react . . . badly.”

  “But he still found out, and I’m supposing, based on your expression, he reacted badly anyway.”

  Auden’s shoulders slump. “Yes.”

  “You shouldn’t have lied to him—”

  “It wasn’t lying!”

  “—about his own bloody DNA, no matter what it meant for the two of you. And you definitely should have told him before Beltane and all that antler nonsense.”

  If it’s possible, his shoulders slump even more. “But then he wouldn’t have been mine.”

  I set my glass on the table and stand up, walking over to where he stands in front of the window. The flat is all steel angles and wood planes—brick and glass everywhere else—and the space is filled with the ceaseless, echoing drum of the rain and the practically ceaseless sluice of Delphine’s shower.

  And still, over all that, I hear the broken sound my friend makes as he exhales.

  “Have you talked to him?” I ask gently. “Since he found out?”

  “Yesterday. He—he’s angry.”

  “You can fix angry.”

  He takes in a long breath, staring at the rain. “Maybe. But I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me. And I don’t think—well, it’s just that he doesn’t see it the way I do.”

  “And how do you see it?”

  Auden closes his eyes. “That it doesn’t matter.”

  I take his drink from him and have a sip out of habit, forgetting that it’s all warm, limey gin. “Ugh,” I say, and then I set the glass far away from him, coming back and patting him on the shoulder.

  “You need to tell him you’re sorry.”

  He sighs. “Yes.”

 
; “And you need to let him go.”

  “What?” Auden turns a betrayed look on me. “No! Absolutely not!”

  “Auden, the two of you are related by blood. You share a father. There’s no happy ending here, and honestly, maybe there never should have been one to begin with. You have too much history between the two of you, and too much pain, and now there’s this on top of it all? You may not think it matters, but you certainly can’t make it not matter to him. It should matter.”

  “But why?” he asks, pained. “Why? When we love each other? You didn’t see him by the river this weekend, Bex, you didn’t see the way he looked up at me after I caught him. Like he wanted to be in those bluebells forever. Like he wanted to stitch his soul to mine, and I can’t—”

  He breaks off, a ragged breath shuddering through his body, and I pat him again on the shoulder. We stand there for a moment, and I keep my eyes fixed on the rain as I feel his shoulder hitch and stutter beneath my palm, like he’s swallowing down noises he can’t bear to let out. I know I should hug him, but I’m not a hugger—and anyway, I sense he doesn’t want it. The only embraces he wants right now are from St. Sebastian. Or Proserpina.

  Speaking of . . . “What did Poe say? You didn’t hide this from her too?”

  “No. I told her. Today actually, before I left. I wanted so badly to bring her here with me to London, I need her so much, and I know she would’ve come if I asked, and yet—”

  “You knew St. Sebastian needed her more,” I finish for him.

  Auden nods miserably.

  He’s right. And it’s the same thing I would have done if I had two subs and found myself in a similar bind. “How does Poe feel about the . . . you know . . . brother thing?”

  “She wasn’t exactly chuffed that I hadn’t told St. Sebastian about it—she excoriated me quite thoroughly, in fact. And now she has to overlook that she’s in love with two of Ralph Guest’s sons, when it was already hard enough being in love with only one. But the actual consanguinity doesn’t seem to bother her.” Auden’s lips tilt up in a weak smile. “She said she thinks it’s rather titillating.”