Feast of Sparks

by Sierra Simone

  “Oh God,” I whisper. I think I’m horrified. It’s horror that’s making my hips push up into the empty air and sends one of my hands to my chest to touch where Auden was touching, right? Definitely horror.

  “I was hoping to find your eyeliner,” he confesses as he crosses the room.

  I’m confused for a moment. “My eyeliner?”

  He gives me a crooked grin that’s both horny and fond. “Do you remember? You always used to wear it. It was so fucking sexy.”

  “I can get some more,” I whisper, and he makes a purring noise that curls my toes.

  Yeah, I’ll definitely be getting more if it gets me that kind of response.

  Auden walks to a shelf on one of my widest bookshelves and pulls free a framed picture. It’s a picture of me at eighteen, at my high school graduation in Dallas. I picked it because at the time it seems like a normal picture to have on one’s shelf and also boring enough not to invite further scrutiny.

  “This is a good hiding place,” Auden says conversationally. “But I couldn’t resist the chance to study the picture closer, and then that’s when I found them.” He reaches behind the books—yes, even at home, all my books are properly edged on the shelves, that’s how they’re supposed to be (and the fact that they make a convenient hiding spot is just a secondary bonus)—and pulls free one of my toys.

  The toy itself is contained in a plastic cylinder, as if that’s supposed to make it discreet, but Auden uncaps the toy with an expression of sinister delight to expose the soft, fake cunt inside.

  I cover my face with my hands; I’m ashamed, I’m so ashamed, but also so aroused that it feels like my heartbeat is coming from my erection and not my chest. Auden’s straddling me again in one graceful move, holding the toy up so that I can’t help but see it. Can’t help but see when he wedges his big fingers inside and the toy stretches around him and lets him in.

  “Fuck, that’s soft,” he says to himself.

  “Are you going to make me fuck it?” I ask in dread and desire. “Are you going to make me fuck it in front of you?”

  “Mmm,” Auden says. He sounds like someone looking at the menu of their favorite restaurant, in rapture merely seeing all the options laid out. “You know, I think I do want to see that sometime. See where you’ve been sticking that desperate cock when your hand isn’t enough.” Auden looks at the toy and then looks at me. “This is a cunt, Saint. You fuck it thinking of our little bride?”

  I’m squirming underneath him now, too well pinned by his muscular thighs to move much, but able to catch the barest amount of friction against his—Jesus Christ, those are his bollocks. I’m rubbing myself against the seam of his Tom Ford trousers and getting to stroke myself against his bollocks. I think I understand now why Auden’s orgasmed so many times without actually being stroked or having sex—sometimes it feels too good and too dirty like this to stop.

  Auden narrows his eyes at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Yes,” I manage. “Yes, I pretend it’s Poe.”

  There’s a glint in Auden’s eyes when he says, “But this isn’t the only toy that you have, Saint. You have some other interesting things back behind those books. Plugs. Dildos. Do you fuck yourself with those too?”

  “Fuck you,” I squeeze out, trying to rock my hips harder against him.

  “How astute of you.” Auden grins. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

  And then before I can truly process what’s happening—that I’m not going to be the one with his cock inside the toy—Auden’s already reached over to my bedside table and pulled my bottle of lube out of the drawer. He really did poke and prod everywhere in here. I hate that.

  I love it too.

  “Why did you need to see my room?” I ask in a hushed voice as he drizzles lube over the soft folds of the toy pussy. “Why did you need to see this?”

  Auden looks up at me, and for a moment, the dirty hunger in his face recedes. It’s replaced by an expression that makes my throat hurt again.

  “Because I need to see everything about you, St. Sebastian Martinez.”

  “But why?” My voice is barely audible at this point, but I know he hears me, because he leans down and says against my mouth, “When you’re brave enough to guess, that’s when I’ll fuck you. And not a moment sooner.”

  He pulls back enough for me to meet his eyes, and there’s something imploring in his stare, as if he wants me to be brave now, to guess now, and then he’ll reward me with everything.

  But I can’t do it.

  I can’t make the words come out. Because if I guess—if I say the words currently burning in my throat and he says no, if he says I’m wrong—then I’ll die. I just poof, smoke and ashes on my bed, like a vampire in the sun.

  Auden seems to know the thoughts rolling through my mind, and his hazel eyes dim the slightest bit when he realizes I’m not going to give him what he wants.

  His lips thin. “Very well,” he says. “Now, let’s see what this little thing feels like.” He drops his hand to his pants, unfastening himself with hypnotic deftness. Within seconds, he has his trousers gaping wide open and his naked shaft ready to fuck.

  “Auden,” I say—well, not say. Whine. “You’re not really just going to leave me here, are you? I can’t—that’s not fair!”

  His brow furrows as he looks down at me. Even with his heavy erection bobbing between us, he looks princely—or hell, maybe it’s partially because of the erection, like he’s some kind of sacred king in truth, with all his power and potency displayed.

  “You said ‘yes, Sir’ to me,” he says. “You’re mine now. Your pleasure is mine. Your cock is mine, your seed is mine, every part of your body, including that pouty mouth and that piercing, is mine. If I say that you haven’t earned an orgasm yet, then you haven’t. If I say that you have to lay between my thighs and feel me fuck something that isn’t you, then you have to. If you don’t agree, then you know what words to say to me, but until then you’re just as much mine as Poe is, and I’m going to keep you. Understood?”

  There can be no question now of how he wants me to answer. “Yes, Sir.”

  He nods once, firmly, like I’m a pupil who’s finally accepted his correction. And without taking his eyes off mine, he presses the head of his cock to the toy pussy and begins to push inside. His thighs go taut on either side of my hips, his jaw works ever so slightly to the side as he pushes in past the tip and feels that first, welcoming squeeze.

  “Jesus,” he mumbles. “Tight.”

  “I know,” I say. Adrenaline is thrumming through me; along with my shame and my desperation to come, there’s the heady excitement that I’m witnessing my very own personal porno. The porno I would have paid any price for, which is one starring Auden Guest. With Auden Guest fucking himself while wearing a shirt with hand-stitched buttonholes, meeting my eyes as his own eyes go hooded with pleasure.

  He gives the toy another inch, and then another and another, and soon he’s stroking all the way in, pressing in so deep that the flared lips of the fake pussy hug his root and I can see the jerky seize and release of his stomach muscles as he struggles to hold it together. “Christ, that’s good,” he says. “Fuck.”

  With his sleeves rolled up, I can see the working of his forearm muscles as he slides the toy up and down his length, as he pulls out to the tip and then shoves it back down. And with his trousers parted wide, I can see the flexing of those lean hips and the bunching of his Adonis muscles right above his cock. I can feel the labor of his powerful thighs against my hips, and I can hear the scrabble and hiss of a bespoke leather brogue against my duvet as he strains against the pleasure he’s giving himself.

  “I bet you have to fuck it loads and loads, don’t you?” he says. “I bet you have to fuck it every night two or three times just to be able to fall asleep. My new submissive has such a needy cock, doesn’t he? He has to come so much or else he starts hurting.”

  I should be too ashamed to answer, bu
t it’s too hot, Auden is too hot, and I’m writhing underneath him trying to catch the ghost of his thrusts against my own cock. “Yes, God. Yes to all of it.”

  “I knew it,” he says, smug triumph in his voice as he masturbates himself. But that smugness and that triumph is addictive to me because it’s not only smugness and triumph, but possession.

  He sounds delighted with me, his new plaything, he sounds pleased that I’m insatiable, that I’m needy, and it’s confirmed by what he says next. “I’m going to have my work cut out for me, aren’t I? Keeping both you and our lusty little Poe satisfied?”

  “Yes,” I moan, bucking up underneath him. “Please, can I touch myself? Just while I watch you? Please?”

  “No,” he says, public school drawl in full effect. “No, I don’t think so. I think you should stay as you are while I come.”

  Rebecca might be showing Auden how to use the equipment, but that raw, Dominant nature is already there. It’s been there since we were sixteen—hell, maybe even younger, though it wasn’t sexual then.

  “Auden—”

  “Try again.”

  “Sir—please. I need to come—”

  “Then come,” Auden says, arching an eyebrow down at me while he works himself. “But you’ll do it like this. Under me, in your jeans. Without touching yourself.”

  I want to snarl and hiss and placate and beg, but there’s no time for it. Already Auden is speeding up, his arm flexing and bunching and his hips punching forward like he’s fucking in truth, like he’s ramming his thick cock into me or Poe instead of a toy. Already his thrusts are rubbing against me harder than ever, and then without warning, he lowers himself just enough that the roll and grind of his arse are flush against my suffering erection.

  I come first, and I can’t even care that it’s from the mean friction of his trousered body against my jeans, that I’ve been humiliated somewhat in this exchange, bossed around and belittled and teased. That’s how it should be, that’s how I want it—yes, he was right earlier. If he says so then I have to, whatever it is. God help me if it’s ever any other way. And so I come under him—underneath him like I want to be forever—and I come helpless and writhing and moaning while he watches with a gleam of sadistic pleasure in his eyes. And then he follows me, freezing above me, every muscle taut and straining, and he climaxes with a grunt that I feel in the marrow of my bones.

  It’s the satisfied grunt of a vigorous man, and what could be more delicious? What could be more perfect? I’m certain nothing could be, that I’ve reached the pinnacle of sex as humans and angels know it, but then Auden slides his hard flesh free of the toy cunt, tosses the toy unceremoniously on the carpet, and then lays fully on top of me.

  His weight—heavy, firm—presses me into the mattress, and his wet cock, still mostly hard, is against my bare belly, and my own cock is still warm and wet and hard from my climax. His lips are against my neck, kissing me softly while he pets my hair and catches his breath against my chest.

  This. This couldn’t be more perfect. If Poe were here, then of course, but if it has to be the two of us, this is how I want it. My shame, Auden’s pleasure, both of us covered in the messes of our orgasms and him petting me.

  And if you would ask me right now whether it was all worth it—the graveyard, the money, the years of bitter hatred and low, impure need—I’d say yes, yes, of course.

  We’d paid hell, and now we had love.

  Chapter 25

  Eight Years Ago

  Mijo.

  Mijo.

  St. Sebastian opened his eyes, smelling and hearing Texas, and for a moment he expected to hear his abuela laughing at something on TV and the sound of splashing outside from the pool.

  But no.

  It was his mother, smelling like home, cradling him to her chest outside of a graveyard. It was almost dark, which in the summer meant it was late, late into the evening, and St. Sebastian struggled to sit up—pain lancing through his head and chest as he did.

  “Slowly,” his mother said in Spanish. He could hear the tears in her voice, but her hold on him was firm and sure. It always had been, always, even in this hostile place.

  “I need to make sure Auden is okay,” he whispered, closing his eyes again. It hurt too much to keep them open; even the faint light of dusk was blinding. “They’re hurting him. He—”

  St. Sebastian couldn’t even say the words.

  He let them.

  He let them because of me.

  “No one’s here,” his mother said. “When you didn’t answer your phone, I went everywhere looking for you—even Thornchapel—but no one was there but the cook and she said she hadn’t seen you or Auden all day. I only just happened to look up from the road and see—”

  Her voice broke here, and St. Sebastian didn’t need to be a parent to imagine what she must have felt seeing him sprawled so quiet and still in the grass. He didn’t have to look at her face to know it was filled with a fear and a heartbreak that would tear him in two just to look at.

  “Who did this?” she whispered, voice tearful and fierce. “¿Quien le hizo esto a mi hijo?”

  St. Sebastian rolled his face into her shoulder, smelling home and safety, smelling Texas and family and laughter all the way across the ocean. For a tired moment, he thought about saying nothing. Not to protect them, but to protect himself from the inevitable consequences of exposing them. Probably the police would do nothing—God knew Billy and Lee got away with everything else they did—and all St. Sebastian would get for his trouble would be another beating.

  But it wasn’t only him that got hurt, and that gave him an angry sort of courage. They’d done this to Auden, his Auden, Auden who bit his lip until it bled, who wanted to bend him over a bed and strap his arse with a belt—and yet put himself in the path of kicks and blows for St. Sebastian’s sake.

  It was more than he could bear.

  He told his mother.

  And then later, at the hospital, he told the doctor and then the policewoman who came to take his report. He begged them all to find out what happened to Auden—if he was alive, if he was nearby, if he’d been injured. Before they’d left the graveyard, St. Sebastian had made his mother help him back inside the stone walls to check—pointlessly, he knew—for signs of Auden. There was nothing. Nothing but disturbed grass, the splintered corpse of his phone, and a sickening smear of blood near the wall.

  He doubted Billy and the others would have finished with Auden and then helped him back to Thornchapel, like mates helping a friend who’s had too much to drink back to bed. And it seemed impossible to St. Sebastian that Auden could have left under his own steam—would have left without St. Sebastian or without at least trying to help St. Sebastian.

  The only plausible explanation seemed to be that they’d killed Auden and tried to hide the body, and it took his mother, two policeman, and later on, a dose of something in his IV that made him too woozy to think properly for him to stop crying, to stop pleading and pleading with them to just make sure Auden’s okay.

  “I’ll make sure,” his mother told him repeatedly, and he didn’t believe her, even after the flush of whatever benzo they’d given him.

  But she did make sure. At some point the next morning—it was bright through the windows, bright enough to slice into St. Sebastian’s brain like a knife made of photons—his mother held his hand and told him Auden was alive and someplace safe.

  “So he’s not hurt?” St. Sebastian asked, with desperate hope. “He’s okay?”

  She gave his hand a squeeze that was so gentle and so very, very adult that St. Sebastian already knew what she was going to say next.

  “He’s not okay just yet,” she said carefully. “He was hurt pretty badly. A broken arm, a cracked rib, and a broken nose. Lots of contusions and cuts and bruises. No concussion thankfully.”

  St. Sebastian closed his eyes. He did have a concussion—a mild one, along with a broken rib—but he would have taken so much more pain and breaking if it would h
ave meant Auden didn’t have to suffer.

  Why didn’t Auden just run like I told him to?

  Why didn’t I stop running sooner?

  “Do you know why I named you St. Sebastian?” Jennifer asked after a minute. She was still holding his hand, but her other hand was plucking at his blanket and hospital gown, trying to make everything pleated and neat.

  “You told me it was because you got to visit his tomb, with the big Giorgetti sculpture on top.”

  “That was part of the story. But not the beginning.” St. Sebastian felt the thin hospital bed mattress dip as she leaned forward on an elbow so she could straighten the pillow under his head. He was used to this from her—fussing over his hair or his clothes, making sure he was eating enough even when their kitchen sometimes held hardly anything to eat. It made him feel small, but in a way that felt good and safe, in a way that made him feel cared for and loved. So he didn’t mind the little pluckings and smoothings and straightenings as she talked.

  “My cousin still lives in Mexico City, and she is one of many who revere and honor Santa Muerte. You know Santa Muerte?”

  There was a lot of Santa Muerte on DeviantArt, but St. Sebastian didn’t tell his mother that. “She’s the patron saint of death.”

  A hum, both agreement and disagreement. “She is more like…death itself. But she welcomes everyone to her table—the people the Church doesn’t always welcome with open arms, like the lonely and the poor, and the women who love women, and the men who love men, and those who have to fight to live as the men and women they truly are, no matter how the world sees them. And she welcomes those who love everyone, St. Sebastian. Like you.” Her voice was soft during this last part and she squeezed his hand again.

  His nose stung and his eyelids burned and he had to swallow, his throat was so tight. How easy it was to forget sometimes that he always had his mother, that she loved him fiercely and with everything she was, that she supported him—that two years ago when he stammered out that he thought that he maybe—possibly, sometimes—liked boys as much as girls, she did nothing but sweep him into a tight hug and promise him he was always safe with her, that she was the proudest mamá in the whole world, and whomever he loved, she would love them too, they would be her children too.