Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  I don’t know if we’re in a scene or not, and so I stay standing where I am. But I do let my eyes rove around the box of glass and brick, thinking back. Skylights puncture the ceiling at intervals, letting in views of the lavender haze above, and I have a faint memory of watching rain fall like silver pearls on those skylights. Pinging like beads from a broken necklace and then sliding off to the side, jittery as mercury.

  “Yes,” I answer. “I remember.”

  “The flat was brand new,” Rebecca murmurs. “I’d only just moved in.”

  I almost wish she didn’t remember that week, that undeniable proof that I am not a living sunbeam made of long eyelashes and inspirational captions. And I wish I remembered more of it, just so I could know how embarrassed to feel right now.

  “You helped me,” I say, because that’s what I remember for sure. “Even though you hated me.”

  She looks over her shoulder, but not at me. Her stare is pinned to the floor, her lower lip caught in her teeth for a brief instant. “I wonder,” she says softly, as if to herself, “I wonder if maybe . . . I didn’t hate you like I thought I did.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  She doesn’t answer, and I think it’s because she has no more answer to that than I do. Instead, she raises her gaze to mine, and she’s beautiful, she’s so beautiful, she’s all liquid eyes and delicate jawline. And my heart is crashing against my ribs because I want her, I am parched for anything from her, any drop of affection and attention, and suddenly it’s no longer a choice. I can feel her across the room, I can feel every inch and foot between us, and the distance is pulling me apart like a cheap sweater, row by row by row, until I’m just a pile of limp, grotty yarn, and the only way to make it stop is to kneel.

  The moment my knees touch the floor, everything stills. The fears, the gnawing insecurities with their vicious little teeth. Because nothing has ever made more sense than kneeling in front of Rebecca.

  For a moment, there is nothing. Nothing but the sounds of the street below—the clang and whirr of the mechanic’s shop, the obnoxious din of an art gallery party full of guests who are clearly very proud of themselves for being at an art gallery next to a mechanic’s. I stare at the floor, an old knotty wood that’s been refinished in such a way that one can still see the ghosts of old nails and paint, and hope I haven’t done wrong by kneeling when I’m not supposed to. And maybe hope a little that I have done wrong, and Rebecca will punish me for it.

  And then she walks to me, a deliberate pace that sends shivers chasing up and down my spine. She wore flats for the trip from Devon, but she might as well be in stilettos for how devastating and dramatic her footsteps are, and when she comes before me, all I want to do is press my face to her ankles and tell her I adore her, I worship her, I love her.

  I love her?

  I think about this as I stare at her feet in front of me. Her flats are sensible and ethical wool things that are comfortable and quality, but a little bit ugly, and I have the fleeting thought that if she’d just let me, if she’d splurge just a little, I could find shoes that were equally comfortable and ethical, but that actually deserved to be on her gorgeous feet.

  The hem of her coat sways a bit as she stands in front of me and I deduce that she’s taking it off. Even though I know she’s fully clothed underneath it, that small disrobing has heat simmering along my skin.

  But can I love her?

  Could I really? Already? After years of thinking she was so full of herself just because she was a certifiable genius, after years of assuming I’d marry Auden—because, honestly, who wouldn’t marry Auden?

  The coat disappears; I hear it drop onto the footstool behind me.

  “You look so good, pet,” she says, her voice almost a purr, it’s that low and breathy. “Whenever I needed to come, I’d think about this. About how you’d look on your knees for me.”

  I don’t say anything, even though I have loads of words bubbling and popping on my tongue. Like popping candy, but made of bad ideas instead of sugar.

  What if I love her?

  I think I might love her.

  Rebecca strides over to a low sofa—elegant, unfussy, modern, exactly her style—and sits. Even with my eyes on the artfully battered hardwoods, I can sense the perfection of her, the slow grace in which she lowers herself and slants her legs to the side instead of crossing them.

  “Come to me,” she says, still in the wonderful, breathless voice. “Hands and knees.”

  I’m still in my own jacket, I’m in heels and a suede skirt so short that it pulls up around my bottom when I lean forward to crawl. Nothing about what I’m wearing is comfortable to crawl in, and nothing about it is explicitly sexy—except it is actually very sexy to be forced to crawl mere moments after walking through a door, to know I look this slutty and debauched with my skirt up around my hips and my Saint Laurent heels sliding across the floor as I slouch toward the sofa.

  Maybe I should be asking, why this? Why is this such a fucking turn-on? Why is my cunt already wet and aching to be touched when all I’ve done is crawl? But it feels like the answer is right in front of me, parting her legs and digging her fingers into my hair. I nuzzle the inside of her knee—silky and warm—and risk a glance up at her face. Her eyes are hooded, liquid and hot under her sinfully long lashes, and her mouth is pressed together in a way that’s lush and stern all at once.

  “I didn’t say you could touch me yet, did I?” she says, tugging on my hair.

  “No, Mistress.”

  “Hmm.”

  I dare another nuzzle, and those eyes hood even more.

  “Delphine,” Rebecca warns.

  I can’t help but smile at that, so I press my face into her knee to hide it. She’s wearing a short romper today, the kind with an immaculately fitted bodice and skirt-like shorts underneath, and the fabric has slid down her thighs enough to expose a sleek expanse of leg. Her skin is so soft-looking, so smooth. The way the light falls in the flat, I can see where the muscles under her skin curve and pull, making a subtle path right to the heat between her legs. I can’t help myself, I lick that path, just to feel it under my tongue, just to taste her and maybe show her where else my tongue could be if only she’d spread her legs a little farther apart.

  Rebecca doesn’t react to my naughty tongue, no gasp or jump or tensing or anything, it’s like licking a living statue. And when I look up at her, I realize I’ve made a very, very big mistake. Those eyes are hot with more than ordinary lust now—there’s now irritation and excitement and a simmering cruelty that I just know is about to boil over.

  I’m smiling so big now that there’s no point in hiding it.

  “You’re so much trouble,” she breathes. Her fingers tighten in my hair. “So much fucking trouble.”

  It’s what she said in the car on the way here. That I was a brat, that I was spoiled, that she’d have her hands full with me. But then, just like now, the way she said those words—brat, spoiled, trouble—made it sound like I was a Christmas gift all wrapped up for her, like I was the kind of thing she’d bite her pillow thinking about at night, and then we’d both grinned at each other, like we’d just learned the most marvelous secret.

  We talked about a thousand other things—safewords and boundaries and limits—but that was what I kept coming back to: I’m a brat. And Rebecca likes it.

  She likes me. And I think I love her.

  When she says I’m trouble, I nip at her wrist and dimple at her, and then giggle as she yanks on my hair in reprimand.

  “Oh you think it’s funny, do you?” she says, but there’s a twist at the edges of her mouth, like someone about to take a bite of a dessert they claimed just seconds ago they didn’t want.

  “I think a lesson might be in order,” she says, regaining some of her sternness with a struggle. “But first . . .”

  She finally does what I’ve been yearning for her to do since I got to my knees, and uses her slender fingers to draw aside the fabric between her legs. She’
s wearing narrow lace knickers—so narrow that they barely cover her sex—and from this angle, I can see her secret places. Bare, soft, and already wet.

  “Why you wear cheeky knickers when no one can see them, and then the ugliest shoes that everyone else has to look at, is beyond me,” I say, which earns my upper arm a sharp pinch.

  “I wear these knickers so that I can put little subs with impudent mouths to use at a moment’s notice,” Rebecca says, and with a sharp tug of my hair, my mouth is pressed against her lace-covered sweetness. “Do your work, little pet. And I’ll think about what needs to be done about all this misbehavior of yours.”

  My work. God. We talked about this too before we came here, about what me moving in would mean, about how we would be here in Rebecca’s flat and in the club and out in the world. Where I would serve her, where I would kneel, and where we would just be a regular couple. The places where there might be a little of both—certain dates, maybe, certain evenings at work when she was alone in her office and needed to fuck.

  Here—here though, it will be absolute between us. She will be mistress, and I will be her pet—and although it will sometimes be informal, because we are also people with jobs and Netflix shows to watch and face masks to use (in my case anyway)—my first priority will be her. My work will be to please her however she wants, whether that is offering up my mouth for her use, or offering up my body for punishment.

  I remember the night I watched Rebecca and Auden spank Poe in the library. I remember how I felt Rebecca’s commands to Poe like fingertips on the nape of my neck, even though I wasn’t even the one being commanded. Later, I’d found Poe and asked her about the spanking, about the pain, about kink and what it meant. What about the parts that aren’t about the pain? I’d finally asked. The parts that are about doing what someone says?

  It’s like being loved, Poe had answered. Like loving.

  And so she was right. Because with Rebecca’s hands twisted in my hair, and my lips pressed against that wonderful part of her, I know that all my doubts earlier were not doubts at all, but tiny, rippling awakenings. Like coming awake next to the ocean, and realizing that I’d been dreaming the roar of the waves for hours without even knowing it.

  I was falling in love long before now.

  The realization is so exciting, and to have it like this, with my tongue flickering over lace and warm skin and with assertive hands fisted in my hair, is heaven.

  Before I can think better of it, I murmur the truth. “I love you.”

  It’s like I speak the words into her very skin, like they coil up through her belly and chest as hungry, grasping vines, because suddenly her body is tensed and flexing and trembling. She’s not breathing, and for a moment—oh, for a stupid, ditzy moment—I think it’s because she’s happy. I think it’s because she’s about to say it back.

  And then the silence bores on, chewing a hole through me, and I simply know. I have a problem with being blurty and blunt, and I should have thought, I should have shut up, because now I’ve poisoned this.

  I thought I was being so careful hiding how needy and uncertain I am, but now I’ve just gone and proved it by saying something unsophisticated and unwelcome.

  Rebecca relaxes the tiniest bit against me, and even though this time I’m not brave enough to look up at her, I know she’s relaxed because she’s figured out what to say. I’ve given her a complicated maths problem and now she’s solved for x. She’s solved for Delphine Can’t Be An Adult About Kinky Sex. It’s in her voice when she answers, gently and knowledgeably: “That’s common to feel in a scene, Delph, it’s very natural.”

  She sounds like someone assuring a teenager about getting an erection in P.E.—I know this is embarrassing for both of us, but don’t worry, it’s normal, you’ll get control over it one day.

  I close my eyes, my mouth unmoving against her, although I can still taste her on my tongue, I can still smell her. She is sweet and the littlest bit tart and something else that’s all her. Perfect. She is perfect and I love her and she doesn’t love me.

  “I’m going to take you to the club as soon as I can,” she’s saying, and now she’s stroking my hair, like I’m a pet in truth, “and you’ll meet lots of other submissives there. You’ll get to see so many other people playing, so many scenes, and then you’ll see. You’ll see that it’s a perfectly natural reaction to have.”

  What can I say to that? What can I do other than nod against her? Yes, you’re right, Mistress, it is just the scene, it’s just hormones.

  It isn’t the way you frown so adorably at elevations and ecological impact studies. It isn’t the way you suck your teeth at certain soil reports, like you’ve just found out soil has been subtweeting you for weeks.

  It isn’t the way you know obscure plants that medieval monks grew and it’s not the way you never come back inside the house without a wildflower for me—a different kind each time, as if you’re worried I’ll get bored if you keep bringing me the same species.

  It isn’t the way you smile when you come, it isn’t the way you hold me when you think I’m asleep. It isn’t how the light itself changes around you, like you are a living filter and your mere presence makes everything bright, saturated, alive.

  No, I can’t say these things. I don’t think she’d want me to.

  “Delph,” Rebecca whispers, and her voice is strange, and if she hadn’t just told me in so many words that my feelings weren’t reciprocated, I’d think maybe she felt conflicted? But I know inside her firm exterior lies a perceptive and kind person, so she’s probably worried about me. Worried that I’m upset.

  I don’t want to worry her, I know that much. I don’t want to be anything other than someone who makes her happy. I want to be easy for her, so easy that she’ll never tell me to go away.

  I open my eyes when she cups my chin and lifts my face to hers.

  “Delph,” she says, and then swallows. “Are you—are you okay? We can stop if you need time to process. I should have waded into this. We should have started slow and built our way up, and that’s my fault that we didn’t. I’m sorry, pet, I’m so sorry.” She does look sorry, and each and every word is like a slap, a burn, a cut. Each word of her apologizing for my hasty declaration. Each word undoing my own feelings and reshaping them into a byproduct of bad dominance. Even though they’re not a byproduct. And she’s not a bad Dominant.

  “I don’t need to stop,” I tell her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, please. Rebecca. Mistress. It’s fine. Just the scene, like you said.”

  She doesn’t let me lower my face for a long minute, keeping me tilted up to her gaze. Her eyes flick dark and concerned over my face, and I just want to die, I’m so embarrassed. “Please,” I say again. “Let’s please forget about it.”

  She releases my face, but she looks like she wants to say something else, like she’s not finished trying to smooth over my gawky blunder, and I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it a second longer, and so I bury my mouth between her legs once again, running a slow lick up her core.

  I feel her relent; I feel the moment she chooses to let it go. Her breath stutters out, a long exhale, and then she spreads her legs even more, pushing her hips against my kiss. I respond eagerly, using the tip of my tongue to make wet promises through the lace, and then sighing in contentment when she finally pulls her knickers to the side and lets me service her bare skin.

  With her legs parted like this, the tight well at her center is exposed, and so is the dark berry of her clit. I lave and lick at both like how I know she likes, following her sighs and the tugs in my hair. I feast on her until she starts arching and pushing even harder against my mouth.

  “Almost, pet,” she says. “Just a moment longer.”

  But before she finishes, there’s a creak and a slam—the door downstairs—and then footsteps on the staircase, shoes thudding on solid, new wood. Instinct seizes me, and I start to jerk away, but Rebecca holds me close.

  “Shh, shh,” she soothes. “I know
who it is.”

  I lift my eyes to hers, and she strokes my hair back from my face. “Only one other person has a key,” she assures me. “And when we’re at the club, lots of people will be watching us. Think of this as . . . practice.”

  Practice. Yes. I will be watched and shared—I want to be watched and shared. We agreed on all this.

  “What’s your safeword, pet?” she asks, her hands still stroking at my hair.

  I take a breath before I say it, and my breath is full of her—the woman I love who doesn’t love me. I force the knife-thoughts down, away, and try to remember who I am. The sunny, happy girl who’s left red lipstick on her Mistress’s cunt.

  I answer.

  “Grege 1947.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rebecca

  “We can stop whenever we need,” I tell her. And we will if she needs to, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved someone was coming up. And while yes, this is actually good practice for a baby sub—a little bit of Thornchapel in London, a little bit of our magic world to get her ready for the prying voyeurism of the club—truthfully, that’s not why I’m relieved.

  I’m relieved because I’m a coward.

  Delphine’s mouth is hot and searching against me when I push her face back to her work, and I try desperately to lose myself in the slick pleasure of her kiss before our visitor makes it up the stairs. I want every feeling I’ve had since Delphine uttered those terrible words to disappear, to shift into what they should be, which is satisfaction and pleasure and pride in my new submissive.

  I’m almost there when Auden emerges from the stairwell, looking miserable and morose, the spattered rain on his shoulders matching the sudden plinking and plonking on the skylights above. He pauses when he sees us, Delphine on all fours and me with my hands in her hair and my legs stretched out as insouciantly as any man’s.

  “Rain outside?” I say lightly, as if there isn’t a tongue in my pussy. As if he’s just popped in for a chat and interrupted nothing more important than me responding to emails.