And it might have worked, this impromptu escape of mine, it might have worked with any other man besides Auden Guest. Because he may well be a prince of galas and understatedly expensive wristwatches, but the hunt is still in his blood.
I’ve only made it nine or ten steps before I become aware of his following me, of his footsteps arrogant and predatory behind mine.
I speed up, walking faster, my hands in my pockets as I duck through patricians and politicians, darting through clumps and clouds of people as quickly as I can without being rude. I think of Beltane, of the woods, of running through the woods of Thornchapel as Auden chased me and the sunlight shafted golden and hazy through the trees. We’re walking instead of running, maybe, and the forest is a forest of people and not whispering trees, but there’s no mistaking that it’s the same thing. I’m being stalked through this party just like he stalked me then. And if he catches me . . .
I don’t know what I want to happen when I finally mount the shallow steps and enter the building. I know what I should want, I know what my mother would hope that I wanted. I know what is right and moral to want.
But if I want that—if I want what’s right and what’s moral—then why am I still here? Why am I playing the part of prey, why am I thinking of antlers and bluebells when I’m wearing a tuxedo and wending my way through installations of wheat and barley woven into the shapes of houses, people, animals?
The exhibit is deserted, emptied of everyone except the grain people frozen in their poses—watering gardens, walking next to cattle, bundling sheaves of wheat. The gala goers must all be outside, enjoying the mild evening and free booze, and I presume the exhibit is closed to the public during the event. My footsteps echo through the big, wood-floored rooms.
I hear the echo of another’s footsteps behind me. Far enough away that I have time.
Close enough that my cock is hard.
Finally, I stop. I stop in a room that is nearly all installation—a mounded structure made of woven grain with a narrow passage for an entrance. I doubt I’m allowed to, but I move into the passage, having to turn sideways to fit, and push myself into the center of the structure, emerging with a few bits of straw clinging to my tuxedo and dusting the tops of my shoes. A bright light shines into the passage I just came in from, and above me, the ceiling is arched and ribbed like the vaults of a cathedral—except the vaults are made of willow rods and grain instead of stone. The ceiling is dropping wheat heads and barley spikes onto the floor.
It smells of summer inside.
The structure is only half a structure; the gallery wall bisects the chamber halfway in. The wall is painted a plain white and still marked with the hanging screws of whatever exhibit was here last.
I press myself against it and try to decide how to feel when Auden can’t find me.
Except, of course, he does find me.
I wasn’t fast enough, or he could hear me shuffling through the passage, or it’s where he would have hidden if he were the type of man to hide. It doesn’t matter, because the minute I hear his footsteps coming closer, everything about my body comes alive. My organ is so swollen now that it presses against my zipper. I know if I pulled it out, it would be wet at the tip.
He steps out of the passage without a single fleck of straw or grain on him, his expression carnivorous. “St. Sebastian,” he says.
Chapter Fifteen
St. Sebastian
“I didn’t come here for you,” I say.
It’s a lie, we both know that, but I have to say it anyway. “I didn’t come here for this.”
“I think you did,” Auden says softly. “I think you came here for exactly this.”
He steps closer. The grain chamber muffles the noise some, which makes the room feel even smaller. A cloister of barley. A cell of wheat.
He steps closer again, close enough to reach out and run a long finger up my lapel, which he does now. “Do you like your tuxedo?”
“I’m going to have to clean the barley off it before I return it.”
Auden’s forehead wrinkles. “Return it?”
“To wherever you rented it from?”
Auden looks appalled. “I didn’t rent you a tuxedo, St. Sebastian. Give me some credit.” His mouth pulls into a moue of offended pride.
Rich boy.
I look down to where his hand still caresses my lapel. It’s hypnotic to watch his fingertips ghosting over the fabric, lingering over the neatly tailored peaks, dancing over the single button that keeps the jacket closed.
“Grosgrain,” he says after a minute, his eyes on the lapel now too. “Instead of satin. I thought it suited you better.”
“I don’t know what grosgrain is,” I tell him. His fingers are plucking at my jacket button, each little tug and pull of the fabric like a whispering kiss along my middle. If he popped the button open, there’d be nothing between his hands and my stomach but my dress shirt.
“It’s silk,” he says, “but it’s been pulled and twisted into something rough and strong. Unlike other fabrics, grosgrain shows its bones.” And then my jacket button releases and his hands are inside, sliding up my stomach to my chest. When his palms drag over my nipples, obviously bunched into tiny points even with the shirt between us, he lets out a long-suffering sigh. As if I should be ashamed I’ve been denying him the pleasure of this.
“This shirt is Egyptian cotton,” he tells me. “It has the longest fibers of any of the cotton breeds. It makes the fabric stronger, but softer too. Almost silky. Do you feel it? The silkiness?”
His hands are everywhere under my jacket now, rubbing along my spine and shaping the blades of my shoulders, tracing the waistband of my trousers, pushing gently against my navel. I can’t bear to look at his haughty, handsome face, and so I have to close my eyes.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I feel it.”
“The tuxedo itself is made of wool,” he says, his hands moving down to my hips, and then around to my ass. He doesn’t linger there, and neither does he pause over the obvious ridge of my erection, but my body hums as if he’s already inside of me, as if he’s already wrapped a strong hand around my staff and started squeezing. “Sturdy but so finely carded that you could almost believe it a cousin to silk. Listen to my tuxedo against yours—it’s barely a whisper, isn’t it? It’s like a breeze in the evening or the wash of the river when the water is low. Barely any noise at all.”
He’s stepped into me in order to prove his point—his thighs moving against mine, his closed jacket brushing against my open one—and my eyes are still closed and I’m shuddering, shuddering, shuddering.
“And our shoes,” he murmurs, his voice so close that I know his mouth is hovering near my jaw, “are calf leather. Made in Italy. Supple—” One of his shoes nudges against mine, forcing me to step out to the side. “—but robust.” His other shoe pushes against my foot and then my legs are spread wide enough that he can fit both of his between mine. I’m unsteady like this, off balance with my back against the wall and my feet planted wide, and so I have no choice but to press against Auden’s touch. His hands sliding under my jacket to grip my shoulders and triceps, his hips pinned firmly to mine. I can feel his cock, hard and stretching to his hip.
“Rich boy,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says back, and then his lips are on my neck. Right above my collar, hot and hard, a kiss immediately turning into a vicious, toe-curling suck.
“We can’t,” I say, finally opening my eyes. His face is buried in my neck, and so I can see the back curve of his head—caramel hair, thick and gleaming—framed by the barley ceiling. “We can’t, Auden.”
“Then why did you come?” he says into my neck, biting me hard enough that I feel it in my marrow. My cock jolts in neglected agony, as if it’s trying to get closer to Auden, as if it’s seeking its owner. “Why did you come here at all if you don’t want this?”
Why doesn’t he understand? Wanting is exactly the problem when it comes to him. Wanting is why I can’t trust mys
elf around him, it’s why I’m here shivering against a wall while he brands me with his mouth instead of safely at home where I can’t be tempted.
Auden seems to realize this the moment he asks the question anyway. I feel his lips curl against my neck. “You do want it, though, don’t you?” He pulls away enough that his fingers can find the buttons of my shirt. They slide between the buttons, teasing little touches against the flat skin near my navel. And then he deftly unbuttons the three above my waistband. “Look at how you tremble when I touch you, stubborn boy. Look at how you flutter those long, gorgeous eyelashes and nibble on that lip piercing. I think you more than want this, I think you need it. I think you need it from me.”
I can’t stifle the noise I make when he unfastens my trouser button or when he unzips me. My cock pushes against the sudden freedom, seeking the cool air, seeking the wicked heat of Auden’s hand.
“I don’t want to want it,” I mumble, my head dropping onto his shoulder as he finally takes me in his hand. “I shouldn’t. We’re—we’re not right for wanting each other.”
Auden strokes my throbbing cock like it’s his favorite pet. “It doesn’t have to be a transgression,” he soothes me. “Who has to know we’re brothers? Half-brothers? We didn’t grow up together. We didn’t know until just weeks ago. We can forget. I know we can forget it if we try hard enough.”
When I look down, I can see it all. His hand with its large, elegant wristwatch slowly jacking me off, the crisp lines of his tuxedo as he shuttles his grip up and down my aching sex. His fingers curled around the grosgrain lapel, turning my tux into an expensive, tailored prison.
“We didn’t know,” he repeats, his touch patient but wicked. “We didn’t grow up together.”
But the thing that terrifies me?
I think I would have loved him anyway.
Even if we had known for years. Even if we had learned the truth when we were sixteen.
There’s no dose of Auden that inoculates you to him, there’s no amount of him that breeds familiarity. I could have seen his face every day and I still would have worshipped the graceful arrogance of his features; I could have spent every waking moment with him and I still would’ve been hungry for any spare word thrown my way.
And there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for him when we were sixteen, there was nothing too shameless for me, nothing too obscene, and I just can’t imagine that sixteen-year-old Saint would have felt any differently if he’d known Auden was his brother. But that doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t make it any less twisted to do now.
Maybe it’s more twisted knowing that. Maybe it’s worse.
Oh God, it’s definitely worse.
“Auden, we can’t.”
He doesn’t loosen his grip. He doesn’t stop stroking. My cock is so hard now that I can feel my heartbeat in it.
“Auden.”
“You know how to stop me.”
I do. I do know how. But once again, I can’t make the words come out.
Auden knows it too. He seals his smiling mouth over mine, taking his kiss like a king takes tribute. “You look so fucking pretty like this,” he murmurs into my mouth. “All undone for me, all tormented. Your cock out and hard for my hand while you keep telling me we can’t.”
Said cock surges in his hold, and I can feel his pride surge right back in response. “Turn around, stubborn boy.”
I should say no.
No—not no. Auden would let me bleat all the nos and we can’ts I wanted, he’d allow these little reflexes of conscience, because that’s what they’d be: reflexes. If I said no to him, I’d have to do it in the language we agreed to speak together. With the words agreed on precisely because they were not reflexes, because they had to be thought about and searched for and chosen.
I should say may I, and end this. I should because I want to, because I know it’s the right thing to do, because if I don’t, I’ll regret it the rest of my days.
He’s turning me now, releasing his grip on my cock so that he can take hold of my hips and spin me toward the wall, and my entire body is humming, singing, alive. Goosebumps erupt every place he touches, he’s sowing responsiveness like a farmer sows seeds, and the noise he makes when he presses his entire body against mine could feed me for years. His lips find my neck above my collar, and he fists my dick again, his own erection grinding openly against me.
“Nothing underneath your trousers, I notice,” he says. His free hand is under my jacket, under my shirt, he’s gone from squeezing my hip to searching out the muscled swell of my thigh, the firm curve of my bottom. I have to close my eyes against the pleasure. “Is that on purpose? Did you do it to tease me? Did you do it because you hoped you’d end up here, your zipper open and me about to open mine?”
I could stop this. I should stop this. I’m going to stop this.
In fact, Auden even dares me to stop him. Once with his words—say it, my sweet, suffering martyr, and I’ll stop—and over and over again with his body. A pause before the expensive wool is pulled down over my hips. A moment of stillness before a warm fingertip presses against the place I open. A lull in the kisses along my neck as he reaches for something in the inner pocket of his jacket.
I know what he’s doing. I know exactly what he’s doing. And still I don’t speak.
Auden—the same man who packed reusable water bottles for our sylvan antler-fuck—is no less prepared now. I hear a packet crinkling, the rustle of deliberate movement, and then something else that has me rolling my forehead against the wall in agony: the slick slide of him preparing his shaft for me.
“You had lube in your pocket,” I say. I want it to be an accusation, but I only sound dreamy and besotted, even to my own ears.
Auden’s voice sounds amused when he speaks. “You can’t blame a boy for hoping.”
Slippery fingers find the most private place in my body and enter, sending me up to my toes. The head of my now-neglected erection is leaving smears of clear seed on the exhibit wall, and when Auden slides his fingers free and pulls my hips back to present my entrance to him, I could cry with relief.
I missed this. I missed this, I missed this, I missed this.
There’s the wet, gliding kiss of his crown over my rim, then the moment the kiss becomes a snug pressure, and then the moment the pressure becomes an invasion. My fingers scratch and flex against the wall as he pierces me, and I can’t breathe, I can’t move. My lips are parted in a kind of noiseless grunt, an apnea of lust and pain.
But he is not noiseless, no, not my arrogant gala princeling. “So sweet,” he drawls, sliding out enough so he can thrust all the way in. “Sweet, suffering boy. Sweet, stubborn boy.”
He makes a grunt of his own when he finally fills me to the hilt.
I know what he must see when he looks down because I feel it, I feel the snugness of where he’s fit himself inside me, I feel the lean muscles of his abs and hips when he presses in. I feel the pricey rumple of our tuxedo jackets and dress shirts and the indecent open air against my backside and thighs.
He’s fucking me against a wall inside an art installation while gala guests tipple and chatter nearby. He’s fucking me in a tux, with our girlfriend outside, with all our friends outside, and he’s fucking me with an angry, plundering rhythm that lets me know he has no plans for this to be quick. No plans for this to be easy.
By the time he lets me come, I’ll be exactly the way he likes me. Broken open with his name on my lips.
“Now then,” he says, still drawling, still cool. “This isn’t so bad, is it? No lightning strikes, St. Sebastian. No bolt from heaven, no hail of fire, no plagues. We are so civilized, are we not?” He asks that right as he gives me a hard thrust, which makes my dress shoes slide on the polished gallery floor.
“You know what we are, and civilized isn’t it,” I say, my voice hitching with each and every stroke. “This is not what civilized men do.” Maybe there have been men like us at the edges of the world, on frontiers, and in the wil
d, lonely places. Maybe we’re not the first brothers to do this—but that doesn’t make it civilized. Far from it.
This is a need that shies away from the light of day. This is a hunger that has to be secret.
“Then we’ll make our own civilization,” Auden says arrogantly. “One where you’re mine.”
“We can’t,” I mumble. My head hangs down, my hair drifting in my face. My hands are braced against the wall and I want so much to drop one down and start stroking myself, but it feels important to resist the urge to do it. Like if I don’t participate in making myself come, then I’m not really at fault, I can’t be blamed.
“You keep saying that,” he says, his hand sliding up my chest to wrap around my throat. He tugs me back, makes me straighten up enough for him to nip at my earlobe. He can’t really piston into me at this angle, but he can still rut, he can still grind. I’m still speared so thoroughly that I swear he’s all the way into my belly.
I’m still so hard and my balls are still so tight that I know I’m going to go off soon, and he’ll have won. He’ll have proven to us both that our unholy lusts can’t be denied or curbed.
Only, what? Two weeks without each other? And now he’s fallen on me like a wolf and I’ve welcomed him with open arms. Shown him my throat, my belly, all my vulnerable places. My stupid, degenerate heart, ready for eating.
“I keep saying it because it’s true.” I close my eyes as his teeth catch on the lobe of my ear, on the skin right below it.
He nuzzles my neck. My jaw.
His cock is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.
“Show me,” he whispers. “Show me the sin in this.”
I can’t. And not because it’s not there, but because the sin isn’t scrawled on our faces or trumpeted in our words. It’s written in our blood and scratched onto our bones.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 20
