Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  “Lie down,” Auden tells him. “On your back.”

  St. Sebastian pulls his lip piercing into his mouth, looking uncertain. “Auden . . . I—”

  “Lie. Down.” Auden uses the voice he’s so careful not to use with Saint anymore. The voice that he used on Beltane. The voice he used that summer.

  When he uses it, he expects to be obeyed—but if he’s not, he’ll happily fight St. Sebastian into submission. He’ll happily wrestle him down to the blanket and pin him there. Happily.

  But St. Sebastian obeys. A flush dusts his cheekbones as he releases his piercing from his teeth and slowly lays himself back so that he’s completely supine. When he’s done, his T-shirt has pulled up from the belted waistband of his jeans just enough to reveal a sliver of stomach. Light bronze and firm, with a narrow trail of hair leading down from his navel.

  Auden’s mouth actually waters at the sight of it. Waters. Like he’s seeing a meal he’s been kept away from for months and months and years. He would pay all the money he has, sell off every asset he owns, just to bite that stomach right now.

  No. Think of the gallery. The gallery with its fake Maeshowe tomb made of grain. The gallery where he held a sobbing St. Sebastian in his arms—where Auden made St. Sebastian sob because he had been selfish and needy. Because he had been a bad Dom and a bad lover. A bad brother.

  Never again, Auden had vowed as he held St. Sebastian’s shuddering frame. Never again. He would die first. Die before he made Saint cry like that again.

  St. Sebastian had been martyr enough for a thousand lifetimes, and now it was Auden’s turn.

  However, that didn’t mean Auden’s hunger had abated. No, no, not at all. Not the hunger, nor the possessiveness, nor the love. All of it seemed to grow and grow, fed by its own starvation, until Auden’s blood felt like it was made from molten metal and his bones from sharpened swords. Walking hurt, working hurt, existing hurt when St. Sebastian wasn’t completely his.

  So he’s been cheating. A little.

  It was Poe’s idea at first. After he confessed all this to her, kneeling at her feet as he sometimes did, and letting her be the priestess to his king, she reminded him that she and Emily had been kinky and in love for eighteen months without having sex.

  There are ways you can still care for him, she said. Little ways he can still be yours.

  So Auden had St. Sebastian’s car serviced, and the render on the front of his mother’s house repaired. He refilled St. Sebastian’s drinks when they sat in the library, he told Saint to go to bed when it was time, he drove him to the library when he was at Thornchapel and picked him up when his shift ended. He bought Saint’s plane ticket to America and then savored his sullen protests for no other reason than it gave him an excuse to use that voice and then see St. Sebastian’s flushed response to it.

  And sometimes, when he was very, very bad—when he felt like his bones would cut right through his flesh with wanting this man so much—he would do worse. He would make St. Sebastian get drinks for him, he would stretch out his legs on the sofa so that Saint would have no choice but to sit on the floor beneath him. He would make Saint wait for him when they needed to go someplace—five minutes, ten minutes, once even a full half an hour—and then he would finally show up, insouciant and drawling, cock throbbing at St. Sebastian's flashing eyes and angry pout. Because of course St. Sebastian waited for him anyway.

  Of course he sat on the floor and fetched Auden his drinks.

  Of course he had to pretend it didn’t make him hard too.

  It’s a dangerous game to play, Auden knows that. He wants this to be forever—he needs this to be forever—and so he has to keep St. Sebastian safe from the worst of his needs. From the worst of both their needs. But surely these little nibbles and licks of dominance are okay? Surely what he’s about to do next won’t hurt anyone? Surely it will be a little relief valve for both of them, a way to blunt the teeth of their cravings for a little while?

  It’s just an innocent little birthday gift, that’s all. Nothing like what they did in the gallery.

  Auden deliberately, unhurriedly, steps to St. Sebastian’s side. And he just as deliberately, just as unhurriedly, lifts his bare foot and then rests it on St. Sebastian’s chest.

  St. Sebastian goes totally still. Auden can’t even feel him breathe under his foot.

  “I thought,” Auden says, “Proserpina might want a little help giving you your birthday present.”

  This isn’t actually Poe’s present to Saint—that is back at her father’s house, a signed first edition of a fantasy novel he loves—nor is it actually his, but that’s apart from the point. The point is how St. Sebastian’s ribs judder and shake as he finally manages to drag in a breath. The point is the swelling ridge behind St. Sebastian’s zipper.

  Poe herself crawls between Saint’s legs and perches there on her knees, a small smile on her lips. “I did want some help,” she says. “I thought I could make you come harder if Auden held you down while I sucked you.”

  The noise St. Sebastian makes then—like death would be easier to endure. Now Auden is smiling too.

  He presses the ball of his foot even harder against Saint’s chest. Not hard enough to bruise or even really to hurt, but hard enough that he can feel the firm resistance of his pectoral muscle. The bones underneath.

  “We did agree,” Auden says, looking down at the boy trapped beneath his foot, “that you should get to pick where you come, because it is your birthday and all. You can of course make use of Poe’s mouth, but you could also make use of her cunt, isn’t that right, little bride? Why don’t you show him his options?”

  Poe shows him. She spreads her knees apart and lifts the hem of her dress—a different dress than she wore to the service today. It’s a white sundress with little daisies printed on it that falls past her knees when she’s standing, the picture of summer sweetness, which makes it all the sluttier when she pulls the skirt up to her hips to reveal the naked pussy underneath. She’s groomed herself completely bare, and so there’s no hiding her soft lips, her clit, where she splits open to show a beckoning shadow, dark pink and dewy.

  She also opens her mouth—wet tongue, plush lips, all of it waiting to be used—and Auden has a dizzy moment when he can’t believe this is real. That she is his, and his in the way he felt ashamed of needing for so long.

  St. Sebastian lifts his head to stare at her, his chest seizing fast and urgent under Auden’s foot. “Fuck,” he groans, head falling back. “Both. Both please.”

  Poe gives Auden a look, which Auden returns as smugly as possible. They’d taken bets earlier on what Saint would choose and Poe thought he’d only want a blowjob. Auden knew better. Poe’s body inspires desperation, it calls to gluttony; a person looks at her and needs to do everything, taste everything, feel everything. Of course, St. Sebastian would pick both.

  “Start with your mouth,” Auden tells her. “Go slow.”

  St. Sebastian’s eyes are dark mirrors reflecting back the sunset as Poe unbuckles him, unzips him, and finally exposes his erection. He rolls under Auden’s foot, hissing a little as Poe gives him a long, hot stripe with her tongue.

  His eyes search Auden’s face, and he doesn’t have to ask the question out loud for Auden to know what it is.

  Do brothers do this?

  Auden nods at him.

  Saint’s eyes flutter closed as Proserpina takes him into her mouth. The foot on his chest keeps him from arching, but his hands reach down for her, and Auden can’t have that. He kneels down, easy and fast, and pins St. Sebastian’s wandering hands up by his head.

  He also rests a knee on Saint’s chest while he’s down there—not strictly necessary to keep him pinned at this point, but still fun.

  Saint blinks up at him—trapped, flushed, beautiful. “You’re holding me down,” he says, a little dazedly.

  “Does it feel good?” Auden asks.

  “What do you think?” Saint mutters, but there’s no venom to it. His eyes dr
op to the front of Auden’s shorts. “Does it feel good for you?”

  Auden raises an eyebrow. His own erection could probably be seen across the lake at this point. “What do you think?”

  Saint rolls his eyes but nearly smiles.

  Auden shifts a little so he can watch Poe between his half-brother’s legs. Her dress is pooled around her in a way that seems fresh and prim and a little princess-y, but there’s nothing prim about her mouth right now. No, that mouth is all wickedness, licking up and down St. Sebastian’s stiffened cock, sucking it into her mouth, trailing soft kisses around the base and the curves of his testicles.

  Auden’s own cock aches and aches and aches. Already he can feel arousal beading at the tip, begging to be licked off too. And it’s not only at the sight—which is beyond erotic—but the knowledge that it’s happening at his command. That pink tongue, the naked pussy underneath the innocent dress. The body currently roiling in agonized pleasure underneath him.

  “Your cunt now,” says Auden. “Make it fast.”

  Poe scrambles to obey, getting to her knees and then straddling Saint’s hips. Her daisy-patterned skirt is everywhere, blowing in the breeze against Auden’s knee and waving around her thighs, and she has to use one hand to hold the excess fabric against her hip as her other hand takes St. Sebastian and guides him to her opening.

  Wet. She’s so wet that they can hear it the moment Saint’s tip glides against her. And when she positions him just right, angles him just so, they hear it as Saint enters her.

  Saint strains underneath Auden, and Poe moans, slumping forward and bracing her hands on Saint’s stomach.

  Auden growls. He needs to fuck, the need for it is clawing inside him, but no—no, he needs this more. The beautiful boy writhing and panting under his knee. The beautiful girl arching and shivering next to him.

  He moves his hands, one to St. Sebastian’s throat and the other to the knot at the nape of Poe’s neck, so he has both of them, he’s gripping both of them, he’s guiding and restraining and making both of them. And he feels when they both reach their peak, when they both go trembling, reaching, shivering, tumbling over together under his touch.

  He could come like this. Just like this. Just with his knee on Saint’s chest and his hand full of Poe’s hair.

  He doesn’t though. As much as he wants to, he wants this more. He wants this moment more. Their bliss he savors as if it were his. He drinks in Poe’s soft cries and Saint’s tortured gasps, their joyous torment under the midsummer sky. He feels it thrumming along his skin like it’s his own pleasure, his own release, even as his dick impatiently reminds him that it isn’t.

  Auden makes sure they’re both finished before he carefully eases off St. Sebastian and lets go of them both. They are limp and sweat-misted; he is tense and tight and he can feel his pulse in his cock, it’s that swollen and ready, but his chest is loose and light and happy. He can feel the happiness around his eyes and mouth.

  “You’re still hard,” St. Sebastian says, rolling onto his side to prop up on an elbow.

  “This was a birthday present for you,” Auden says, “not me.”

  St. Sebastian seems to think about this for a moment. “What if, for my birthday, I want to see you come?”

  “On my tits?” Poe adds eagerly, climbing between them and laying on her back. Before Auden can even truly digest what’s happening, she’s untied the halter of her dress and tugged the bodice down, exposing her breasts, which are pale and soft and generous, tipped with tight, rosy nipples, and dotted with fading bite marks.

  His bite marks.

  Fuck.

  This wasn’t the plan, this was never the plan, but Auden suddenly can’t bring himself to care about the plan, not when Poe’s pressing her tits together like that, not when Saint is dipping his head to kiss the crescent-shaped imprints of Auden’s teeth all along the undersides.

  He’s more aroused than even he knew, because his hands are shaking too much to open the button of his shorts, and he keeps fumbling with it and fumbling, fumbling, until Saint reaches up and opens it for him, his warm fingers brushing along the skin of Auden’s stomach as he does. Auden can’t breathe as Saint pulls down his zipper too, working his shorts open until there’s nothing between Auden’s cock and the open air save for his boxer briefs.

  “You have to do it,” Saint whispers. “I can’t—I shouldn’t—”

  Because brothers don’t. Brothers don’t do what Auden wants St. Sebastian to do right now, and that’s reach past the elastic waistband and draw out his cock for him.

  Damn their father to hell for his lies.

  Auden tugs the waistband of his boxer briefs down himself and fists his shaft, looking down at Poe. Her fuckable mouth, her sexy tits. All of her so brilliant and beautiful and more precious to him than his own life, and he loves her so much, he loves Saint so much, he wishes they knew, he wishes he could properly explain it to them. He wishes they could understand that when he bites, when he bruises, when he is cruel, it’s only because he’s given them his own heart for biting and bruising, it’s only because his life is completely theirs already, to stomp on and macerate. It’s a kind of homeostasis, a kind of loop—they own him, so he gets to own them in return. They hold his spirit, and so he can hold their bodies.

  His wild and thorny heart beats for them and them alone.

  “You both are my life,” he tells them, because there should be no secrets tonight. “My entire life.”

  It takes nothing—two strokes, maybe less—and the orgasm roars through him, barreling up his length and erupting past his fist to spatter Poe in white ropes of seed. It feels yanked from the very soles of his feet, from the deepest pits of him, every drop of his essence offered up as proof of his need for them, unending, unbearable, unbelievably good and agonizing all at once. It goes on, pulse after pulse, until Poe’s breasts are liberally striped with his cum, like he’s double-marked the territory he’s already marked with bites, and then some, because there’s semen on her upper belly and along her cheek and mouth as well.

  “Fuck,” he whispers, as his organ gives a final throb and gives up one last pearl of fluid. “Fuck.”

  He drops to the blanket on the other side of Proserpina and pulls her into his chest, not caring about the cum, not caring about anything but holding her. On the other side of her, St. Sebastian watches him with glittering eyes. Behind him is the fire, and behind that are Delphine and Rebecca, still consumed with each other.

  St. Sebastian wraps an arm around Poe’s waist, his fingers pressing into Auden’s bare stomach. It’s the closest to happy Auden’s been since Beltane.

  “Happy birthday, St. Sebastian,” Poe finally says. And they lay there for a long time, not moving or bothering to clean up until the sun has finally sunk behind the hills and the stars have come out to light the sky.

  Later that night, when all the sex is done and the coolbox is empty of drinks, Auden sees St. Sebastian drift away from the group—currently telling each other ghost stories—and he gets up to follow.

  The mostly full moon hangs high above the lake, and the cicadas have quieted some, and so as Auden follows Saint down to the beach, the loudest sound is the lake itself, chopping and sighing in the breeze, which is cooler now than it was. Cool enough that Auden has goosebumps, although as always, Saint seems unaffected.

  “I lied earlier,” Auden says as he approaches Saint at the edge of the water.

  Saint looks unsurprised both that Auden followed him and that Auden lied. “What about this time?”

  That stings a little, but Auden deserves it.

  “Your birthday present,” he answers. “It wasn’t just what we did earlier. I have another gift for you.” And he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small bundle of silk cinched tight with a ribbon.

  He hands it to him, letting his fingertips linger over Saint’s palm as he puts the bundle there.

  “You didn’t have to get me anything. Even the scene—you didn’t have to do an
y of that.”

  “I wanted to,” Auden says simply. “Now open it.”

  Saint carefully unties the bow of the ribbon and unwinds it from the bundle. The silk falls open to reveal a ring, which gleams like a circle of moonlight in his palm. He picks it up between his thumb and forefinger and studies it, pulling out his phone and turning on its flashlight to see it properly.

  Auden knows what he’ll see engraved into the silver. The ornate capital G with a thorn-studded vine coiled around its outer curve.

  G for Guest.

  Thorns for Thornchapel.

  St. Sebastian’s face doesn’t change, but Auden feels suddenly nervous, suddenly exposed. He’s never had to share the burden of being a Guest before, and he knows he’s fucking it up, he knows he’s going about it all wrong. St. Sebastian already has a family. A good one—two good ones, if he counts the Daveys. Saint doesn’t need the tainted silver of a poisoned line.

  “It was our grandfather’s,” Auden says quickly, feeling like any moment Saint will hand it back to him or throw it in the water or drop it in the dirt. “I barely knew him—he died when I was very young—but he was a good man. He wasn’t like our father. He loved his wife, he gave to charity, he was a man of true faith. When he died, my grandmother gave me his ring, and told me she knew I’d be worthy of it, and Thornchapel, so long as I had even a tithe of his spirit. I used to cling to that idea, you know? That there was more in my blood than only my father—that there was my grandfather, who was good, and my grandmother, and all kinds of ancestors I didn’t know, but who might have been good also. And if they were there in my blood, maybe I could be good too. Maybe I would be better than my father.”

  St. Sebastian turns off the flashlight, but he doesn’t drop the ring in the dirt. He doesn’t hand it back.