Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  And all of it is fitted and draped to perfection, hugging the strong curves of his shoulders and the firm swells of his pectoral muscles. Between my knees, the shorts are pulled tight around his thighs, and when I look down, I can see exactly where his thighs curve into his hips. I see exactly where he bulges behind his zipper, and how much he does. Through the thin, expensive blend of his shirt, I can make out the shadow of his navel, the dark pink circles of his nipples. If I wanted to lick him through his shirt, I would know exactly where to.

  “What are you doing?” he asks curiously.

  “I don’t know,” I say. Neither of us move.

  “I think you wanted to help me,” he says, still looking up at me. It’s so strange to be above him like this, to be the one trapping him, caging him. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. “You wanted to distract me,” he goes on, “from my morbid imaginings.”

  That’s right, I remember. I remember how he looked when he was staring at the altar. And now he’s looking up at me with something similar and yet so different—color in his cheeks and his breathing fast, and now it’s because of me, it’s all for me.

  “Well?” I ask, and when I ask it, I realize I’m breathing fast too. “Is it working?”

  His eyes are intense; I think they could burn holes in the air. But his mouth is pure laziness as he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and slowly releases it. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  For a moment, it’s just this. Only this.

  A successful distraction.

  And then I brush the hair out of his beautiful eyes.

  He catches my hand as I do it, as if to stop me, and I tear my hand away and do it again, deliberately running my fingertips over his forehead and letting all that tousled silk kiss against the backs of my knuckles.

  “St. Sebastian,” he warns.

  “It’s in your eyes.”

  “It’s always in my eyes.”

  I do it again, wishing I could watch the flutter of those dramatic eyelashes forever. “I want to see your face.”

  “St. S—”

  I put my hand over his mouth, and he goes completely still underneath me. Never, not in twelve years, have I done something like this. Never have I taken charge of his body, never have I taken what I wanted from him. And never has he let me. Never has he let me straddle him, silence him, slide a hand into his hair and twist, as I’m doing right now. Just enough to make him grunt against my palm. Just enough to make him swell even more in those Lake Como shorts of his.

  The sensation of topping him is almost as forbidden, almost as reckless, as the knowledge that it’s my brother I’m touching like this. It thrums through me like scotch, like the storm, like a thousand thousand sins, like nature itself.

  I can’t stop it. I won’t stop it.

  All storms must break, after all.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  St. Sebastian

  With a twist and a shove, I have him angled away from the wall and flat on his back in the grass. Pencils spill everywhere and thunder pounds through the air, and we both ignore it all, our eyes only on each other.

  “What are you doing?” he asks again, this time in a voice that’s rough. Almost angry. “We don’t do this. We don’t do it because this is how you wanted it to be. We haven’t been—it’s been for you, St. Sebastian.”

  He’s right and I don’t care. I don’t care right now.

  I swing my leg back over his hips, bracing my hands on either side of his head. It feels strange to be over him, and wrong too, but it’s the kind of wrong that makes me hard—and it’s that kind of morning, anyway. The kind of morning when anything can happen. So why not this?

  “You wanted to imagine it,” I say, dipping my face to run the tip of my nose along his jaw. “So let’s imagine it.”

  “W-what?”

  I’m gratified by the quaver in his voice. By the flush in his cheeks and the relentless bar in his pants, which even now strains against his zipper. “You wanted to know what the Thorn King felt? I can help you.”

  “St. Sebastian . . . ” It might have been a dismissal or a protest, I don’t know. But whatever it was going to be dies on his lips when I collar his throat with my hand.

  His slow swallow against my palm might be the single sexiest thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. The squeeze of the muscles in his neck. The graceful roll of his Adam’s apple.

  “A torc,” I say, tightening my hand the tiniest bit. “He would have worn a torc.”

  Auden’s lips part. He draws in a shuddering breath.

  And then he nods, closing his eyes.

  I’ve never felt Auden’s neck like this. There were times—brief, stolen interludes—when I was permitted to caress him, allowed to explore his body, but it was never like this. Never me with power over him.

  I sit up so I can circle his neck with both hands, with thumbs on either side of his throat. I can trace the knob of his larynx and the curved ridge of his windpipe. I can settle my touch in the sickle-shaped notch of his collarbone. Everything that keeps him alive—all the air, all the blood—all of it can be spanned by my fingers alone.

  It’s a humbling, terrifying realization. To know he’s nothing but oxygen and carbon and hydrogen like the rest of us. It feels like a lie. Because how could it be true?

  How could a wild god be this vulnerable?

  I lift my fingers away and run them down his chest, down the tight furrows of his stomach to the waistband of his shorts.

  “He’d be naked too,” I say, “or mostly naked.”

  Auden raises an eyebrow at me. Even flat in the grass, he manages to look haughtily amused. “Oh, is that so?”

  “It is,” I confirm, even though I actually have no idea and why would I? All my information about human sacrifices and kings come from novels and low-budget fantasy movies. But it makes a kind of sense to me—if the point was to sacrifice the king while he was still hale and strong, then wouldn’t all that health and strength be on display?

  And anyway, I just really, really want to take his shirt off.

  He gives me a look like he knows what I’m up to, but he doesn’t stop me, he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t point out that this is a very, very dangerous game for us to play. He simply arches his back when I push the hem of his shirt up to his chest, he curls his shoulders off the ground when I tug it over his head.

  I toss it to the side when I’m done, and then it’s my turn to be distracted. By the firm lines of his chest, by the etched muscles of his stomach. By the flat coins of his nipples, which I run my fingers over.

  “This is hardly fair,” he rasps. “You can see me and I can’t see you.”

  There’s no hesitation to me pulling off my own shirt. I ball it up and throw it next to his in the grass.

  His eyes sear over my exposed skin so hotly I almost forget I am on top of him, that I’m the one in control. If looks alone could bind—if they could bite and bruise and fuck—then I’d be thoroughly used by now, I’d be transparently and indelibly his possession and belonging.

  But as it is, looks can’t do that. And even so, he keeps his cravings confined to his stare and to the restless roll of his hips between my thighs. He doesn’t issue any orders, he doesn’t take control. And when I circle his wrists with my fingers and pin them on either side of his head, he lets me. He allows it, even though there’s a fierce tension thrumming through his body as he does.

  I dip my face to his, close enough that we can feel each other’s breathing. “You’re being very obedient.”

  “A Thorn King would be right now,” he whispers. But there’s a small line between his brows, a small frown on his lips—and I realize that there’s another reason he’s being so amenable.

  He’s worried I’ll stop.

  I think I’m worried I’ll stop too. Because I know we shouldn’t, I know I should get up, I know there’s only one way this can end . . .

  I brush my lips over his.

  We both freeze
at the feeling of it, at the dazzling, sizzling thrill. It’s been so long, it’s been forever—ten weeks of raw, undiluted hell—and I can feel the firm warmth of his mouth everywhere, not just my lips, but on the insides of my thighs and along the column of my throat and on the arches of my feet.

  With one kiss, he’s kissed me everywhere, he’s owned me everywhere. Just as he did when we were teenagers in his garden. One kiss and I was forever his.

  “St. Sebastian,” he whispers against my mouth, but I don’t let him finish, I can’t. He’ll try to be sensible. He’ll point out once again that I was the reason we haven’t kissed in ten weeks, he’ll tell me to stop and think about what we’re doing. He’ll tell me to remember what I said in that wheat and barley tomb, that I’d hate myself for loving him.

  I don’t care. I don’t care right now.

  It’s Lammas and the thunder is growling over the hills and Auden Guest is underneath me, his wrists in my hands, and I want it too much. I want him too much.

  Everything else be damned, however literally that may be.

  I slot my lips against his and then slowly, torturously drag my mouth along them, letting him feel the piercing running along his lower lip.

  He is all quivering tension underneath me; all rolling hips and jerky breaths. Above the place where my fingers cuff his wrists, his hands clench and flex and clench, like a big cat sheathing and unsheathing its claws.

  “They might have drugged him,” I say. When I speak, my lips graze and rub against his—the very act of speaking creating the kiss itself.

  “Drugged whom?” Auden asks dazedly.

  “The king. Sacrifices were often drugged.”

  “And this . . . are you drugging me right now?”

  I let my tongue flicker against the arched underside of his upper lip. He moans up into our kiss, his pelvis seeking friction against me.

  “You tell me,” I whisper. And then I open my mouth to his.

  It’s impossible to separate the parts from the whole—the heat, the silky wetness of it, the demanding strokes of his tongue, which is the one part of him that can’t pretend submission even for a game.

  The taste of him, like mint and tea, and the feeling of his groans against my mouth.

  His body arching up to meet mine, and the agonizingly carnal sensation of our bare chests and stomachs meeting, and the inevitable moment the angles all match up and our clothed erections slide against each other.

  I can’t stop kissing him, I can’t ever stop. How have I ever stopped? How have I ever torn away from a mouth like this—commanding, sophisticated, filthy?

  So filthy. This mouth that can speak Latin, that can discern the balance in a good Burgundy, can effortlessly rattle off the names of obscure philosophers, this same mouth is now predatory against mine. His tongue plunders every corner of me, his teeth catch on my piercing and pull, his lips seal over one of my lips and suck until I whimper.

  He’s mating with my mouth, and my body responds like it’s being mounted. Like his cock is already pushing inside me and seeking out my tightest, hottest places. Like his fist is already shuttling up and down my dick. My testicles are pulled tight, and my erection throbs against my zipper.

  And all because of those firm lips, that seeking tongue. Those needy, greedy strokes and nips.

  I manage to pull away long enough to look down at him, and he does look like a man drugged now, like someone dosed well past sobriety. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, and his lips swollen and wet. The high contours of his cheekbones are dusted with pink.

  Underneath me, his chest heaves and heaves and heaves.

  “What next?” he asks, blinking up at me, and his eyes are so bright, his pupils so blown, that I know I could say anything to him, I could do anything I wanted.

  Anything anything.

  “They’d need your blood,” I say, and then I bend my head and bite him over the heart, just as he once did to me. “There’d be knives.”

  I soothe the spot I just bit with my tongue and then bite him again. He jolts underneath me, and then trembles. I do it again, and again, moving my mouth to bite him everywhere I please—his collarbone, under his nipple, the juicy muscle between his neck and his shoulder. I let go of his wrists so that I can work my way down his stomach, nipping and licking, and he gasps.

  Oh, how he gasps.

  “These—are magnificent—knives—” he manages to say as my tongue dances around his navel.

  I find the trail of silky hair leading down, and I lick through it, I bite my way down it until I get to the waistband of his shorts.

  We both go still.

  This is the moment, this is the choice. After this, there’s no pretending, because brothers don’t do this. They don’t slowly pop the button on their brother’s shorts, as I’m doing now. They don’t unzip the zipper and groan when they see there’s no underpants underneath, not even the poncy designer briefs Auden normally likes. They don’t drag their lip piercing up and down the velvet skin of their brother’s bare erection.

  They don’t.

  They don’t.

  “St. Sebastian,” says Auden, lifting his head to look down at me over his stomach.

  I look up at him from between his legs, my mouth hovering over his thickness. “Yes?”

  He blinks at me. “Why?” he asks, and he doesn’t have to elaborate, I know what he’s asking.

  Why am I doing this?

  Why now? Why this way?

  I tell him the truth. “I don’t know.”

  He stares at me for a long moment, his pupils still blown, his lips still parted. A man deeply drugged. “I should need a better answer,” he murmurs. But then his head drops back into the grass, and he doesn’t speak again—not until I suck the tip of him into my mouth and I hear him grunt my name.

  He is, as he is in all other ways, perfect here. Eight and a half straight inches, thick and proud and crowned with a deliciously flared tip. The hair here is darker than the hair on his head, the color of chocolate rather than cinnamon, and it’s short and silky and curled in perfect waves, as if he was painted or sculpted and not grown all messy and crooked like the rest of us.

  I nuzzle the curls at his base and breathe him in—clean skin and the lingering smell of his soap—and then I tease my tongue along the soft underside of him. I let him between my lips and seal my mouth around his length.

  He obeys the unspoken rules of our game, and he doesn’t grab my head and fuck my mouth deeper, he doesn’t search for my throat to hold as his cock nudges in and out of it. He keeps his hands to his sides—although they’re hardly passive in their obedience. He rips at the grass next to him, clutches and yanks at it as I take him deep in my mouth for the first time since Beltane.

  He’s mine, like this, mine in a way that’s so potent I’m nearly giddy with it. He quivers for me, he gasps for me. He grabs at grass and clenches his jaw for me. And when I crawl back up over him, there’s nothing but wild desperation in his face. A king at his final battle. A god at the burning of his temple.

  “Don’t stop,” he begs. “Don’t leave.”

  “I won’t,” I promise, kissing him again. “I won’t. I’m not done yet.”

  “Yours,” he says, still begging. “Let me feel yours.”

  Lust punches me right in the stomach. I’m fumbling at my zipper almost before he even finishes speaking, shoving my jeans down far enough to expose myself. The minute I lower my hips and rub against his slick erection, we both grunt. His cock is so hard, so slippery, and I have to press all the way against him to keep us together the way we need. Press so that our stomachs and chest are flush, our legs a tangle of denim and yellow cotton-silk blend. When I grind against him, I feel the hot bar of him beneath me; each thrust of my hips has us both exhaling in sharp, short bursts. Mating, but cock to cock.

  I won’t last like this, it’s too hot. Too, too hot.

  “You would be tied up,” I say softly, determined to finish this little game of ours. I find his wri
sts with my hands again. “Tied up and bound.”

  I pin him to the ground by his wrists, by his hips, and continue rutting against him. His eyelashes flutter up at me in the headiest way; he’s beyond himself, beyond his normal restraint and sophistication, he’s nothing but a horny, pleading boy underneath me. No longer the Thorn King.

  Just a man needing the most essential release men need.

  “You wore your torc, you were drugged and bound,” I say low in his ear, still thrusting against him. “And now all that’s left is to give it up. All that’s left is to let go.”

  “Yes,” he murmurs, his eyes closing. “Yes, St. Sebastian.”

  And with a long, hard shudder, he releases against me, spending onto both our stomachs and cocks.

  And then it happens. The inevitable. What was inevitable from the kiss, from before the kiss, from when I saw him sitting against the wall while thunder rolled around us.

  Pleasure scissors deep in my gut, knifing me with delirium, with jabs of euphoric and primal sensation. My spirit is huge, expansive, as big as the storm, and my body is nothing but heat and flesh and need, rutting in primal, biological drive. Something shears free at the base of my spine, like a strung wire being cut, and the whiplash nearly kills me. I growl wildly into Auden’s neck as my hips pump and pump against his, as I ejaculate all over us both, spurting heavily over and over and over again.

  It’s not an orgasm, it’s a death. It’s a draining, an emptying. Ten weeks of longing, two and a half months of denial, all of it pumping out of me like blood from a vein, hot and life-giving. Spilling and spilling and spilling.

  I don’t even realize I’m crying until it’s over and I’m slumped against him. The tears run down to my nose and drip onto his throat, where they slide in clear tracks down to the grass.

  “I’m sorry,” Auden whispers underneath me, and for a moment, I think he means about what we’ve just done, about the Thorn King game and what I used it for. But as he rolls me to my back and reaches for his bag, I realize he’s not apologizing for what we just did, but for what he’s about to do. “I’m sorry,” he says again, moving me to my stomach and then crawling over me. “I need it too much from you. Just one more time.”