A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel Book 1)

by Sierra Simone

  Both drive her wild, make her writhe and make her skin glisten with the fine, misty sweat of good sex, and then Rebecca leans down and brushes her hair from her damp forehead.

  “Do you want Poe’s fingers?” she asks softly. “They might make you come, if she puts them inside you.”

  For the first time since I crawled between her legs, I feel the wrong kind of tension steal over Delphine. Her thighs stop quivering and go stiff; her belly freezes along with her breath. All from the idea of my fingers inside her.

  “I—I don’t—” her voice is panicked, distant-sounding, as if she’s getting smaller and smaller inside of herself. “I don’t think I can—”

  “Shhh,” Rebecca soothes, moving closer and dropping kisses on Delphine’s forehead. “Shhh now. This is for you, this little slut is all yours to use however you like. You don’t have to have anything you don’t want, ever, ever. Not while I’m here, not ever again.”

  I look up just in time to see the look Delphine gives Rebecca and the look Rebecca gives her right back. A look full of fierce determination and utter trust, made hot and sparkling by the light of the fire.

  How can these be the same two women who fight literally all the fucking time ?

  That’s the power of kink, I guess, or maybe even ritual space. The outside world and the past don’t have to exist here: there’s no logic but the here-logic, the now-logic, and nothing else matters.

  Rebecca keeps her eyes on Delphine as she reaches over and flicks my arm. The message is so clear she doesn’t even need to speak it aloud. Back to work, little slut.

  I return my hands to Delphine’s thighs so I can gentle her and soothe her as I lick and suck. So that she can feel cherished and treasured as my tongue and lips—and yes, even the careful tugs and scrapes of my teeth—coax her tighter and tighter and higher and higher.

  She comes with a long, low moan that pulls deep strings in my belly, her thighs closing around my ears and her hands shoving into my hair and holding me fast to her, as if I would move away when she’s contracting so sexily against my mouth, when she’s giving me more and more of the tart-sweet taste of her.

  After Delphine gradually comes down, her body relaxing into a stretch of satisfaction, Rebecca urges me back to where I was. I nestle between Auden and Saint, who are near-identical pillars of male torment right now, hard and flushed-faced.

  “Do you want fingers?” Rebecca asks, leaning down so that only I can hear the question.

  “Yes,” I whisper eagerly.

  “Do you know if you still have a hymen?” she asks, still very quietly. “Her fingers may hurt, if you do. There might be blood.”

  I can actually feel my eyes light up as she says this, and then she rolls her eyes.

  “I forgot who I was talking to,” she mutters to herself. “Fingers and hurt it is.”

  I lay my head back onto the blankets, closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. I don’t know what to expect or how to feel, but I do know the way I felt with Auden’s hand in my panties was enough to push me to the brink. I’m not even sure how I’ll handle anything more.

  Warm fingertips brush hair away from my forehead, and I open my eyes to see that Saint has moved to his side next to me, leaning on one elbow and searching my face while he carefully caresses any tickling hairs away from my skin.

  “Are you ready?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

  “I am,” I say. “Are you?”

  He takes a moment to answer, and in that moment, the fire jumps, and I see his coffee-hued eyes steeped with shameful lust. “I am. I’m more than okay.”

  Delphine has moved between my legs now and I hear Rebecca murmuring to her—encouragement or instructions, I’m not sure—and that’s when Auden gently turns my face away from Saint’s to his.

  “Your mouth is still wet from her,” Auden tells me.

  “Yes,” I say.

  He doesn’t answer in words. He presses his mouth to mine, and dances his tongue over my lips until he’s licked off every bit of the woman he never had a chance to taste for himself. And then he parts my mouth with an insistent kiss and kisses every trace of Delphine Dansey right out of me.

  I’m breathless when he finishes, breathless from the kiss itself and the jealousy behind it, from his ragged need and the expression of pained gratitude he gives me when he’s finished.

  “Thank you,” he says quietly. “I needed that.”

  My heart twists—for him or for me, I’m not sure which—and I’m relieved to see that Delphine and Rebecca were so wrapped up in their soft conversation that they didn’t notice anything unusual between Auden and me, they didn’t notice how he kissed me as the farewell he’d never get to give Delphine herself.

  Saint notices though. “What’s going on?” he asks Auden and me. “Between you two?”

  Now’s not really the time to tell him that Delphine dumped Auden, so I only answer the question he asked. “Nothing’s going on,” I say, and I mostly mean it.

  “Nothing yet ,” Auden murmurs in my ear and I snap my gaze over to his. His eyes burn with meaning.

  “Shut the fuck up, all of you,” Rebecca interrupts in a pleasant voice, finally done instructing Delphine. “Poe, spread your legs.”

  I do, and Delphine smiles at me. A slightly mischievous smile, as if her own orgasm has emboldened her, or maybe it’s Rebecca at her side, coaching her and telling her what to do. How to lean forward and cup my pussy so hard that my back arches off the blankets. How to take my tight nipples between her teeth and tug just enough to make me cry out, suck just sweetly enough to make me melt back down into the blankets.

  She does all these things and more, she daisy-chains gentle bites down my stomach and my thighs, she grinds the heel of her palm against my clit until I’ve completely slicked the palm of her hand. She inches back and dips her head down and seals her lips over my bud. She sucks and licks, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt, it’s both more delicate and also filthier than I ever could have imagined, having someone eat you there. Having their tongue flutter all silky and naughty and curious in your private places.

  Within moments, I’m there, I’m about to come—so of course that’s when Rebecca tells Delphine to pull back.

  I whimper in disappointment, and I think maybe Saint does too. His legs and feet keep moving restlessly against the blankets, and I wonder how badly he needs to touch himself right now, I wonder if that’s allowed. The realization that everyone right now is probably throbbing with the need to come shivers over me, and I have a brief fantasy of all of them—every last one of them—using my body to sate themselves. My mouth and my tight cunt and everything, until every last person is spent and loose.

  I can’t stop shivering now that I’ve thought of it. I want it, I want to be used, and I want it with a ferocity I wouldn’t have thought possible before this moment. I want it like I want my thorn-bitten hand to keep hurting. I want it like I want Delphine to tongue-fuck me again.

  My lord crawls over me with her hair tickling my skin and a hungry look on her face, and then she’s on me, she’s kissing me, she’s kissing me like she owns me. Kissing me like I’m her bride, her living saint, and she’s going to worship me by consuming me. Her fingers move back down, circling my clit until I’m too distracted to kiss her back properly, and then Rebecca says to Delphine, “Start with one.”

  Delphine starts with one.

  One slender finger tracing my inner petals until she finds the place where my body opens, stroking all around until my hips are arching to her, and then with another deep kiss, she pushes her finger inside.

  It doesn’t go all the way in, she’s stopped at the second knuckle, but the slide of it is so good, so good and I already want more.

  I buck shamelessly for it, trying to chase her touch, lure her into slipping another finger in, and Rebecca just shakes her head at me, like she’s witnessing something tragic.

  “Our poor little slut,” she says to Delphine. “I think she can’t hel
p herself. I think you better give her more.”

  Delphine gives me another finger, sliding the first one out and then pushing back in with two. I make a happy noise, my toes curling as she turns her hand so that her fingers drag against something swollen and sensitive inside me on her way out. Her fingers aren’t as big as Auden’s, so I’m not stretched too wide—at least not until she adds a third finger, and the stretch of that makes me thrash and twist.

  “Should we have the boys hold her still, you think?” Rebecca asks Delphine.

  Delphine’s eyes glint down at me as she says with a wicked grin, “Yes, I think we should.”

  Saint and Auden need no further prodding; Saint moves so that my head is pillowed on his arm and his body is pressed to the side of mine, and Auden moves closer too, taking my bloody, aching hand in his. Both men hook strong legs around my thighs, trapping me open, keeping me spread like a pinned butterfly on a board.

  And something changes then. I’m not sure exactly what, only that it does. Only that we go from two submissive virgins exploring sex with the help of a Domme back to lord and bride so fast that I can’t believe we ever slipped out of the roles at all. Delphine is braced over me, fire painting every gold part of her scarlet and shadows dancing over her face as she begins fucking me in earnest, and the trees are all around us and so are the crumbled walls and the altar and the thorns hidden in the dark.

  I have that feeling again, like I’m surrounded by fluttering veils, like God and magic and history are seeping out from underneath those veils and seeping into me, and just by being here, I’m being made holy and anointed. I remember the feeling of cupping a blessing in my palm, but now it’s as if I’m cupping a blessing inside my entire body, and it’s time for me to spill it out, and if I don’t spill it out, I’ll burst with it, I’ll simply burst.

  Rebecca doesn’t need to tell Delphine to push harder, Delphine’s as caught up in the moment as I am, as much the lord as I am the saint, and so she drives her fingers inexorably in, in, in, wedging me and spreading me and doing something that hurts so much that I start crying.

  Delphine pauses but I shake my head at her. “Keep going,” I breathe. “I like to cry.”

  I really do.

  The pain is like stabbing or biting or—fuck, tearing —that’s what it is, I’m being torn open, and I know the moment it happens, because I arch my neck and let out a low scream, and the minute I do, my clit swells up and my orgasm swells up right along with it, ready to pop like a balloon. Delphine fucks me with slow, wide movements, her thumb finding my clit to rub it in time with the thrusts of her hand, and the pain has spun itself into gold now, into pure, glimmering gold. It feels so good to be fucked, so good like I never want it to stop; I want to be fucked forever, I want fucking to be my new job. I could stay poised in this moment for the rest of my life, with the fire jumping and the distant beat of drums thudding through my blood, and the memory of pain feeding the greedy pleasure building in my womb.

  Everything is so tight, so urgent, and my lord braced over me and fucking me is suddenly the most necessary and natural thing in the world, and I’m so frenzied and delirious with the need to come that I almost feel like I’m floating, like I’m holding every orgasm that ever was and ever will be inside my body, and that when I come, I’ll flood the entire fucking world with relief and rapture and joy. The rain starts up again at that very moment, as if ready to flood the world with me, raining softly, softly, but with a proud, tossing wind that whips at the fire and creaks through the trees.

  This is what I was missing , I think, feeling the blood and the pain and the weight of my temporary sainthood in my belly. This was the gateway all along .

  This was worth waiting for.

  A few things happen then, to make me flood the world, to make me uncup my saint’s blessing and spill it out.

  The first is that Delphine, after a long, hungry look at where her hand fucks me, moves herself between Saint’s leg and my own so that she can push the wet and needy part of herself against my thigh. She rocks and grinds as her hand does the same, and when I catch Rebecca looking at her, I see a woman only the barest sliver of self-control away from taking what she wants. Like she wants to tackle Delphine and then devour her from top to bottom, which only makes me want to be devoured by both of them in turn.

  The second thing is that Auden sits up, and he moves down so that he can watch everything Delphine does to me. His eyes trace hungry lines up and down my body, they blaze every trail that I know he wants to make with his own fingers, his own mouth, and then without warning, without preamble—he does. He does track his fingers up my leg, he does bend down so that he can kiss my thigh. And then he kisses Delphine’s wrist, the base of her thumb, kisses the flexing knuckles where her fingers meet her hand, he kisses higher up still. Until I feel the painted lines of his kisses all over my cunt, against the tight, wet places where Delphine’s fingers stretch me open. And he licks, nuzzles, bites, and samples me to distraction, winding me up and up and up, until he sits up again, his mouth swollen from kissing and stained red with virgin blood like a storybook vampire’s.

  And the third thing to happen is that Auden Guest moves back against me and crushes my mouth in a kiss like no other kiss I’ve ever had, no other kiss I’ve ever dreamed of, because it’s ferocious and cruel and full of promises, and yes—it’s tinged with the metallic salt of my most intimate blood. Saint utters a low curse from next to me, something fast and reckless and vicious, and then joins him in our branding, carnal kiss, seeking out my taste from Auden’s lips as well as my own. Both men bend over me, their mouths fighting for mine, and maybe fighting for each other’s too, and it’s wet and open and raw and angry and claiming.

  It’s our wedding kiss all over again.

  Auden squeezes my thorn-throbbing hand, and it’s like someone pushing a detonator button. The pain runs through me like power through a line, sizzling right down to my cunt, and boom .

  I blow.

  I flood, I pour out, I bless. My body arches and contracts around Delphine’s hand, unearthly sounds are torn from my throat and I sob and thrash and moan as Saint and Auden kiss the sobs and moans right off my lips and then kiss them right off each other’s. At that moment, there’s no question that I’m a saint, that I’m a goddess, that something in me has awakened, and the rain answers my divinity in kind, abruptly roaring into a windy, fierce downpour as I scream my pleasure up into the night.

  And right as the hardest, tightest, best orgasm of my life peaks, lightning splits the sky open and strikes a massive tree, sending it crashing down into the chapel and onto the altar itself.

  Chapter 26

  The tree is a problem for tomorrow, there’s no question about that. Our eyes are too seared from the flash to see properly, our ears are still ringing with the earth-shaking clap of the lightning hitting earth, and anyway, the trunk is still nipping with flames, although the rain is doing its best to put a stop to that.

  It’s clear we need to get back to the house, but Becket insists we each have a nibble of cookie and a drink straight from the Prosecco bottle to finish the ritual. Rebecca makes sure Delphine and I only have the tiniest sips possible, but she makes us eat a whole cookie each and then shoves a bottle of water at us, like any good Domme monitoring for sub-drop would. And so, huddled under the noisy, flapping tarp, we still share our version of cakes and ale, watching the fire die and the wind yank angrily at the branches of the tree now half-laying across the altar. The blown-in rain sluices the blood off my left hand, and when I look over at Delphine, I can see by the guttering light of the fire that she has blood running from both her hands. Not much, but it’s definitely there, definitely visible even with all the sparks and floaters from the lightning strike chasing across my field of view.

  It takes me a minute to understand why she has blood on her right hand too, but once I do, I blush.

  Becket says we have to close out the circle, and so Auden throws a coat over me while Rebecca and
Becket do the same for Delphine, and wearing nothing but my coat and my rain boots, I walk through the slicing rain with my friends. We douse the flames of each lantern if they’re still burning, and we thank St. Brigid.

  We stop at the altar, but there’s no time to figure out where the other lantern went, if it’s crushed under the tree or what, because it’s now so cold, so windy, that it’s absolutely necessary for us to get back to the warm indoors. Auden and Becket make sure the big fire is completely dead, and then they make noises about coming back for everything in the morning, but I don’t pay much attention to anything they’re saying, because everything feels so blissful and unreal and marvelous.

  I’m smiling when Auden takes my hand to lead me out of the ruins. The ground is now so wet that my rain boots come free with a sucking noise every time I lift my foot and they splash every time I set it down. Suck-SPLASH. Suck-SPLASH. It makes me feel like a little girl again, playing alone in my backyard while the rain dropped down and my mother graded coursework by the kitchen window. The memory makes me smile even bigger.

  “What are you smiling about?” Auden asks, puzzled.

  “Subspace,” Rebecca answers for me over the rain. “Walk with her back to the house so she doesn’t float off to the moon.” And then she takes Delphine’s arm and tugs her down the stone row, Delphine chattering happily all the while in a giddy, punch-drunk voice. Becket follows and steadies Delphine every now and again when she sways.

  “Right,” Auden says with a sigh. “Come on, Proserpina.”

  “Okay,” I say dreamily.

  Saint appears like a ghost next to me, mud-soaked and watchful, as we leave the clearing and enter the woods. “Do you hurt?” he asks me in a worried voice. “You’re staggering a little.”

  “I only hurt in the best way,” I smile, but even with all the endorphins and sex-chemicals crashing through my brain, I can still sense that I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow.

  Saint gets out his flashlight, and it’s a good one, a strong one, the kind that a man who works with his hands owns, and it cuts a sharp cone of light over the path. Rain glitters in its beam, streaking in mesmerizing silver streaks, and I stumble when I try to reach out and catch one.