A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  I wish I could tell him about the endorphins, which even now are coaxing heady, dizzy bliss to the surface. I wish I could tell him how the red heat on my ass has sunk into every secret place in my body, kindling warmth at the tips of my breasts and at the juncture of my thighs. I wish I could tell him that he’s beautiful. As beautiful as this spanking feels, which is the kind of beauty that comes with bitter pain and is all the better for it.

  Auden’s about to do number thirty-four now, and I’m unable to stay completely still. I’m squirming in his lap, and each squirm adds a delicious grind of friction from my clit against his thigh, and also sends me grinding against his cock too.

  This time, Auden doesn’t ask me to stop.

  A massive thwack makes the whole room suck in its breath, even Auden—who is undoubtedly feeling the sting in his hand right now. I manage to moan out thirty-four, almost beyond all thought, beyond anything but the heat on my bottom and the yanking, angry orgasm building behind my clit. For the first time in my life, I’m about to come with someone else. With several someone elses.

  And also for the first time in my life, there’s no feeling of wait, there’s no sense that somehow this isn’t right. It all feels right, nothing feels wrong, and maybe it will happen, if I could have just another moment of grinding against Auden’s muscular thigh . . .

  Spank number thirty-five makes me scream. It sears through me, it sets every nerve ending jangling with a surfeit of pain, and I’m rolling my face against the couch cushions, the cushions that are wet with my own tears. My orgasm is hovering, hot, ready to tear me apart if only I could just—

  Two things happen at once.

  Firstly, Rebecca kneels beside the sofa and gently turns my head toward hers. Her lips brush against my tear-wet mouth, and then she gives me a deep and appreciative kiss. I moan into her mouth, into the softness of it, the satin touch of her tongue and the warmth of her lips. I moan again when she pulls away and the kiss is over.

  And secondly, I notice that Auden is completely frozen underneath me, not moving at all—except for the hand that’s come to rest on my bottom, that seems to be reflexively soothing the place he just hurt. I also notice a hot, wet feeling against my hip.

  Auden came.

  He came from spanking me.

  I brace up on my elbows and look at him over my shoulder. He looks stunned, lost, no longer the spoiled boy-king, but the wandering knight who’s just seen the Grail . . . only to have it disappear before he could close his fingers around it.

  Those long, long eyelashes flutter as he closes his eyes and drops his head back against the sofa, and the silence around the room breaks when Becket says quietly, “Saint’s gone.”

  Chapter 13

  Somehow, Auden and I manage to extricate ourselves with minimal embarrassment. The dim room hides the evidence of the pleasure he took in my spanking, and when I stand and Rebecca helps me pull up my tights—checking my ass first to make sure I don’t need any other care—the expressions on Becket and Delphine’s faces are not condemning or concerned. Both of them look near drunk—pale skin flushed with hungry, glassy eyes—the expression of voyeurs with whetted appetites.

  But I can’t sate those appetites right now. The only thing I want to do is find St. Sebastian and . . . well, I don’t know yet.

  Just find him, I guess, and hope that I haven’t irreparably broken something.

  The minute my skirt is back down, I’m padding quickly across the floor and out into the corridor, shivering against the cold air seeping in from the broken window. I wrap my arms around my chest as I go into the main hall and see that Saint has opened one of the big front doors and is about to leave.

  “Wait!” I call out, rushing forward. “Don’t go!”

  Saint stops, but he doesn’t turn and neither does he close the door, which sends the icy wind whipping through the high hall, and sleet bouncing against his feet.

  So I shut the door for him, firmly, standing between him and it until he looks at me.

  “What is it?” he asks tiredly.

  “That’s my question to ask,” I say. “You should be riding with Becket if you want to leave. Not planning to slog home in the ice and wind in order to prove a point.”

  He lets out a joyless bark of laughter at that. “To prove a point? Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Well, isn’t it? You don’t have to pretend with me, St. Sebastian, I’m not afraid of your honesty. And I’m not new to people having ideas about the things people like Rebecca and I enjoy—”

  Saint braces a hand against the door next to my head and stares at me with those dark eyes. He’s nibbling thoughtfully at his lip piercing, as if choosing exactly what he wants to say next.

  “I’ve never done what you did in there,” he finally says. “Or what Rebecca did. I’ve never hurt someone, and I’ve never been hurt—for fun, I mean. For—” there’s the faintest flush under his cheeks now, “—for pleasure. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t wanted it, you know. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been craving it for years, that I don’t fantasize about it—”

  He catches his breath; there’s shame everywhere through him, and it’s so delicious that I just want to lick it right off his body and make it my own. “Look at me, Poe,” he pleads, and when I search his face, he shakes his head and dips his chin. “I mean, look.”

  I look down, and there’s the firm, heavy proof of his response.

  Fuck. Me. I slump against the door, lust coiled so tightly in my belly that it almost hurts.

  “Oh, Saint,” I murmur. “Was that because you wanted to be me? Or Rebecca?”

  “I don’t know,” he says helplessly. “I always thought I wanted to be both, but then when I saw Auden's face—”

  And here he cuts himself off for good, refusing to say more.

  “Saint . . .” I try to nudge, but he seals his lips closed, looking like he wants to punch himself for even uttering Auden’s name aloud. The little metal ball underneath his lip is pulled tight enough that it dents the soft skin there, and I can’t stop staring at it. I can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to take that little ball between my teeth and tug.

  In an ideal world, I’d be spanked again for taking such a liberty, but alas . . .

  “I want to kiss you,” I blurt out and his eyes widen, then darken even more as his eyes dip to my mouth. “I’m sorry and I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I just had to tell you—”

  His lips are hard against mine before I can even speak another word.

  The kiss is desperate, grasping, gasping, with tongues and teeth, and everywhere touching, everywhere my fingers digging into Saint’s arms while his hands clutch and fist at my skirt. I can smell him, and he smells like Thornchapel too, except smoky and crisp somehow, the way a fire smells burning against a cold night.

  The kiss is like fire too, consuming, roaring, volcanic. I feel wild, unstable—and Saint is even wilder than I feel, cupping my ass and shoving me up against the door, pinning me there as he plunders my mouth with vicious, fitful frenzy. His lip piercing digs insistently into my lip, and I want to die it feels so good, I want to worship it and write poems to it, and every time he moves his mouth, I feel its delicious little path over my lips; I chase after it with my tongue.

  I circle my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, and the pain of my sore bottom against his palms is like heaven as we kiss and arch together, his erection finding just the spot to grind against, his chest pressing hard against my swollen breasts. I can’t breathe, I don’t want to breathe, and with my hurting ass and the rough, cold door behind me, I have such a perfect balance of pleasure and pain that I know I could come from this. My thwarted orgasm from earlier is tightening and tightening, it’s beckoning me, it’s begging me, and I’m ready to follow, I’m so very ready—

  Saint breaks our kiss, our faces still so close that our noses nearly touch, and he blinks a few times, as if he’s not sure where he is or what he�
��s doing. I try to pull him back, I want more, more, more, but he sets me down and takes a big step back, his hands balled into fists and his expression anguished. When he meets my confused stare, he looks at me like I’ve accused him of something.

  But I haven’t, I’m not, I don’t understand—

  “This can’t—” his voice breaks and he looks away, swallowing. “This can’t happen. We can’t happen. Do you understand?”

  “No, I don’t fucking understand,” I say, my not understanding slowly giving way to hurt, humiliated anger. “I don’t know what to think at all right now.”

  He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, toying with the barbell. He looks miserable.

  It would be so easy right now to whip him with my words and scourge him with all the bitter rejection I feel. And I want to, really want to, even though I’ve never been a whipper—never before St. Sebastian at least. I also want to plead, to coax, to chase him away from we can't happen.

  I want him to be mine. Or I want to deny him the right to ever call me his.

  I want to heal him and I want to hurt him.

  All because of one broken kiss.

  I take a deep breath, I remember who I want to be. That I want to believe the best of people, that I want to be honest and resilient—not someone who doesn’t listen, not some discourteous, feral sub girl who lashes out with hurt pride.

  And if that’s who I want to be, then I owe Saint what he’s asked for. My understanding.

  “I like you,” I say finally. “I like you a lot. Not just because we were kids once, but because I’m intrigued by the man you are now. I’m . . . I don’t even know how to describe it without sounding trite, but I’m drawn to you, St. Sebastian. I’m coded to you somehow, like every part of me just responds to every part of you. But it’s okay if it’s not reciprocated, if you don’t feel the same way, because sometimes that’s just what happens, and I promise to honor that.”

  Saint looks angry and pained at turns—he pivots to face the far end of the hall, like he needs to see something other than me while he thinks, and then he pivots back. “It’s reciprocated, Proserpina,” he says in a low, tight voice. “It’s very, very reciprocated. But there are other things to consider. Auden—”

  “—is not going to fire me,” I interrupt, completely and utterly done with this excuse. “I know you’ve had your differences, but that’s not something he’d do.”

  Saint’s voice is still tight when he says, “There’s more to Auden than you think. He can be incredibly cruel when he likes.”

  “Is that truly it? You’re worried I’ll be fired if we fuck?”

  Saint winces at that word. “Poe.”

  I study his face, and suddenly I get the creeping feeling that there’s more, that there’s something else. “What aren’t you telling me?” I ask. “What aren’t you saying?”

  Saint takes so long to answer that it’s almost its own answer. I rest my head back against the cold door with a sudden wave of exhaustion.

  The sleet that had blown in earlier is now melting around my tights-covered feet into a frigid pool of wet.

  “It’s complicated,” he tells me. “And I am reasonably certain you wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell you, because I don’t even believe it myself. Not really.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I ask.

  He pushes his palms into his eyes. “Nothing,” he mumbles through his hands. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “This is bullshit,” I say, any nice and understanding words turning sour in my mouth. “You won’t kiss me because of a reason you won’t tell me and that you don’t even believe yourself? You know, all you had to say was ‘Poe, I don’t want to kiss you.’ You don’t have to make fools out of us both to make sure we don’t do it again.”

  His hands drop away from his face, his eyes blazing with an inky heat. “Jesus fucking Christ, Poe! What about that kiss would make you think I wouldn’t want to do it again?”

  “I don’t know!” I shout back, fully aware that I’ve abandoned all my good intentions not to be the feral sub girl, but I can’t help it. None of this makes sense, none of it, and I may not deserve much, but I at least deserve the truth. Or even a better fucking lie. “I don’t know what to think at all!”

  His lips press together in a bloodless, angry line, and he slams his hand against the door by my head. Just like he did earlier when we were kissing, except this time when he ducks his head low, it’s not to touch mouths but to utter low, acid words.

  “You want to know so fucking badly? Fine. The entire village of Thorncombe thinks that you should marry Auden. Auden’s father wanted you to marry Auden. Everybody in this goddamn place thinks you should marry Auden, except Delphine.”

  And Auden himself.

  I try to speak the words out loud, but I can’t, I’m too stunned, my mind still tripping over this weird and untrustworthy little speech of his. “The village doesn’t know me,” is all I can manage, all I can produce as a somewhat logical response.

  “Don’t they?” Saint asks bitterly. “You haven’t noticed any stares as you’ve walked around? Any people watching you?”

  I open my mouth to protest.

  But I can’t.

  Saint goes on, nodding at my aborted response. “They’ve known about you since you were a child, or at least they’ve known about Ralph Guest’s plans to marry you to his son once you two were old enough.”

  “That’s—” I shake my head, still not making sense of anything Saint is saying. “Why would it matter what Ralph wanted? Why would it matter to the people in the village?”

  “Of course it matters what the Guests want. You don’t pick up on the vibe here? Like this whole place is cloistered in a strange, timeless little bubble? Like a Sarah Waters novel but with pizza delivery?”

  He’s right, but he goes on before I can agree with him.

  “I don’t know why or how, but somehow they learned Ralph thought you were destined to marry his son, and that was that.”

  “But that’s stupid,” I protest. “He’s engaged. Surely they know that from Abby working here.”

  Saint’s hand falls from the door and he sighs. “They know. And they still think you’re some kind of chosen bride for the lord of the manor.”

  “It’s . . . it’s just something for people to gossip about, that’s all.” But even as I say it, I remember Auden’s words in my room on my first day here, I remember him saying his father didn’t approve of his engagement to Delphine. Could that have possibly had anything to do with me?

  No. No, that’s ridiculous. Bananas. Saint’s got the story mixed up somehow, or maybe the villagers do, but there’s no way any of this can be true. “I’m not a chosen bride,” I say firmly. “For anyone. I don’t belong to Auden just because his father willed it so, and I’m certainly not going to worry about what the people of Thorncombe think.”

  Saint almost speaks then. He lifts a hand and parts his lips, and whatever it is that he’s about to say has him even more bitter than before.

  But he doesn’t say it. Instead, he closes his mouth and then regards me with half-lidded eyes, more of that watchful hunger he seems to have around me so often.

  After a long moment like this, he finally speaks, and when he does, he speaks softly. “I have to care what they think, Poe. I don’t have friends here and I barely have family. I don’t have a real home, I don’t have anything I can call mine. All I have is this small, scratched-out life, and if I want to keep scratching it out, I can’t be any more of a pariah than I already am. I want you more than words can say, but I also want to survive here when you’re gone, and for that to happen, the most we can be is friends.”

  The words drop through the air like swords. Terrible and final.

  He leans his forehead against mine, his eyes closing. “Can you understand now?”

  Defeated, I nod.

  What is my lust compared with his future? What are kisses when he needs neighbors?

&n
bsp; “Yes, Saint,” I whisper as he lifts his head away from mine. “I see now.”

  He stares down at me, and for a moment, I imagine I see something else in his face—guilt, maybe? A certain evasiveness?—but then it’s gone, and he leans in to give me a cautious, chaste kiss on the cheek.

  “I hope we can be friends,” he says in a quiet voice. “I hope there’s at least that.”

  I don’t like the way the words feel leaving my lips, but I say them anyway. “We’ll be friends, Saint, and that will be enough.”

  He lets out a breath, as if he doesn’t like hearing the words any more than I like saying them, but before either of us can say anything else to disrupt our new balance, Becket comes into the room with Saint’s coat in his arms.

  “I think the party's over,” Becket says, walking toward us and extending the coat, which Saint takes with a nod. “Auden spent about ten minutes glaring at the fire and then stalked upstairs, and then Rebecca decided she’d had enough too. It’s just Delphine in there now.”

  “I’ll go help her clean up,” I say. “Goodbye, Saint. Becket.”

  Saint doesn’t look at me as he reaches for the door. “Good night, Proserpina.”

  Becket gives me an apologetic sort of kiss on the cheek, as if wanting to make up for Saint’s curtness, and then he follows Saint into the cold, leaving me alone in the hall.

  When I get back to the library, Delphine has almost everything picked up, and we work together in companionable silence until the room is back to rights. Together we cover up the remaining logs in the fireplace and turn out the lights.

  My mind is on Saint the entire time. I don't cry, I don't breathe a word of anything to Delphine, but I feel it huge and hulking inside my chest, like some awful tree with burrowing roots and crowding, scratching branches.

  It scratches rejection and disappointment everywhere inside me.

  I try to ignore it.

  After we're done and we’re walking up the stairs, Delphine says, completely out of nowhere, “Did you like it when Rebecca spanked you?”

  Surprised—and a little grateful to have something to think about that's not Saint—I shoot a glance over at her. “Didn’t it look like I was enjoying it?”