But it’s not the posture of someone defeated or reluctant; it’s more like the stillness of a prince waiting for the touch of his father’s crown on his head. It’s the restraint of youthful power and deep anguish—a deceptive calm held only through his strength of will while he decides what he’ll do. And we’re all in captivity to it, all of us enthralled and possessed as a muscle ticks in his cheek and his lips press together in finality.
I squirm in my seat at the same moment Saint pushes my palm harder against his inner thigh—like we’re both undone by Auden when he’s like this, like we’re both ready to crawl for him, to offer ourselves to him.
We’re the imaginary kingdom, I think dizzily. It’s us. And he’s the king.
Auden looks up, meets every single one of our gazes, holding mine and Saint’s the longest.
“Yes,” he says simply. Finally. “Yes.”
Chapter 19
We still haven’t decided who will be the bride or the lord, and when Rebecca suggests we wait until the morning to pick, I think we’re all slightly relieved. It was hard enough to choose to do this in the first place—so having to wade through all the snarls of emotion and desire strung between us feels nigh on impossible right now.
Abby comes in from the village and makes us a dinner of roast chicken and potatoes—both sprinkled with some mysterious, addictive combination of herbs and salt. It’s delicious; delicious enough that the relative silence around the dinner table feels natural and not awkward. But after the excuse of food is over and it would normally be time to go to the library and drink, it becomes apparent that we aren’t sure what to say to each other, what to talk about. Tomorrow, we’ll experience something that none of us have ever experienced before, and there’s both tremulous excitement and shaky nervousness running through us all.
Becket is the first to leave the table—he has to have everything ready for his weekend Masses, and he’ll join us in the early evening, after the Saturday service. Rebecca mutters something about getting ahead on work, and closets herself in her room with her laptop and her drawing tablet.
Auden mutters much the same, and is gone only seconds after Rebecca.
“I should go too,” Saint says. “I promised Uncle Augie I’d polish up a written bid for him by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I say, wanting to protest but not knowing how. He should go, he should help his uncle, and yet I want him to stay. I want to touch his thigh again. I want his thumb on my shoulder making those slow, distracting arcs.
He stands—Delphine glances up from her phone only long enough to mumble a goodbye—and then I stand too, and offer to walk him out.
“Do you like working for your uncle?” I ask as we go. I notice we’re both walking slowly, as if we don’t want to part, but neither of us knows how to say he should stay. Because saying it would bring all those little touches to life, it would give them meaning, it would mean risking his refusal of me again.
“I do,” Saint says, and he sounds like he means it. “Augie was too busy to be a real surrogate after Dad died, but he did his best, and even though Mom and Dad never married, Augie still helped out Mom whenever he could. When I came back from Texas this last time, I was finally able to help him in return.”
Seeing my questioning look, he says, “My mother’s father owns a construction company in Dallas, and they do lots of big builds, like hotels and office buildings, things like that. I spent my weekends and summers helping out with the administrative stuff, learning the ropes. So when I came back and saw what a mess Uncle Augie’s books were, I offered to clean them up. Sometimes I’ll help on-site if they’re short, but mostly I’m the money guy. The paper guy.”
I bump his shoulder. “You’re the money guy in a family business. And yet you still feel like you don’t belong here in Thorncombe? Not even with your dad’s family?”
He shrugs, like he’s feeling indifferent about it, but there’s something defensive in the roll of his shoulders. “My mother was Mexican and Texan and Catholic. I spent years back in America, away from my dad’s family. I don’t look like them, I don’t sound like them.” Another brittle shrug. “At best, they see me as exotic. Most of the time, I feel more like an interloper. A cuckoo dropped into their nest.”
Something in my chest twists, a sharp, wringing ache. I stop walking and throw my arms around him, burying my face in his chest, and startled, he catches me up, steadying me and cradling my head against him with a large, warm hand.
“You’ll always belong with me, and everyone else can fuck off if they feel differently.”
“It’s just life, Poe. It’s just how it is.”
“Fuck life,” I mumble into his T-shirt. It’s an old shirt, so worn through that the cotton is impossibly soft, and he smells like a bonfire in the woods, smoky and clean. I nuzzle against his chest again, relishing the feel of his firm chest all warm and strong under the fabric.
“Poe . . .” he says softly.
I angle my head so I can look up at him. He’s staring down at me with that wary fascination again, a small frown paired with a notch between his brows. I slide a hand up the tight lines of his stomach and chest, and then trace that frown with the tip of my finger.
His hand tightens in my hair. “Fuck,” he mutters. “I can’t—we can’t—Poe—”
I answer him by gently pushing my fingertip into his mouth, past the plushness of his lower lip. He catches it in his teeth, flicks at the pad of my finger with his tongue. I let out a helpless noise, and he shudders.
“You belong to him,” he whispers, although it sounds more like he’s trying to remind himself. “You belong to him and I’ve already taken so much from him . . .”
“I’m not his,” I whisper back, fiercely.
And with a low, helpless groan, his mouth crashes into mine.
The piercing digs insistently into my lip, and I lick at it like I’ve been wanting to, I suck at the soft skin around it until Saint is growling against my mouth and yanking me close. A thick erection intrudes against my belly, and some deep-seated, unlearned instinct makes me press harder against it, sends my hand sliding between our stomachs so I can shape my palm to it.
“Fuck,” he mumbles as I grip him through his jeans. His forehead drops down to roll against mine in slow, agonized movements. “Fuck.”
I’ve never touched someone like this before, never held the weight and heat of someone’s pleasure in my hand, never felt someone shivering violently against me because of something I was doing to them.
With the possible exception of Auden. Who came just from spanking me.
I’m not his.
Saint’s breath ruffles the hair near my ear and warms my neck, and he moves his lips over my temple, then over my face in helpless, searching kisses, like the answers he’s looking for are in the curve of my jaw and the blush warming my cheeks, like he can find the meaning of life with his lips alone.
I trace the hardness of him, I let my fingers wander up to the tip—swollen and distinct even through the denim—and then down to the base and back up again.
“Sometimes I wish you were engaged to him like Ralph wanted,” Saint confesses in a hoarse whisper. “And that he was here right now. Seeing us like this.”
“He’d punish us both,” I say, and it comes out like I’m fantasizing because I am fantasizing; I am imagining being thrown over his lap again, being scolded, being fucked into dreamy submission by Auden Guest for the crime of kissing his enemy.
God. I have to stop.
“I’m not his,” I repeat again.
Saint pulls back enough that I can see his blown pupils and his parted mouth, which is wet from kissing me. He cups one of my breasts in his large hand, plumping and massaging it until it’s so heavy and aching that I could cry, until my nipple pulls into a tight bead against his palm. Then he gives it a vicious, unexpected twist, and I whimper in pure, clean pain.
I want to worship him for it.
Here’s the thing about me:
Most people are programmed to move away from hurt, but I’m not. And it’s not for any bathetic, mother-abandonment issues either—I’ve just always been a girl who likes it to ache. As a child, I would bite my own forearm to see the marks it would leave, I would wrap a length of scratchy rope around my wrist and tug on it for hours to feel the chafing, pretending every kind of child’s game imaginable around it. I was a captive, a pirate held by an enemy crew, a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard. The pain made the games real . . . or maybe the games gave me an excuse for the pain. Either way, the bruises and marks and chafes gave me power somehow, some kind of strength, like they sharpened the rest of the world into a thing of fearful, breath-taking beauty, a beauty that could only be perceived through the power of hurting.
So when Saint hurts me, I don’t slap his hand away, I don’t leap back. Sizzle-fast agony burns through my nervous system and then vanishes in a flash; by the time I cry out and buckle against him, the pain is gone and there’s only breathless, endorphin-fed eagerness in its place.
St. Sebastian winds his fingers through my hair and pulls my head back, just enough so he can search my face with dark, troubled eyes.
“Maybe you’re not his,” he says finally. “But you want to be.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Because it’s true.
It’s also true that I want to be Saint’s.
With a sigh, he slides his hand free from my hair and takes a step back, the cool air of the hall rushing in to fill the space between us. My hand tingles with the remembered feel of his erection stiff and thick against it, my nipple aches for more cruelty, and I think I could sing hymns to the memory of his lip piercing as he browsed over my face with needy, greedy kisses.
“What’s going on between us?” I ask, all of me keening for his touch again. “The other night with your hand on my shoulder, and now this . . . ?”
He scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t know,” he admits, looking miserable. “I don’t know. I just—I feel like I keep telling myself what I should do and then it doesn’t matter. There’s only what I want.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
Me? Auden?
Both?
But he doesn’t answer. Those dark eyes grow cold, that perfect mouth pulls into a pretty sulk.
“Saint,” I say, reaching for his hand. He lets me take it, but he’s completely still and unresponsive when I do. “I’m waiting for you. I’m waiting for you to say screw Thorncombe and choose me instead.”
“Don’t you get it?” he asks. “I am choosing you. And you don’t even know it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense—”
He gives a short, bitten-off noise of fury, and I take a step back.
“I can’t be what you need!” he says. “I can’t be anything you need. I’m choosing you by choosing to see the fucking truth.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. Grouchily.
“Well, I do. You know when I told you that I didn’t believe all the shit the village does? I lied.” He starts walking backward to the front door, lacing his hands behind his neck before stooping to grab the coat he’d thrown over the metal folding chair earlier. “I lied, Poe. I do believe it. I don’t want to, I don’t like it—it fucking kills me that you’re so obviously meant for someone else. It kills me that you’re this beautiful dream and I’m a nightmare to anyone who tries to love me.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m poison to certain people, Poe. Auden learned that the hard way. I’m not going to do the same to you.”
And in the bare second it takes me to fumble for a response, he’s yanked open the door and stormed out into the wet night.
I wander up to my room, stunned. There’s no erasing all the mixed signals Saint’s been giving; I don’t feel like I’ve imagined something that’s not there. No, it’s more like I haven’t been seeing something that I should have seen before. Something about the way St. Sebastian and Auden are around each other; something about how their history has scarred the both of them.
I’m poison.
Auden learned that the hard way.
It’s uncomfortably like what my father said about learning how dangerous Thornchapel was with my mother, and I have a real moment where my angry, hurt feelings about Saint slide into all the angry and hurt feelings I still have about Mom. Poison and danger, daughter and mother. Alive and dead.
There’s a knock at the door, and given that I’ve only just entered, I’m close enough to pop open the knob without taking another step.
Delphine stands there in pajamas, two colorful packets in her hand. “I want to do face masks,” she declares, and then without waiting for me to answer, she comes inside my room and deposits herself on my bed.
“Um,” I say.
She’s already opening the first packet. “Don’t you want to have clear, dewy skin for the ritual tomorrow?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me,” I answer honestly.
She tugs the slimy mask free and unfolds it into its horrific fake-face shape. “Here. You need it.” She narrows her eyes at me as I approach and take it from her. “Have you been crying?”
“No,” I say.
“So you’re about to cry, then.”
“I’m not,” I protest through gritted teeth.
“Your eyes are glassy and your chin is doing the thing. Come onnnn, put the face mask on, I promise you’ll feel better.”
With a sigh, I obey. When Delphine wants something, she is a force of nature, and I’m too tired to fight nature right now. I lie down on the bed, adjust the cold, glutinous mask over my face, and then close my eyes to wait.
“So what happened between you and Saint?” Delphine asks, settling in next to me. Even through her pajamas and my sweater, her shoulder is warm and soft, and she strokes an idle foot along my shin in a casually sexy way that raises goosebumps along my flesh.
How has Auden not fucked her yet?
Since I don’t feel particularly invested in protecting Saint’s pride at the moment, I answer, “Well, we kissed and then he told me he was poison and stormed out.”
“Oh my God, really?” Delphine says.
“Yes, really. And it’s not the first time it’s happened. I should have seen it coming.”
“You mean he’s kissed you and told you he was poison before?”
“The night we played Spin the Bottle, I chased him out and we . . . you know. Had a moment. Then he said we couldn’t be together.” I feel even stupider now that I’m saying all of this out loud. When did I become a Russian Doll girl? Except instead of dying over and over again, I’m just doomed to repeat the same kiss and the same fight with St. Sebastian Martinez.
“Why can’t you be together?” Delphine asks, puzzled.
I open my mouth and then close it again, having to readjust the mask as I think. I can’t tell her about the village and what it thinks about me marrying Auden; it’s too ridiculous and it could be hurtful and I’m not going to burden Delphine with it—
“Is this about Ralph wanting you to marry Auden?” Delphine says, and I freeze.
“You know about that?” I ask, shocked.
I feel her hand wave my question away. “Oh, everyone knows about that. He even told me before he died. ‘If you marry my boy and keep him from Proserpina Markham, you’ll be damning him to hell’ or something like that. I mostly ignored him.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Delphine, please know that I don’t have any intention of—”
She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Stop. Ralph was beastly, and nobody would ever blame you for the things he said. I told him to fuck right off.” She laughs. “Golly, that made him furious.”
“Why was he so obsessed with this idea? Me marrying Auden? It’s just so random.”
“Well, I used to think him quite mad . . . but then I saw how Auden looked at you when he was spanking you, and I have to say, it didn’t seem quite so delusional then.”
Her voice is so mild, so unaccusin
g, and meanwhile my face is flaming so hot under the mask that I think it might catch on fire despite the antioxidant-laden slime. “Delphine . . .”
“Did I ever tell you how Auden and I started dating?” she asks softly, before I can say anything else. Before I can apologize for making her fiancé come from spanking my bare ass. Or apologize for wanting her fiancé so badly that it haunts every dream I have.
“No.”
“I was raped when I was at Cambridge,” she says matter-of-factly. “My second year.”
“Oh my God. Delphine. God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
She squeezes my hand again, not in reassurance or acceptance, but like she just wants to feel close, like she wants to hold on to someone while she talks. “They’d dragged me out of Audra Bishop’s summer party, and only one of them managed to—managed to do it before they got caught—but they kept hitting me to stop me from screaming, and I—”
She breaks off and takes a breath. I tighten my fingers through hers, and she tucks our clasped hands to her belly. “Auden was at the party, and he noticed I was missing. He came out and found them in the garden, and he yanked them off me. He fought them all, you know, so viciously. Beat two or three of them to fuck and back, and then sent the rest running.”
“Jesus.”
“He saved my life.” She sighs. “Of all the things I don’t know sometimes, I do know that.”
“He saved your life,” I repeat, feeling the weight of that. The undeniable fate of it. How could there be anything but a happy ending for them when that was their beginning? “So then you two started dating?”
I can feel her shake her head next to me. “It took a while. I couldn’t do anything at first. Most of the boys from that night were arrested—and they’d all been sent down of course, all except one who the police couldn’t prove was there. Just this one boy, and we didn’t even go to the same college, but the idea that I might run into him, that I might see him—it was paralyzing. I couldn’t even walk to class alone. I couldn’t study in the library by myself. I ordered food in so I wouldn’t have to leave my room after nighttime fell. And then the trial began and it was so fucking terrible . . .”
A Lesson in Thorns Page 20
