A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  If only she could see herself like I see her right now, with her rosy nipples peeking through the sliding silk of her hair and her hips flaring into irresistibly grabbable curves. Her thighs are soft, enticing, and even when she walks, her legs and her gold-covered cunt make a plump V that my hand aches to cup and press.

  When she’s in front of me, I pull her hands away from her belly and take them in my own. “You’re gorgeous,” I tell her. “I can’t wait to fuck you.”

  Her chin is doing the thing, but she manages a smile at me. “I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to be naked,” she says quietly. “I’ve never been naked with someone else. Not even when—”

  She breaks off, and I lean in and kiss her.

  I mean to kiss her out of reassurance, out of comfort, but the moment my lips touch hers, I want more, I want the kind of kiss a bride deserves. I dance my tongue against the seam of her lips, and when she finally parts them to let me inside, I find her tongue and show her all the things I want to try with other parts of her body. Things I’ve never done before with anyone, but that I will do tonight as her bride. And she responds in kind, in hunger, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me closer and closer until our bare feet are tangled in the same cold grass and our breasts are mashed together so tight you couldn’t get anything between them if you tried.

  When we finally break apart, gasping, I manage to ask the one thing I should have thought of earlier. “Is this going to be okay? With . . . everything . . . ?”

  She beams at me. We’re both shorter than everyone else, but share the same height, which means I can see right into her dark honey eyes when she says, “Yes. I’m going to be okay.”

  “If you need to stop . . .”

  “Then I’ll stop. But I want this, and I think—” she looks around at the fire and the altar and the lanterns and her best friends in the world “—I think this might be the safest and best way.”

  “Is there anything I shouldn’t do? Or should do?”

  “You’re perfect,” Delphine says. “You’re perfect and tonight is not a night of smudges. I’m not saying there won’t be nights that are, but right now I’m ready and I want this.”

  “Okay,” I say, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Then let’s get fake married at the altar. I should probably stop after this one though, so I don’t make it a habit.”

  That makes her laugh. “Come along, bride,” she says, pulling me to the altar. “Our thorns await.”

  Chapter 25

  “By your own vows and your own blessing, you the bride and you the lord of Thornchapel are bound together. For the good of all assembled here, for the good of the earth on which we stand, it’s now time for you to join together and seal your union with promises exceeding words.”

  I can barely hear Becket over the sight of my wrist wrapped in thorns.

  Rebecca did well finding these—they’re green and bendy enough to loop around our wrists and then cinch tight, but firm enough that the thorns dig unrelentingly into our skin. I feel like my entire heartbeat is in my left hand; I think I can feel Delphine’s heartbeat in hers. Tiny drops of blood weep from pricks and scratches and cuts, and when I meet Delphine’s eyes, her lips are parted and her eyes are glassy and I see the flushed, rapid-breathed expression of a masochist experiencing safe pain for the first time. Pain without fear—or maybe pain with only the good kind of fear, the fear that comes from roller coasters and scary movies and walks through the woods on Imbolc night. Pain with trust and warmth.

  I give her a dizzy, giddy smile, thinking about how much I love her, how much I love everyone else here. How alive I feel, how satisfying it is to watch our mingled blood drop in small tears onto the ground, as if we’re feeding the earth together.

  Handfasting over, Becket cuts us free of the thorns, and for a minute, Delphine and I don’t let go. We keep our hands clasped, slick with little rivers of blood, cold and hot all at once, aching with pain but also aching with something else, something sweeter.

  For a moment, I forget I’m not really a bride, not really St. Brigid, and I forget Delphine isn’t my lord. I forget all the way over to the platform, where the others wait, all while Delphine coaxes me down onto the piles of blankets someone brought in earlier. I forget the cold, forget the mud, because it’s warm here by the bonfire and my hand is hot with pain, and when Delphine kneels in front of me with her erect, pink nipples poking through her hair and her soft pussy glinting gold whenever the fire jumps just right, I’m hot everywhere. My cunt alone feels hot enough to smelt copper, but I’m certain that sparks are going to fly up off my skin when she runs a slow finger up my calf.

  “Please,” I say, not really sure what I’m asking for in a specific sense, but knowing I’m ready for it, I’m ready for anything.

  “Please, what?” she teases, but she bites her lip right after and she’s nervous, I see it now. And of course she is—it’s her first time having sex and she has an audience and she’s the one expected to take the active role. The masculine role in the ceremony, I would have said until earlier today, when Becket chided me for it.

  God isn’t male or female, God is God. So let’s be careful how we bring gender into ritual space, mm?

  So says the man who prays to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  Becket had smiled then. The official stance of the Church is that all gendered language is allegorical.

  I’d groaned then. Fine. But I think it’s sexy, the whole bride and lord thing. Can’t I have it both ways?

  You can have it any way you like, as long as you think about it first and it hurts no one else.

  There’s no doubt that I like it this way, plush and curvy Delphine raking her eyes over me like I’m a spill of glittering treasure laid in offering at her feet. There’s no doubt that I like the idea of her being the lord, the man, while I’m the incarnated saint she’ll fuck as both duty and ecstasy. All the things that are good about this ceremony gleaned away from the bad, from the binary, as Becket would say. Any of us can be anything. All of us can be all things.

  What’s the point of searching for the divine if that’s not true once you find it?

  There is one extra complication, however, beyond blowing up essentialism and binaries, and that’s the very nature of Delphine herself, her burgeoning identity as a sexual and kinky person. She’s a submissive and she’s supposed to take charge right now, and I can tell she’s worried. I can tell she’s not sure where to begin.

  I rise up to my elbows to help, suddenly very aware of everyone around us. Auden’s on my left, reclining on an elbow like a Roman emperor watching a bacchanal, his eyes raking over my naked body and Delphine’s naked body, one hand flexing and relaxing as if itching to touch us. His other hand is predictably in his thick, beautiful hair, twisting it in a slow anguish. He’s wearing one of his Brideshead Revisited outfits, wool trousers and a tweed jacket layered over a sweater and button-down, and there’s no mistaking the big erection pushing against his pants. I wonder if he’s ever seen Delphine naked; I wonder if he still wants to have sex with her; I wonder if I should be jealous.

  I wonder if it’s strange that jealousy is such a fucking turn-on.

  Saint’s on the other side of me, kneeling like he’s at Mass, his glittering eyes and glinting lip ring flashing with light from the fire, and he has his eyes on me, only on me, while Becket sits at my feet, his eyes on everyone, eyes so blue that even the flames can’t change their color.

  And Rebecca is settling next to Delphine. She’s graceful and assured as she uncuffs and rolls up the sleeves of her nearly sheer white silk blouse. She discarded her coat a few moments earlier, and her boots, but there’s still something so effortlessly dominant about her, even in bare feet and riding pants and an untucked blouse. The fire gilds her cheekbones and the sharp point of her chin, and that same burnish highlights the delicately fluted line of her collarbone.

  “I have this, Proserpina,” she says, noticing me sitting up to help Delphine
.

  She tosses her braids over her silk-clad shoulder in an audible waterfall, and she puts the back of one slender hand on Delphine’s cheek. “The Consecration is quiet about what happens here, and so I think given the circumstances, we can be inventive. I’m going to guide you.” She turns her hand to cup the side of Delphine’s heart-shaped face. “Tell me if you don’t want that.”

  Delphine nods, her full mouth parted. “I want it.”

  “Good girl,” Rebecca says quietly, and the change in Delphine is immediate, a glowing happiness suffusing her entire body. Rebecca smiles at that, but her smile looks troubled, the smile of someone who’s just now realizing they might be in danger and they’re not sure how to escape. But it’s gone before I can analyze it any further, and Rebecca is all calm, teacherly Domme again.

  She uses her hand to slide the thick hair off the back of Delphine’s neck, and then Rebecca begins running a slow, soothing hand from the nape of Delphine’s neck down to the small of her back, whispered touches of reassurance all along the valley of Delphine’s spine.

  “Proserpina is already having fun,” Rebecca says to Delphine, and then she asks me, “Aren’t you, Proserpina?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “Show us,” Rebecca commands, and next to me, Auden makes a noise at how quickly I obey. At how I obey, which is by letting my knees fall open to expose my wet, swollen cunt.

  “Fuck,” Saint says on a guttural moan from the other side of me.

  “See?” Rebecca tells Delphine. “See how wet she is already? Can you see how red and flushed her cunt is? That means it wants you. It wants you to kiss and rub it. And do you see this?”

  She takes Delphine’s hand and guides it right to the plump berry of my erect clit, strumming their fingers across it, and sweet, needy pleasure sings up my body.

  “Oh God,” I pant, trying to squirm back toward their touch for more.

  Rebecca laughs a little. “I think Proserpina might be a little slut, Delphine. Which means she’s our little slut tonight. Our little virgin saint-slut. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  Next to me, Auden drops his head back in unadulterated agony. I manage to look away from the tormentors between my legs to see the strong column of his throat working in long, tortured swallows.

  “It does sound fun,” Delphine says, sounding braver and happier again.

  “You know what little sluts love best? Other than being fucked, of course?”

  Delphine shakes her head.

  “They love hearing all the ways you’re going to fuck them. Put your hands on her thighs and push them farther apart; there you go, sweetheart, that’s lovely, just lovely.” Rebecca puts her hand on the back of Delphine’s neck, not gripping hard, but holding her with just enough pressure that Delphine will still feel kept and guided as we move forward.

  I’m spread even farther now, the chilly breeze fighting with warm drafts from the fire and sending hot and cold air dancing over the slick split of my pussy and over the stiffened tips of my breasts. Delphine’s hands are warm on my thighs, if tentative, and I watch as Rebecca instructs her to examine my pussy as if deciding whether or not to use it.

  “See how silky those curls are?” Rebecca asks. “See how those little petals in the middle are unfurled?”

  “Yes,” Delphine whispers. “Yes.”

  “Your mouth is going to be there, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Run your hands to where her legs meet her body, that crease right there, yes—now use your thumbs to part her cunt even more. She’s not allowed to have any secrets from us, none at all, because we’re going to fuck every secret place of hers, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” Delphine answers, trembling.

  And then I’m opened up to her eyes. To everyone’s eyes, really, because even Auden and Saint shift to look at my virgin goddess cunt.

  I have to resist the urge to whimper, and they haven’t even touched me for real yet.

  “See this tight, wet hole?” Rebecca asks. “What are we going to do with it?”

  “Fuck it,” Delphine murmurs, her gaze going hungry on my body.

  “That’s right. We’re going to fuck this tight little pussy until it comes. And what about this?”

  She moves one of Delphine’s hands lower down, and then I feel a fingertip graze lightly over the hot button of my asshole. A place even I’ve never played with.

  Something like fear and hunger—but filthier than both—shivers through me as they touch.

  “Could we fuck this?” Rebecca asks her protégé.

  I lose the war against my self-control and moan as Delphine continues stroking me, wonder in her expression as she watches me squirm with shame and dirty pleasure as she does.

  “Yes,” Delphine replies, her lush lips parting in that way they do when she gets caught up in something. “We could fuck it.”

  “And what about that pretty mouth of hers?” Rebecca asks, directing Delphine to look at my face. “Those plump, rosy lips she has, like she’s always wearing lipstick. Wouldn’t it feel good to fuck that mouth? Make her suck on all our secret places too?”

  Delphine’s eyes hood. “Yes.”

  “Then I think that’s where we should start. You are the lord, after all, you have certain rights, do you not?”

  Delphine nods, mouth parted all the way now. “I am. I do.”

  “Good. Lay back. Perhaps Becket wouldn’t mind lending his lap for his lord to recline on?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Becket says huskily, and arranges himself so that Delphine can pillow herself on his thigh. I think I can see his erection even through the gleaming curtain of her hair across his lap, but I don’t have much time to look, because then Rebecca snaps her fingers—a sound I’m very attuned to. I’m up on my knees in an instant.

  “Do good little sluts eat their lord’s pussy when asked?” Rebecca asks me, arms crossed over her chest and one eyebrow up in a perfect, demanding arch.

  “Yes, Rebecca,” I murmur, keeping my eyes cast down.

  “And are you a good little slut?”

  I shiver. “Yes,” I reply obediently.

  “Then it’s time for your lord to use your mouth.”

  Without waiting for further instructions, I lower myself to a crawling position and move between Delphine’s open legs, risking Rebecca’s censure for dallying when I give myself a few stolen seconds of caressing Delphine’s soft thighs. They’re so warm, so giving, dimpled in kissable dimples that I could spend a lifetime learning the constellations of.

  And then I remember Auden will never have a chance to.

  Does he feel strange watching me stroke her legs like this? Watching me swirl a finger through her gold curls and part her folds so I can taste her?

  Is he jealous? Sad?

  Horny?

  All of those things?

  There’s a short, sharp flick on my ass that I know without looking came from Rebecca. “Focus,” she orders, and I try to forget Auden and get down to the business at hand instead.

  I’ve never done this before, obviously, but my motto for everything from college to drinking is that you can’t go wrong with enthusiasm, so I simply dip my mouth to her and begin.

  My lips brush across her curls—they’re soft and fine, damp and clinging to her flesh—and I kiss my way through them, feeling her quiver as I do. There’s a scent to them, disturbed by my wandering mouth the same way petals release their scent when you rub them, but it’s not floral. It’s sweet and a little earthy and unlike anything I’ve ever smelled. I run the tip of my nose along the top curve of her, breathing her in.

  It’s an aphrodisiac, because as soon as I do, as soon as my lungs are full of Delphine, my body pulses with heat, responding in kind by slicking my pussy even more, and my mouth waters, it actually waters for the taste of her. I part my lips and let my open mouth slide down, my tongue dipping over her clit and down to her waiting hole.

  Delphine cries out—a good cry, I think—given the approvi
ng noise Rebecca makes and the rewarding swat I get on my ass for it.

  So I follow her cries, I follow the curl of her toes on my back and the quavering of her belly, and the eventual desperate tugs of her fingers in my hair. I trace my tongue along the inner folds and the rim of her vagina, and lap up the tart-sweet taste of her body, and then I move up and suckle her clit until she thrashes in Becket’s lap. I learn what makes her moan and what makes her sigh, and when to do what to create the perfect balance of tension and languor. I alternate between balancing on my elbows so that I can stroke the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and sliding my hands underneath her so I can cup and fondle the generous curves of her ass and angle her pussy up to my mouth.

  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?