Page 41 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
“Nothing!”
“Hmm.”
I’m punished for that particular lie with several fast swats to the same place, so fast I can barely keep up with counting and breathing at the same time. When she’s done, we’re at seventeen, and my ass is rocking in the air, that senseless rock of trying to move away from the sting. I’m mostly only sensible of the burning along my ass, but I can feel Auden grow more and more restless underneath me, his cock like an iron bar against my hip and his thighs locked rigid and tight under my own. It seems like he’s lost control of his hands, however, because the one on my thigh has started kneading the flesh there ever so slightly, and the hand that was spread at the small of my back has now moved up to my nape and is playing with my hair.
“You can push her down if you like,” Rebecca says to Auden. “I bet she’ll even like it.”
Ohhhh, I do, I do like it. Auden’s hand is warm and rough, and more certain than I’ve felt it yet tonight, as if he’s discovering a natural aptitude for pinning librarians down by their necks.
And the sound he makes when the change in position forces my ass higher arrows right through me. It’s a low, satisfied groan, it’s the groan of someone who can’t help himself. I squeeze my eyes closed, as if that will stop up my ears, as if that will save me from the intoxicating presence that is Auden Guest.
Rebecca goes again, and I count through the thudding breathlessness she’s created, I count even as I try to wriggle away and Auden has to hold me even tighter. Until she gets to number twenty-five and lays one so hard on my sit-spot that I give a little scream and try to arch away. Auden’s holding me too well, and so all I accomplish is rucking down my tights and revealing my cunt for real.
There’s an audible reaction the moment it happens, a caress of cool air on my wet folds, and I realize that all the wiggling around has finally accomplished what I fantasized about earlier. I try to squirm back down, but I can’t seem to find a modest angle, and I’m stopped anyway—by another five, vicious spanks from Rebecca.
“Thirty,” I manage, my eyes wet. My throat and chest are all knotted up with the pain, and I’m hovering in that space where I can’t take another spank and also I could take thirty more. Nothing matters and everything matters. Everything hurts, and everything is just starting to feel good.
I feel as much as hear when Auden drops his head back against the couch, as if hearing my shaken voice as well as seeing my naked ass at the same time is too much to handle, and that’s when Rebecca says, in a voice so intentionally denuded of emotion that I wonder if this was her goal all along, “My hand hurts, Auden. Maybe you could do the last five?”
Auden’s hand on my thigh tightens, then relaxes, then tightens again. “Pardon,” he says. His voice is calm, but I can tell the lie—under me, his cock is rock-hard and throbbing, and his chest is heaving like he’s just
run a race. “But you’d like me to what?”
“It’s only five,” Rebecca explains. “And there’s not much you need to know. Just stay away from her kidneys and her spine and you’ll be fine.”
I hear Delphine shift on the arm of the sofa. “Auden, I don’t mind if you do,” she says, and there’s an odd mix of relief and fascination in her tone. “I really don’t, darling.”
Even with Delphine’s sanction, I still expect Auden to protest more—but he doesn’t. “Very well,” he says, sounding resigned. “Ready to count, Poe?”
I almost want to shake my head. My ass is screaming, and I’m very, very aware that Auden has a much better angle for spanking than Rebecca did. And a fresh hand. And no idea what the hell he’s doing.
On the other hand, do I want Auden to spank me? Do I want to be exactly here, thrown over his lap with my skirt flipped up and my backside ready for his punishments? Yes, yes, of fucking course I want this; I’ve only been fantasizing about exactly this moment since I arrived at Thornchapel a week ago.
And anyway, it’s only five. I can do five of anything, right?
So I nod.
Without another word of warning, he connects the flat of his palm against my rump, and somehow he makes one swat feel like ten, like twenty. I cry out from the impact, the air gone from my lungs, and before I can even finish whispering thirty-one, he’s at the other side, right on the abused skin of my upper thighs. I cry out again, a couple tears dropping out of my eyes and clinging to my eyelashes. Through the tears, I can see that Saint has moved closer. He looks entranced by the scene, his gaze caroming up to Auden, then down to where his hand cracks across my ass again, and then to my face. And I wish I could speak, I wish I had the air in my lungs to say that for me this moment is as beautiful as it is sordid, that the tears beading on my eyelashes feel good, that the breathless knot in my chest is actually loosening far more painful knots in my mind.
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.
