Page 52 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
I flush. “Yes.”
“Did it make Becket feel good?”
“Yes.”
“And did you break anyone’s trust?”
“Well, not technically—”
Saint kisses me on the mouth, quickly and softly, to interrupt me. “Then you didn’t do anything wrong. And I’m jealous, but I’m not mad.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He kisses me again, deeper. “Can you feel how not-mad I am? Can you feel what jealousy does to me?”
And I can, I can feel it, a thick bar against my hip, and I abruptly need to be fucked, to feel Saint inside me and to know that I haven’t broken anything. But when I reach for him, he stops me and sighs. “We should try, remember? Restraint?”
Groaning, I slump in his arms. “I wish you and Auden would figure things out already.”
“Believe me,” Saint says. “Me too.”
Friday afternoon, I find Auden out by the maze, watching a team of men and women in yellow vests examining the statuary and taking notes on hedge depths. He has his arms folded as he surveys them, and predictably, Sir James Frazer is already sitting next to him, doggy ears perked and twitching at all the noise.
Auden’s brows are pulled together when I reach him, his long fingers tapping against his bicep in thought, but when he sees me, his sharp mouth hooks into a smile and his eyes hood the tiniest bit. His gaze drops from my face to my feet and then back up again, taking its time around my waist and tits and mouth.
“You are lovely,” he says. The words themselves are sweet, but his voice isn’t. His voice says I want you over my lap. His voice says You don’t even want to know the things I’m thinking about doing to you right now. “Were you a good girl this week?”
I blush—from his voice and from the memory of how I got on my knees for a priest in a very un-good-girl-like way—and my blush has him licking his lips. “Let’s go up to the house,” he says, in a low, seductive voice. “I need to kiss you.”
“Yes,” I breathe. Then, half a second later, “Wait. No.”
Auden’s eyebrow lifts. “No?”
“I mean—not no, I do want kissing, but we need to talk first.”
He studies my face for a moment and dips his head. “As you wish.”
We start walking in the direction of the house, but at the last moment, Auden takes my hand and pulls me toward the walled garden. The door with its peeling paint and rusted lock is half open, and when we walk through it to enter the stone-walled enclosure, it’s apparent that it hasn’t been tended to in a very long time. Tulips and hyacinths push against lavender stems only just beginning to soften and green, and pansies and primroses dot the overgrown beds like spatters of paint. In the middle, a fountain stands bone dry, stray leaves skittering around the bottom.
It’s somehow more beautiful than it was when I saw it as a child, and I pause in the center of it, watching the breeze toy with the chaotic tumble. Auden merely runs his hands through his hair and gazes around the garden in the same way that I gaze at a bookshelf full of fiddly pamphlets and maps needing to be scanned. Like he’s staring at a heap of work, which is heaped on top of too much other work, and a little bit of him is dying inside. Until, that is, his eyes land on a thicket of lavender and baby’s breath that have overrun their bed. Then a smile tugs at his mouth.
He catches me staring, and turns that irresistible smile on me. “I have fond memories of those flowers.”
I look at it again, wondering why. It’s a bed the same as all the others. “Did you play here as a child?”
“Well, yes,” Auden says, reaching out a hand to lead me over to the fountain’s edge, where we sit. From here we can see the entire north end of the garden, complete with a marble Leda and her amorous swan. “But my memories are a bit more recent. They involve a certain local librarian.”
“Saint?” I ask, and Auden’s smile grows a bit sharper. I see the tip of his tongue move over the edge of his teeth, as if he’s remembering a kiss. Or a bite.
“Yes,” he says, looking over at the lavender. “Our first kiss.”
“Will you tell me what happened? Someday?”
He turns back to me with a smile gone a little bitter. “It’s not a pretty story.”
“It might still have a pretty ending.” I hope. Please God, let it have a pretty ending.
Auden doesn’t acknowledge that last part. Instead he trains his hazel eyes on me. “What did you need to talk about?”
