Page 18 of Salt in the Wound
So yes, I knew so much more than I had before. Facts, data. Explanations and history.
But I still couldn’t reconcile the idea of myself with that word.Submissive.
I hated that I was grateful to Mark for allowing me this small reprieve of merely pretending submission, but I was, I was grateful.
And if there was a part of me that lingered over the idea of punishment, if there was a part of me that noticed how very close this was to corporal penance, that remembered dreams best forgotten…
Well. No one had to know but me and God.
I can meet you tonight.
I typed it before I could lose my nerve. There was no point in delaying it—it had to happen, and the more practice I had, the better I’d be at pretending in front of other people. And it was stupid to be nervous about seeing Mark again.
He was my fiancé; he would be my husband. Seeing each other was inevitable. How much, I still wasn’t sure, but I was bracing myself for anything.
And at some point, surely, his eyes had to grow warmer? His manner less cutting? I recognized I was hardly a cuddly person myself, but I did think I was easy to be around. Fair to the people around me.
Or maybe he was cool and detached with everyone? Perhaps he’d never been able to turn off whatever he’d needed to excel when he’d been in the CIA.The devil they sent in to scourge the other devils.That’s what my father had said about him.
I’ll be looking forward to it.
He sent an address next, an expensive new-build on Billionaire’s Row. His Manhattan residence, I assumed.
With a deep, steadying breath, I turned on my heel and started walking the way I’d come. I needed to get ready.
* * *
If I’d neededproof that whatever Mark did at Lyonesse was profitable, here it was, because no one was buying a penthouse like this with a former government employee’s salary.
When the elevator to his home opened, I was greeted by two stories of windows overlooking Central Park, a cavernous space of glass and white walls and orderly bookshelves. I stepped forward, noting that aside from one hallway behind me, everything else on both levels was open. It should have felt wasteful, this much space in Manhattan, but there was something so pragmatic about the way it was finished and furnished that it was hard to find fault with it. It wasn’t trying to point to anything more—not money, not power, not pretension—and for that reason the wealth and power it represented felt all the more apparent.
“Isolde,” came a voice from my left. I turned to see Mark walking toward me, wearing only slacks and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His shoes gleamed against the dark wood floors.
His eyes went immediately to my left hand, and I thought I saw a flash of satisfaction in them when he saw that I was wearing his ring.
“I’m glad you could make it tonight,” he said. He stopped just behind me, and I could feel, rather than see, that his hands had lifted. Awareness prickled at the back of my neck as adrenaline injected itself into my bloodstream. Was he going to grab me from behind? Reach around to crush my throat?
“May I?” he asked, in a voice that would have been gallant if it weren’t so low and rough.
The coat. He wanted to help me with my coat.
“Yes,” I said, and the word came out too faint, too weak. “Thank you.”
“Manners. I like that.” He deftly unwound my scarf and pulled it from my neck, and the pads of his fingers brushed against my throat. I prayed he didn’t notice the tremble that went through me then—from fear, from leftover adrenaline. From the knowledge that tonight I would learn how to behis, even if it was only to act the part later.
He eased me out of my coat with a fluid grace that betrayed much practice, and then I heard footsteps. I turned to see him putting my things away in a neat little closet, and I took a moment to absorb Mark in his own domain while he was occupied.
He still moved like he did that day in the dojo with the knife, with a sort of casual grace—but there was something more languid about his movements here. I wouldn’t call itrelaxed, because purpose was still scrawled all over his actions, cut into the unreadable expression on his face. But there was something more patient about him, a patience that felt almost leisurely. A man who had all the time in the world to do what he wanted.
He closed the door to the coat closet and moved to face me. And all that purpose and patience was now bent on me. As if he was so secure here in his minimalist aerie that he could pour all of his attention on me instead of his surroundings.
My breath caught in my chest as his eyes dropped down my body. I hadn’t known what to wear to a fake BDSM training session, so I’d worn high-waisted bike shorts and a sports bra; he’d be able to see the shape of my body, but very little else, save for a strip of skin between my bra and shorts. My breasts were nothing special and mostly contained by the bra, and the shorts came down nearly to my knees.
When I’d dressed, I’d imagined his ire being piqued by this obvious barrier between him and my body, this clear signal that sex was nowhere on the table. I’d imagined him looking disappointed, maybe, or even pensive, like he was thinking of a way to get me out of my clothes.
I’d been wrong.
Mark nodded at me, and there was approval in his tone when he said, “Good. Follow me.”
