Page 39 of Salt in the Wound
Mark finally turned to face me. Those sculpted lips were curled in an expression so disgusted that I would have taken a step backward if I weren’t still so close to the stairs.
“Well, then let me enlighten you.” The words were as hard as the look in his eyes. “Your father would like for me to deflower you. The sooner the better, in his mind.”
I stared at him.
The words didn’t fit together, didn’t make any kind of sense. And I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way—they genuinely made no sense to me.
Deflower.
The sooner the better.
Mark didn’t move or speak as his words finally, painfully, transformed into meaning—as my lips parted and my chest lifted in a sharp breath.
My father wanted Mark to fuck me.
It was so medieval that I almost couldn’t ascribe it to my iPad-wielding, Savile Row-clad father.
…Almost.
But—
“Why?” I whispered. “Why does it matter?”
Mark didn’t speak as I stepped away from the stairs, turning to face the desk in the corner of the room. My father worked in here sometimes when he was in Manhattan; Mother and I used to run up the stairs as fast as we could and try to jump in his lap. He’d act surprised and then tickle us both until we were shrieking.
And now I was staring at that same desk as I stood across from the man who’d bought me in marriage, whom my father had apparently told to claim my virginity like some kind of trophy.
Did he think Mark needed further incentive to marry me beyond what had already been agreed on? Did he think Mark was so easily won over? Mark had an entire club of people to fuck, and I didn’t doubt that he was fucking people outside of it too. One college student’s hymen was hardly going to tip the scales in either direction.
“He must know—he has to know that you’d have no remorse over this. That it won’t trap you into going through with the wedding if you decide you don’t want to marry me.”
I turned in time to see Mark’s jaw work to the side. “It’s not me he wants to trap, Isolde,” he said after a moment.
“But if he doesn’t want to trap you, then who does he—” I stopped, my breath catching. “Oh.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “Oh.”
My father wanted to trap me instead. Whether it was because he believed me secretly romantic and naïve, or because he wanted to manipulate my Catholic morality, I couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t matter. My father believed that if I had sex with Mark, I’d feel compelled to marry him.
It was insurance against my potential resistance.
Anger punched at my lungs, and I had to fight to keep my breath regular in front of the too-perceptive Mark.
But how could my father do this? When I’d already been so compliant, sofuckingobedient, even when it came to giving up the life I’d always wanted?
“Bold of him to assume I’ve never had sex,” I muttered.
Mark gave a short nod.
“Not that I…what we did on the stage at Lyonesse—that was the closest anyone’s ever come to touching me—” I stopped, flushed. “I presume you told him that he had no right to ask such a thing?”
“I told him that I would do with my future wife whatever I damn well wished,” Mark said flatly. The words were just as medieval as my father’s demands, but I didn’t feel a renewed rush of anger at hearing them.
I also didn’t care to look too closely at what it was that Ididfeel.
“And what did he say to that?”
Mark lifted his glass to his lips but didn’t take a drink. “That he was prepared to make it an essential condition of our engagement. He doesn’t trust that you won’t be seduced back to God otherwise.”
