Page 24 of Salt in the Wound
But this wasn’t the same thing at all. I knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
I didn’t answer him; instead, I sat down and began pulling on my shoes, dropping the blindfold next to me. “I’m free for three weeks around winter break, excepting Christmas,” I said, without looking at him. “Otherwise, I won’t be able to make it to DC until spring break.”
“Isolde,” Mark said, and I ignored him, standing up and grabbing the blindfold as I did.
“You can text or call. I’ll need at least a day’s notice to arrange travel.”
“Isolde,” Mark said again.
I finally looked at him.
I was furious with him. I was furious with myself. I was furious with Mortimer and my father and with my mother for dying and leaving me alone with these men.
“I meant what I said.” Mark dipped his head toward the blindfold in my hand. “You did well tonight.”
I could have laughed if I wasn’t so angry at everything and everyone right now. “I couldn’t even sit in your lap for ten minutes. No one is going to believe I have the power to interest you.”
I could see him touch the tip of his tongue to his teeth, and then he pressed his lips together. “That won’t be a problem,” he finally said. “And let me call you a car.”
“That would be nice. Thank you.” I extended the blindfold to him, and he strode forward to take it. When his fingers brushed mine, I remembered how warm and hard his body had been around me. How his fingers had felt in my hair as he'd caressed me.
I was ashamed I’d let him hold me like that.
I was even more ashamed that I’d liked it.
* * *
That night,as I dreamed alone in my bed, shame followed me from vision to vision, filling my belly even as I woke up on my stomach, rutting against my mattress as I half-unconsciously rode my way through a panting climax.
seven
On a frigid New Year’s Eve, I stepped out of a black car and shut the door. I pulled my coat tighter around me as I looked across the narrow glass and steel footbridge to the island in the Potomac.
This close to shore, the river was a broken mosaic of ice, and I could see loose chunks of it sliding in the channel farther out. On the other side of the bridge was a glass building four or five stories high, its angles striated by deep pink and purple lights. They glowed over the slushy Potomac and against the flat stretch of DC and Alexandria behind them, like the building was a glass casket for a setting sun suspended inside.
There was no way to get there but by foot, by crossing over the bridge.
The piercing wind found its way under my long wool coat, scraping at my thighs and breasts through the thin silk of the dress Mark had sent for me to wear, and it chased me across the bridge as the car idled behind me. Charitably, I wondered if Mark had given the driver instructions to make sure I made it inside safely.
Less than charitably, I wondered if Mark had told the driver to make sure I made it inside, period.
I was here for my first appearance as Mark’s fiancée and submissive, and I was determined to acquit myself from our rehearsal a month ago. I wasn’t going to let something as simple as crawling knock me off-kilter; I wasn’t going to panic just from sitting in his lap.
The tall glass doors slid open automatically as I approached, and I stepped inside the lofty space, my eyes sliding to the stairs, elevator, and smaller door just behind the front desk. The same pink and purple glow from outside was muted in here, softer, complemented by a subdued gold light from strategically placed sconces and pendants. I was the only one in the lobby, aside from the two employees who’d opened the doors and the employee behind the front desk.
Hesitantly, I walked toward the desk, not sure what to say exactly. Was there some kind of sex club etiquette? Would I need to sort out a temporary membership? Could I treat it like a normal meeting?Yes, hello, I’m here to see the owner? I’m his fiancée, I promise he knows me?
But the woman—also dressed in black, in a pencil skirt and a leather corset over a silk blouse with a tie-neck—smiled at me as I came forward.
“Miss Laurence,” she said warmly. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Of course, Mark would have made all the arrangements. There was a strange feeling that came with the realization, almost like a thrill, to know that he’d thought about me while we weren’t together. I had the same feeling whenever he emailed me about my ongoing education in kink, especially when those emails came late at night. I imagined him in bed in that Billionaire’s Row penthouse, his phone in his hand and his thoughts on me.
I imagined him here, watching other people play, his thoughts straying to his bartered future wife.
It was a dangerous thing, that thrill. I had to ignore it.
“If you’ll follow me,” the woman said. She had pale gold skin and thick black hair that was twisted into a neat chignon at her neck. “And over here is our coat check, if you’d like to leave your coat.”
