Page 6 of Salt in the Wound
Sometimes, both in sparring and in diplomacy, you had to stop dancing around your opponent and attack. I decided to take a more direct approach, just to see how he parried. “You don’t have to dance with me, you know. If you don’t want to.”
There was no hitch in his movement this time, but the faintest curl of amusement pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Who’s to say I’m not enjoying it?”
Our gazes locked. He was tall enough that I had to lift my chin to look at his face, and his strength was undeniable around me. I suddenly felt the yawn of years between us. Before now, my youth had been an asset, the way I moved through spaces as Mortimer’s eyes and ears, but for the first time, I felt it like a liability.
This man, so much older than me, could outplay me, outmaneuver me. He could even kill me, if he chose—that he’d made clear enough in the dojo all those months ago.
I didn’t think he wanted to kill me. But something about dancing with him under the night sky felt like dancing right into a trap that even I might not be able to escape from.
But then why did my chest feel so tight? Why did it feel like the air was falling, falling, right out of my lungs, as if it was suddenly made of something heavier than air, like iron or lead? Why was there was nothing left to keep my pulse moving normally?
And as we moved around the floor, our eyes still tight on each other’s, my blood was pooling in all the wrong places. A flush on my cheeks and chest. Thick and hot in the bottommost part of my belly. All from this man’s cold, perceptive stare.
I hated it.
The music ended, proof if I ever needed it that God was watching over me, and I managed not to yank myself away from the tuxedoed danger, managed to wait for him to walk me attentively to the side of the dance floor, where my father stood talking to colleagues.
I still hadn’t responded to his question about enjoying the dance, and before Mark released my hand from where he’d tucked it firmly in the crook of his elbow, he leaned in to murmur, “I took significant pleasure in our dance, Isolde. Worry not.”
And then he straightened, smoothed his jacket, and with a jagged sort of smile, left me.
I felt the place where his hand had been on my back the rest of the night.
* * *
I wokeat dawn the next day, my heart slamming against my ribs, slick flesh pulsing between my legs. I wasn’t ignorant of sex; I knew that I’d had an orgasm in my dream.
Just as I knew Mark Trevena had been in my dream.
I sat up and shivered on the edge of my bed, wanting—wanting—
My fingers twitched, my skin tingled. I imagined a knotted cord against my back, purging myself of unwanted lust, but my body was confused, too tangled from the dream, and the idea of whipping myself only stirred me more.
I shoved up from my bed and stumbled over to my dresser. I would pray and then I’d run, and I’d run so far that even my own dreams were left behind me.
Two hours and five miles later, a chipper Bryn came up beside me. It was already hot, even this early in the morning, and the trees lining the Riverside Park path weren’t enough to stop the pink flush under Bryn’s light bronze cheeks.
“I heard you met our Knife Guy last night,” she said by way of hello, matching my pace perfectly. “Lav told me.”
Lavender was Bryn’s older sister. Both Bryn’s mother and father worked at Laurence Bank; Lav was engaged to a vice president of global markets there. Bryn’s life was practically more involved with Laurence Bank than my own.
“His name is Mark Trevena. We danced.” I didn’t know why I added that last part. It didn’t matter.
Who’s to say I’m not enjoying it?
“Do you know what he does?” Bryn asked, looking over at me. Her dark ponytail swung in a long arc over her shoulders. She asked like she already knew, like the answer mattered.
“He said he was a business associate of my father’s.”
“Izzy, he runs a sex club.”
I stumbled, barely catching myself before I fell. Of all the things she could have said, I would have never—
Sex clubs were real? Truly real?
“Lav said it’s very secret, someplace in DC. And everyone goes there, like everyone who matters, and from all over the world. And it’s not just a sex club, but it’s like a fetish club or something. You know, spanking and people pretending to be puppies and stuff.”
“A sex club,” I repeated faintly. Our footfalls were back in sync now as we ran, but I felt like I could trip again at any moment. I’d never even been kissed, but I hadn’t considered myself innocent, by any means. Half the morsels of information I brought back to Mortimer were in some way related to sex—who was having an affair, who wanted to be having an affair, and so forth, and so I’d considered myself worldly when it came to matters of the flesh.
