Page 37 of Salt Kiss
“Did you see?” he asks once the elevator doors close. His voice is triumphant, and there’s a boyish glint to his eye. He looks like he just pulled off a high school prank.
A high school prank that I think he might have earned fifty million dollars for.
“Did we give an elected lawmaker gastroenteritis last night, sir?”
Mark waves a hand. “We merelyinfusedgastroenteritis onto his toothbrush. What happened next was out of our control. Besides, I can’t blackmail everyone, Tristan. It would get boring.”
“And why are we blackmailing anyone again? Around a popular bill that would be objectively a good thing?”
“My definition of objective good is more limited than yours,” Mark reminds me. And then he walks back into his office as I trail behind him. “There are two companies with the ability to partner with NASA for a renewed space program. One is a clear favorite because they’re ready to expand immediately. The other company has much better tech and design but isn’t ready to scale up.”
“So that company...”
“Asked me to kill the bill, yes. Never fear, though. It’ll be back soon. It’s too necessary and there’s too much public interest for it to stay dead.”
“And by the time it comes back, the company that hired you will be ready to compete more evenly?”
“That’s right. And if they get a favorable government contract, fifty million dollars will be a drop in the bucket,” Mark says. “An advisable gamble for them. A great stock opportunity for me.”
He’s pushing papers together on his desk now, and I think about how he fucked a curvy sub half to death on this desk. Left her nipples wet and her thighs rope-bitten, and now he’s casually mentioning how he derailed federal legislation in less than three days because someone had good stock options.
Mark glances up at me, and victory still burns through his normally cool expression. “Let’s get lunch,” he says. “I’m starving.”
Fourteen
Two weeksafter we get back from Singapore, I’m in the daily security meeting listening to Nat and Goran bicker about hosting a prince from Spain and what additional security precautions they need to take. I’ve been listening to this same fight for a week now, so I’m about to pack up and go upstairs when my daily email from Sedge hits my inbox. I open up the most updated schedule for Mark and then frown at the screen.
In a little over a month, there are three weeks shaded in, with the wordIrelandnoted above. There are literally no details attached other than the wordsPhiltre D’Amour.
“Philtre D’Amour,” I murmur out loud to myself.
“It’s the yacht,” says Goran, and I look up at him, surprised.
“Mark has a yacht?”
“I feel like even the wordyachtis a little mild,” Nat adds.
“What would be the right word, then?” needles Goran, who still seems to be grumpy over the prince’s security issues.
“Ridiculous,” mutters Nat, and then Goran’s face splits into a delighted grin.
“Okay, you’re right. That thing is ridiculous.”
Sedge would be the one handling the details, the equipping and porting and boarding, and so I’ll need to talk to him to figure out next steps for a security plan. “I wonder why Ireland of all places,” I say, folding my laptop shut and standing.
“Isn’tsheIrish?” Goran asks, just as Nat says, “Her mother’s from Ireland.”
“Who has an Irish mother?” I ask.
They both look at me, two sets of blinking brown eyes. “Isolde,” Goran says, like he’s telling me the sky is blue.
“Ah,” I say. That clarifies nothing for me.
Nat’s phone pings, and she eyes the screen like it’s about to bite her. “That’s the prince’s team about their precious cargo. I swear if they have another fit about—”
That’s my cue to leave, and leave I do, going to find Sedge before joining Mark upstairs. I find Sedge in his office on the floor below Mark’s, dressed in trousers and a button-down shirt layered under a cardigan with birds on it. His colorless, barely gray eyes flick up to me as I enter. “Hello,” he says in that soft, wary way of his. I’ve learned that most of the employees on this floor fall into the same kinky categories as the members here. Dinah and Andrea are Dommes, Sedge is a submissive. Ms. Lim is a switch, which I can only measure by when she wears a collar and when she wears keys—and in the variances of herfuck around and findoutenergy as she’s dealing with guests.
“Hello,” I greet politely. “Do you have any more information about this trip to Ireland next month? Goran said that Mark wants to take a yacht?”
