Page 54 of Salt Kiss
“When you’re with me, I don’t feel heavy anymore. I feel light inside of my own skin, like...like my heart is so light it could float away.”
And then I stop. I still don’t know if that made sense, and I definitely don’t know if that exposed too much of what I can’t ever expose, and I have no idea what Mark is thinking right now as he studies me, his gaze piercing, a line drawn between his brows.
“I promise not to let your heart float away, Tristan,” he says. Quietly.
And then he steps close enough for me to smell him, to smell the rain and wet earth, and it’s the smell of Morois House, I think, rich and hidden, and then his mouth is on mine, driving away every other thought.
Eighteen
My limits are morethan nothing but still not extensive.
Maybe it’s a soldier’s hubris, like I can fuckinghooahmy way through anything, including nipple clamps and electric fly swatters, but mostly it’s that everything on the list, I now imagine Mark doing to me, and I just want him to do anything to me. Anything he wants.
Also, and maybe this line of thinking makes me a bad submissive, butanything Mark wantsso far has resulted in me having the best fucking orgasms of my life.
It’s not all ensorcelled martyrdom, you know.
Markand I fall into a rhythm over the next few weeks.
In the mornings, after the security meeting and my morning dose of fiber because fiber is an important part of my life now, I come up to his office where I’m shoved under his desk to suck him off or I’m dragged up to the roof so he can fuck me under the morning sky. We decide early on to be discreet-ish, knowing that it would be impossible to hide things forever from Jago or the core Lyonesse staff. So while I’m not servicing Mark in the hall (yet), I routinely find myself on my knees in the car while we’re driving around the city. Or dragged out of the hall with an impatient hand around my wrist and shoved into the nearest playroom, shackled to a bed and then paddled or flogged or whatever new sadism Mark dreams up that night.
On Sundays, Mark keeps me in his apartment and cooks for me, makes me read to him while he effortlessly dices shallots and garlic and other wonderful smelling things. For dessert, there’s me on the table, being edged or tormented or slid into.
At night, I sleep with him, his arms wrapped around me and his legs tangled with mine.
I wonder if Strassburg did all this, if Strassburg had to read him Sassoon and Owen and Rosenberg on Sundays, if Strassburg got to know the heavy weight of Mark’s limbs as he fell into a dreamless sleep.
On the third Sunday, after we eat a dinner of radish greens and quail—the quail bones so tiny and delicate that I feel like a monster eating it—Mark clears the table and I kneel on the floor. It’s never something he’s asked me to do in these in-between moments, these moments that aren’t quite kinky and aren’t quite not, but it feels good to do it anyway. Settling. Like when I’m down there, I’m already lighter.
“Evander never makes eye contact with anyone but Arjun, and even then, it’s only when Arjun lets him,” I said one morning to Mark after I’d taken his erection in my throat and swallowed his cum. I was still kneeling after, my head resting on his thigh like he sometimes let me do, and his fingers were in my hair, toying and teasing, the one thing that never failed to make me want to purr like a cat. “Should I be doing that too, sir? When it’s just the two of us?”
“I’m a little more organic than most in what I like privately,” Mark replied. “I like seeing your face. Your eyes. I like when I can see all the little desires and petulances that make having a submissive so much fun.”
“Will you tell me when you want me to do something?”
He tugged on my hair. “Always.”
So kneeling when we’re not in a scene isn’t something he’s said to do, but I like it, and I also like the way his eyes flit over to me in silent pleasure as he cleans up.
I do look at him though; I don’t think that’s something I can ever give up. I could watch him move between the kitchen sink and the dishwasher forever. I could take in the poetry of his rolled-up sleeves and the efficient circles he uses to wipe down the counter for the rest of my entire life.
After he’s done, he comes to me.
“It’s your birthday tomorrow,” he says, tucking a finger under my chin.
“Were you looking at my file, sir?”
“Perk of the position,” he says, looking down at me. “Also my older sister texted me very stern instructions not to forget.”
“She’s very nice,” I say honestly. I’ve been talking to my father as infrequently as I can manage, but I still hear all the happiness she’s brought him in his voice.
“Blanche is an angel. Very strange, given that Melody and I are not,” he says. “Anyway. Setting aside the fact that our families are now legally connected and I have people reminding me of your birthday, I already had this planned for you. But we’ll need to go down to a playroom for it.”
Usually when we go to the playrooms, it’s more about proximity to the hall and Mark’s impatience than what’s inside. He’s just as happy to make me kneel on dried beans from his pantry or torture me with binder clips from his desk drawer as he is to use the specialized tools downstairs.
My curiosity is hardly sated as we step inside the playroom and I see a plastic sheet laid over the leather upholstered platform in the middle of the space. There’s a plastic sheet underneath it too. I turn to face him.
He’s already unbuttoning his shirt as he eyes a table against the deep green wall.
