Page 20 of Salt Kiss
“I forget you grew up here. Well then, you already know how often these happy accidents seem to occur in the Beltway.”
“It seems like they happen more often when Lyonesse is involved,” I point out.
The curve of his mouth widens, almost a real smile now. “As you say, Tristan. As you say.”
I throw myself into work,into running and push-ups and sit-ups when I’m not shadowing Mark, and when I am shadowing Mark, into the full, attentive minutiae of being a bodyguard.
I learn his work habits; learn the times he prefers to run, exercise, and eat; the restaurants he likes to frequent for working lunches; the manner in which he receives the more notable and preeminent guests of his club. I study the safety plans for the upcoming trips and begin to make my own for the few trips marked further out on his calendar; I study each and every person he meets with and commit them to memory.
And if his cool voice still works its way into my chest, if I find myself tracing the fullness of his mouth when it’s pressed into its usual delphic shape during meetings, then I hope I hide it well enough.
I can’t want him. And it would be foolish anyway, since he treats me with the same lazy remove as he did our first two days together.
If you’re worried I’ll expect more...
Five weeks into working for him, we make a trip to Manhattan and then to Bishop’s Landing outside of it, a Hamptons-esque area with Edwardian mansions aplenty. It’s for a masquerade, and while I assume I’m meant to stay with the car and let the event security take point, Mark gives me a domino mask and makes me go inside after I help Jago secure the car.
“I need you to dance with me whenever I say,” he says as I find him again. “For protection.”
“Protection? Sir?”
The masque is a sumptuous revel of wealth and luxury, with costumes that look like they cost thousands and thousands of dollars, not to mention the flowers and candles and food. It’s like being inside a fantasy novel.
East Germany in the sixties, it is not.
Mark wraps a strong hand around mine and pulls me out onto the floor. “You see, Tristan,” he says as his other hand finds the small of my back and pulls me closer. I instinctively lay my right hand at his shoulder and feel the warm convexity of muscle there. “When you’re in the business I’m in, a party like this is a chance for people to schmooze their way into your good graces. My good graces, unfortunately, have to be paid for, but it’s not polite to say so. Being fond of dancing, with a conveniently available dance partner, makes a lovely little escape hatch from these overtures.”
The business I’m in—information, not kink. And he doesn’t need protection from violence but from awkward networking.
“This wasn’t in the job description, sir,” I mutter as I do my best to remember how to waltz.One two three, four five six.One two three, four five six.
“The job description is whatever I say it is.” A sigh. “You dance like you’re following orders.”
It’s only eight years of military experience that keep me from shooting a glare at him. “I am following orders, sir,” I point out.
His eyes flash blue under his own domino mask. “Follow them better, then,” he says, and pulls me even closer. Our hips are pulled in, his hand unyielding at the small of my back, his fingers tight around mine. “Feel what my body tells yours to do. Stop counting.”
With a deep breath, I do as he says. I watch as his shoulders dip, feel as his thigh brushes my thigh. The hand at the small of my back moves ever so slightly, a signal forward or backward or to the side, and the minute I stop thinking and let him lead, the dance becomes as natural as breathing.
And then awareness burns through me like a brushfire: the rainlike smell of him, the firm length of his legs moving so close to mine. The stretch of sun-bronzed throat above his bow tie. Our hips are close enough that it would only take a missed beat, a hesitation, for him to feel the erection lengthening in my suit trousers.
I have to look away, pretending I need to keep my gaze to the side so I don’t misstep. I don’t want him to see what I’m failing at stopping.
I’m trying not to, I want to tell him.But I think of you too much. I think of your last bodyguard, who you might have fucked, and I think the ache in my throat is jealousy.
At some point, the music ends, and we move off the floor. And despite Mark’s earlier words, and although he does keep me close, he engages in conversations the rest of the night, leaving me free from his touch and craving it all the more.
Eight
Two daysafter we get back from Bishop’s Landing, I take the elevator up from the security office to the top floor, doing my morning check-in with the object of my blooming obsession.
For some of the meetings Mark takes, he wants me in the room or just outside it; for some, he doesn’t want the presence of security to upset whatever delicate transaction is about to take place. And yet for others, he wants me visible down on the server floor, a human manifestation of how safe a secret will be at Lyonesse. Each day is slightly different, but I don’t mind because each day is set by what he needs, and so there’s a reassuring logic to that. All I need are my orders, and I’ll march wherever I’m told.
Today I’m also holding a cappuccino fresh from the club kitchens because I noticed on our trip to Bishop’s Landing that it’s Mark’s morning drink of choice. Which surprised me a little—I suppose I expected a precisely pulled shot of espresso or even just black coffee, the lifeblood of the U.S. military machine. But a cappuccino takes time to make, time to drink. It invites stirring and savoring. Hardly the drink of a former special activities officer.
It’s the kind of knowledge about someone that raises more questions than answers, and maybe if I find him in the right mood, already switched into the charming club host from the controlled autocrat he usually embodies during the day, he might tell me why he likes cappuccinos. He might arch his eyebrow at me, the line of his mouth moving just so—the small gestures that would be an earsplitting grin on any other man.
Instead, I walk through the empty vestibule to his office door and push it open to find him taking off his jacket behind his desk. Which has a naked woman tied to the top of it.
