Page 52 of Salt Kiss
Once upstairs, I move through the empty lobby area in front of his office and through the office itself, into the hallway that leads to his apartment. Despite working here almost two months, I still haven’t seen the inside of his private living space; he’s always in his office when I come in the morning.
One of the doors is open—I still knock, feeling strange, wishing we were back at Morois House. Things were so simple there: I was his to hurt or to fuck, and he was mine to adore. And there was nothing but time for all of those things.
“Come in,” he calls from somewhere in the apartment, and I enter, momentarily surprised by what I see. I’d expected something as stark and minimalistic as his office, glass and glossy wood and then more glass, but his private rooms are the furthest thing from stark.
The floors are made of wood, running in wide, pale planks, and the walls are the green of bay leaves or dried sage. A velvet couch and two overstuffed chairs set off a living area; botanical watercolors hang on the wall. Lights are everywhere, lamps and sconces and pendants, and built-in bookshelves are crowded with books. Just beyond is the kitchen, its butcher block island covered in bowls holding oranges, onions, and apples. Well-loved copper pots hang on a rack.
It’s stylish and expensive, but it’s not cold. There’s something of him stamped on this place, and it reminds me of who he was at Morois House—not only a hedonist nor a murderer but something more than both.I could spend days here, just exploring his things. Him.
I start with the books, which are mostly medieval history and ancient philosophy, with a smattering of cookbooks and slim volumes of poetry. And oddly enough, there’s an entire shelf of yellowing paperback mysteries that claim to be coauthored by a cat.
“In here, Tristan.” Mark’s cool voice comes from deeper in the apartment, and I pass into a hallway to find an open door to a large bedroom. The floors are the same wide-planked wood, but the walls are painted a soft white. There are more bookshelves, a large bed with a white cover, and a door out to a narrow balcony with a glass railing.
The light is tinted blue, with strange patterns waving and dancing over the floor and walls. I look up to see three skylights in the ceiling, and above them, the clear water of the rooftop pool, shot through with refracting sunlight.
Mark emerges from the bathroom in gray trousers and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, feet bare and hair still damp. When he sees me, his eyes hood a little in a now-familiar gaze, a dark and burning stare that usually precedes some humiliating command. In Cornwall, I privately thought of it as theminestare, the look of a dragon gazing upon his hoard of gold, a conqueror looking over his bloodstained spoils.
It never fails to make my mouth dry, to send heat and blood down deep into my belly.
Yes, yours, I hope my gaze says back.
He rolls his lips inward, briefly, as if stopping himself from something. And then he says, “Let’s have a drink on the balcony, shall we?”
After a long flight where I stayed conscientiously sober as a weak gesture toward my role as a bodyguard—as if having a constant semi and being distracted by Mark’s mouth weren’t just as bad as being soused on first-class champagne—a cold beer sounds great. I tell him so and he leaves to fetch one for me, returning with the Zywiec porter I like and his usual glass of gin, and then together we go out onto the balcony. It’s small, but there’s enough room for the two of us to lean against the railing and look out over the Potomac.
It’s warmer here than it was in England, but not hot. Just warm enough that the beer is nice to drink. The air smells like water and concrete.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I breathe out, unable to hold it in any longer.
“You do?” asks Mark, looking over at me. His arms are on the railing, his glass dangling carelessly from his fingers.
“You’re going to say that we should stop, that I don’t know what I’m getting into, that this will only make things messy since I’m new to kink and was still a virgin as of last week, and then you’ll say that we should go back to the way things were—and—and I don’t want to go back to the way things were, sir,” I finish in a rush. “I want to be yours. Like Strassburg was. Please.”
“Tristan,” he says. It looks like he’s fighting a smile. “I don’t want to stop.”
His words hang in the air like light, there but not there, and I have to breathe, have to swallow, before I can speak. “You don’t want to stop?”
“I don’t, however selfish that makes me.” His eyes are very blue out here in the sunshine. “But I do owe you an apology.”
I have no idea what he could mean. For food and orgasms and the only nightmare-free nights I’ve had since I killed Sims?
Maybe...maybe the stuff with the rulers and spoons and library carpet...
“Mr. Trevena, I liked everything we did. Please don’t say you’re sorry for it. If you say that you’re sorry for it, it makes it seem like it’s worth saying sorry for.” And if it’s worth saying sorry for, it makes me feel ashamed for having wanted it in the first place.
“I’m not sorry for what we did,” he replies after a minute, his eyes searching mine. “And I want to do more of it. But I am sorry for how it was done. I should know better.” A bitter laugh. “If nothing else, I should know better. But I wasn’t thinking clearly this week.”
I remember seeing him in the library, every muscle standing out in harsh relief, bleak anger turning his face into that of a vengeful god. Haunted by whatever haunts him there.
“I used you selfishly,” he goes on, “and while I am a selfish man, I prefer to be so on purpose. And whatever this week was, it wasn’t on purpose.” He looks away from me. The breeze lifts and pulls at his hair, streaks of gold and platinum glimmering in the sun.
“Okay, then,” I say slowly. “Well, if you feel like you need to apologize for that, then I accept your apology. Although isn’t this how most people do things? Not on purpose?”
“Most people don’t gag their lovers with paper towels,” Mark replies mildly. “We’re not most people.”
I roll the beer bottle between my palms for a moment. “Are you saying that it needs to be on purpose from now on?”
“Yes.”
