Page 72 of Salt Kiss
But so is staying, so is watching him marry someone else.
“Yes,” I finally admit. The word is edged with pain. “Yes. I’ll be your bodyguard still.”
Mark’s shoulders relax, his mouth too, and I realize he was worried about my answer. Afraid to hear it. It sends a small curl of pleasure amongst the agony behind my sternum.
He doesn’t want me to quit. It could be because I’m good at my job, or because he doesn’t want to train someone else, or because he’s hoping he can lure me into being his bodyguard-with-benefits again, but I don’t care. He doesn’t want me to leave, and oh God, I’m fucked up because that feels almost like love to me.
“Good,” he says, and his voice is low and deep, and I think of him burning me with wax until I came. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Whatever you require, sir,” I say, hoping it sounds professional and not pathetic. Not like I’ll still do anything for him because I’m in love with him, because I’ve made him into a graven image, my own personal god, and it doesn’t matter how capricious or cruel he is, I’ll still worship him.
He turns and settles so that he’s half sitting, half standing against the edge of the table. He carefully moves his shoulder forward, testing how much it hurts. Given the way he pales, I assume it hurts quite a bit. “I need you to go to Ireland and bring Isolde home to me,” he says.
I step back like he’s just swung at me.
Like I’ve been shot at.
I stare at him, my eyes wide and my breath coming faster. “No.”
“No?”
“I can’t go get your bride for you. Don’t ask me to do that.”Don’t ask me to be complicit in my own heartbreak.
Mark settles a little more on the edge of the table, wincing at whatever the change in posture does to his shoulder. “It would be an extremely pleasant errand, I assure you. I had planned on flying there, fetching her, and then sailing back on thePhiltre D’Amour. Three weeks of the best meals and sunsets in the world, just the two of us and a handful of unobtrusive crew members. Unfortunately, Dr. Sutcliff has now extinguished my dreams of ocean-based courtship.”
“I won’t do it. Have her fly here instead. Or find someone else.”
“I’ve gone to considerable trouble and expense to create this vacation, and Isolde deserves a respite before we’re plunged into the politics and headaches of getting married. And the closer we get to the wedding, the more danger she could be in, especially considering Drobny and the events of last week.”
“All the more reason I should be here withyou,” I say in frustration. “You need me here to keep you safe.”
“I have the whole team here, and she has no one right now. There’s no one I trust more than you.” He looks down at his hands, and then he looks back up to me. “She is important to me. I don’t know that I can state it any more clearly than that. She is quite possibly the most important thing in the world to me right now.”
It hurts. I close my eyes and think of how much I would give to be the most important thing in the world to Mark, even after what I learned today. Even knowing he was blithely fucking me while someone else wore his ring.
I hear him come closer.
“I understand you wish you’d known about the engagement.”
“Don’t make me sound needy. It’s a normal thing to know about someone you’re having sex with,” I say miserably. I don’t open my eyes yet.
I can’t—I can’t look at him.
“Tristan.” I feel his hand on my arm, and then my chest, and then around the back of my neck. I crumple, and my face goes into his throat, and he smells like blood and rubbing alcohol and the smallest hint of rain underneath it all. He’s so warm and his collarbone against my jaw is strong and smooth.
“Tristan, I’m sorry. Can you forgive me? I’m not...I’m not accustomed to explaining myself, and especially not to someone who’s new to Lyonesse...” He sighs. It tickles warmly over my ear and jaw. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
I can hardly explain that the reason I’m hurt has just as much to do with being in love with him as it does with my principles. I’ve managed to hide my infatuation with him, my wayward heart, this long, and thank God, because I think if he knew how much this was destroying me right now, I would die. And if hepitiedme for it, then...
I don’t know. I’d die and resurrect myself just so I could die even more horribly a second time.
“You’re only apologizing because there’s something you want,” I mumble into his neck.
I feel Mark smile a little. “Well, obviously.”
“I think it’s cruel of you to ask me to bring her to you.”
There. That’s the closest I can allow myself to confessing the truth of the matter. That asking a lover to escort the bride to the groom is viciously unfair, salt in the wound. That every mile I sail closer to America with her will feel like another mile of barbed wire cinched around my chest.
