Page 71 of Salt Kiss
“It’s not a secret, Tristan. Our engagement was announced in five different newspapers. Her uncle is a Catholic cardinal and will be in attendance. Her father, Geoffrey Laurence, is one of the most influential men in international banking.”
Geoffrey Laurence. I remember him—compact and well-dressed with silvering hair. Mark had been in a strange, restless mood after lunch with him. And that night, he’d kissed me on the rooftop.
At least one of us should get what they’d hoped for.
“It’s been in the works for four years,” Mark continues. He’s still holding my wrist, still watching me. “It’s always been the plan.”
“And fucking me? Was that part of the plan?” And then I stop and give a humorless laugh, remembering his words in Singapore. “No, of course not. I was going to complicate things. But what—you just couldn’t help yourself anyway? You wanted me badly enough that it was worth cheating on your fiancée? Risking an engagement that’s been announced in five different newspapers?”
His face grows cool. “Something like that.”
It occurs to me that someone walking into the room would see two regular lovers right now. Him on the table, me standing between his legs. My hand on his chest with our eyes locked.
But of course that’s not the whole story. There’s a bloody rag between my hand and his skin; he’s holding my wrist tightly enough that I’d need to safeword in order to get away.
And it’s not just the two of us—we’re not alone. Isolde is a veil between us, a shadow.
“Is she like me?” I ask, and the words are as ragged as the wound on Mark’s shoulder. “Will she kneel for you? Let you do whatever you want to her like I do?”
I don’t know what I want the answer to be. Is it better or worse if she’s not a submissive?
Mark doesn’t answer for a moment. “She submits when it suits her,” he says, which is more confusing than no answer at all.
“Is she polyamorous?” I ask. “Will the marriage be open?”
“That’s up to her,” he says mildly, and I could kill him right now, I really could.
“So you don’t even know if she would be okay with it, and you still had sex with me?”
“What we do is a lot more thanhaving sexand I think you know it.” He lets go of my hand, but not to free me. He grabs my tie instead, standing up and looking down at me as I’m held in place by the silk around my neck.
He’s only an inch taller, but I feel that inch like a mile. “What wedid,” I correct him. My voice is quiet now. “I’m done now. I can’t be—it would be cheating.”
He doesn’t like this. I can feel his fingers spasm around my tie, and his mouth is white around the corners.
But he says, “As you like.”
Like it’s all down to me. Like I’m being the unreasonable one.
“Let go of my tie. Sir.”
A muscle moves in his jaw, but nothing else changes. Until—abruptly—he lets go of me and turns away. The bloody washcloth falls to the floor between us, and I bend to pick it up.
“Will you keep working for me, Tristan?” he asks. He’s looking out the window now instead of looking at me. “Being my bodyguard?”
“I—”
There’s the shelf of World War I poetry he has me read aloud to him on Sunday afternoons. There’s the door to his bedroom, the light dancing around the floor from the pool above it.
There’s the door to the guest bedroom, a room that Isolde might claim for use of its closet.
There’s the kitchen where he’s cooked for me; there’s the kitchen island where just last week I was naked and trussed up, rope wrapped around my testicles while he jerked my dick until every inch was blood-dark and as tight and smooth as stretched satin. I screamed when I came and then Mark had fed my own orgasm back to me, running his fingers over my stomach and then making me lick them clean.
I turn back to him, and he’s still looking out the window, afternoon sunlight catching on the gold of his eyelashes.
With dismay, I realize that I’m still his. I’m still cursed.
The idea of leaving him is impossible.
