Page 73 of Salt Kiss
But I know I’m about to cave. I can feel it. He’s so close and my lips are resting against his pulse and his hand on my neck is firm and unyielding, and I can’t help that I’ve already surrendered my soul to him. That I would do it again in a heartbeat.
He’s just like that somehow.
“It can’t be the cruelest thing I’ve asked of you,” he murmurs. “Out of teeth and burning wax and binder clips, surely this doesn’t even rank in the top three.”
He’s hard against my hip, I realize. Because I’m close or because he’s remembering being cruel to me, I can’t be sure. Either way, it makes me shiver.
“It’s the worst and you know it.”
“Hmm. You could use your safeword, you know.”
I pull back and look at him. He looks back at me, his hand still cupping my neck.
“That’s for kink,” I say uncertainly.
“And kink is all the time for me,” he responds. “Because you are mine all the time.”
His words sink into my mind without so much as a splash, racing right down to the bottom, right to the very seat of my soul.
“Don’t say that,” I whisper. “Not now.”
I search his face, wondering—scolding myself for wondering—but could he...care for me? I’d assumed for him that our arrangement was physical, that I was nothing more than a pet. An affectionately treated pet maybe, but not beloved. Not someone to invest a future in.
You are mine all the time.
“Okay,” he says. “I won’t say it.”
But his eyes blaze.
“I mean it,” I say weakly. “I’m not...yours.” I am. “We’re not anything now.” We are.
“You are in control, Tristan,” Mark says. “Always. If you change your mind, then rest assured that mine remains unchanged. I want you. Being a groom doesn’t change that.”
“It should,” I mutter.
Mark shrugs. “I’m an uncommon groom. And Isolde is an uncommon bride. This is Lyonesse after all.”
I shake my head. I’ve only been at Lyonesse for a few months, and even I know that kink and polyamory only work with honesty. Whatever was happening between Mark and me was about something else. But I don’t know what, and when I look at Mark, I can’t find the answer in his eyes. Only something that looks like...regret, maybe. Pain.
Like he’s about to lose me for real, and I have to close my eyes again.
“Okay,” I say, wishing my stupid, weak heart were anything but what it were. “I’ll go to Ireland for you.”
Twenty-Four
One daythey’ll write songs about how much I despise Isolde Laurence.
Which is impressive of me, given that I haven’t even met her yet, but I detest her. She’s marrying the man I love, most importantly, but also she comes from some kind of plutocratic banking empire,andshe has a degree in art history, which is the most pretentious horseshit I’ve ever heard of.
I know my West Point education came with a literal sword, but still. Art history? What the fuck.
And now, as I’m driving a rented car along some low, green cliffs to get her and escort her to the yacht, I’m looking at my destination nestled above the sea: a manor house of white stone, wide and symmetrical, with tall windows and a circular drive. The lawns around it are a deep green and as neat as a blanket rolling down to the cliffs. On my flight here, I searched Cashel House online and found that there’s been a manor house on the site since the twelfth century. So that’s Isolde Laurence, then—a pointless degree and a family seat that predates the invention of the chimney.
All of that and she has to take Mark away from me too.
I pull up in front of the house and take a deep breath as I park.
Stop.
