Page 79 of Salt Kiss
Him, the bossiest person I know? “You are awful at coaxing people,” I say, and that surprises a laugh out of him.
“Is that so? I seem to recall coaxing you into several interesting situations over the last month.”
“I had to coax you first,” I counter, and he laughs again, and there’s a burning hook in my chest, just behind my heart. I don’t think I can handle this,us, the teasing, the warmth, like there’s nothing behind us but easy, happy sex.
“I should go,” I say. “I know it’s late where you are. Is your shoulder okay, by the way?”
“It’s fine,” he says. “And I mean it about relaxing. Isolde won’t if you don’t.”
“Right. Just pretend to be you.”
“Now you’ve got the idea. And Tristan?”
“Sir?”
“I put you in your suite for a reason. I want you to be close in case Isolde needs anything.”
I bite back a sigh. I had really wanted to see if I could change rooms today. It doesn’t feel...healthy...to be so close to her.
“Yes, sir,” I say reflexively.
“Also, I have clothes you can borrow in the dresser. You’re on a yacht; you don’t need to look like you’re dressing for a job interview.”
“You’re the one who wanted me in suits. Sir.” But I go over to the dresser in question and find shorts, linen pants, both short- and long-sleeved T-shirts. They look light and comfortable and tempting.
“Well, I changed my mind about the suits, at least while you’re in the middle of nowhere. Since I can’t enjoy you in them anyway.”
It feels like flirting, but from him, it’s just honesty. “Yes, sir,” I say, and after I hang up, I dress in a pair of his shorts and a T-shirt.
They smell like him.
I findCaptain Duval to check in, and I’m assured that everything is running like clockwork—or likemarine chronometer-work, she adds with an eyebrow arch, letting me know this is a boat reference I won’t get—and then with nothing else to do, and it still being early enough that I don’t want to pester Isolde with my company, I decide to head to the basketball court and see how bad I’ve gotten.
I’m walking down the narrow hallway that leads to the gym, the basketball court, and the room with the racks full of wooden weapons when I catch movement. Instinct has me stopping just before I reach the doorway, using the wall-length mirror to see inside without revealing myself. It’s an instinct I’m grateful for, because it allows me to stand there and watch the incredible sight within: Isolde Laurence, knife in hand, fighting an enemy only she can see.
Her hair is pulled back in a braid that looks like it started neat and has been trying valiantly ever since, and thin strands of hair cling to her damp neck and forehead as she spins, slices, stabs. She’s wearing only a sports bra and bike shorts, and I can see that her rich-girl clothes from yesterday hidmuscles.
Lean ones, yes, tight and subtle—but for-real, no-shit muscles that any soldier would be proud of.
They flex and lengthen as she moves, every part of her body working in concert to kick or pivot or block. Her feet make almost no sound on the mats, and even though I can see the strength behind each movement, she’s not out of breath. There’s an ease to her, a practiced grace, that makes me think she’s done this sequence of movements before, that it’s not spontaneous. It doesn’t take away from the beauty of it, or the skill—even when the yacht sways, she moves with it, as unbothered as a leaf on a branch in the wind. Her knife flashes in the morning light, and gold glints on either side of her fingers. Some kind of inlay into the hilt.
I catch winks and drops of red—rubies, I think. Her knife has rubies in the handle.
She finishes with one knee drawn up, her other arm extended behind her, and she could be the tiny ballerina inside of a music box—save for the look on her face, which is deeply, if beautifully, grim.
Well, that and the knife.
I wait until she puts her foot on the mat and makes a small bow at the air before I step inside.
I see the moment she senses me, her spine lengthening and her eyes finding mine in the mirror.
“So this room was all for you,” I say with a smile. “The captain and I weren’t sure.”
“It was kind of Mark to have it here,” she says. Her voice is neutral, and her face too. It’s notdistantnecessarily, her demeanor, but it’s so self-possessed that it’s close. “I wouldn’t have thought to ask for a space like this on a yacht.”
“The whole boat is nonsense,” I agree. “There’s a basketball court. And aspa. And that’s a really cool knife.”
I don’t mean to say the last part, it just comes out, but now that I’m closer to it, I can see the intricacies of gold and ruby in the handle, the wavy patterns in the steel blade, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
