Page 84 of Salt Kiss
I read about quests and dragons near the library’s glassed-in fireplace, and sometimes I read up on the deck with the wind ruffling my hair, and sometimes I read at the prow, braced against the railing with sea spray flecking the pages.
And sometimes I just watch the waves, the swirl and the froth, and my mind drifts to Isolde, gleaming with sweat, a blade flashing in her hand.
My mind drifts to the man waiting for her in America and what it felt like to have his hands in my hair, on my throat, bruising my hips.
How he looked when he burned me with wax.
It’s usually around this time that I have to go to my room and masturbate, the black and silver ring Mark gave me rubbing against my flesh as I do.
Isolde and I meet again for dinner, and we eat food that reflects the “terroir of our destinations” or something pretentious like that. I’m almost used to it, after months with Mark, but sometimes I’ll be looking down at a plate of foie gras with mint gel or roasted pigeon with sweet red fruits scattered everywhere, and I’ll remember that it was less than a year ago that I was eating DFAC food scooped out of a hot metal pan.
It was less than a year ago that Sims was stealing my Pop-Tarts.
And then usually whatever conversation Isolde and I are having goes quiet, me lost in memories and her lost to something too. After dinner, Isolde takes a drink and goes out to the prow alone, her back straight and her eyes on the sea. I don’t join her because by that point in the day, I’ve started not to trust myself.
War memories, and missing Mark, and Isolde’s mouth with its barely there dent on her upper lip, and the gorgeous, twisting thresh of the sea—it’s all added up by then into something dangerous.
I lock myself in my room and stare out the balcony window until the ship is asleep, hardly knowing myself. And then I wait for the tortured whimpers, the soft noises of the sleeping damned, and I go into her room and wake her up. I press a hand to her chest and then to her belly until she can breathe, and we both ignore the points of her nipples poking through her top, and we both decline to talk about what we see in our dreams, and eventually I tear myself away and go back to my room.
We don’t say much in these moonlit moments, but sometimes our eyes meet and they stay met for too long and it feels like we’re speaking anyway. Together in whatever perdition that turns sleep into a haunted circus of memory.
And so it’s like this that we reach the Azores, gliding into the unreal turquoise and teal arms of São Miguel.
We’re only here for a day, to provision and refuel ourselves for the rest of the way across the Atlantic, but time seems indifferent here. Mist hangs in the air, rainbows shimmer over volcanoes, and the occasional spit of rain haphazardly dances along the decks while the sun beams from the other direction.
We refuel closer to shore and then move back out into the harbor, the interior crew and captain taking the tender to the marina to handle provisioning and paperwork. I grab a beer—a Zywiec,the yacht will provideindeed—and stroll out to the main deck, intending to enjoy the view.
And stop short, because I’m greeted by an entirely different view than green island slopes and clear blue water.
There had been a swimsuit in her room after all, because Isolde is swimming in the pool.
It’s shockingly modest: a white one-piece with long sleeves, more rash guard than swimsuit. But then again, Mark knows her, and anyone who’s spent any time with Isolde can tell that she’s not the type for micro-bikinis or mesh.
No, she’d want something that deflects attention, that draws no notice...so it’s a shame for her then that this suit does the absolute opposite.
The contrast of the fabric and her now lightly suntanned skin is the contrast between white and pale gold: white-clad arms and slender, gold hands, white-clad hips and taut gold legs. And the cut of the swimsuit over the contours of her rump—deceptively indecent. Because it’s not cut high, not tailored like a thong, nothing so obvious as that. But onher, on that toned, luscious part of her, it’s more obscene than wearing nothing.
Her body carves through the water with ease—strength and timing both—and even though she’s not tall, her legs look long and powerful as she kicks through the water. Her hair streams behind her, and then when she kicks off from the wall, turning underwater, it billows into a silky cloud, like some kind of mermaid’s.
All this I see before good manners and loyalty to Mark—and basic fucking decency—slam into me like a wave breaking on a steep shore.
I’m staring. I’m staring and that’s wrong and I’m going to go drink my beer somewhere else.
Except that’s the moment she sees me. The moment I’m turning away is the moment she stands up and gives a wave, gesturing for me to wait as she climbs out of the pool.
And oh my God, what the fuck, Mark is going to hell, the hell reserved for evil fiancés, because that swimsuit is the furthest thing from modest, the furthest thing from demure.
When she is out of the water, it is absolutely fucking see-through. A thin glaze of white over a toned stomach with an oval navel, over high breasts with roseate nipples. Over a darker delta between her legs.
And she has absolutely no idea. Her bearing is the same as always, upright and deliberate, and she’s not making any move to cover herself, and she’s walking toward me with a larger almost-smile than usual. The swimming has put her in a good mood—or maybe it’s the Azores, the shimmering mist and lush mountains—or maybe it’s that we only have two weeks left until she’s home and with Mark.
“The yacht did provide, you were right,” she says, and reaches up to twist her hair into a platinum rope, squeezing out the water. It drips onto her breast, wetting the fabric even more. I don’t look, I don’t look,I can’t look, but I don’t need to. Even in my peripheral vision, her nipples through the swimsuit are conspicuous, unmistakable. I could precisely recreate the diameter of her areolae, the amount of time it takes for the tips of her breasts to grow stiff in the air outside the heated pool. I could draw the exact geometry of her navel, the triangle between her legs. Just from that one instant.
Her, in this swimsuit, is now forever etched into my mind.
Fuck. Me.
And I can’t move from where I’m standing, which is behind a half wall that separates the pool deck from the shaded bar and the glass doors leading to the dining room. I mentally curse Mark for only having linen pants and shorts in his room for me to wear—the kind of soft, loose clothing that makes no secret of my weakness.
