Page 85 of Salt Kiss
“We should eat lunch together. I’ve thought of some more questions about Lyonesse,” Isolde says, and Mark would be so happy right now that she’s thawing, that she’s seeking out company—but I’m not happy, not happy at all, because she’s coming closer, and it’s only the giant bottle of Zywiec in my hand that blocks my groin from view as she passes to go to the stairs. She turns back after she’s on the first tread. “Would that be okay? I’ll go change real fast and then I’ll be ready to eat.”
“Yes,” I say. Rasp. “That would be okay.”
Thank God she’s going to change. I hope she doesn’t get to her room and realize what the suit reveals and then feel embarrassed; I also hope she sees immediately what’s happened and never ever wears this suit again.
I wait for her to get most of the way up the stairs before I move to follow—the stairs lead up to the shaded deck where lunch is set out, and it’s a mistake, it’s afucking mistake, because just as I’m commending myself for having escaped the moment unscathed, I look up to see her run a finger along the inside of her swimsuit bottoms to adjust them. A natural gesture, an unconscious one, to straighten the bunched fabric between her cheeks. And in any other situation, it would have been amodestinstinct, to make sure her bottoms were covering every possible part of her.
But this is not any other situation. And she’s at the top of the stairs and I’m at the bottom, and she has one foot on the topmost step and her thighs are parted, and when she tugs the swimsuit back into place, it pulls aways from her skin for the briefest moment. And I see pink.
Pink.
Wet and tight and disappearing into shadow and then covered once more.
I freeze, and she’s already gone, and my blood is rushing hot into my belly, and my mind is whispering profanity, utter fucking profanity. And my chest feels like someone’s kicked it in, because I just saw my boss’s fiancée’s cunt—off-limitsrich girl who likes knivescunt—and I’m so fucking done for. Because I want it. I want it so badly that I might have to lash myself to the fucking mast of this boat, might have to pitch myself overboard.
I want to look at it; I want to feel the inside of all that pink. I want to taste it.
Fuck, I want to taste it.
I want to slide my way inside and pump myself empty.
And I have to go have lunch and answer questions about Lyonesse’s washing machines or whatever and pretend that everything is normal and that I’m not trying to strangle my own thoughts.
I have to pretend that even after months of seeing people screw onstage, of seeing sex and torment in every shape possible, a flash of pink isn’t enough to unravel all my fucking control.
Twenty-Nine
The next morningas we’re leaving the Azores, I speak with Mark for what will be the last time until we get to Manhattan. I reassure him of the usual things, that Isolde is content and enjoying the yacht, and I try to keep my voice steady, like someone who’s slept a deep, untroubled night’s sleep, and not like someone who didn’t sleep at all. Not like someone who jerked themself raw thinking of the pink between Isolde’s thighs while the bed smelled like damp stone and rain, and then had to go into her room and wake her from a nightmare and act like everything was normal and platonic and fine.
But Mark hears something in my voice because of course he does.
“Is everything okay, Tristan?” he asks. “You sound strained.”
“Everything is fine,” I lie. “Just a little groggy still.”
It’s a bad lie, such a bad lie, because I’m never groggy in the morning, but he makes a little hum of acknowledgment.
“That’s good. Take care of Isolde for me. Give her everything she needs.”
“You should call her, sir. Before the signal’s bad.”
I say this every morning. And every morning he says the same thing.
“Why would I do that when I have you there to be me in my place?”
I am either lucky or outright damned that he has no idea how much I want to be in his place right now. Almost as much as I want to be in her place.
Jesus Christ, I’m a lost cause.
“One last thing,” he says. “Someone came to Lyonesse looking for you today.”
I’m at a loss. “Looking forme?”
“Seems they asked your father for your current address. Wanted to speak in person, not over the phone or over email. A sister of the soldier you killed in Carpathia.”
“Oh,” I say. Faintly. Dizzily.
“Reception didn’t write down her name, only his,” Mark goes on. I already know the name he’s going to say before he says it, but it still feels like a hammer to the face when he does.
