Page 27 of Honey Cut
I am so, so aware of the steel and wood and air that separate Mark and me right now.
One thing I never realized during my career as a good boy, as a hero, is that guilt can feel good too. Like a thrill, a secret dose of darkness, and it filters into my blood as I slide off my bed and leave my bedroom, as I climb the stairs to Mark’s loft and knock on his bedroom door.
There’s no answer, only the faint drumming of the rain echoing throughout the penthouse, and with some hesitation, I knock again. The guilt is fading into embarrassment now, into that upward rush of shame. Maybe he doesn’t want me to come up here, or maybe he’s changed his mind?—
No. I’m not going to leave it at that. Yes, I might be a submissive, his plaything, I might love wrapping myself in his red flags like I’m using them to fight off the cold, but if he’s going to corner me in the kitchen for some light frottage, then the least I deserve is the chance to knock on his door.
With a burst of bravery, I open the door and let myself in the room, preparing myself for anything. Rejection or sleepy annoyance or?—
He’s not here.
With a frown, I step all the way in, looking from the neatly made bed into the open bathroom with its glass shower and freestanding tub. I check the walk-in closet, and then because I’m doubting myself, I go back downstairs and check the common areas as well.
Mark isn’t there either.
He couldn’t have left…he would have had to walk by my door to use the only exits—the elevator and emergency stairwell next to it—and I would have heard him. Even over the rain and the wind, I would have heard him. And when I check the alarm log next to the elevator, it shows what I know to be true: no one has come or gone since before dinner.
Back up in his room, phone in hand, I stand in the empty space for a long time, forcing myself to accept what I can see: no extra door, no balcony, no rooftop access. His room is a box with no escape, and he didn’t leave the penthouse through the main exit. Which means he has another way out of the penthouse, or he’s found a way to doctor his own security system to hide his comings and goings.
But I still would have heard him.
With the wedding planner and the chance that his and Isolde’s movements are being surveilled…I don’t like this. Not at all.
I call him—and, to my surprise, I hear his phone ring, and ring from his closet of all places. Following the sound, I walk back into the space, scanning the wooden shelves and rows of tuxedos and suits for the phone. I don’t see it, and the ringing ismuffled, like it’s behind something, and?—
There’s a seam along the edge of the full-length mirror.
It’s a hidden door, and when I swing it open, I find a nook large enough for a built-in desk and a stool. A monitor is on and glowing, several camera feeds visible, and at a glance, I can see the front of Mark’s building, the interior of the elevator that serves Mark’s floor, the lobby with its security and concierge desk.
I can access the video history, and so I click back several hours on the elevator feed, the lobby, the front. I don’t see the man with the neck tattoo anywhere, and the only people I see in the elevator footage all have key cards for their own floors and get off at their first stops.
No one has come up…and Mark hasn’t come down.
He wouldn’t leave his phone here if he were stepping out—but I remember Singapore. I remember his phone and passport on the bedside table. The makeup covering his tattoo and the uneaten room service.
I don’t have any evidence that he’s been hurt or kidnapped, but I also don’t have any evidence that he’s fine either, aside from that one time in Singapore. And at least then he’d left me a note.
After a brief, if heated, internal debate, I text Goran and explain the situation. While I wait for a response, I go back to the security feeds in front of me.
There’s more here than in my security portal. When I scroll through the camera index on the side, I see feeds for the club, for a house in Maine, for some kind of pied-à-terre in a European city I don’t recognize when I click it open. There’s an unlabeled feed that shows nothing but a bare concrete floor and tattered plastic drapes, a setting that would be ominous if it weren’t for a pile of fruit snacks and a handful of sports drink bottles off to the side. A construction site, probably.
And then my stomach wrenches to the side. Becomes a dry, hot knot.
The feeds for the yacht are here.
I see the pool, the library, the dining room. Not Isolde’s dojo or chapel, thank goodness, but all the main living areas of the vessel are covered, and I know Isolde and I definitely defiled some of them. With near-numb fingers, I click back to when Isolde and I were on board.
God, what has Mark seen? I thought only Sedge would have known, but this is worse,this is so much worse?—
But there’s nothing here.
I blink a few times, click around, confusion and fear making thought impossible.
But no, there’s no record of anything for the three weeks we were at sea. I see recordings from before we embarked, as the craft made its way to Ireland, and I can see it now, in its marina full of fellow superyachts, but there’s nothing between Ireland and then docking in Manhattan. Like the trip across the Atlantic never happened at all.
I let out a shaky breath, unsure of what to make of this. Maybe Sedge deleted everything? Maybe Markhadseen it all and then deleted it because he was hurt or angry?
He hasn’t acted like a hurt or angry man since we came to New York, though, and he certainly wasn’t angry in the kitchen tonight when he let me grind myself to a shameful orgasm in his arms. And he’d made the point—clearly, emphatically—that his marriage is arranged, that nothing matters until the vows are spoken.
