Page 39 of Honey Cut
“I’m a liar and a murderer, and I don’t play games I don’t plan on winning. But I have told you that I won’t have an unwilling bride. If you need fucked—if you need the pain and atonement you sometimes crave—then you should know that we’ll be doing those things enough publicly to scratch any and every itch you might have. I regret that you were a necessary sacrifice to build this bridge with Laurence Bank, and I want to preserve as much for you as can be preserved. And so if you want this marriage to be something more than transactional, to be my shadows-and-glass girl for real, then you need to mean it.” The corners of his mouth are white and bloodless. “I promised once that I would make you feel every hour that I’ve abstained from possessing someone—it is exponentially truer now. You will suffer for it.”
I open my mouth to speak, to answer—to beg—and he shakes his head.
“You need to think about this, Isolde. I am not being magnanimous or solicitous here. This is a waiver. Think before you sign your safety away because your safeword will be the only armor I leave you with.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply. He yanks me into him and brings his lips down onto mine. And then he fucks my mouth with deep, demanding strokes of his tongue. I am bent back from the intensity of it, held up entirely by the arm around my back, and I can barely breathe, and he tastes like whiskey and mint, and he smells like torrential rain and jagged rock.
He kisses me with promise—with threat—and every rub of his lips and every slide of his tongue just convinces me that the threat is half of what I like about this, about him.
What is God without vengeance or heaven without hell?
What is Mark Trevena withoutthis?
When he pulls away, he doesn’t pull me up, and I am suspended only by him, staring dazedly up into his face with swollen lips and a heaving chest. He could not look more like a fallen angel right now, with his bow tie dangling from his neck and his bright hair in a tousle. His eyes are as black as hell itself.
“At least stay with me tonight,” I whisper. “We don’t have to fuck or even undress. But stay with me. Let me sleep next to you.”
“As you wish, my bride,” he says. His voice is husky from kissing and from what kissing has done to his body. I feel his erection as he pulls me upright and takes his time letting me go.
But he doesn’t do anything about it. When we get to the bedroom, we brush our teeth, the first domestic ritual we’ve shared, and then he changes into pajama pants in the bathroom after I leave.
And when he gets into bed next to me, even though he allows me to press myself fully against his side, he doesn’t move to push his arousal against me, doesn’t do anything about it at all. I wonder if he’ll cave, if I could cajole him into relieving himself, but the minute I’m nestled into all that lovely-smelling strength, the exhaustion of the day catches up with me. I fall asleep thinking of Tristan alone in his room and of Mark’s scorching honesty, of the years-old hunger he admitted to.
I fall asleep as Mrs. Mark Trevena, and for the first time since I was nineteen, I don’t have a single bad dream.
fourteen
ISOLDE
But even without the nightmares,I still dream that night.
In my dream, I’m not at the St. Regis or in New York at all. I’m walking on a narrow path toward a wood, wet grass brushing against the skirt of my dress. Above me, the sky is a glister of stars, scarred by the dark and bright seam of the Milky Way.
Tristan is beside me, carrying a torch, a sword belted at his side. I know there is a notch toward the top of it, a notch matching the shape of a steel splinter that I’d pulled from my uncle’s head six months ago. My uncle is alive, which I am glad for. But I cannot regret that Tristan is alive too.
I steal a look at him as we walk, at the long hair he’s tied back with a ribbon I gave him during our voyage to Cornwall. At the sloped nose, the mouth as lush and full as a woman’s. His lashes are sooty and long, casting fanlike shadows on his face in the torchlight, and the dark slashes of his brows are drawn inward. Hair has escaped the ribbon to brush along his high cheekbones and jaw. They say that when Tristan came to King Mark’s court a few years ago, the king was besotted with both his valor and his looks and took him first as his own shield bearer and then made him the commander of his forces. Eventually the king made the young man his heir, since Tristan is the son of his older sister’s new husband and Mark himself has no children. His first wife died before she could bear him any.
They say the king loves his favorite knight, shares a bed with him. The court whispers are jealous and openly vulgar. What person wouldn’t want Mark’s pretty nephew by marriage splayed underneath them, they joke to each other. What person wouldn’t want to ride to battle with someone like that sharing your tent afterward?
I’ve only met the king once, earlier today, and he was as handsome and cold as the stories said, his hair and lashes gold like a northerner’s and his eyes the color of the ocean at night. I could not tell from the drawn-out greetings and long ceremony of signing contracts and exchanging gifts if the king loved Tristan or not. But I did know from our days at sea that Tristan lovedhim.
And for that, I am sorry.
“This is the real wedding in his eyes,” Tristan says in a low voice as the wood spreads before us. I can see more torches through the trees. “It’s not too late to change your mind. He doesn’t consider you his wife yet, but after this, there is no turning back. Now is the time if you want to stop this.”
How like a man, like a warrior, to think that the future is the kind of thing that getschosen, that a different tomorrow can be bought by desire alone.
“If I don’t marry your king, the alliance between Cornwall and Ireland will fail,” I tell him. That is true. Another true thing: while my father is the king of Munster and disputed king of Leinster, the real power behind his throne is my uncle, who sends his spies and pirates raiding along every coast. And I am here as much for him as for my father. I am here to be a stronger warranty against war than a marriage because there will be nothing of Cornwall’s strength and defenses that my uncle won’t know.
“You should not be a pawn between kingdoms,” says Tristan. He looks over at me. When the torchlight catches his eyes, they are as green as summer itself. “You deserve happiness, Isolde.”
“And what would my happiness be if I ran away from the king?” I ask him, keeping my voice low. The torches in the trees are far away yet, but this is treason, and even growing up the niece of Morholt, lord of shadows and raids, I don’t speak treason lightly. As far as the Church and the Kingdom of Munster are concerned, I am already married to King Mark. I am subject to his laws.
“Me,” Tristan says simply, with the clear honesty he always seems to have. He’s so open, so earnest, and I have no idea how he’s survived the snares and politics of Mark’s notoriously invidious court.
“Tristan…”
“We could run away together,” he says quickly. “You and me. I love you, Isolde. I love you, and I can’t live without you, and if you marry Mark, it will kill me. I swear it will.”
