Page 46 of Honey Cut
Too much. Tristan was good about giving me a jolt of pain to get me over the edge, but Mark hurts me like God hurts me. Like he’s chastising my very soul.
Mark rises up, looking down at me. It doesn’t matter that he’s naked, that his bare toes are braced on the sheets or that I can see where his testicles have pulled tight to his groin in the cool air. He could be a god, a victor, a king for how much authority he exudes right now.
“Tell us why you like the pain,” he purrs. “Tell us why my little wife gets so glassy-eyed when I afflict her with myself.”
I can feel the audience liking this—craving this. The brief times I’ve been at Lyonesse, the play has been unabashedly visual and sexual, bodies doing things to other bodies. Butthis, this is something more sexual than nakedness and punishment and orgasm. This is Mark fucking my mind, unspooling my thoughts to lick and savor, and giving me nowhere to hide. This is more exposing than even a wedding gown being hiked up to show off my aroused vulva.
“It feels good,” I finally answer.
He regards me a moment and then slides off the bed, reaching for something on the floor behind the headboard. I can’t turn all the way to watch him, not cuffed as I am, although I do see the quick flick of his gaze to the wings where Tristan is.
I’m sorry, I wish I could tell him.You were never meant to be tangled up in all this.
Mark straightens up, and my eyes fall to what’s in his hands. A riding crop, silver and black, absolutely wicked. His long fingers are curled around the silver handle, and he taps the leather keeper at the end against his palm while he walks along the edge of the bed to my feet. He’s pacing like a teacher waiting for a student to fumble toward the right answer.
“It feelsright,” I try again, and Mark shakes his head.
“Not good enough,” he says. And then with a hard flick, the crop cracks against the bottom of my foot, searing into the tender arch.
It’s a half-shriek, half-groan that leaves my throat, an embarrassing noise, but I don’t have the energy to be embarrassed. Not when the pain is so vicious, so fuckingmean, and I’m writhing in my restraints, trying to twist my feet away from my husband.
He comes around the other side of the bed now and bunches the silk of my skirt in his fist.
“Do you want to try again?” he asks lightly, shoving my skirt up to my waist. It’s only my thong protecting my modesty now, but in an instant, that’s gone too; he’s ripped the delicate seam at the side and stripped it right off my hips. With my ankles cuffed as they are and the skirt of my dress up around my waist, I know my pussy is visible.
And despite his showmanship, his control, I see his gaze stray to it. I see the spread of his pupils. The shining, swollen tip of his dick.
I think of his warning last night, that he was giving me a waiver.
You will suffer for it.
I want him to make me suffer for it so badly. I want him to cuff me to his real bed and use my body until I forget that we can never be on the same team. Until I forget why I’m not supposed to love and worship him.
I dredge up another answer for him, a truer answer. “It feels cleansing,” I say, trying to speak so I can be heard. “I feel clean after you hurt me.”
Crack. Crack.
I writhe in the cuffs, two lines of pain puffing across my upper thighs now. I hadn’t thought that part of my body especially sensitive, not compared to my nipples or the soles of my feet at least, but the riding crop is merciless.
Mark gives me two more strikes, one on each thigh, waits until I manage to catch my breath, and then two more. Five thin welts of fire on the top of each thigh, burning down into the muscle and bone.
I’m blinking up at the ceiling now, which is half stage guts with its loft blocks and sandbags, and half glass roof looking up into the night sky. My nipples are so hard they could rival the new marks on my thighs for how much they hurt, and my breathing is a jagged chain attached to my cunt. My thoughts are floating up to the glassed-off stars, pulled back down only by the cool charm of his voice.
“We’re getting closer, Isolde,” he says, soothing and cruel all at once. “But what is the truth? Why do you feel clean after I hurt you?”
Why indeed? Why do I feel purified, sanctified by it? Why do I feel like I’m gold refined by the fire? Like I can be full of God’s love only after I’m emptied of everything else—memories, thoughts, regrets, trespasses?
“Because I deserve it,” I whisper.
There is a pause. No riding crop, no pain. I blink up at the ceiling as Mark watches me.
“Because you deserve it,” he repeats, loudly enough for everyone to hear. His voice is fond now and almost kind. “Well. If you say so.”
seventeen
ISOLDE
The crop comesagainst the sole of my untouched foot.
