Page 49 of Honey Cut
“How do you feel, little wife?” he asks. He’s speaking so the guests can hear. The aftercare is part of our performance tonight, which I knew coming into this, and yet it feels strangely transgressive. More so than them seeing my nakedness, more so than them seeing Mark penetrate me.
I press my face into his shoulder. “I don’t know,” I whisper. Wetly. My tears are spilling onto his chest now.
“It’s okay not to know,” he says. The cool reserve is creeping back into his voice, but it’s still a little hoarse, a little ragged, and I can feel his heart thumping swiftly against his ribs. It’s comforting to know he’s affected too. That what we just did had some kind of power over him.
“I don’t feel alone right now,” I volunteer, knowing he’ll understand why that matters. “I feel dizzy and good and clean and—not alone.”
He gives me a slow, lazy smile. I think it’s for the benefit of the crowd, but it works on me too. “No, you’re not alone, Isolde. Look at them. Look at your people, your fellow deviants. Look at them touching for you.Fuckingfor you.”
He takes my chin in his hand and guides me to look out into the hall. And he’s right: they are touching for me and fucking for me. Stripped clothes and writhing forms, people straddling, kneeling, stretched out on the ground. Sucking and screwing. Some are only watching, and some are only watchingus, and yet the mood is fully hedonistic.
The demons have been let out to play.
He strokes my hair, flowers sticking between us along with my tears. It’s so easy to breathe in his arms and so easy to cry, even though I don’t fully know why I’m crying. It just feels like what I’m supposed to do.
“They loved you,” Mark says, and his voice is low now. Just for us. “I knew they would.”
And you?I want to ask.Do you love me?
But I’m afraid of the answer. He thinks I’ll destroy him. It’s hard to love someone when you know they’re actually a knife pressed against your throat.
I should know.
eighteen
TRISTAN
I can’t lookat the bed anymore.
I look down at the watch in my hand, warm from Mark’s skin and now from my own, catching my reflection in its large face. I look like I’ve just staggered into an outpost after an ambush; I look like I should have blood all over my hands.
I put the watch in my pocket and scrub a hand over my face. I have to get it together. I can’t be panting after my boss—or, worse, his wife—where everyone can see. I can’t be watching them like they’ve each got a hand around my throat.
But as much as I’d braced for the wedding, even for this scene, I had not expected this. I expected jealousy and heartbreak. I expected that watching the two objects of my obsession marry and fuck would tear me apart.
I did not expect it would make me hard. Like balls-tight, weeping-tip hard. Like I can’t breathe into my stomach because even the pressure of an inhale into my belly is stimulation at this point.
I’m grateful it’s only Sedge back here because I think he’s feeling the same way. When I look over at him, he’s staring at the stage with an expression of horror. But even the iPad he’s holding over his groin can’t hide the ridge underneath his flat-fronted trousers.
I look back to the stage, trying to scrape together some semblance of professionalism. Some dignity.
Stoically heartsick is one thing.Wretchedly arousedis another.
Mark is sliding off the bed with Isolde still tucked in his arms. He could be in one of his unethically expensive tuxedos for how haughty he looks while naked. And even though he’s completely nude and Isolde is still in her gown, there is no question who is leaving the stage with their pride intact.
White-blond strands of hair hang loose from her now-disheveled braid; rumpled petals are falling from her like rain. The torn silk of her dress exposes a curled-in shoulder and a breast marked with livid bites and bruises. The train of it hisses on the stage next to Mark’s feet as he walks toward me.
They have made paintings of how Mark looks right now, a monster with a ravished damsel at his mercy. I want the damsel. I want to be ravished. I hope none of it shows in my face, although Mark would probably notice anyway. He’s too skilled at reading people, and I’ve never presented a challenge for him, as transparent as I am.
“Sir, I have a fresh tuxedo for you,” Sedge murmurs as Mark reaches us. On the other side of the stage, Dinah emerges to applause. The stage lights dim, and more candles are being lit in the balconies and corners of the room. I see the discreet scurry and dash of club employees moving chairs, bringing in cushions and chaises and upholstered tables.
Dinah exhorts the guests to keep fucking, to make themselves comfortable, to make use of the playrooms and showers and bars. The music is already shifting, quickening. The party will last a long time tonight.
“Thank you,” Mark says. To my shock, he turns to me, offering me the tearstained Isolde. “Tristan, will you take my wife up to my apartment? I think she’ll want to change. Sedge will fetch her soon to come back to the hall.”
I can hardly refuse, as he’s already moving to put Isolde in my arms. She smells sweet, like honey and flowers, and when I take her weight, I feel her hair brush against my jaw. She shivers a little when my fingers press against her ribs—that postorgasm ticklishness of hers.
Holding her body against mine while it’s boneless with pleasure is…hard to ignore. When I risk a glance down, I see that she looks as pornographic as she feels: her lips swollen, the collar on her neck gleaming. The tip of her breast is still bunched tight, and I wonder if I’d find the little nub between her legs turgid and greedy even after what Mark did to her on the bed.
