Page 87 of Honey Cut
I also can’t drag my eyes from where his hands make efficient work of his shirtsleeves, from his newly exposed forearms. I can see the tendons and muscles moving under the ink of his tattoo. A bird of prey midflight, which feels very apt right now.
“So I know you know how to stop me,” Mark says. And then his hand drops to his belt. At the sound of it leaving its loops with a leather hiss, my body responds. A clench deep in my guts, the thick pulse of my stiffening cock. Even my nipples feel tight.
But I won’t let him beat Isolde for this, even if she gets off on being beaten. He needs to understand how this happened; he needs to know that this isn’t about loyalty. He needs to know about the yacht.
He needs to know that we love him.
Next to me, in her chair, I hear a shuddering exhale. When I look down to Isolde, her cheeks are scarlet and her nipples are pushing against her dress.
“I want to know what this is about,” she says.
He drops the belt on the ground. “Safewords first.”
She and I look at each other, and I see my own helplessness mirrored there. Nothing good will come of him dragging the truth out of the light while he’s unbelted and furious…and also we are helpless thralls when it comes to Mark andnothing good. We pine for his nothing good. We jerk off to it, pant for it. Maybe even fuck other people just to feel close to it.
“Hazel,” I say, staring at her.
“Hyssop,” Isolde says, without her eyes leaving mine. “My safeword ishyssop.”
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean,” Mark says, and I vaguely recognize the words. A psalm, I think. One of the angsty King David ones. “Do you need to be cleansed, Isolde?”
A pause. Whatever moves through her eyes then, I don’t entirely understand, but it breaks my heart.
“Yes,” she says, closing her eyes. “Yes, I do.”
thirty-three
TRISTAN
Mark doesn’t speak,but he doesn’t have to. The air is seething around him.
Isolde opens her eyes and stands and then gently presses on my chest with a slender hand. It takes almost no force at all for her to move me, and it never will.
“Scourge me if you want,” she says. Her voice is throaty but unwavering. “You know I want it, and you know I deserve it. But leave Tristan alone. He’s blameless here.”
I’m unprepared for her to try to defend me,protectme, with her pink dress and neatly tied bow and five feet two inches of boarding school manners and memorized psalms. I open my mouth to—well, to what, I’m not sure, but it’s ridiculous forherto shieldmewhen it’s my fault and she has more to lose. And when there’s video evidence displaying that I’m very muchnotblameless.
Mark seems unprepared for this too because a harsh, ragged laugh is torn from his throat. “Blameless, wife? So you blackmailed him into pushing his tongue into your mouth? You extorted him into putting his hands up your dress and enjoying what’s mine? He hated every second of eating your cunt or sticking his dick inside it?”
Isolde’s chin is set in a stubborn, little point. “I won’t let you make up your own story about this. If you want to know something, ask.”
“Am I to be both the victim and lawyer of my own cuckolding?” Mark demands coldly.
“Why not? You’ve already made yourself the judge and jury.”
“Clever wife. And I suppose that you’d rather I presume you innocent instead of guilty?”
“Ask, Mark, if you really want to know. Ask what you really mean.”
He does. “Did you fuck my bodyguard last night?”
Isolde doesn’t hesitate, but I see the courage it takes for her to answer. “Yes.”
“Was it the first time?”
“No.”
I look back at him just in time to see him flinch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him flinch—not when stabbed, not when sewn up on his kitchen table. And that flinch cuts me deeper than any invective or imprecation ever could.
