Page 92 of Honey Cut
Isolde is still softly crying.
I’m slumped over the table, pantsless, my cock wet, my ass wet, and there’s a crying woman next to me, and I’m fairly certain Andrea has witnessed it all from just out of sight. And yet I can barely move. My body feels hollow, my heart like a paper thing, torn in half and lit on fire. And when I’m finally able to brace myself on my forearms and turn, I see that Mark is already tucked away and zipped up, his suit jacket buttoned and the condom somewhere unseen. Only his mussed hair and still-violent eyes speak to what just happened.
“Three times, you said?” he asks, looking at Isolde and me.
She nods, miserably.
“Then I’ll have two more turns with him at some point, and we’ll call ourselves even. Good night, my bride.”
And with that, he strides off the terrace.
After he leaves, she moves. “Oh God, Tristan, are you okay? I didn’t—I should have—” She’s helping me up now, hugging me, pulling back to check my face.
I am in socks, a shirt, and a tie and nothing else. Lube makes everything slippery below the small of my back. I need to dress and then shower and then—fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know what I need to do.
And I’m supposed to survive this two more times?
“I should have safed out for both of us,” Isolde whispers now.
I force myself to focus on the tearful woman in front of me. I push my hand into her hair and pull her into my chest with my hand cradling her head, although it’s a weak embrace because I can still barely stand.
“I didn’t want to safe out,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry, Isolde. But I wanted…that. Even if I hated it, I wanted it. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes,” she says into my chest. “Yes.”
Even though it’s the last thing I should do right now, I kiss her hair. “I’m sorry too,” I say quietly and pull back to look at her. “For the yacht, for last night. For this. Tell me what to do, Isolde, because whatever you want, I’ll do it. If you want me to safe out, if you want me to quit, if you want to run away together.”
“Run away together,” she repeats, a small curve to her mouth like she thinks I’ve made a joke.
But it’s not a joke, not to me. “I can quit and you can file for divorce and we can submit our safewords in triplicate. And then we can move somewhere quiet and get a dog and take naps whenever it rains outside. We don’t have to live like this. Most people don’t live like this.” I gesture to the table with its knocked-over glasses and pooling wine.
Her eyes follow my hand. “Is that what you want?” she asks carefully.
I drop my head forward. “I don’t know. I just know that I can’t watch you hurt.”
She takes in a long breath and then dips a little so she can meet my eyes. “I like hurting, Tristan,” she says, a little sadly. “And we can’t run away from who we are.”
We stand there for several long minutes, the air empty of all sound except for some faint city noises and the ever-present breeze.
When we finally step back and Isolde helps me find my clothes and my belt, I see what was next to me all along—the spray of shattered glass from Mark’s flung gin. That’s why he kept kicking my foot. He didn’t want me to step on the glass and cut myself.
As we leave, I dare one last glance back at the shards on the ground. They sparkle against the cum that I spilled all over them, a scatter of diamonds and pearls in the night.
thirty-five
ISOLDE
I hate sleeping alone.
I can survive it, and have for years since the nightmares started, but sleeping with Tristan on the yacht and then Mark at Lyonesse has ruined me.
You should never get a taste of comfort. It makes it so much harder to go back.
Mark chose his own room for the night, and when I came downstairs, the door was firmly shut and the light off. There was no sign of Andrea or the staff, although I was certain that she’d stayed to listen, just as certain as I was that the rooftop would be cleaned by morning, all the food and broken glass and semen cleared away like it had never been.
And there was no chance of sleeping in Tristan’s room, of course. So I slept alone, and I tossed, and I turned, and I killed people over and over again in my dreams, except this time I was killing Tristan over and over, his sweet green eyes going wide as I speared my honeysuckle knife into his belly.
I wake up bleary and bone-tired, on the edge of tears.
