Page 107 of Honey Cut
“Do I love Isolde? Yes. But I love you too, sir, and so does she. Punish us if you must. Make us suffer. But don’t keep yourself from us. Don’t wall yourself away. I won’t survive it, and neither will she.”
His eyes are searching mine. “You are flirting with danger, my knight.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I have a medal that says I do more than flirt with it.”
He huffs a laugh and then closes his eyes. “Where is the quiet little hero from six months ago? Have you changed so much?”
“You changed me.”
He looks sad when his eyes open again. “No. I couldn’t take credit for anything so lovely. You changed yourself.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say in a low, urgent tone. “About Isolde and me. When I fell in love with her, it was like…getting to fall in love with you again. Like loving you through her. And then it just becameher, but you were still part of it, and I don’t know what I’m trying to say except that I don’t want this to be the end. You once said I was yours all of the time—I still want that. And I want Isolde to be yours. And I know that’s what she wants too, and for you to be ours back.”
He doesn’t respond. He just looks back at the haze over the river.
Shutting me out once again.
How many times?How many times can I lay myself bare for this man and then suffer for it? All I’ve ever wanted is a glimpse of the bloody thing beating in his chest, a whisper of his clever, wicked soul, and all he’s ever done is deny me.
Defeated, I drop my hand from his arm and step back.
And then Mark speaks. “His name was Eliot.”
I go still.
“He was my partner my first year out in the field. He was a couple years older than me, but it could have been decades, he was that good at the job already. Born to it. He was—” Another short exhale—a laugh. Like he’s laughing at himself. “He was mesmerizing. It didn’t matter if you were a friend or a foe, a colleague or a target—he could charm you into giving him your wallet and your car keys and the names of everyone you’d ever seen hoisting a Carpathian flag. When I was first recruited into the agency from the Rangers, they warned me about him. He was a little bit of a rake, to use a dated term. A trail of broken hearts from Langley to Lahore.”
I don’t speak. I’m terrified to speak. He’s never told me this much about himself, ever.
“If I met Eliot now, I would have been able to see right away that he had certain appetites that matched my own. Not that he liked fucking more than just women, I mean, that was apparent from the moment I met him, but that he liked power and he liked to play when he fucked.”
“He was kinky.” I quickly close my mouth, worried I’ll scare Mark away from saying any more.
But he keeps going. “The usual kink wisdom would have said it was doomed from the start. You can’t have two Dominants together—someone needs to be a switch at the very least, and neither of us were any less dominant than the other, but…”
He stares out into the night, to where the city would be visible if not for the fog. “I used to think it was being young that made it possible. We were young and adventurous and horny, and that goes a long way. But now I just think that we loved each other, enough that we couldn’t walk away, even if it was pure fucking chaos every time we were in bed together. Every scene was a contest, total warfare. I have a lot to thank that period in my life for, actually, because if I hadn’t been repeatedly made to surrender, I would never have known what it felt like. To be in cuffs or made to crawl or caned until I was sobbing. It made me a better Dominant, and when I started Lyonesse, I’d decided that it would be necessary for anyone who wanted to learn here. If you’re too proud to submit, too proud to experience anything you want to do to a partner, then you’re too proud to wield power safely. But I wouldn’t have learned that without Eliot. Without the messes we made together.”
His voice is almost fond now, fond and a little melancholy, and it’s so much better than the bitter hurt from earlier, but it still makes my throat ache.
“It was never easy with Eliot,” Mark says, looking down at his glass. “Like I said, he was charming. A rake. That didn’t stop even after he and I started, and we were apart for months at a time. Some of our assignments required—” A breath. “It’s not officially condoned, you understand—but sometimes it’s the easiest way to get what you need. Sometimes it’s the only way to avoid suspicion.”
“You mean having sex?” I ask. “While on the job?”
“Don’t look so scandalized,” Mark reproves, but there’s a faint indentation at the edges of his mouth, like he could be persuaded to smile. “Sex is usually preferable to violence. If I could solve a problem with someone’s thighs around my waist rather than with my hands around their neck, why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t Eliot?” The indentation fades, and his mouth is a straight line once again. “But he was doing more than the job description, sharing his bed even when it wasn’t for work. And I wouldn’t have minded if it was just sex, but…”
Mark’s hand tightens around his glass. I watch as his Adam’s apple moves in his throat, as he forces himself to take a breath and say evenly, “It was more than just sex. It was love too, and affection, and I realized that for him, I was one of several, a chip in a mosaic, while to me, he was everything. I realized that I was absolutely obsessed with him, and he was only in love with me in the same way he was in love with practically everyone he met. That was the secret to his charm, you know. He really did fall in love with you, even if it was only for a day. Even if it was only for five minutes in line at a café.”
A pause.
“I know with every atom in my body that he loved me,” he says. “Just as I also know that he did not love me the way I loved him. Maybe he wasn’t capable of it—maybe being someone who loves that freely and that easily precludes obsession. Maybe I’m made wrong if for me love is being jealous of the air inside someone’s body and of the sunlight for touching their skin. But I do know what it felt like to love him, and it felt like having frost creeping over my lips and down my throat while I watched a fire burn in the distance.”
The words hang in the air, sparkling with the fog.
I want to touch him again—I want to pull him into my arms. When is the last time someone has done that? Huggedhim? Comfortedhim?
“But then why did you get married?” I can’t help but ask. “And why is it a secret? Sedge didn’t know when I asked him. Isolde didn’t know either.”
Mark’s jaw works a little to the side as he looks over at me, like he’s considering a few different responses. “How did you find out?” he asks. “How did you know enough to ask Sedge?”
