Page 61 of Honey Cut
Violence.
Greed.
A glimpse into the darkest, truest tabernacle.
I’m fucked right there in front of everyone, Mark working me with his fingers until I come with a long cry, and then I’m dragged to my knees and made to open my mouth with cruel fingers still wet from my own body. Mark pushes past my lips and doesn’t stop until he’s in my throat, his fingers staying curled around my jaw. He tastes like clean skin and smells like thunderstorm, and when he comes, his eyes are as dark as the sky behind him.
And then they slide from my face to the corner of the terrace, where I know Tristan is posted.
“Show me,” Mark says, returning his gaze to my face.
I stick out my tongue.
“Good girl. Swallow now.”
I do as I’m told, and I’m rewarded with a kiss, a deep one that he bends down to give me. His tongue slides against mine in a coarse chase of his own taste, and he must like what he finds because I feel the rumble of approval against my mouth.
“Will you ever share her, Mark?” someone asks.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Mark says, rubbing at my lower lip with his thumb. “I’m enjoying having her all to myself.”
I open my lips and suck at his thumb. Being shared is such an arousing idea, and yet when he says possessive things like that…
It’s easy to forget why I’m here.
The wind blows again, hard enough to toss hair and make waves in the pool. A lie comes to me then, and like all of my good lies, it’s half-rooted in the truth. I wait until I’m lifted from my knees, petted and praised and given a pear cocktail while the party resumes. Mark is twirling a loose curl of my hair between his fingers and watching an actress peg her husband by the edge of the pool when I ask, “Do you mind if I go to bed early tonight?”
His posture shifts ever so slightly, from relaxed to theappearanceof relaxed. “Is everything okay? You’re not hurt?”
“I’m not hurt,” I say.
“You’re not…overwhelmed?”
“A little,” I say. That is the part of this that is true. “The car—that was different for me than the hall. I don’t know why.”
“Different in a way like you wished you’d used your safeword?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No, not that at all. Just different like…I feel messy right now. That’s all.”
Mark still has his fingers in my hair. His eyes search my face. “Do you need me to come with you? Or would you rather have space away from me?”
I can’t handle this mix of possession and concern from him. “I don’t need space from you,” I whisper. “But you should stay. Enjoy your guests.”
He pushes hair away from my face. I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to let me go, doesn’t want to stop touching me.
But he drops his hand and nods. “Of course, Isolde. Go get some rest.”
I finish the pear cocktail and set it on a table as I leave, not looking back at my husband even though I want to. Even though part of me does want to stay and have him twirl his fingers in my hair until dawn.
I also don’t look at the terrace corner.
My dress, silky and heavy with crystals, hisses on the steps down from the roof into the glass bower of Lyonesse. I pass the door to our apartment and keep going; I go to an elevator and slip inside. I’m not concerned with being seen on camera, not yet. I am going to the kitchens to have a late snack made; that’s what I’ll tell anyone who asks.
The kitchens are in the basement, one subfloor above the server room. I’m not concerned with interior access tonight, however, and I get off on the kitchen floor, walking under the crisp-white lights to the kitchen itself, which is a racket and bustle of pot lids and metal bowls. Right inside, I remember, is a delivery door leading to an underground tunnel to the parking garage, a tunnel that has an outdoor exit of its own.
Here I do move quickly, unhooking the neck of my dress and shimmying out of it. With a quick rip—I do regret this a little—I detach the lining from the glamorous shell and drop the sparkling outer layer and cape to the floor. I shuck my high heels too.
I’m only wearing the lining of the dress now—what amounts to a black slip. My bare feet.
