Page 69 of Honey Cut
“Is there a question in there?” His voice is dark and playful, both.
“Can we fuck? Sir? Please?”
“Only because you asked so nicely,” he purrs, and in a moment’s time, our pants are off and I’m riding him, his mouth hot and wet on my breasts, leaving little scrapes and nips everywhere.
Even after earlier, I feel stretched, and sitting on him like this, he’s so deep that I can barely breathe. After he’s done abusing my breasts, he leans back in his chair and allows me to explore his body, to stroke the corrugations of his stomach and the lines of his chest. To play with the crisp hair on his pectoral muscles and abdomen. To trace around the scar on his shoulder, the reason Tristan came to get me from Ireland instead of him.
Funny to think that everything that’s happened between Tristan and me is because of that scar.
He lets me caress his neck and then closes his eyes as I run my fingers through his soft hair. It catches the now-silver light, a treasure in my hands. I follow the straight, thick tracks of his eyebrows with my fingertips and find the slight ridge in his nose. I push my thumb against his lower lip and make his mouth open for me so I can see his white even teeth and the slick pink of his tongue.
He indulges all of this—until he doesn’t. He bites my thumb and then works my hips over his lap until I’m releasing with wet seizes and he’s pumping inside me, leaving me filled with his semen.
When we finish, he has me stand up so he can see me drip. He plays with it a minute, catching it with his fingers and pushing it back inside me, and then he smacks my ass.
“Is this you saying you’re ready to play chess now?” I laugh.
“How did you know?”
We’re four moves into a game when there’s a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Mark calls carelessly, and the door opens to reveal Tristan in his usual black suit.
When he sees me and Mark—Mark shirtless, me in the bralette and lounge pants—scarlet seeps into his cheeks.
“Ah, sir, I didn’t—ah. I can go.” Tristan takes a step backward.
Mark tuts, waving him in. “No, no, come on in. I forgot to tell you that we’re taking a holiday today.”
“Um. We are?”
Tristan doesn’t know? I saw Mark with his phone just before we ate; I assumed he told everyone. Perhaps he only told Sedge and Dinah.
“Well, Isolde and I aren’t working, so I certainly don’t expect you to. You have the day to do whatever you’d like.”
I’m treading a fine line here, but the blush on Tristan’s cheeks and the look of longing he gives the chessboard make my chest squeeze. “Why don’t you spend it with us?” I propose.
I think my suggestion surprises all three of us.
Then Mark smiles, one of those big heart-stopping smiles. “That’s an excellent idea. I’m sure you have some novel with a dragon in it to read—come read it on my sofa while we play. I may need my knight to defend me against Isolde’s school chess club strategies.”
I glare at him, and he smiles even wider.
“I—” Tristan doesn’t seem to know what to do. Finally, he steps all the way inside the apartment and shuts the door. “Okay, sir.”
He doesn’t go get his dragon book, but he does peruse Mark’s groaning bookshelves while Mark and I start moving our pieces on the board again. I can feel Tristan behind me, confused and a little shy, and I wonder what he’s thinking. If he can perceive the shift between Mark and me, the change in Mark’s demeanor.
Has Tristan ever seen this side of Mark before? This side that’s mischievous and yet still menacing—open and yet still unknowable? Jealousy flares like a freshly lit wick at the thought, which is stupid, so foolishly stupid.
It doesn’t matter what came before now; Mark has promised he’ll be faithful to me.
But the flame won’t die down or even flicker. I think of the two of them together, sharing smiles and touches, showers and coffee as a storm rolls in. Iamjealous of the sex—I was jealous of Isabella Beroul when I saw her here at Lyonesse on our wedding night—but that Tristan might know these big smiles of Mark’s or that Mark might know that Tristan sings to himself while he’s getting dressed…
That’s worse.
I don’t have a claim on their past, I know that. But isn’t jealousy still understandable in this case? Natural, even? When they only stopped because of me, and it’s not like either of them has become less tempting since I arrived?
Mark does win the game, but it takes him a long time, and it’s very close. There’s a slaughterhouse of onyx pieces beside the board when we’re done. He considers them a moment and then stands up.
