Page 80 of Honey Cut
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Isolde doesn’t thinkthe story is ridiculous or unbelievable—she was at the same security meeting as I was, of course. Plus, she tells me that she overheard Mark talking to Melody about Ys at the engagement party.
“‘Ys started the game. I’m only finishing it,’” she finishes.
“At the security meeting, he seemed like he barely knew anything about it,” I say. “But why pretend? Why keep the Lyonesse team in the dark? Didn’t you think that was strange at the time?”
“I did,” she admits, “but also Mark is rarely forthcoming about anything. If he really did have something to do with John Lackland’s death and that death is somehow connected to Ys… Well, I could see why he wouldn’t want anyone able to draw lines from one thing to the next.”
And I have to concede that she’s right. Mark’s done more than collect secrets at Lyonesse—he’s buried his own.
For the rest of the day, I think about what Cara said. I think about whether this makes me more or less guilty when it comes to killing Sims. Because, sure, now I know Aaron was committing treason for far longer than just that one morning, but also…shouldn’t I have noticed? I was his best friend—how had I failed to see that he’d been trapped in a nightmare of his own making?
Mark doesn’t call Isolde again that night, although he does check in briefly with me over text to make sure we’re both home safely, and we go to sleep early, her still tense about something—work, she says—and me scouring my memories for anything else I could have missed about Sims before he died.
I don’t have nightmares that night, but I do dream. Sims is stealing my Pop Tarts, and the Pop Tarts keep turning into Bronze Stars, which he chews on obnoxiously. They turn into knurled discs in his mouth, the shavings falling out like crumbs.
But it’s not horrifying; there’s no blood, nothing pulpy and dying. Just metal crumbs and the bad jokes he used to make in the DFAC.
I wake up somewhere between sad and guilty, and it mingles with the tender, heady sensation of having Isolde limp and warm in my arms, wearing a silk nightie and a flush on her cheeks.
Maybe it’s the past making me melancholy.
Maybe it’s the months of deprivation. Of her. Of him.
Maybe it’s that the October sunlight is falling just so over the slope of her nose and her full upper lip.
When my dick fills all the way, burrowing into her belly, I don’t peel away from her. And when she stirs and slings her thigh over my hip, I don’t move it back. And when she starts grinding against me, her cunt hot and swollen through her underwear, I don’t stop her.
Her eyes flutter open, still sleep-glazed but also hungry. I see the moment she becomes aware of how we’re pressed together, of how she’s moving against me.
I see the moment she decides not to stop.
And then her panties grow wet with her and start catching on her skin, pulling aside, so that I’m rubbing against the bare lushness of her outer labia.
I shudder.
“Honey,” I say hoarsely. “Please.”
She reaches down, a wiggle and an arch, and then the panties are gone, and it’s just bare skin to bare skin. The head of me is almost as wet as she is, and my balls are pulled tight to my body. When my tip catches on the slippery entrance to her body, we both freeze. Staring at each other.
“Tell me to stop,” I mumble. My whole body is trembling. “Tell me that you’re married and that you can’t. Tell me you only want your husband.”
She keeps her eyes on mine. Her voice is hushed, miserable. “It wouldn’t be true if I said it.”
“Isolde…”
We can’t. We shouldn’t. We agreed we wouldn’t.
Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s different this morning versus any other morning. I’m not a new person, and neither is she, and neither of us have let go of what we feel for the wicked man in the suit who rules our lives.
But maybe that’s the thing about bad decisions.
Sometimes there’s no good reason for them.
No good reason at all.
I push at the same time she moves her hips, and I’m squeezed inside, just the end of my erection. She’s so soft and so tight and so, so hot. I’m close to losing it. I’m going to come with nothing more than my tip inside.
