Page 9 of Honey Cut
How long has it been? A day? Two days? And already I’m starved to death, emaciated with greed. Craving Tristan like he’s what sustains my flesh and blood.
It can’t be that he’s the first person to learn my body inside and out—it can’t be that he’s gorgeous, that he’s strong, that he’s the kind of person anyone would want in their bed. And it can’t be love, it would be absurd for it to be love. I’ve only known him for three weeks.
But it issomething. Familiarity, maybe, once I saw the torment he carried, the guilt and brokenness over the lives he’s taken. Or longing, possibly, for the goodness inside his heart, that bright, sweet, incorruptible core of him. Goodness he just seems tohave, that he doesn’t have to reach for, atone to get, refine in a fire.
Or maybe it was that, from the very beginning, I knew he was Mark’s. Mark’s step-nephew, Mark’s bodyguard. When I’d learned he’d been Mark’s lover as well, it was a confirmation of a suspicion only barely felt in the hollow of my chest before then: Tristan was like me.
And if falling in love with Mark could happen to someone as good as Tristan Thomas, then maybe I’m not so broken after all.
Just as I take Tristan’s hand to push it farther down, we hear water running through the walls.Mark is awake.
Mark is upstairs, awake, doing things, and his bodyguard is here on my bed.
I hear Tristan’s ragged exhale. In the dark, I sense more than see him hang his head.
My skin is on fire with misery, but what can I say? What can I do? Beg him to keep touching me when Mark is up and moving around?
“I’m sorry,” Tristan mumbles, and there’s enough misery in his voice that I know that I’m not alone. That the minute he leaves, he’s going to touch himself like I’m going to touch myself, and we’ll both be hoping that will somehow make this lust of ours better, safer. Only half a sin instead of a whole one.
“Don’t be sorry,” I finally say. “We shouldn’t.”
“We have to be careful,” he says, and he looks at me. I can tell from the shine of his eyes in the dark.
“I know we have to be careful. I have more to lose than you.” I don’t speak the words with any bitterness—I gave all my bitterness to God years ago—but they come out so unvarnished, so starkly true, that I can tell it pains him to hear.
“I know you do,” he says quietly. “I stayed for you, remember? You’re why I’m here, and I’ll help in any way I can.”
The ache between my legs could collapse stars, but the rest of me is cooling and darkening. Turning to glass. I sit up.
“Thank you for staying,” I say, also quietly. When he’d told me on the yacht that he wanted to quit, that he didn’t feel like he could work for Mark after betraying his trust, I’d nearly shattered.
When I thought I’d have to do this all by myself, I’d been able to bear the idea of my future with all the stoicism of a martyr. But having had Tristan for just those few days at sea—it ate away at my strength and took it away with the tide. After the glow of his company, after being with someone who had also killed, who had also lost their mother, who had also lost themselves to Mark, it felt abruptly staggering to live without it. Withouthim.
How would I survive Mark without Tristan?
Tristan’s hand comes to rest over mine. “Anything for you,” he says, and he means it. I can hear that he means it. And I don’t deserve it.
I want to cry.
“I need to tell you, though, that I think Sedge knows,” he says. His voice is still soft enough to be a whisper. “Knows about what we did on the yacht, I mean.”
I process his words immediately, my mind whirring.
Sedge the assistant. Sedge who undoubtedly has Mark’s ear.
Sedge who looked at me with pale, suspicious eyes when he first met me on the dock this morning, his thin but pretty mouth set in a slight frown.
“Oh,” is all I say.
“There were cameras in the interior rooms of the yacht.” A long breath. “I’m so sorry, Isolde. I didn’t think to check for them. The security system the captain showed me was purely external.”
“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t check either.”
Stupidly. Foolishly. Why didn’t I check? Why didn’t I think of it? My uncle had drilled every care into me when it came to doing my job, and that included being caught on camera. But the rooms of a private yacht—I hadn’t even considered it. Because originally it was supposed to be Mark and me, and why would he need to have eyes on himself?
But it was an obvious oversight, one I shouldn’t have made. Mark had told me once that he’d played this game longer than me, with more dangerous people than me, and here is the perfect example of my inexperience knocking my own pieces off the board.
“Do you think Sedge has told Mark?” I ask.
