Page 130 of Bitter Burn
Mercy.
But this is mercy too, to have both of them with me, both of them close, and it is the opposite of my dream all those weeks ago, the opposite of standing between their graves in a wretched and desolate garden. This is them alive and together, the way it should be, the way I planned for it to be.
No bitter ending, no tragedy—only the villain dead and the lovers together at last.
The greatest mercy I could grant them, I think.
And it’s not the glass-cracking blaze of the fire or the wail of sirens that follow me into the deep, but the kisses of my beloveds—as sweet as the first time I ever felt them, as necessary as air and blood. I hope if they ever stand above my grave, they know that I died in love with them, happy for them, relieved.
More than anything, I hope they know I died wishing that I could kiss them back.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
“You have to stay still, puppy, and show her how good you can be. Otherwise, we’ll have to stop, and wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Sweat-sheened muscles ripple as Tristan strains against his own urge to squirm. His eyes squeeze shut, open, shut again. Looking makes it worse, of course, but how can you not look?
I let my fingers drift over Isolde’s back, across her shoulders, toying with the delicate straps of her lingerie whenever I find them. I lean forward to murmur in her ear. “Lower the candle a little now. That’s right.”
Isolde tilts the candle in her hand, and pale pink paraffin splashes against the shimmering skin of Tristan’s stomach. The muscles bunch and tense as the wax rolls between the corrugations of his abdomen to streak toward his navel, cooling into waxy rivulets on the way there.
“The lower you go, the hotter it’ll be,” I purr, wrapping my hand around hers. We’ve put the candle in a bamboo holder that ends in a kind of spout, meaning it’s easier to control where the wax goes. I aim it just above where the tip of his swollen cock bobs above his stomach, a string of glistening precum stretched between the two. “Let’s try right…there…”
Tristan moans as the wax spills and burns, and he writhes on the table—not restrained, only commanded to restrain himself. Which is cruel of us, we know.
I’m pressed against Isolde’s back, and I can feel her slow, shuddering inhale as she watches him move beneath us, his erection lifting and seeking, his fingers twisting into the plastic draped over the table.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask her as I nuzzle down to her ear. “Such a simple thing, and you’ve completely undone everything he prides himself on. His self-respect, his restraint, his need to be good for you… Let’s do another, a little higher this time. Let’s give him a moment to breathe.”
This time, Isolde makes a delicate arc of wax from Tristan’s ribs to the shallow valley where his pectoral muscles attach to his sternum. He still pants through it, but he’s able to keep his eyes open this time, staring up at Isolde with flushed, desperate worship. His pupils are so big that it’s hard to see the ring of green around them, and the sparkle of a tear or two is caught on his lashes.
His gaze slides to my face, and he starts trembling anew. “Please,” he whimpers. “Please.”
“Please what, baby?”
“You too,” he breathes. “I want you to do it too.”
“What do you think?” I ask my wife. “Should I play with him too? Do you think he can handle both of us?”
She turns against me, enough to look up into my face. She has her hair up tonight, with a few tendrils having escaped to hang against her neck and wave against her temples, and I can see every flicker of excitement, nervousness, and sweet, blossoming sadism move across her features.
“I think he can,” she murmurs and then drags her fingers up his oiled stomach, over the pink and blue patterns of wax we’ve already left streaked on his skin. “I think he wants to be good for both of us. Don’t you, Tristan? Don’t you want to earn a reward?”
As if this isn’t its own reward for our little wax tart, but Tristan nods eagerly anyway, lips parted and wet, as if we’ve extended the promise of clemency to a soul in purgatory. “Yes,” he begs. “I do, I do.”
I palm the half-covered globe of Isolde’s backside and kiss her shoulder. “Climb on the table,” I tell her, quietly enough that only she can hear me. “Straddle him and torture him a little while I get another candle ready.”
She dips her eyelashes once. “Yes, sir.”
I walk over to the far side of the playroom we’ve rented for the evening, a space in a sleek and glassy club in the heart of London, and squat down to pull supplies out of a well-stocked cabinet. The minute my hand finds a fresh candle, déjà vu laps at my feet like an incoming tide: the foaming memory of playing with Tristan at Lyonesse, of my own stocked cabinets and plastic-covered tables. It’s disorienting to feel a candle in my hand, to hear Tristan’s soft noises behind me, and then look up to see walls of frosted glass instead of wood paneling. To have the space lit by recessed LEDs instead of hand-finished sconces spilling warm, golden light.
But Lyonesse is gone, burned from the bottom up by its own treasury, nothing but a shell now. A broken crown made of crumbled carbon and shards of glass.
When I woke up in the hospital three days after the fire with a broken rib, a newly repaired gallbladder, and a liver that would appreciate some time off, I knew the truth before anyone had to tell me. I’d felt it even bleeding on the grass between Tristan and Isolde, listening to the sirens get closer. Lyonesse was gone and, with it, eight years of myself, eight years of work and secrets and lies.
Let it burn, I’d wanted to say as the fire trucks wailed to a halt on the shore of the Potomac. Let it die.
