Page 75 of Bitter Burn
I stroke through the silk and feel the implacable column of her husband there. I stroke harder, a small masturbation through his own wife’s body.
Mark jerks and then gives me an offended look, like I’ve just pulled a dirty trick on a playground.
It’s Isolde who speaks then, with a quaver of a voice. “Tristan, go easy on him.”
Mark briefly licks the bottom of his top teeth, a wicked, satisfied gesture that Isolde misses. I suddenly feel as if I’ve been scolded by the teacher while the actual instigator stands smugly behind them, unnoticed and unpunished. “Yes, Tristan, go easy on me. I’m an old man, and I can only withstand so much, you know. It would be cruel to taunt me over it.”
I shake my head, unable to help the small bubble of happiness in my chest. This Mark, this Mark above all others, makes me feel like I’ve stumbled into a fairy realm and decided to drink the fairy wine and eat the fairy food. This is the roguish king who could cajole innocent knights into dancing under his hill for centuries, his caprice lined with equal parts playfulness and icy violence.
He can just be so goddamn charming sometimes. It’s not fair.
“I would never taunt, sir,” I say.
“You don’t even mean to and you taunt, like a jewel glinting in a case or a spring day outside an office window. Lube yourself up now, more than you think you need. And don’t be shy about making a mess. No one’s coming to inspect the room and make you run a mile for every unrolled pair of socks.”
Isolde turns to watch as I follow Mark’s instructions and drizzle lube along the top of my penis, listening to his advice about using more than I think I’d need. God knows I’ve been on the business end of a lubed-up rod enough times to know that more is always better.
Her lower lip catches between her teeth as her eyes follow the rhythmic shuttle of my hand up and down, up and down. She squirms, fucking herself wantonly on Mark’s cock, and he drops his hands to grab her hips.
“A reprieve, sweet one,” he says evenly. “I am either going to come right this instant or I am going to forget the entire point of this exercise and attack both of you like a fox around a pair of bold little bunnies, and either way, my plans will be quite disrupted.”
She goes still but paws helplessly at his bare chest, fingers twisting in the golden hair there. I can tell it hurts, but it’s a fast and vicious smile that passes over his face and not reprobation at all. He slaps her backside hard as I step behind her.
“If you want to spar again, I’m more than willing,” he says and nuzzles her throat, inhaling with transparent pleasure. “I like your claws as much as the rest of you, kitten.”
She reaches up to slide her hands into his hair, tousling it, tugging on it. “You are all claws and teeth, so it’s only fair.”
“I wish it were any other way, Isolde. I can swear that to you with my hand on a Bible and a sword at my neck. May God strike me down if it’s not true.”
I think of the supply closet before I left.
I don’t want to be spoken of in whispers.
“I’m happy to be the sword at your neck,” she says and runs her hands through his hair again. I know how silky it is, spun gossamer and sunlight. “But you don’t have to swear. I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
“You hate me,” he points out. Only curious, not defensive.
“I love hating you and I hate loving you. We are the first day of creation, darkness and waters, a welter and waste.”
“I suppose that makes Tristan the light,” Mark says, looking past Isolde to me. “Well, don’t just observe the vagaries of marriage, sunshine. Let’s see what illumination you bring.”
There is one thing about loving a married couple that I didn’t think of earlier, and that’s how it feels to be folded into their dragon’s nest, welcomed in from the cold. An open door glowing with light and beckoning the weary traveler inside.
Listening to their combative courting of each other feels like I’m in the courtship too in a strange way. Let into the archives of a museum or the light-controlled cells of a rare books room. It’s privileged information, the way the two of them are when they’re alone, and I’m being given the honor of learning it.
I drop another kiss on Isolde’s shoulder, and then I have to bend my knees a little to get lined up.
“How precious,” Mark says, and there’s a shift now in the tenor of his corruption. From impish to remorseless. “Reach back and pull your cheeks apart for Tristan. Yes, just like that, so he can see your hole. Show him what he’s about to get, how tight it is. How obscene.”
A flurry of lights from the window show me exactly what he’s promised—a shining, wet hole, promising suffocation. Vulgar release.
Whenever the lights flash, I can see exactly what I need to see, and I step even closer as I fist my dick, pressing the wide, crude head against the delicate eyelet calling me home.
Just this small amount of contact is enough to grip me by the spine and shake me until my teeth rattle, and I know it must show on my face, because Mark observes, a little coolly, “It’s a little early to disgrace yourself, don’t you think? At least get inside first.”
I would love to snap back, to remind him that just a minute ago, he had to force Isolde to stay still so he wouldn’t spend too early either, but my concentration is wholly bent on clenching every muscle in my body, in somehow managing to slowly push forward without howling at the ceiling like a wolf.
“Breathe out,” I tell Isolde in a low voice, and she exhales. I slip forward to the second ring of muscle with a grunt, and she lets out a gasp of discomfort.
