Page 40 of Bitter Burn
“Can I trust you?” I ask Anguish. “I haven’t in the past. I don’t like the way you convinced Mark to sell you half the club, and I think anyone who routinely tops Merlin Rhys is probably very dangerous. And you have no reason to help me.”
“So cynical,” Anguish replies, and it’s hard to see her face with only the candles on stage, but it sounds like there’s a smile in her voice. “I wouldn’t trust me in your shoes. But I do care about Mark. I knew him when we were younger, and you’ve never seen a man do so much with so little. It was alchemy, like he was a magician, except the magic was his cunning, his ruthlessness. His determination. Like right now. He is doing exactly what he should be, which is looking like he wants to make you jealous. Like he wants to punish you, and not with fiber optic floggers but with relegation. Now you need to play your part, speak your lines.”
“The shame and repentance,” I say dully. I hate it. I do feel shame, but it’s too intricate and too filigreed with self-righteousness and sewn on top of the betrayals that have been done to me—and it’s not at all what the club wants to see.
But isn’t it miserable enough to be rejected by Mark privately and publicly? Why do I have to chase after him too? All I want to do is hide in a corner and lick my wounds. For years.
The submissive on the stage is beginning to sway and slump now, her curves flashing in the moving light of the floggers.
“You’ll have to go to him,” advises Anguish. “The club would see him coming to you as weakness on his part. They think you robbed him and ran away with his bodyguard. What self-respecting person would make the first move in that case?”
The lights come up as Mark finishes with a controlled flurry of strikes, ending with a sharp flick between her legs.
My hands fist again.
But Mark doesn’t touch her, doesn’t step behind her and rub his cock against her or reward her with large, skilled fingers. Instead, he looks up at the balcony, up at me, and he does it so obviously that the rest of the crowd looks too.
I don’t need Anguish to tell me to relax my hands this time. I don’t even have to pretend to look miserable.
Mark doesn’t react to whatever he sees in my face, but after he hands off care of the submissive to Dinah, he walks off the stage and disappears for the rest of the night.
You’ll have to go to him.
Fuck.
The next night, I’m in orange silk, modest in front but draping lower in the back, my hair around my shoulders in sculpted curls. I’m a little agitated by the time I get to the hall, because I’ve been stewing all day about Mark flogging that submissive, and it’s not even the flogging I’m upset about but that single caress down her spine. It was for my benefit and for the benefit of the crowd, but I don’t care. His caresses belong to me and Tristan, absolutely no one else, and I’d like to tell him so. Preferably while I’m yanking his belt open.
But I can’t tell him so, because he’s in meetings all day, and then he’s already been claimed by the usual sycophants and serial networkers when I step onto the floor of the hall.
The mood is darker tonight, turned a little dangerous from the merriment of the first few days. There’s an edge to the drinking and colloquy now, to the fucking and kink happening on scattered sofas and cushions, and it only takes me a minute on the floor to identify it.
Boredom.
Seven days is a long time for a festival, and these are people who already live like they’re Romans at the court of Elagabalus. So even with wine and sex on the proverbial—and literal—table, they’ve grown restless. Bloodthirsty.
And now I’m in the middle of them, looking for Mark but as yet alone. Whispers tickle at my exposed shoulder blades as I move toward the stage, suddenly too nervous to approach Mark where he’s trapped in conversation near a statue of Saturn.
“…can tell she misses him…”
“I heard Mark threatened to kill them both if they ever saw each other again…”
“…a trial by iron.”
The last snippet is followed by a wave of shocked laughter, and unease burrows in my belly. If I’m not going to take Anguish’s advice and go to Mark, then I should retreat to the safety of the nook. I’m not in control of my face tonight, or my body or my heart, and maybe that’s the difference between being cuffed on stage and fucked in a torn wedding dress and being quite happy about it and then standing here fully clothed and feeling like my ribs are about to splinter from the atmospheric pressure of being watched.
I turn for the stairs, discretion being the better part of valor, and then two women holding goblets of wine step in front of me. They aren’t wearing costumes; they’re in pantsuits with cropped pants and stilettos, but their expressions are every bit as feral as the other Saturnalians. I’ve seen them with Andrea before, not just in the hall but having lunch and drinks.
So her friends then.
“How good of you to celebrate with us,” the first woman says as she lifts her drink to her mouth.
My nervous system doesn’t betray me now at least. I’m able to keep myself as cool as they are.
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” I say. They’ve crowded close enough that I have to look up at them, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of stepping backward. I wish I’d put on heels though. I wish I were able to sleep by myself without waking up screaming so I didn’t have exhausted bruises under my eyes. I wish I were back in the apartment staring at nothing.
The second woman tilts her head. “You did seem comfortable with Christopher that first night. Practiced dancing with him before?”
My fingertips tingle as my body decides that we need to shift from calm to alert.
