Page 58 of Bitter Burn
It felt so good to hold her in broad daylight, without the plausible deniability of the shadows around us, and I breathed her in, the sweet scent of her hair, the faint mineral scent of my own soap, which she’d been using since she came back.
“I wasn’t trying to buy your forgiveness,” I told her.
“I know. It wouldn’t have worked if you had been. But thank you. You—” She pulled back enough to look at me. “You make a perfectly innocent Christmas morning feel depraved, you know.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I do?”
“Every mug or blanket or book—I know what you were imagining when you got them.”
“Is that so? Tell me how well you know my thoughts, Isolde. I’m curious now.”
Her soft lips pull together. “I think you bought me that mug hoping you could sit me on the counter while you got the kettle going and then be the one to put the drink in my hands. I think you got me those blankets because you imagined me curled up next to you on the couch until I accidentally fell asleep. I think you got me those diabolically strong peppermint candies because you know I crave those little jolts of pain, and you like giving me what I crave as much as you enjoy watching the pain itself.”
“Hmm.” She was right, but I grumpily didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting it.
Unfortunately, she could read this thought of mine as well, and the ensuing smile reminded me of how she’d stood over Tristan in Morois, rolling her foot over his cock. Arrogant and assured, too lovely to do anything other than surrender to.
Unless you were me, of course. Then you’d only see all that self-assurance as a challenge.
That smile… I wanted to taste it so badly.
“I can’t repay you in kind,” she said, her smile fading. “I don’t have any gifts for you.”
“Play a game of chess with me,” I bargained. “And then we’ll call it even.” And I’d still feel like I was coming out ahead.
“Okay,” she said, and her lips twitched once more. She pushed a little closer to me, and instinct had me dipping my head, and?—
A chime from my phone, signaling the only good reason to be interrupted while trying to kiss my wife. “I have to go downstairs for your last present,” I said.
And I went down to meet a smiling Sophie and an impatient Melody, on their way to Sophie’s parents’ house after they made the handoff, and then I returned to Isolde with an armful of wriggling silver fur, alarmingly big paws, and an eternally wagging tail.
The look on Isolde’s face…I wanted it commissioned in marble and frescoed on my walls. How often had I seen it prior to this? Maybe the night I took her virginity on her father’s desk and maybe on Samhain? A look of terrified joy, of hope, of happiness.
“Mark,” she whispered. “What…”
“An Irish wolfhound,” I said and carefully handed over the squirming puppy. She started licking Isolde’s face, and Isolde laughed—she laughed—and I could be the king of the world and not have been happier than I was in that moment. “Melody and Blanche found her at the farmhouse when they went back to look for some of Ricker’s things for the funeral,” I said. “She was under the porch and cold and seemed to be hungry, so they took her with them when they went back to the town house. They can’t find an owner or where she came from, and the vet thinks she’s been on her own for a little while at least. And I thought…”
I stopped. It felt grim to say on Christmas morning, too grim to say while Isolde was giggling with a puppy in her arms. But that was our lives, wasn’t it? Pleasure in darkness and dolor in the sunlight.
“I thought you might feel less alone,” I said.
When our eyes met, I couldn’t tell if it was happiness or sorrow or both humming between us.
In the here and now, at the funeral reception with Lady Anguish, I say, “Tristan will be staying at Lyonesse until New Year’s, along with Hugo and Kayden and Isabella. I hope—well, I hope it will cheer both of them up.”
“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” Anguish says. She nods toward the house, where we can see straight through the conservatory windows to the kitchen and the living room. “If you want the club to believe that you don’t have an affair being carried out under your nose, you’ll need to stage-manage the two of them very carefully. Just look at them now.”
Yes, I can see it. Isolde ostensibly in conversation with a congresswoman who knows Isolde’s father, Tristan nodding at a three-star general with his hands behind his back. And yet it doesn’t matter that they’re across the room from each other, that they’re in completely separate conversations. Their eyes keep finding each other’s, and their bodies unconsciously shift toward an invisible shared point of gravity between them.
It’s like watching two very pretty magnets do their best not to collide.
“Don’t stare too long,” advises Anguish. “You’re doing a very good job hiding your feelings, but it won’t matter how aloof you appear if you can’t stop watching them.”
I rip my eyes away, down toward my drink. This jealousy…it’s worse than being shot, worse than being stabbed. Except why then do I enjoy stabbing myself with it?
“I knew you were screwed the moment I saw Tristan,” says my companion. “He looks far, far too much like Maxen. Prettier, maybe, and sweeter and sadder. But a green-eyed hero nonetheless, except a submissive this time.”
“And also not hopelessly in love with his vice president,” I mumble.
