Page 5 of Bitter Burn
If Isolde had slit my throat, it would have hurt less.
No, I suppose I’m too realistic to have hoped for anything by coming here. I don’t deserve their forgiveness or understanding, and I won’t deserve it at any point in my life, because I would do it all again. I’m going to keep doing it.
I came to Morois because yesterday, I had a dream where I stood in a wind-haunted garden and stared at honeysuckle leaves caught in the dead grass. I can still smell the wet stone of the garden walls. I can feel the damp earth soaking through my clothes. I can feel the leaves between my fingers, brittle and light, so different from the velvet petals of summer.
So much for the honeysuckle. The bad luck came anyway.
I woke up from the dream and booked a flight to England. For no other reason than to reassure myself that they were still alive, my sweet adulterers. Than to see with my own eyes that they were not buried near the sea.
But now that I have seen them, I should go, I should leave. That’s what a logical person would do. I don’t have time to check on two people who think they’re good at hiding.
In fairness, Morois was an inspired choice on their part, because it’s unknown to my enemies, only impersonally known by Sedge and my bodyguards, and only personally known by Blanche and Melody. The security system is closed, so I don’t have eyes on the property when I’m not there, and it’s isolated enough that there are no neighbors to notice if it’s occupied or not.
Unfortunately, all the inspired choices in the world wouldn’t have changed a thing. It wouldn’t have changed the little blue dots on the screen of my phone…or the pretty rings on their pretty, perfect fingers tracking their every move.
I’ve known they were at Morois since the minute they boiled their first kettle of tea, but I resisted coming, because what would have been the point?
And there’s still no point—except that I had a bad dream, and there was no sleeping, no eating, no thinking, until I knew they were both alive and that their traitorous little hearts still beat in their dear, duplicitous chests.
So I should slip back through the trees and over the moor to my car. If I’m already on the other side of the Atlantic, I might as well see to some business, and I should see to it quickly.
But I don’t move. I stay where I’m at, watching the doorway Isolde went through, rooted like a tree. Rotting like old fruit.
From the library window, a fire flickers.
Three
Mark
I sneak in through a window on the north side, easing through the messy slush of grass and snow to a window my grandfather added to the house as a younger man. It has a catch hidden in the frame, invisible unless you know it’s there, and it allows one to unlock the window from the outside—perfect for paranoid spies.
Or spurned husbands.
I don’t realize how cold I am until I’m inside, and I take a moment to warm myself before shucking my wet shoes, coat, and gloves and moving into the depths of the house. The flagged floors hide the weight of my steps, and I know exactly how to slip past the library doors to avoid being detected—even by Isolde. Her senses might be sharper than Tristan’s, but my wife has never had to sneak cookies past a Cold War spy with a twin sister in tow.
The lovers have closed the library doors to keep in the heat, but no matter. The warped Jacobean paneling in the far corridor doubles as the back of a bookshelf, and a gap in the wood gives me a view into the room. It was how Melody and I would check to see if Grandad had fallen asleep in his chair before we crept into the kitchen, and now it shows me Isolde in that very same chair, although she’s not asleep. Her borrowed linen pants are off, and my bodyguard’s shoulders are wedged between her fair thighs.
Dancing firelight makes flashing glimpses of the scene. The strong grip of Tristan’s hands on her knees; the dark curl of hair at the nape of his neck; Isolde’s erect nipples poking through the white T-shirt.
Her pearl-colored hair is up in a messy knot on top of her head, fallen strands brushing against a shoulder that’s been bared, and her throat is in a long arch as Tristan runs his tongue along her core.
He’s taken off the wool coat from earlier, wearing just a henley and jeans, but his boots are still on, like he didn’t have the patience to take them off before going down on my wife. Even with his clothes on, there’s no hiding the shift and pull of his muscles as he moves at his work, as he spreads Isolde’s thighs farther apart. As his hips flex unconsciously.
Heat thrums through me, blistering and shapeless, as I watch Isolde’s fingers moving through Tristan’s hair. His jeans are stretched over his hips and the firm curves of his backside. It’s harrowing to see. Dangerous for me and for him.
It was in this very library that I had him for the first time. I’d tried to avoid it, I really did—because he’s my sister Blanche’s stepson and also for the sake of my plans. For the sake of the innocence still shining from his bright eyes, an innocence he’d clung to despite war and death and the stubborn belief of an entire country that being a hero is the best thing a person can be rather than the loneliest. It was bad enough that I’d hired Tristan at all, but to use him like a concubine felt wrong even to me.
I just…hadn’t planned on liking him so much.
And when I’d been fucked up over Eliot, drunk and lost in the memories of marrying under falling magnolia petals—to have Tristan Thomas kneeling at my feet, lips parted, eyes greener than jewels?—
I am only mortal, you understand. And I’ve never claimed to be a hero.
On the other side of the bookshelf, Isolde is having an orgasm against Tristan’s mouth, a long, shivering climax that has her back arched and her eyes closed. Tristan has a thumb buried in the muscles of her thigh, and I can see the pain sizzling through her like a current. She believes she deserves it, the pain, and because she believes she deserves it, it’s the only thing that sets her free. Makes her clean of her sins (and she has so many of those, even I won’t argue about that).
Tristan lifts his face to hers, his lips wet and shining in the fire, and says, so I can barely hear him, “What you did last night…can you do it again?”
Isolde opens her eyes and slides both of her hands down to cup his jaw. Her expression is tender—Tristan is so hard not to be tender toward—but I see a new tension in her body. I don’t think Tristan is aware of it, because he gives a relieved shudder when Isolde nods.
