Page 62 of Bitter Burn
“I think together we could make it elegant,” she says, again with that poised calm. “Not only in form but in function—an elegant way to put the suspicions to rest once and for all, my renewed loyalty on display for everyone to taste and see.”
If she’s embarrassed referencing our affair in front of the others, she doesn’t show it. And Mark doesn’t seem embarrassed either.
I am though. Ashamed that I’ve helped make any kind of world where Isolde thinks she has to do this.
“You know,” Kayden says slowly. “There’s no reason it has to be quite as traumatic as it used to be. And if there was ever a time—having Hugo and I here to witness it might give the moment some legitimacy.”
Mark’s handsome mouth is taut at the corners. “Just as the moment illegitimatizes me, both maritally and morally. And before you can sermonize about how I have no legitimate morality left anyway, just know that the pretense of it still serves me at Lyonesse.”
Isolde puts her hand over his. That small action seems to carry with it the power of an electric shock—he only barely manages to stop the jolt that shudders briefly through him.
“Please,” she says softly. “I want to do this.”
He looks down at her hand, a muscle jumping once in his jaw as he does. “I know. That’s what worries me.”
“Will you at least think about it?” she asks. “For the next day or two?”
There’s a hesitation in his movements as he lifts his other hand and then rests it slowly on top of hers. I abruptly feel that I’m intruding on something private, even as envy begins eating at my guts like a worm. I don’t care that the jagged gap between them is so palpable that it might as well be outlined in yellow surveying tape; the way they look at each other says it all.
They are obsessed with each other.
“I’ll think about it,” concedes Mark with no small amount of bitterness. But the way he holds Isolde’s hand the rest of the night makes me think that he very well might consider selling his soul for only that, only the slotting of her fingers into his and the occasional stroke of his knuckles with her thumb.
Twenty-Four
Isolde
I hate being afraid, and I’ve always hated it because there’s no lonelier feeling than fear. No one can ever be truly afraid with you, never in exactly the same way—and even if by some miracle they could, then that would mean they can’t protect you. They can’t take the fear away. How could they if they are as weak as you are?
I’m afraid the first night I go back to the hall. Afraid of my own weakness, of how easily I can hate myself if invited to do so. Afraid of the loneliness leaching outward from some hidden well inside me, a ragged hole in my heart that I must have had since birth, afraid of how it freezes my bones and chills my breath.
I don’t want to end up in the garden again, blue-lipped and empty, not even trying to pray, my mind drifting from horror to horror done by my own hands. All for a God whom I now think might be sick to see what I’ve done in His name.
“We don’t have to go tonight,” my husband murmurs, coming up behind me. He runs his hands up my arms to my shoulders, and they are so warm, so certain. How can a man so cold have such warm hands? And be so warm everywhere else? Sleeping in his arms at night is like sleeping tucked under a dragon’s wing.
A cinch of desire low in my belly pulls even tighter, reminding me that all Mark and I have done is sleep. I wake up in the morning with stiff nipples and a needy cunt, and the willpower it takes to refuse to beg for his long fingers or his wicked mouth or the mouthwatering erection between his hips is almost beyond what I can spare.
I’ve never stopped wanting him. I’ve never stopped loving him; even hating him is not without its own erotic thrill. And I know all the very persuasive reasons why it would be stupid to return to how we were before Samhain: we don’t trust each other; we’ve hurt and lied to each other; we have a broken marriage to perform; I’m only just now creeping away from a ledge in my own mind that I still don’t fully understand.
But my God, do I want him. Even having him lift me onto the counter and bid me to stay there while he cooks, even reading at his feet, even having his long, strong fingers massaging my scalp as he washes my hair…he must understand that it’s all subtle, seductive obscenity for me. That he only has to hold up a berry for me to obediently open my mouth, that every time I let him dry my hair and wrap me in a robe, I’m nearly shaking by the end. Pain I have craved since I was a girl, but here is the debossed side of it: I am as fragile as spun sugar, ready to offer him the air out of my throat, when his power over me is painted in strokes of homecooked food and the slow turn of pages at his feet.
I don’t think I’ll ever not crave pain, but I’ll never forget how to crave this either.
I meet Mark’s eyes in the mirror.
“It makes no sense,” I say, “that you feel like the only person who sees me, all of me, I mean. Even the parts of me that don’t feel quite real, even the parts I hide from myself. And yet of anyone I’ve ever known, you are the one person who can hurt me the most.”
His fingers trace up to my neck, linger along the shell of my ear.
“I think,” he says quietly, “that makes the most sense of anything in the entire world.” His fingers move downward and gently circle the place just above where my neck and shoulder would meet. Where my collar would go.
My voice is a whisper when I tilt my head to grant him better access, and the word itself is a reflex, as honest as it is unplanned. “Sir.”
A spasm—a quaking of his fingertips against my throat—and then he steps back, the touch at my throat vanishing as swiftly as the moment does.
In the mirror, I can see him looking down and to the side, his ribs moving hard enough to strain the seams of his shirt. A standing version of the Dying Gaul, a fighter panting in the corner of the ring.
“I meant it,” I aver. “I—I don’t know what to do with everything else between us, the future or the past, Tristan and my uncle and every lie we’ve told. But I do know that I mean it when I call you sir. I remember my safeword. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting you.”
