Page 7 of Bitter Burn
Hard, I think, judging by the sharp cry Isolde gives.
She comes again, this time on his cock, and suddenly, I find that I’m no longer in control of my own hand. It’s reaching down, it’s unfastening my trousers, and then I’m working myself hard enough that it hurts. But there’s no choice, I have no choice, because something about my wife having an orgasm on top of another man has me unable to do anything else but give in.
And even with the T-shirt hanging down past her backside, even with her back to me, I see enough of her to fire every jealous, obsessive fantasy I’ve ever had. The slope of her neck. The upturned soles of her feet where they’re tucked by Tristan’s thighs. The hair in shades of gold and bone, just like in the handle of her favorite knife, the one I gave her knowing it would one day be streaked with blood like her fervent little soul.
It’s her left hand I fixate on as she rides Tristan with darkly selfish prerogative. As she rolls her hips and drives every last ounce of stolen pleasure to the surface. Her ring flashes in the fire, the rubies and the gold, the pattern of honeysuckle wrought in permanent form. Etched on the inside of her ring are two words, the two words I’ve scored into my mind over and over again.
Quarto optio.
Tristan can’t hold back any longer, and his entire body bows into one slow, juddering arch. A noise tears free of him—half gasp, half sob—like the orgasm is a mean thing sent to afflict him, and you’d think from the way he scratches at the carpet that he’s being flayed alive.
Sweet puppy, my darling hero, unraveled by only the gentlest pull of a string.
I don’t stop stroking myself as Tristan goes still, but I tell myself I’m going to, that I’m going to zip up and then step away, but just then, Isolde lifts to her knees above Tristan’s hips. His organ slips free, and semen drips out after, sliding from her body onto his. Slowly and catching the light of the fire as it does.
Isolde reaches down, and I only realize what she’s done when her left hand emerges shining and slick. She has Tristan’s cum all over her wedding ring.
She pushes her wet fingers against his lips, and he loses it, flipping her over and entering her again with an animal grunt that sends hunger burning all the way through me. I should be in there right now; I should have them both at my disposal; I should be able to see that defiled wedding ring in as much detail as I want. I should be punishing them for this; I should be punishing myself with how good it feels to have them tear off pieces of a heart that I thought stopped beating in a damp alley eight years ago.
Tristan stabs into her over and over again, hard enough that I can hear it, deep enough that this well-bred heiress is completely uncivilized underneath him. Perspiration shimmers on his back, on the toiling muscles there, and I recognize this version of him from the yacht, from the surveillance footage I watched with a compulsion akin to addiction. Whatever goodness and chivalry in him are gone, and now there’s nothing left but the primal urge to take, to have. To possess. To come as hard and as much as he possibly can.
Ah, my poor hero and his breeding kink.
Isolde’s fingers twist through his hair, tight, tight, like she’s trying to hold on, and it’s her left hand, and her wedding ring is still slippery with another man’s seed, and even with all the delicious skin on offer, with Tristan’s firm backside and the glimpses of Isolde’s pink cunt, it’s the ring that I’m staring at when the climax slams into me like an enemy charge. I stagger sideways, sucking in a sharp breath as it rips through my groin.
Cum splatters on the four-hundred-year-old paneling—a month’s worth, what feels like years’ worth, more and more, too much, not enough, oh God, it’s not enough. Even as I’m painting antique wood with thick rivulets of white release, I know I need more, harder, worse. It’s not enough to feel it sizzling up my thighs and churning in my groin. I want it burning me alive, charring my bones. I want there to be nothing left of me when I’m done.
There’s still too much left of me when I’m done.
Inside the library, the lovers are cresting again, together, Tristan grunting into Isolde’s neck and Isolde’s heels digging into the small of Tristan’s back as she pants out his name. Tristan stays on top of her for a long time after, his limbs slack and his face in her neck. She strokes his hair as the fire hisses and pops.
“We should go to bed,” she says.
He nods but doesn’t move. She keeps stroking his hair.
Meanwhile, I’m in a quiet fugue of my own. I’m stunned at myself, at my lack of self-control. I stare at the semen rolling down my wall and think, How did I get here? How did they get so much power over me?
This was supposed to be a game in the beginning, a gambit, the left flank of a battle plan that had been in place for years. I thought I could stay above it somehow, above the two of them, and I thought I could watch them together with the same detachment I’d feel watching two strangers at Lyonesse play.
I thought I could watch them fall in love. I thought I’d be utterly unaffected by it.
I was wrong.
Four
Mark
I wish I could say that I don’t know how long I stand there after I zip up my pants, but the clock on the mantel tallies my weakness in relentlessly measured increments. Half an hour. I stand and watch the firelight dance over their exposed skin, watch Isolde’s fingernails card through Tristan’s hair. I can almost feel it between my own fingers, thick and soft, strong and silky. I sometimes wonder if the barber at West Point wept as they shaved Tristan’s hair on R-Day.
Finally, Tristan pushes himself off the floor and lifts Isolde in his arms. She slips her arms around his neck, her eyes hooded but a faint pulling between her eyebrows. She’s troubled, I think, but already resigned to worrying about whatever it is tomorrow, and it’s a shame I’m not in there, because I would have made her as loose-limbed as Tristan. I would have made it so you had to ladle her off the carpet.
Maybe all husbands like to think so.
I ease back into the shadows of the corridor as Tristan emerges with Isolde, but I needn’t have bothered. Tristan carries her off to my bedroom without so much as a glance in the opposite direction. Which is a good thing because I very nearly follow them, a sudden swell of possessiveness making me step forward, my hand lifted, like I’m reaching for them.
I catch myself before I do anything stupid—well, anything else stupid—and wait until I hear the bedroom door close. I give it a few more moments and then slip into the library.
Once inside, I sit at my desk, pull out a piece of paper and one of the heavy fountain pens left behind by my grandfather. It’s not a long letter that I write. It doesn’t have to be—Isolde won’t believe a word of it anyway, and Tristan will be by her side regardless of what she chooses. And I don’t hope I can convince Isolde that everything I said on our wedding night was real. Why would she believe me when she knows I’ve been false about so much else?
