Chapter 3 #2
And then, with a precision it takes some dominants years to learn, she lifts her foot in the crucial moment before Tristan erupts.
His flesh gives an unhappy, enervated lurch, and then fluid drips from the end, leaving a small pool on his belly.
Like a dab of pearlescent paint on a painter’s palette.
I want to smear it up to his chest and watch it shine in the light of the fire.
Tristan’s whimper is one of utter misery.
I, of course, am an artist of misery, a priest of it.
Hearing that whimper, I know he could give me so many more.
I know I could push him, torment that blood-flushed cock of his until the skin pulls so tight that it shines even when it’s dry. I could have him sobbing.
But Isolde is still learning, maybe, or just impatient. She pounces on him like a cat on a mouse—if a cat could pounce on a mouse twice its size—and is over him on all fours, kissing him hard enough that he grunts.
I hear that grunt like I made it myself, and my fingers curl even harder against themselves. I won’t masturbate watching the two of them, I won’t . Even an unrighteous man has to have his dignity.
My body doesn’t care about dignity, however, and I don’t have to look down to see the tent in my trousers.
Every part of me is stretched like a wire even before Isolde sits on top of Tristan’s hips and strokes his penis with her slick cunt, and then by the time she’s begun rocking on top of him, my forehead is pressed to the paneling, my arms braced above my head, my heart pounding.
Tristan tries to push inside her, but she doesn’t let him at first, lifting away or leaning forward, a slow game of chess. Pressing, retreating, pressing, retreating.
Until he’s begging, beautifully, pleading with her to let him inside, to make it stop hurting, to please let him make her feel good.
She could torment him like this for as long as she pleased—God knows I could keep him trembling in this state for an entire night—but her own patience must be at its breaking point.
She reaches between them and fits his length to the entrance of her body. And then slowly sinks down.
“Oh God,” Tristan mumbles, his eyes squeezing closed, his fingers digging into the carpet. Every muscle under his sweat-damp skin is quivering and tense, and his teeth clench together in barely endured agony.
For Isolde’s part, she seems to feel much the same, because her thighs are already gripping his sides; her head is dropped back.
She rides him hard, just like I’ve done on this very carpet, the direction of penetration less important than who is using whom, than the power stolen right out of Tristan’s big, strong hands.
She’s using him to get herself off, and he is squeezed in agonized bliss, desperate not to come until she does, but it’s nearly past any controlling now.
He reaches up with a shaking hand, pushes it under the T-shirt she still wears, and palms her breast.
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.