Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Mark
The following evening, after my bodyguard has escorted Isabella through every glass-fronted temple to consumerism that exists on Fifth Avenue, he comes to the penthouse.
“Ah, Tristan,” I say from the kitchen when the elevator doors open and Petitcrieu scrabbles across the hardwood in a flurry of flapping ears and noisy claws. “Thank you for coming. I know you had a long day.”
Isolde, who is eating at the kitchen island, betrays nothing of her myriad feelings about Isabella Beroul save for the tiniest hesitation in the movement of her fork. Tristan, for his part, sighs as he shrugs off his wool coat and scarf.
My wool coat, I notice with some pleasure, the one from Morois. I like that he keeps wearing it. I like seeing it on him. I also like the idea of punishing him later for the casual theft of it.
“Is there any dinner left?” he asks as he comes into the kitchen, bending down every other step to pet the dog. He’s wearing a black suit with a tie still knotted at his throat, and he starts tugging at it as he drifts to Isolde’s side. Little magnets, the two of them. “I’m starving.”
I fetch the plate I have warming for him in the oven—seared steak and rosemary-flecked potatoes, the first thing I ever made for him—and then I add some kale salad before setting it in front of him with a fork and knife.
“Are you not eating?” he asks as I go to pour him a glass of wine.
“I already ate,” I say. And then I add, softly, “It’s nice to see you.”
He looks up from where he’s already started tucking in, a blush spilling from the apples of his cheeks to the neatly trimmed sides of his hair. “You just saw me,” he says and looks back down.
“It’s been a whole day. It feels like a lifetime.
” I watch him for a moment longer, the strong jaw, the straight nose, the dark eyebrows and lashes, the full, rosy mouth.
My Pre-Raphaelite knight, wrenched into this ugly world.
“Tomorrow night, you’ll return to Montreal, and then who knows when I’ll get to steal you back? ”
“It won’t be forever,” he says with a certainty that I envy.
Isolde’s eyes lift to mine and then dip back down. “That’s right,” she says, soothing in her own quiet way. “Just until this is over.”
But I saw the understanding in her gaze. She might not know how I think things will end, what I’ve planned for, but she knows that there’s something underneath the casual way I hedge around the future.
I clean up as Tristan and Isolde finish eating, enjoying this little domestic eye of the storm, even with the thunder that only I can hear rumbling at the edges.
Petitcrieu has passed out under their feet, lulled into submission by the occasional rub from an affectionate foot.
They murmur to each other between bites: Tristan telling her about his day, Isolde asking questions about Armorica.
Tristan’s shucked his suit jacket, and Isolde is barefoot in loose lounge pants and a sweatshirt that hangs off one shoulder.
An old Army one of mine that she must have found in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.
Maybe while she was snooping, which is a charming thought. My pretty little spy.
When they’re done, I coax Petitcrieu into her crate, clear away their plates and wineglasses, and ask lightly, “Does anyone want to join me upstairs?”
They look at each other and then at me.
“Yes,” answers Tristan.
Isolde nods.
They go together, hands linked, Isolde only coming to Tristan’s shoulder—though the businesslike muscles of her exposed shoulder keep her from looking like a prototypical damsel.
I do feel like a villain following them, however, chasing them up to my wicked bower and feeling absolutely no shame about it. If this is the last time I get to trap my knight before the world unravels, then I plan on enjoying every last second of it.
Plus I worry about them, my darling playthings. I worry that Tristan is too good and that Isolde is too used to thinking of herself as the hand of God to act on her own. That simply won’t do, and I’ve always known that would be the case, but as with everything else, I thought I had more time.
Tristan and Isolde mount the last step to the loft—I treat myself to a final glance at both their backsides, works of art even beneath trousers and lounge pants—and then I follow them into the open space, which is separated from the penthouse with a glass railing.
The rest of the loft is lined with cleverly fitted cabinets and spotted with debauched furnishings: a low leather sofa clearly designed with sex in mind, a leather-upholstered table with a hole in the middle, and a St. Andrew’s cross.
I turn on a lamp in the corner and then pad over to one of the cabinets. “Isolde, you’ll want to take off your pants. Tristan, why don’t you roll up your sleeves?”
I am already quite ready for the evening since I’ve been planning for it all day, so I’m already barefoot and wearing nothing but sweatpants.
I’m not shy when it comes to my many scars, but I am deliberate about when I show them.
Tonight, I want to show as much of myself as possible.
The skinny ridge and uneven scars under the ink on my forearm, the snarl of scar tissue on my shoulder.
The now-healed scratch marks on my chest from an angry cat in Morocco.
I gather the things I need and turn to see Isolde rolling up Tristan’s sleeves for him.
She’s already obeyed my request and stripped from the waist down, but she still wears my sweatshirt, and the overall look is so adorably sexy that it’s easy to forget that she left four men bloody and lifeless in a Serbian nightclub only a few months ago.
She finishes with the sleeves as I set everything down, and they both watch me as I approach. I come up behind Isolde and slide her hair away from her shoulder so I can kiss it. Her skin is like silk under my lips.
“Safeword?” I murmur.
“Hyssop,” she says, my wife who constantly seeks atonement and who, like King David, probably needs it.
“Hazel,” adds Tristan.
And then for the hell of it, I say mine. “Honeysuckle.” They look at me, surprised, and I shrug. “It’s good for Dominants to have a safeword too.”
“You’ve never used it before,” Isolde points out.
“How often am I good?” To illustrate my point, I slide a hand down over Isolde’s luscious backside and squeeze until she shivers. “Now, Tristan, you should sit down. Yes, there on the sofa. And, Isolde, allow me to help you onto his lap.”
Tristan looks up at me with confusion all over his lovely face. “Um. On my lap?”
“Yes, yes, look alive now. There you go, Isolde, exactly there. Good girl.” Once Isolde is where I intend, she looks up at me too, a question on her face. I kneel on the floor next to the sofa, where she’s braced up on her elbows. “Do you trust me?”
She narrows her eyes. “I think you know the answer to that.”
“Do you trust me for the next twenty minutes?”
Her gaze remains doubtful, but a smile pulls at her mouth. “Maybe for the next fifteen.”
I brush some hair away from her face, wishing I could etch her features into my memory, wishing there was some way I could promise myself that I’d never forget the sea-colored eyes, the narrow nose, the winged brows, and the delicate jaw.
That I’d never forget the perfectly imperfect parts of her: the slightly overlapping front tooth, the upper lip with no dip in the middle, the haughty cast to her chin. Like God was too excited by his own creation not to rush through the details.
“Do you remember the night after our wedding, at Lyonesse?” I ask, posing the question to Tristan rather than to Isolde. “Do you remember why she said she liked pain?”
Tristan has been stroking the backs of her thighs, completely entranced. His fingers are lingering over the crease behind a knee when he says, “Because she thinks she deserves it.”
“You have to be careful with people who think they deserve pain,” I say softly, still stroking the hair away from Isolde’s face, still looking into her aquamarine eyes.
“Because sometimes they don’t think they deserve for the pain to stop.
Sometimes it feels too good to want to stop.
Sometimes it feels so awful that even wanting to stop feels like proof that they’re the weak and miserable creatures they thought they were.
Sometimes they might think they deserve pain so unequivocally that they begin wanting to hurt themselves rather than having someone else do it. Isn’t that right, Isolde?”
A pause, and then a small dip of her chin.
“And that’s not kink anymore, is it?” I ask kindly.
She closes her eyes. “No,” she whispers.
I press my lips to her temple. “No,” I echo.
And then I look up to Tristan, who’s looking down at Isolde with a troubled expression.
“When you love someone who feels better with pain, you have to be careful, especially with someone like Isolde, who can handle rather a lot of it. Her body won’t lie—you’ll be watching her skin, checking her pulse, her responsiveness—and there are ways to make the same amount of pain feel like so much more. ”
“Like with the trial by iron,” comments Tristan quietly.
“Yes,” I say, kissing Isolde’s temple again before I stand up.
I’d rather not talk about the trial by iron.
Agony is one thing, but agony on display is another—and in front of a callow and vicious audience that doesn’t deserve anything like what Isolde gave them that night.
“You’re going to spank her until her ass is red—not pink but red.
You’ll hit this spot here too,” I add, indicating the crease where her thighs meet her cheeks.
“That’ll be enough for light bruising. If you really want things to hurt, you’ll have her on her feet but bent over clutching her ankles.
It’ll tense the muscles and give each strike less cushion.
Feel free to hold her legs down if she gets too kicky. ”