Chapter 18
I can’t lookat the bed anymore.
I look down at the watch in my hand, warm from Mark’s skin and now from my own, catching my reflection in its large face. I look like I’ve just staggered into an outpost after an ambush; I look like I should have blood all over my hands.
I put the watch in my pocket and scrub a hand over my face. I have to get it together. I can’t be panting after my boss—or, worse, his wife—where everyone can see. I can’t be watching them like they’ve each got a hand around my throat.
But as much as I’d braced for the wedding, even for this scene, I had not expected this. I expected jealousy and heartbreak. I expected that watching the two objects of my obsession marry and fuck would tear me apart.
I did not expect it would make me hard. Like balls-tight, weeping-tip hard. Like I can’t breathe into my stomach because even the pressure of an inhale into my belly is stimulation at this point.
I’m grateful it’s only Sedge back here because I think he’s feeling the same way. When I look over at him, he’s staring at the stage with an expression of horror. But even the iPad he’s holding over his groin can’t hide the ridge underneath his flat-fronted trousers.
I look back to the stage, trying to scrape together some semblance of professionalism. Some dignity.
Stoically heartsick is one thing. Wretchedly aroused is another.
Mark is sliding off the bed with Isolde still tucked in his arms. He could be in one of his unethically expensive tuxedos for how haughty he looks while naked. And even though he’s completely nude and Isolde is still in her gown, there is no question who is leaving the stage with their pride intact.
White-blond strands of hair hang loose from her now-disheveled braid; rumpled petals are falling from her like rain. The torn silk of her dress exposes a curled-in shoulder and a breast marked with livid bites and bruises. The train of it hisses on the stage next to Mark’s feet as he walks toward me.
They have made paintings of how Mark looks right now, a monster with a ravished damsel at his mercy. I want the damsel. I want to be ravished. I hope none of it shows in my face, although Mark would probably notice anyway. He’s too skilled at reading people, and I’ve never presented a challenge for him, as transparent as I am.
“Sir, I have a fresh tuxedo for you,” Sedge murmurs as Mark reaches us. On the other side of the stage, Dinah emerges to applause. The stage lights dim, and more candles are being lit in the balconies and corners of the room. I see the discreet scurry and dash of club employees moving chairs, bringing in cushions and chaises and upholstered tables.
Dinah exhorts the guests to keep fucking, to make themselves comfortable, to make use of the playrooms and showers and bars. The music is already shifting, quickening. The party will last a long time tonight.
“Thank you,” Mark says. To my shock, he turns to me, offering me the tearstained Isolde. “Tristan, will you take my wife up to my apartment? I think she’ll want to change. Sedge will fetch her soon to come back to the hall.”
I can hardly refuse, as he’s already moving to put Isolde in my arms. She smells sweet, like honey and flowers, and when I take her weight, I feel her hair brush against my jaw. She shivers a little when my fingers press against her ribs—that postorgasm ticklishness of hers.
Holding her body against mine while it’s boneless with pleasure is…hard to ignore. When I risk a glance down, I see that she looks as pornographic as she feels: her lips swollen, the collar on her neck gleaming. The tip of her breast is still bunched tight, and I wonder if I’d find the little nub between her legs turgid and greedy even after what Mark did to her on the bed.
I drag my eyes back up to Mark, who’s looking at me expectantly. I haven’t answered him yet.
“Yes, sir,” I manage to say.
He nods, autocratic even when nude, and then lifts his hand. “My watch, then.”
Ah, shit.
“It’s in my pocket, sir. I can bring it back once I’m finished taking Isolde upstairs.”
Mark is already shaking his head. “No need.” And he steps closer and reaches into the pocket of my suit trousers, his fingers warm even through the pocket lining. His fingertips graze my erection as he searches for what he wants, and I lift my chin and stare straight ahead, as neutrally as I can. My cock, though, twitches at the attention. Reminds me that the man I’m hopelessly obsessed with is naked in front of me, that his well-used wife is in my arms, and that I’m about to carry her somewhere secluded.
If Mark notices, he doesn’t say anything. Just takes his watch and clasps it around his wrist like he’s already robed in Tom Ford and not like we can see the lingering wet on his shaft.
“There is water and also some fruit up there for her,” Mark tells me. “If she gets stubborn about eating, tell her I’ll take it out on her delectable ass later.”
“I heard that,” mumbles Isolde. She’s still deep in subspace.
I try to shake off the unhappy clench in my chest when I think about being there too, about how it felt. Covered in wax or binder clip imprints or semen, dizzy and untethered by anything that wasn’t him.
I’ll never know that feeling again—not with Mark, at least. And I don’t know that I could bear ever giving that part of myself to someone else.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and I start taking Isolde out of the wings and properly backstage to one of the elevator banks. I hear Mark ask Sedge for the tuxedo as we leave.
* * *
Mark’s apartmentis just how I remember it—contemporary and elegant, with dashes of Morois House. Wide wood planks, dog-eared books, and copper pots, botanical prints hanging on the walls. When I open the door and carry Isolde inside, I see that it’s warmly lit, as always, with pendants and sconces and scattered lamps, an utter contrast to the hall with its sweeping lights and strobes.
The last time I was in here, Mark asked me to go fetch his bride. He sat on the table with a bloody shoulder, and the sun was bright on his blond hair, and with such effortless, casual sadism, he told me to get Isolde. To bring her here so he could marry her and fuck her and do all the things that he would no longer do to me.
It can’t be the cruelest thing I’ve asked of you.
It’s fitting that the first time I walk back in, it’s with Isolde in my arms. Tattered wedding gown and all.
I see the water and fruit right away: a bucket filled with ice and glass bottles and a platter of berries, cut oranges, and small clusters of pomegranate seeds.
I set Isolde carefully on the wooden counter of the kitchen island and make sure she can sit up on her own. She can, although her eyes are dilated and her cheeks are still flushed. She could be drunk, she’s that well beaten and fucked.
I miss that feeling so much I could cry.
I bring her a bottle of water and make her sip, and then I offer her the platter of fruit.
“Not hungry,” she murmurs.
“It’s for your blood sugar.” I take a blackberry and hold it to her mouth.
Her eyes lift to mine, a shock of turquoise, and then she parts her lips. Her tongue darts out, pink and soft—the sight of it nearly as good as a proper lick on my skin—and then she nibbles it from my fingers. Berry juice stains the inside of her lips, dark and sweet, and then I watch her throat undulate as she swallows. With her wide pupils and ragged dress, she could be a character from a fairy tale, the unlucky mortal who ate the fruit under the hill and now can never leave.
It’s so unlike her, unlike her normal sangfroid, and it’s so fucking erotic to see her so unraveled, so delirious. Even when I fucked her senseless on the yacht, I don’t know that I ever saw her this undone.
Mark did this. This is Mark’s doing, and my masculine ego is stung that he could do it and I could not, and my stupid infatuated heart knows exactly why he could do this, exactly what she’s feeling right now.
I know better than most: he’s just like that somehow.
Wordlessly, I get another berry and feed it to her, breathing deep against the tickling of her lips and teeth and tongue against my fingertips. Just weeks ago, I had my tongue in that sweet, berry-stained mouth. I had my cock there. I’d pushed until her lips were stretched around me, and I’d slid against that velvet heat until my seed was spurting down her throat.
I feed her a strawberry slice next, and she sticks out her tongue for it, like she’s receiving a communion wafer. Or like Mark has ordered her to show him what he’s given her, like a good girl.
With a trembling hand, I find the ripped silk of her bodice and try to cover her breast. She catches my hand with hers, pressing my palm to the taut curve. I can feel her stiff nipple against my palm.
“Tristan,” she whispers.
I can’t meet her gaze. We haven’t been this close since the fitting room, since I ate her cunt until she left my mouth and chin slick with her satisfaction. And there’s a good reason that I’ve been keeping my distance. When I look at her—when I touch her—I become not myself. My twenty-nine years of being good, my years of military discipline, my inner sense of right and wrong—it all just vanishes. There’s only her and the need to have her as close to me as possible, the raw, primal urge for slick flesh, for hard things, tight things, wet release.
“You should get changed,” I say, my voice harsh. I still can’t look at her. I pull my hand away and step back.
She drops her hand slowly.
“I’m sorry you had to?—”
I shake my head. We can’t go down this road because it leads nowhere. To bitterness and blame.
“It’s my job.” I take her by the waist—efficiently, carefully—and lift her from the counter. I set her on her feet without looking at her tits or her stained mouth or her lust-glazed eyes. “Do you need any help getting out of this gown?”
“The buttons on the back,” she says after a minute, and turns. It’s like last night all over again, except this time I’m not terrified her husband will see the blatant lust scrawled all over me. I am terrified that I won’t control myself, though. We’re alone, and each button is a fresh glimpse of smooth ivory skin, and I bet her cunt is still so wet right now that it would take nothing to push inside.
The minute I finish unbuttoning her, I step back. “I’ll wait out here,” I announce. Unnecessarily.
She looks over her shoulder at me, the barest brush of turquoise iris and black pupil, and then nods, her chin pointing down. She leaves in a rustle of silk, and I notice with horrible, pathetic relief that she goes into the second bedroom in the apartment, not into Mark’s room.
They’re not sharing a room yet.
If nothing else, they’re not sharing a room yet.
I give myself thirty seconds once she’s gone. Thirty seconds to brace my forearms on the counter and hang my head and let the swirl of yearning and envy pulse through my body and shiver down to the tip of my aching tumescence. To accept that watching Mark cuff her and crop her and then ride her was like discovering sex all over again, somehow. That there’d been something tonight that I hadn’t known about before, although I’ll be damned if I can explain to myself what it was. I knew Mark was an irresistible sadist; I knew that when Isolde fucked, she was a delicious mix of fragile and brave.
So why was it any different watching them together?
“Tristan?” comes Isolde’s voice, and I’ve lost track of time somehow, let the thirty seconds unwind into God knows how long.
I straighten up as she comes into the kitchen, trying to discreetly smooth my suit jacket over my hard-on. Not that there will be any hiding it after seeing her now because she’s in the shortest filmiest white dress I’ve ever seen, her tousled hair loose over her shoulders and still caught with stray petals.
Her nipples press against the fabric, and when she walks, the dress catches on the tops of her thighs and clings to her hips and ass. I think—my mouth goes dry—she’s not wearing any panties underneath.
She laughs a little, and I realize I’m staring. I rip my eyes away and clear my throat.
“I suppose that means that I look the part,” she says, coming closer. There’s still a flush on her cheeks and chest, and her voice is husky from sex, but she sounds more like herself now, more lucid.
“You look stunning,” I say, keeping my stare pinned on the window and the DC skyline just beyond. “No one will be able to—” I have to clear my throat again. “They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ll all want you. And that will please Mr. Trevena, I think.”
“Tristan,” she says again. She’s come even closer while I was looking away, silent in her bare feet. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, I do. Even without the provocative outfit, she is obscene. Prurience embodied. The mussed hair with its flowers, the lips tinted with juice. The blooming marks above her collar.
“I am sorry,” she says. Softly. And when I lift my hand to stop her, she takes it in her own. “I’m sorry I asked you to stay when you wanted to quit. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help myself those times before the wedding. It’s not fair to you. None of this—is fair to you.”
Her fingers are so slender around mine, and yet so strong, a distinct roughness to the pads and her upper palm. She has the hand of a fighter, after all, not only an heiress.
“I don’t know if I could have left,” I admit to her. The apartment is hushed, a cloister, the opposite of the music- and moan-filled hall just a short walk away. “I know I should have walked away, and sometimes, I still think about it, about how it wouldn’t hurt so much if I—” I pull in a breath. “But I think it would still hurt. At least here, I get to see you.”
“It hurts me too,” she whispers. “The way I feel about you…”
My heart squeezes up into my throat, but she doesn’t finish her sentence. She bites her lip instead and then pulls my hand to her, to the place only barely covered by her dress.
I groan when my fingertips make contact with her snatch—hot and slippery. No panties, no impediment. When she goes back into the hall and kneels at Mark’s feet or sits on his lap or whatever he has her do, her pussy will be so available. So easy for him to show off. So easy for him to use.
“We’re alone,” she says quickly, pushing my fingers inside of her. I groan. “No one would know. We could be so fast.”
“It’s a bad idea,” I say, but I’m already getting my cock out, ripping at my suit trousers while I test the slick haven of her cunt with my fingers. I walk us both backward to the hallway, to her room, but I can’t quite make it there.
I press her against the wall next to her door, slide my wet fingers free, and then wedge my hard length against her hole. “God, why can’t I fucking stop when it comes to you—” I shove in, too wound up after the wedding, after tonight, to do anything but rut.
She takes it though, shuddering out a moan as I put myself where her husband was earlier and stroke into what he so obviously enjoyed.
“You feel amazing, honey,” I mumble.
It’s like having sex with silk, like fucking water, but it’s so tight too, and her tits are pressed against me, and I can smell the fruit I fed her. I’m going to come so fast, going to empty my balls inside her?—
There’s a knock at the door to the apartment. Fuck.
Isolde and I rip apart, and I only just manage to move into her room as the door swings open.
I hear footsteps.
“I see you’re changed,” Sedge says to Isolde.
I can’t see her now from where I’m standing, but I hope to God that she doesn’t look like she was just getting railed against the wall. Hopefully, her hard nipples and the all-over flush on her cheeks and chest will just look like the lingering effects of what happened up on the stage.
If Sedge happens to see me with my wet cock still out, though, that’s a different story. I step as far back into the room as I can, wincing at every rustle of my clothes.
“Yes,” Isolde says, and she’s using her Laurence voice now, her money voice. “I’m ready.”
“Is Mr. Thomas still up here with you?” Sedge asks. He doesn’t sound suspicious necessarily. Just curious.
“He went back downstairs so I could get changed,” she lies smoothly. “But he made me drink water and eat, just like Mark asked.”
“I’m sure Mr. Trevena will be pleased to know it,” Sedge says, and there’s no parsing his voice right now, not that there ever is. He always sounds wary and dry. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
Footsteps—Sedge’s, Isolde is still barefoot and silent—and then the firm close of the door. I allow myself a shuddering exhale.
That was too fucking close, and fuuuuck, what was I even thinking? What the hell am I doing, sticking my cock inside Isolde the first chance I get? I know she can’t be with me now that she’s married—and even before she said her vows, it was risking her marriage and my job and Mark’s trust to touch her.
And yet as I lean out into the hallway to check that I’m truly alone, it’s not guilt or self-directed fury that I feel. It’s urgent, animal need.
I have to,I reason with myself as I move back inside Isolde’s room. I can’t go down there like this.I don’t have a choice.
It’ll only take a minute—if that—and my balls are already pulling tight to my body as I squeeze the sensitive tip and then work my hand down in a slow stroke.
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the shadows in here, I can see that Isolde hasn’t even unpacked yet. The bed is still tightly made, with a suitcase resting on top, and her gown from tonight is in a crumple next to it. Two wardrobe boxes, still sealed, are in the corner. And hanging from the rod in the open closet is her reception gown, that godless little dress that nearly melted my brain last night. Next to it is a tuxedo—a classic one, not the all-black one that Mark favors here at Lyonesse—and pinned to the jacket is a note from Sedge to Isolde, telling her that he’d arrange to have both items professionally cleaned within the week.
I don’t make the choice to do what I do next. It is the inevitable outcome of tonight, of this weekend. Of the last six months.
I stroke my cock looking at that wedding dress and that tuxedo pressed together, looking at that expensive fabric, at the things they wore when they shared their first dance, exchanged bites of cake. At the dress I unhooked from Isolde’s body, as Mark watched from his new chessboard.
I think of Isolde’s tight little cunt under that dress, and I think of Mark’s eyes flashing at me from the bed across the stage, and I think of the yacht, and I think of Morois House, and I think of how sweet Isolde tastes and how Mark groans as he comes, and then I’m erupting, spattering semen all over Isolde’s gown and Mark’s tuxedo. Thick, long spurts, and I jerk myself even harder after I see my seed dripping off their wedding clothes. It feels amazing to pump all over the expensive tulle and wool, and my head falls back as I work the rest of my orgasm free with a series of rough grunts.
The blood pressure drop nearly takes me out, and I stagger forward and lean my head against the open closet door while I catch my breath. Pearly cum drips from the cuff of Mark’s tuxedo, and I watch its progress, satisfaction mingling with shame. He would love that, if he knew. My shame coupled with my bliss.
His favorite food.