Chapter 11
eleven
Our first twodays in Singapore go precisely to plan, and enough so that by the time we visit the kink club, a glass-and-metal confection near the massive glowing gardens by the bay, I think I’m ready to talk to Mark.
About being available. For him.
At first, I think the readiness comes from Singapore itself, bright and busy, and still lush somehow, despite the high-rises and car-choked streets.
And then I think maybe it comes from watching Mark meeting with the Lyonesse member, from walking behind them in the gardens and realizing that people are stopping to stare at Mark. He’s that handsome, that well made, that merely prowling around in a casual gray suit is enough to turn heads in one of the busiest cities in the world. And it’s more than his features and athletic frame; it’s the way he moves—effortless, unconscious power.
Who wouldn’t want to give themselves to someone like that? Someone strong and lovely and sovereign?
But I know—and I think I knew it then too—that the readiness is because of the plane. Because he helped me not with sympathy or soft, coaxing words but with sharp commands and a strong hand on my neck. Because he didn’t call me a hero. Because he understood that killing Sims hadn’t been something as easy as being good or being brave.
He is maybe the only person who seems to understand that.
And maybe I want to give him something in return for that gift, that understanding. Or maybe I just want him, and to hell with the consequences. So what if I fall in love with him and he doesn’t love me back? I’ll still be his to use. That’ll be enough.
And so I wait until we’re done at the club, done touring its excesses: the small indoor Ferris wheel equipped for sex, the tractable subs and terrifying Dominants, the wealth dripping from necks and fingers and liberally poured wine bottles. I wait until we get back to our hotel suite, with its two separate bedrooms, the colorful lights of the gardens at night pressing against the windows.
“Sir,” I say as Mark walks toward his room.
He’s already stripped off his jacket and draped it over his arm, and his fingers are on a cuff link. “Yes?” he asks. It’s been a long day and his hair has freed itself from the elegant hairstyle he favors. Some of it has fallen forward over his forehead. It looks heartbreakingly soft.
I stand in the middle of the suite’s living room, daring myself to say the words, to just fucking do it already.
“I know what Strassburg did when he worked for you,” I say, hoping I sound level and confident and not like I’m terrified of all the potential outcomes of the next few minutes—not like I’m terrified even of the outcome that I do want. “I mean?.?.?.?on top of his regular duties.”
Mark is still, watching me with eyes gone atramentous in the dark.
“You know.” It’s not spoken like a question.
I forge ahead. “I know he was your submissive. I know you had sex with him.” I try to think of all the things I wanted to explain, make clear. “I know it wasn’t romantic or anything, more of an arrangement, and I—”
It’s so hard to talk when he’s watching me. When he’s motionless, sharp-eyed, like a chess player waiting for an opponent to walk themselves into their own trap.
“I want to do that,” I finish. There’s a tremble in the word want that I hope he didn’t hear. “I want to do what Strassburg did. With you.”
Mark’s hand drops from his wrist, the cuff link still fastened, and I catch the small flex in his jaw before his expression becomes neutral once more. “Let me make sure I understand. You’re offering yourself for me to fuck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
Of all the questions, I didn’t expect that one.
“Because—because I think it would be good. For you. To have that.” My answer is punctuated by short, shallow inhales; Mark is walking toward me now, his eyebrow lifted.
“You think it would be good for me,” he repeats. He stops just a foot away, and I can smell that subtle, haunting scent of him. Rain and heat and lingering electricity. “And that’s why you want to do this.”
“Yes, sir.”
He draws in a breath. Waits. “No,” he says finally.
Humiliation slides in my veins like a cold, thick gel. “No?” I ask in a faint voice.
“No,” he confirms. “We’re not doing that.”
“But—”
Even in the city-lit glow of the otherwise darkened room, I see his eyes flash. “I’ve given my answer, Tristan.”
“Because you don’t want to?” I can’t help but ask. It’s needy of me, insecure and miserable of me, but I have to know. I have to know if I’m not enough for him even to use.
A bitter laugh escapes his mouth and he turns away. “Strassburg offered because he already knew he was a submissive, and it was just as convenient for him as it was for me. He needed to be topped and didn’t have time outside of being my bodyguard to make it happen. It was mutually beneficial.”
My misery is in charge now, making me speak when I should be apologizing, retreating, escaping to my room to shove my face against my hands and let my sheer, worthless unwantability overtake me.
“You didn’t answer my question” is what the misery says, and Mark looks at me.
“Yes, I want to,” Mark says. Bluntly.
My stomach lifts, drops.
“I want to shove you to your knees and fuck your pretty face whenever I feel like it,” he goes on. “I want to slide into your tight hole and stroke there until I come. I’ve thought of almost nothing else since the wedding.”
My mouth is wet. “Oh,” I say.
“But.” Mark looks away. “I can’t fuck someone without my needing to—well. Sex with me is rarely nice, let’s put it that way. I will—I’ll have to—”
There’s a tightness to his jaw now. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, including at his sister’s wedding.
“You saw Evander kneeling that night, and it bothered you,” he says. “Strassburg saw people kneeling and was eager for the moment he could do it himself. I can only be the man I am, not someone easier, and so this is my one gesture toward goodness. I won’t fuck someone unless I know they want it. All of it.”
“I do want it,” I say, my voice shaking.
He shakes his head. “I will use you like a toy. Like a thing. I will make you cry and like it. I will take you more often than you think a person could need to fuck.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Those words in his cool voice—like a fist around my penis, like teeth on my throat.
“Whatever idea you have about being?.?.?. this for me is incomplete, badly informed. This is not a good idea, and—” He passes his hand over his face and looks back at me. “It’ll complicate things. In the future. If I’m fucking you.”
“I don’t care,” I tell him quickly. “And I want—I want all that.”
His eyes search mine. “When you first came to Lyonesse, you seemed to find the idea of submission degrading. Tristan: I will degrade you. I will enjoy it. Unless you are wired to feel more like yourself, more alive, more human, when someone is tearing you apart, then I would be a bad Dominant and a bad brother-in-law to Ricker to use you like that.”
He steps away, and the new space between us feels like a warning. I’m losing this.
“Please, sir,” I say. “I—”
My pride is gone, my reason gone. There’s only desperate, lonely need.
“I want it. I promise. I promise.”
“Even if I believed you really knew what you were asking for, it doesn’t change anything. Fucking you would have consequences that I can’t entirely predict. It would be exceptionally foolish of me to let my craving for you derail a year that’s been as deeply planned as this one.”
It is still a rejection, I’m still hurting with it, but my mind lights on those words: my craving for you. On the words that came before them.
He does want me. He does.
Mark shakes his head and turns. “Please forget this. Find someone who will take all that lovely, selfless nobility and give you something lovely and selfless in return. It’s not me.”
I mean to speak, I mean to stop him, but by the time I figure how to open my mouth and tell him that I don’t want anything lovely and selfless, that I want all the things he said with the using and the tearing apart, he’s gone.