Chapter 30

thirty

There isno phone call from Mark this morning. I knew there wouldn’t be, but it still feels strange to start the day without hearing his cool voice. Unsettling, and it’s like the world knows and the world agrees because the rough weather has continued and the yacht is pitching under my feet as I stand at my balcony door.

But there is something beyond missing Mark’s voice, and as I watch the drizzle-washed sea outside, I return to memories of last night. Of Isolde at the prow of the ship, salt water glistening on her mouth.

I feel the same way.

It is nice to be seen. Understood. Especially about as ugly a thing as killing.

About being glad your dead mother can’t see what you’ve become as an adult.

I still don’t know why Isolde feels that way though. Maybe it is the nun thing. Maybe her mother wanted her to join the Church more than anything and would have been horrified at her marrying Mark.

Curiosity burns bright in my mind as I finish getting ready for the day and eat a quick, efficient breakfast while rain patters on the deck. I’d like to ask Isolde about it directly, but something makes me think that it wouldn’t work, that the inner workings of her are like a masterfully cut gem and the facets will only flash in precisely the right light—and only then with a patient hand.

I wonder if Mark was drawn to her because he saw a puzzle, something only cleverness and perseverance could work open. A challenge.

Not like me, who was begging to be fucked into the carpet at the first opportunity.

I’m jealous of Isolde in a brand-new way as I walk down to the dojo after I eat. Of course, I’m still miserable that she gets to marry Mark, share his life and his attention and his bed, but now I’m also jealous of who she is. How she is. Elegant and crisp. Contained and mysterious. I want to be those things so badly, instead of the tortured, needy mess that I am.

No wonder I’m no one’s fiancé.

Isolde is already in the dojo when I get there, holding a rubber knife by the blade. She extends it hilt-first to me. “Want to spar today?”

I don’t take it. Instead, I eye her, slender and short. She barely comes up to my shoulder, and for all those tight muscles of hers, there’s no doubt in my mind that I have almost a hundred pounds on her.

Plus—okay, Mark would scoff at this—but sparring a woman feels wrong. There were no women in my BCT group, and I’ve never mock-fought a woman before. The only women I’ve fought were Carpathian rebels, and we were actually trying to kill each other.

Isolde correctly interprets my hesitation. “I’ll be fine, Tristan,” she says with an almost-smile. “I promise.”

“Isolde?.?.?.?”

“You’ll pull your strikes, right?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then I’ll be fine,” she insists. For her part, she looks like she means it. She also looks like she thinks I’m being very parochial right now.

I rake a hand through my hair, trying to make her understand why it’s a bad idea. “Mr. Trevena will kill me if I hurt you.”

“How is he going to kill you? I thought you said he was no good at fighting.” Then she pauses, tilts her head the tiniest amount. Her braid moves over her shoulder as she does. “Do you call him Mr. Trevena in your head too?”

“In my thoughts, he’s Mark,” I admit. And then feeling like that exposes too much, I revert to our original subject. “I don’t have a cup on.”

Isolde’s eyebrow lifts. “I’ll be mindful of future Thomas generations.”

That was almost a joke! I feel like I’ve pried a pearl from an oyster, or a gem from a hunk of cold rock. And then I reach for the knife.

I have no resistance to her when she’s playful and entreating.

Her lips press, like she’s trying to hide a real smile now, and then she goes to find another rubber knife.

“Why knives?” I ask. “Why not spar empty-handed?”

“I like knives,” she says simply as she returns. Leave it to Mark to marry a little thing who says I like knives the same way most people say I like ice cream. “Don’t you?”

“I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”

“More of a gun guy?”

“More of a whatever gets the job done guy,” I state, and she gives me a long look, like she’s trying to figure out whether I’m lying. I’m really not—the job is the job, and whether the job requires guns, fists, or a seven-inch Army bayonet makes no difference .

She bows to me and I mimic her, and then we both shift into a fighting stance. Hers is almost balletic—light and agile, her free hand up in a gesture that reminds me of the way her uncle blessed her before she left Cashel House.

I feel like an oaf in comparison, more used to fighting in boots and body armor than sidling barefoot on cushioned mats, my tread heavy and obvious as we start to circle each other. But even so, my shadow stretches over her, and each of my steps is like two of hers. It would be nothing for me to take her down, so I remind myself to be slow, be careful, and—

Like a sprung snare, she’s snapped forward and struck me, rubber poking hard into my stomach.

I blink at her. What the fuck?

She’s already resettling in her stance. Her pulse isn’t beating any harder in her neck. “I told you I’d be okay,” she says, tossing the knife into reverse grip and lifting her guard again. “I’m not made of sugar.”

Well. Fine, then.

This time, I watch her differently. I watch her shoulders, her hips, the sources of her striking power. I see her guard dip ever so slightly and then lunge in—only to have the rubber edge of her knife drag across my throat.

A trick. Shit.

We step back, and this time, it’s fucking on. I stop seeing her as a refined little doll and start seeing her as a real opponent. “I thought all this shit was about fitness,” I say as we circle each other. “But you’re really scary, you know that?”

That pleases her, I think.

“I’m sure you’re a better shot than I am,” she says, like she’s trying to soothe my ego.

“I don’t mind you being better than me,” I tell her with a grin. “I promise.”

“Do you think I’m better than Mark?” she asks.

I remember him that night in the club. Even subtracting the effects of the gin, I still think Isolde would smoke him. And I don’t think he’d mind either. “You’d win for sure.”

This pleases her too.

We begin again, and I’m dying, dying, dying, countless fake rubber deaths. Fighting Isolde is like fighting smoke, ephemeral and curling. Indifferent and impervious to my strength.

Because I am stronger. I feel it every time we make contact; I feel my solidity, my size. But she’s faster—and cleverer. No matter how spontaneous my strikes, no matter how instinctual, she’s always three moves ahead. I’ll still be following through with a stab that I’m sure is going to make contact this time, and then I’ll feel the gentle tap of a restrained kick to my head. A heel hook to my kidney. Her small fist popping into my ribs.

And goddamn if it doesn’t have me slowly stiffening in the compression shorts I stole from Mark’s drawer. Her nearness, her fearlessness. Her full mouth set in a line of deadly concentration.

And her scent—sweet, sweet, earthy. Like honey glazed over a fingertip to be licked off.

So it’s luck when I finally take her down to the mats.

Pure fucking luck.

We hit a wave right as she’s kicking me, and I’m making to tackle her, something she’s danced away from a hundred times this morning, but we both lose our balance as the yacht pitches hard to port and the world slants sideways. Down we go.

We land with me on top, and it’s a soldier’s instinct that has me grabbing her wrists while she’s stunned into pliancy, securing her weapons, so to speak. Except the effect is that the ship rights itself, and I’m sitting on top of her and pinning her wrists to the mat.

And then I’m suddenly, horribly aware of every single detail of Isolde Laurence.

Her sweat-slick throat and collarbone. The slightly crooked upper tooth.

Her breasts, heaving under her sports bra.

I remember again that I’m not wearing a cup. I need to get off her before she notices her resident bodyguard has an erection from being fake stabbed over and over again.

She’s trying to catch her breath—the fall knocked the wind out of her. I realize I’m squeezing her wrists too hard and ease up, preparing to climb off her and apologize, but then she shifts, quicker than I would have thought possible before this morning. She plants her feet and bucks her hips, and suddenly I’m the one on the bottom with my wrists pinned.

She’s straddling me, and I’m not wearing a cup.

I’m not wearing a cup, and she’s sitting on me with her thin bike shorts, and I can feel the heat of her cunt through our clothes. That pretty pink cunt that I saw for myself on the stairs, that’s been haunting my thoughts ever since, and it’s on me now. Against me. Four thin layers of fabric away.

Fuck fuck—

“You win,” I say desperately, before she can recognize that the bulge she’s sitting on is a cock. A swollen one that’s currently begging to be touched. “Let me up.”

She doesn’t move. She’s staring down at me with a dazed expression. The fall must have been harder than I thought.

“Isolde,” I say, my voice tight. “Honey, you need to move.”

The endearment slips out without me meaning for it to, but I’m too panicked to care. There’s a lot worse than an endearment currently wedged between us, and I’m just a bodyguard, and she’s engaged, and I’m in love with her fiancé.

I’m in love with her fiancé, and I’m hard underneath her.

I try to move from beneath her—it’s not a matter of strength but of finding a way that doesn’t make it very, very clear that I’m painfully turned on—but the minute I try to shift, to nudge her off, I end up driving my arousal harder against her core and she lets out a low, shuddering gasp.

We both freeze.

Her eyes meet mine, blue green and nearly black with pupil. “Tristan,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She moves her hips over me, once. Hard. On purpose.

And pleasure skates right down my shaft to my balls, and it’s my turn to suck in an agonized breath, and I stare up at her, my thoughts driven away by the pressure of her sitting directly on me. I can feel the shape of her sex through her bike shorts.

Fuck it now, some silky instinct coaxes. Expose her cunt and push into it and fuck.

The ship does the next part for us, rolling over a wave, the gravity pressing us together again, and she shivers, goose bumps creeping everywhere on her skin.

She’s looking down at me with an expression I haven’t seen before, beyond dazed, beyond stunned. It’s naked, almost—vulnerable. Lids hooded, eyebrows up, like they’re frozen in a question. Mouth parted and lips wet. She still hasn’t stopped shivering.

Almost like she looks when I’ve rescued her from a nightmare, but somehow so, so different.

“Do you need it?” I hear myself ask, and I have no idea where the words come from. I just know that they need to be asked. “Do you need it right now?”

She nods, quick and miserable, her braid moving over her breast as she does.

I get why she’s miserable. I’m miserable too. Because here I am on Mark’s yacht, wearing his clothes, with his pretty bride’s pussy rocking over my erection. Because I had righteous things to say about cheating, about how he and I had to stop because otherwise it would be wrong, and yet here I fucking am, not with him but with her. And this is cheating, there can be no doubt.

When Mark told me that I should take his place, that I should give her anything she needs, I know he didn’t mean this.

But I look up at her parted mouth, her pert tits moving with ragged breaths, and I think of the salt water dripping off her lip. I think of how she said I feel the same way. I think of her in that sinful white swimsuit, of her whipping around this space with her honeysuckle knife flashing in her hand, and of the nights spent with my hand on her chest, helping her breathe in the dark.

And God, it’s wrong, it’s so wrong, but somehow knowing that she belongs to Mark, that I can feel his ring on her finger digging into my wrist—it makes me into someone or something I don’t recognize.

Filthy, greedy, angry.

Whether it’s to get closer to him—or to punish him—I don’t know. But I say to Isolde in a rough growl, “If you need it, honey, take it. Take it fast.”

Her mouth falls open even farther, that one crooked tooth, that tempting tongue, and her brows are pinched together even more, like she doesn’t know what I’m saying, but her body does, her body knows, and she grinds down on me with a twist of her hips.

She twists again, searching for something, her eyes never leaving mine, and then she finds it, a low moan escaping her lips.

She lets go of my wrists and braces her hands on my chest and starts riding me, hell-for-leather, rutting that needy pussy hard enough to drive the breath from both our lungs.

And every twist, every rock and thrust, has me straining underneath her, my neck arching, my fingers digging fruitlessly into the mats by her knees. My balls are full, so fucking full, and my mind is full of fantasies about emptying into her—that pink place, that wet mouth. All over her goose bump-covered tits and her sweet ass.

Fuck, I want to see that ass. I want to grab one cheek and pull—spread—and see everything. Slick cunt and cinched opening and soft folds and plump clit. I want to come all over that pussy. I want to fuck it—God, I want to fuck it.

And because I’m lost to her, to the needy little movements of her hips, her worried brow, her open mouth, my mind goes to darker places, worse places.

I want to come inside her and then have Mark know. I want to come inside her and then watch Mark come inside her too, his way slicked by my seed. I want us both bare in her, so bare, pulsing and breeding, and then I want Mark to punish me for daring to use what’s his, to shove me down and hurt me until I’m crying, and then wedge his cock inside me until I spurt all over the floor.

Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of him that I notice the change in Isolde above me, the way her fingers twist restlessly in my shirt, the way her eyes go round and worried, her whole face pleading as she moves faster and harder above me.

She can’t get there.

Even though her nipples are bunched so stiff that they’re stretching the fabric of her bra, even though she’s getting my shorts wet through her own clothes, she can’t get there. And it’s just a guess, just a whisper, a whisper in Mark’s voice maybe, but I reach up and grab her hips and dig my fingertips in hard enough to bruise.

The noise that leaves her then is brutal in its filth, wholly animal. She shudders above me, her fingertips digging into my chest in return, a hectic flush crawling up her stomach to her chest.

She needs—I don’t know if it’s surrender or if it’s pain—but whatever it is, she needs it to finish.

And I’m here to serve.

With a grunt, I flip us back over, the impact sending a short breath from her lungs, and I’m between her thighs immediately, rutting, humping, shameless as I brace myself with one forearm and slap her breast as hard as I can.

She shrieks and arches against me, writhing.

“Don’t want to—leave a bruise—” I pant above her. “He might see if I do. Slapping is better.”

She nods, her hair moving on the mat, stray locks crackling with static electricity. “Again,” she gasps. “Do it again.”

I slap her breast again, harder, hard enough to make her sob. Her breath hitches against my lips, and my eyes go to her mouth, so soft and pink below mine. That upper lip with its shallow philtrum. Those corners that naturally tug down into a pout.

I want to kiss her. I’m going to kiss her. I’m going to slick my tongue against hers and taste that soft mouth for myself, and I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’ve never done this part, and it’s pure instinct to pump my hips, to slide one arm behind her back to hold her tight and thrust and thrust, to lean down and—

She rolls her face to the side before I can put my mouth to hers, but her hands are still fisting in my shirt and she’s closing her eyes and saying more more more, and I’m hurt that she won’t kiss me, and I’m so—shit—I’m so close, and I slap her tit again, hard as I dare, and her back comes off the mat as she comes with a silent scream, her mouth open and her eyes wide and unseeing.

Her thighs are tight around my waist, and I can feel the pulse of her cunt on my cock, feel everything get a little bit wetter through our clothes, and then she reaches up, still desperately trying to fuck herself against me, and pulls my hair so hard I see stars.

The pain shoots down my spine, hot, needed, and for a moment, Mark is there with me, in the torment, in the dirty need that follows. With a gasp, I erupt, wrapping both arms around her head and fucking my way through the pleasure like a knight fucking a princess he knows he’ll never get to touch again.

Warmth spreads between our hips: my spend, slick inside my compression shorts, pumped out with hard, grunting thrusts against her. Again and again.

Until slowly, inevitably, I’m empty. Empty on top of a flushed and sweaty Isolde.

I unwind my arms, feeling dizzy, feeling outside of myself, my arms shaking as I lift myself up to check on her. Her eyes are round when she stares up at me, her cheeks scarlet, as is what I can see of her left breast. She’s breathing in slow, shaking breaths that she’s obviously trying to bring under control, and her throat is working over and over again to swallow. From the waistband of her bike shorts to her backside is a giant wet spot, slick enough to let me know that most of it is semen.

I settle back on my heels, my hands falling by my side. I go from euphoric to horrified in an instant.

“Fuck,” I mumble. “Fuck.”