Chapter 32

thirty-two

Salt isbright and light on my tongue as I brush my lips over hers.

Her hand finds my shirt, fists in the fabric, and holds me close—as if I’m going anywhere. As if I’d ever fucking leave.

Her lips are soft enough to stop a person’s heart. And then they part and allow me inside.

I lick once, twice, seeking her tongue and grunting when I find it. It’s slick, velvet and sliding, and then my hands come up to sift through the silky ends of her hair. It spills over my fingers like water, and I can’t get enough. I have to push my hands into her hair and feel it on my palms, my wrists. I have to grab and pull just enough so that she gasps into my mouth.

A sharp, raw thrill stabs right down to my cock at that noise. Is this what Mark feels? When he’s controlling someone? Like every whimper and moan is wired straight to his system? I don’t know how he can stand it, how he can think straight when he’s got someone under his mouth and their head in his hands.

And Isolde just?.?.?.?lets me. She lets me twist my fingers in her hair and slide my tongue over hers. She lets me trace her teeth and rub against the roof of her mouth, and she lets me steal every pant, every breath.

There are no words for what that’s like.

I slide my hands from her hair to her neck, my thumbs pressed against her jaw and tilting her face farther up to mine.

“You’re beautiful,” I say roughly. “You make me—” I don’t finish because that’s the whole sentence. She makes me.

She makes me mean and brutal in my hunger; she makes me a different Tristan, a new Tristan. It’s fucking exhilarating. With Mark, it was like floating, like breathing, but this—this is like burning.

This isn’t the thrill of danger; this is the thrill of being dangerous.

“Tristan,” she breathes as I break from her mouth to nip at her chin and then her throat. “Oh God. I’ve wanted this since the moment I saw you.”

Satisfaction, fierce and amoral, floods through me.

“I wanted you too,” I rasp, licking back up to her mouth, which is already open for me.

Who am I? Who is this animal that has already given his heart to another? She said I was good—I want to be good—but all of that is hazed over now. I’m gone. I’m feral. My only comfort is that she’s strong enough to withstand the flurry of gripping fingers and relentless teeth.

I reach for her dress, search through the taffeta to find a lithe sweep of thigh. I slide my hand up farther and she widens her knees. She does it instinctively, and I shudder out a pleased breath. I did the same for Mark and would again in a heartbeat?.?.?.?and here I am with someone else doing it for me, and I don’t know how to make sense of it. How can I be both Tristans in equal measure? But I am, and God, her thigh is so warm, so smooth, like nothing I’ve ever felt, and then I reach the place where her leg joins her body. I pause, dropping my forehead against hers.

“I want to touch it so bad,” I mumble. “Let me touch you. Please.”

She is breathing hard against my mouth. “Until my wedding day, I’m yours to touch.”

I move my thumb first, my fingers still on the inside of her thigh. Her underwear isn’t lacy or silky, but it still feels expensive. Like her. Like her cunt, a cunt so costly that Mark is paying his whole kingdom for it.

She shivers at each pass of my thumb, and then has to grab on to my shirt with her other hand when I press my palm to her.

“Oh God,” she moans. And when I rewrap my hand around her throat to hold her still as my fingers slide into the top of her underwear, she starts inhaling so quickly that she’s almost hyperventilating.

My hand on her throat isn’t that tight, so it’s not about airflow. I look at her, my hand pausing in her panties, about to ask—

“Hyssop,” she says on a quavering exhale. “That’s my safeword. I’ll say it if I need you to stop.”

I can’t keep a smile from quirking my mouth. “Mine is hazel,” I say.

Her mouth tilts too, and for a moment, we’re both still. Smiling like fools over these twin possessions of ours, and I see a new understanding in her eyes. That Mark and I weren’t just ordinary lovers, that I was his. His in the way that required a safeword.

I push my hand all the way into her underwear now, the stretchy material caught around my wrist as I skate my fingertips over the hauntingly perfect center of her. And my smile fades as the dark thrill of having her like this returns. My hand around her throat, my other hand up her dress.

It would take nothing for me to spend right now. Just a couple rocks of my hips, and the friction of Mark’s borrowed linen pants would do the rest. But I’m also so, so aware that I’ve never done this. I’ve never stroked a pussy, touched it, hoped to make it come. And I’ve never been in control before now either. With Mark, I was his plaything, his fuckdoll, and I have a fresh appreciation for how intense it is to be in charge, for the pressure of it.

I want to make it perfect for her; I want to feed this new beast inside me.

How to do both?

The fabric of her skirt is gathered on my forearm and bunched at my elbow as I stroke a path from her clit to the hot skin of her back entrance. She takes in a long breath as I continue exploring, feeling for myself her soft curls and then her wet, slick flesh.

Oh God. So?.?.?.?so fucking wet. I didn’t know what it would feel like, feeling someone else’s wet, but it’s like being burned from the inside out, like being stroked on the inside of my skin.

My thighs are clenched to keep my climbing orgasm at bay.

I bend my face to hers and map her above as I map her below—tongue along teeth as I rim my finger around her soaked entrance, tongue against tongue as I caress the swollen knot at the front of her.

And then as my kiss dips deep, I do the same with my first finger. I push it into her, all the way to the last knuckle, and I—

My mouth breaks from hers, and I’m fighting for my life now. My whole body is trembling, transformed, by this tight channel, slick and silken. So hot that I don’t know how I’m not tasting flames in her mouth.

For a long moment, we stay like this: me straining for control, her shivering and breathing. Me feeling the inside of her under the stars, and her kiss still tasting like tears and the sea.

And I think: this is Mark’s bride.

“Can I tell you something?” I say as my thumb finds her clitoris and presses against it.

She’s trembling. “Yes.”

“I’ve never done this before.”

“You’re”—more trembling—“doing great.”

It isn’t enough to do great. I want her to make my whole hand wet. I want her like she was the other day—shameless, wicked. I want her to feel just a fraction of what I’ve felt at Mark’s hands, like the happiest, most wrung-out slut who ever drew breath.

“Take my hand,” I command, pleased when she lets go of my shirt and reaches between her legs. I’m even more pleased when I feel that it’s shaking as it rests over my own. “Make my hand do what you do when you’re alone.”

Her eyes close. “Tristan.” It’s a moan.

“Do it.”

Her hand is still shaking, but she obeys, her fingertips pressing to my fingertips, guiding me, using me. She uses my fingers but it’s her, her making the slow circles, the gradually quickening strokes. Her clitoris is so hard now that it’s practically pouting for attention. I wonder if I could get my mouth around it and suck it like a dick. I want to try.

Her hand falls away as she grows more and more rigid against me, and I press my forehead to hers as I work her eager flesh, drawing in her every exhale as my own inhale, savoring the small noises that eke from her chest. Treasuring the gasped words—yes—close, I’m close—Tristan, faster, make me, make me—

I know the last ingredient. My other hand drops to her thigh, my thumb seeking out the slope of her quadriceps muscle, and then slipping down to dig hard against the nerve buried alongside it. Enough pressure to make her feel it, not enough pressure to contuse.

She detonates on a silent scream, her eyes wide, her hands clawing at my chest as her thighs try to clamp around my hand. I grab her thigh to keep her spread, and the minute I feel her start to relax, I push two fingers inside to feel all that wet quivering for myself.

A primal growl rumbles in my chest. The fading contractions, what I made her do. I want it again, I want more of it, and I’m not a sadist, I don’t get off on hurting her, but I love making her, I love using her roughly, and I shove the heel of my palm against her clit, my fingers still buried deep.

“Ride it,” I tell her, and she shudderingly submits, fucking my hand so obediently that I can’t believe this is the same girl who plays with knives in her spare time.

I grab her jaw and tilt her up for a deep kiss, satisfying myself with tasting her mouth for a long moment before I take her lower lip between my teeth and bite.

Hard.

She comes again with an animal noise, her lip still between my teeth, her thighs wide as she desperately humps against my hand, her dress everywhere, just fucking everywhere, and my cock hurts so much, my whole body hurts. I let go of her lip and lick at it as she continues to convulse around my fingers, and then I pull back to watch her.

She’s an absolute mess right now, tangled hair and red eyes and drenched pussy, and oh my God, I can’t believe I never thought to imagine this, a wrecked heiress riding my hand like her life depends on it.

When she finally goes still, inside and out, I withdraw my fingers and then suck them clean. I nearly die at the taste: salt and honey and something else that has no name because it’s just her.

She watches me with hooded eyes, and then I push my hand into the bodice of her dress. I find a stiff nipple and tease it with wet fingers. I tug just enough to make her whimper again.

“I want to fuck your cunt,” I hear myself say.

“I’ve never done that before,” she confesses.

“Even though you have a safeword?” I ask. Given that Mark had me facedown on a rug within weeks of meeting me, I’d assumed he and Isolde had done all sorts of things together, had done everything together.

She shakes her head. “The safeword was a precaution. Everything we did, we did as a performance, to sell the story of our marriage.” A shadow crosses her face. “Except for one time.”

I think about this, about where this leaves us.

“I haven’t done this either,” I admit. “I might be really bad at it.”

She glances down to my hand in her dress, to her spread thighs. Her cheeks are pink. “I think we’ve just established that you’re pretty good at things you’ve never done.”

I laugh a little, letting go of her breast to band an arm around her waist and haul her against me. I can’t stop touching her, grabbing her. There’s so much of her I want, and I want it all at once.

“Mark keeps his room well-stocked,” I say, running my nose over her cheek, burying it in her hair. Her hair smells like honey too—sweet, sweet, sweet. “He has condoms in there.”

And then I pause, realizing I never actually asked. “If you want.”

“I want you inside me,” she says against my collarbone. “And I have an IUD.”

“That’s not very Catholic of you.” My hands are busy, grabbing her waist, smoothing her hair, squeezing her ass through her dress.

She huffs out a noise. “It’s not like a condom is any better, at least according to the pope.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” I say, and I reluctantly let go of her to get to my feet. But she stops me with a hand on my wrist.

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. We don’t need a condom,” she whispers.

Images of my orgasm all over her fill my mind. Of my semen dripping from her, white from pink. My dick jerks against the linen, my balls pulling tight to my body, and I groan. Mark’s words from months ago echo through my mind.

Breeding kinks.

Yes, it’s a thing of mine. But exchanging fluids like this isn’t a small thing. At Lyonesse, I’ve heard of partners waiting years to do it. Mark and I haven’t even done it.

I pull back, cradling Isolde’s face in my hands so I can see her expression. “Are you sure?”

Her face is open like I’ve so rarely seen it before tonight. The moonlight catches the lighter threads in her irises and turns them silver. “I’m sure,” she says softly, and I groan again.

“I want it so much,” I say, and I’m already reaching for her skirt again, ready to lay her down on the deck and crawl between her thighs.

“Here?” she asks before I can.

“I can’t wait.” And then I take her hand and press it to my throbbing cock, hissing as she wraps her hand around it. I don’t know how long I’ll last inside her cunt. Not long, I think.

“I have an idea,” she says, and then presses a kiss to my jaw.

* * *

A few minutes later,and we’re in the chapel one floor up. It serves our needs perfectly—only a door and a quiet set of stairs away, much closer than our suites, and the crew is accustomed to giving it complete privacy since it’s where Isolde comes to pray.

The chapel is small, lit by artificial candles on the small table in front and more fake candles in a recessed nook, and by the moonlight coming in through the window. Two short pews with attached kneelers fill the space.

I turn and look at Isolde, who is staring up at me with dark eyes, her mouth swollen. Here in the enclosed space, I can hear the rustle of her dress as she moves.

I suddenly—perversely—wish Mark were here. To see her like this. To see me like this.

I tremble just thinking about it.

Isolde steps close, rustling, rustling, and presses her hand to my heart. My cock is an obscene thing between us, brushing against the skirt of her gown as she looks up at me.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You,” I whisper.

Her eyes miss nothing. “And Mark?” she guesses.

I can’t lie. I give a reluctant nod.

“You really love him,” she says quietly.

I don’t answer, but I don’t need to. I think of what she said before she kissed me.

I don’t love you.

But here we are anyway, wet and swollen and already gone too far. I’m here because I can’t seem to stop myself from falling for cold, deadly people, but I don’t know why she’s here. Am I a way to punish Mark? To prove something to herself?

Or am I simply scratching an itch before she gets married and has a duty to be faithful?

The curse doesn’t care. It’s used to being lonely, to aching for what it can never have. And if I’m alone in falling for her, then she’s made me feel not alone in so much else. Grief. Nightmares. Being snared by the dark gravity of Mark’s world.

We’re together. Whatever else we are, we’re together.

I seize her waist and pull her in for a hard, quick kiss. “How do you want it?” I rasp.

“I want it how you want it,” she breathes.

I search her face. Her eyes reflect every candle in the room, and her pulse rushes in her throat. “Are you sure?”

A small smile, like I’m being very precious right now. “Make it rough, Tristan. Like you mean it.”

I hesitate. “It’s your first time.”

“It’s not my first time having sex, just my first time having sex like this. And my first time was with Mark, and you better believe he fucked me like he meant it. I can still feel the imprint of his fingers inside me.”

She says it with a flash of her eyes and a toss of her head, and static dances in front of my eyes.

“You’re goading me,” I manage to say.

“Maybe. Is it working?”

I could laugh if jealousy wasn’t stuck in my chest like a sword. I push her backward to a pew, biting her lips, her jaw. I spin her around, bend her over the back, and shove her dress up to her hips.

She is still finding her balance as I yank her panties—black, soft, label-less—to her ankles and then shove them in my pocket to use privately later. I kneel a moment so I can take in my new favorite thing, the gold curls and pink petals. She’s flushed and wet from my fingers, and I can see all of her like this.

I take her ass in both hands and spread her apart, and then press my tongue inside, burying my nose in her as I do.

Ah God, she tastes so fucking good. My tongue slips through her with no resistance, and then I lick a hot stripe up to her back entrance, which is just as tight and pretty as I imagined.

She jolts, fighting me, a panicked whine in her throat as I test the muscled rim with my tongue, but I dig my fingers in and keep her spread, returning to her core. I swirl my tongue as deep into her channel as I can, and then I find her clit and polish it with the tip of my tongue.

Her knees are buckled and she’s panting when I stand up and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm.

“I want you to sit on my face,” I say, shoving the waistband of my pants down and pulling out my dick. “I want to trap you there, with my hands on your hips, and my mouth wherever I want it, and I want to feel your clit on my tongue. I want to suck it. I want you to come on my face so I can taste it.” I wrap my fingers around my aching length and shudder at my own touch.

I’m not going to last long, I think. I need to make this count, make her climax again.

God, the thought of her fluttering on my cock, impaled and squirming?.?.?.

“Tristan,” she says, looking back over her shoulder. Her eyes are burning in the dark. “I need it now.”

“Fuck, honey, me too.” And I fit my crown to the slick cove of her cunt, hissing as our two needs meet. The center of her is so hot, so wet, and the sight of my tip pressing into such a pretty hole—

“Oh,” she whimpers. “Oh God.”

Oh God is right. I’m having to jam my way in, the muscles in my thighs and ass and stomach working to push me into her wet little glove, and she’s stretching around me, each new inch I take inside of her like some kind of primal victory.

But it’s toil, sweet toil, to wedge inside, and I have to find her hips to hold her steady as I do it. Each stroke is a velvet caress on my flesh, sending ticklish sparks of heat up my organ and into my belly, into my balls, which are embarrassingly tight. Ready to breed.

And I’m not even all the way inside her yet.

“You feel so good,” I groan. “Fuck, I’m not going to make it.”

“Come inside,” she whispers. “I want to know it’s because of me.”

I’m finally all the way in, and I look down at where we’re joined. My cock swells as I appreciate the sight: her rosy skin wrapped around my thick intrusion, clinging as I withdraw a glistening inch and then shove back in.

Her pretty asshole. Her firm ass.

The fabric of her sumptuous dress rucked up around her hips.

“Okay,” I finally say. “I’ll come inside.”

I let go of every good thing in me, and I follow my instinct to rut. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t done this before, it doesn’t matter that it’s ridiculously brief, because I’m going to fuck her hole until I come, and it’s every fantasy I’ve ever been ashamed to have.

The only thing that would make it better is if someone were going to come inside me too.

Fuck, this is it.

I pump faster, harder, crueler, like she’s something I found and pinned down for this very purpose, and she’s whimpering, moaning, trying to push back to meet my thrusts and failing since I still have her hips in my hand.

“Here it comes,” I groan, going even faster. “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

The climax claws up my thighs, chews through my belly. It surges through my groin with tight, vicious waves of heat, making me grunt with the agony of it, the incredible, beautiful agony of releasing into the bride currently bent over a chapel pew.

She’s moaning too, a low, musical hum, and I’m shivering as I fill her up. As I give her all of my need, all of my lust, all of this new beast inside me. All of my twin curses, her and Mark both.

It’s slick and every pulse of my dick makes it slicker, until I feel it running down my balls and smearing over my lap. But I don’t stop until she’s had every single bit of it. Every last fucking drop.

I pull out slowly, and she makes a wounded noise. She didn’t come, and I’m going to fix that, but first—

I look down at what I’ve done, at the mess I’ve made of her. Cum is everywhere, wet and crude, and dripping out of her in gleaming pearls. I gather it with my fingers and push it back inside her, the sight unbelievably pornographic.

I shudder as I do it, my fingers moving faster and faster, and now she’s rocking back to meet me. “I want to come again,” she’s panting, “please, please, please—”

If my cock wanted a break, it doesn’t anymore. It’s already raring back to life with my semen and her arousal drying on the hot skin. My erection juts lewdly between my hips as I take a final look—as I memorize the sight, knowing I might never have it again—and then I’m grabbing her, hauling her up and pushing her to the floor.

She knows what I want—or maybe it’s what she wants too—and she’s already gathering her skirt up to her hips and spreading her thighs. I’m greeted by glistening pink, by my seed still visible there.

I move between her legs and mount her immediately. “Fuck,” I curse as I’m swallowed again by liquid heat, my passage eased by what we just did. “Fuck, baby.”

I find her wrists and pin them above her head, my whole weight on her now, and her throat is arching underneath me. I thought coming would take the edge off, give me longer to enjoy being inside her, but there’s nothing that could have prepared me for having Isolde Laurence like this. Writhing underneath me with her cum-wet pussy speared by my cock, her throat bared to my teeth.

I grind my lap into her, seeking the right kind of friction and feeling her quiver underneath me when I find it. When I find the perfect angle to rub against her clit as I fuck into her. And all that’s left is to run my tongue over her pulse, to nip and suck where her throat meets her shoulder until she moans.

My hips churn, roughing my cock in and out of her, and then I lift my head to watch her. To watch as her eyelids flutter and as her mouth parts, as her hands claw and flex above my grip, as she whispers my name.

Tristan.

She quakes underneath me, her hips seeking, and I push in to the hilt and let her rub herself on me as much as she can while she’s pinned to the floor. Her head thrashes and her shoulders lift as she breaks apart, all satin quivers, and I’m fucking done for.

I sink my teeth into her collarbone and pulse, letting loose for the second time, trying to push deeper and deeper and deeper as I jet my release into her body.

And finally she goes still underneath me, her eyes closed and her hands limp. Her ribs are moving fast, hard, and her mouth is twitching into a smile.

“You were pretty good at that too,” she says, and I let go of her wrists to tickle her sides.

“Pretty good?” I mock growl, dipping my head to kiss the smile off her face.

“I mean—” She’s laughing and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard and also every laugh is squeezing me inside her and it’s killing me. “You might have to do it again for me to judge properly.”

“That can be arranged,” I murmur, moving my face so I can nuzzle her hair, nose into the corners of her jaw and throat. Drag my mouth over the tops of her breasts. When I meet her eyes again, she’s still smiling and I’m smiling, and I think we both realize at the same time that we’re just?.?.?.?happy.

She presses her hand to the side of my face. “I love your smile.”

I turn my face to kiss her palm. “I love yours.”

Her eyes are searching my face. “You deserve to smile more, Tristan.”

“This seems like a stones and glass houses situation.”

“Maybe we just need more reasons to do it,” she replies.

I kiss her palm again. She’s right, but also there’s no erasing our lives as they are. Dead mothers, war, unwanted marriages, being in love with Mark Trevena—it’s all here to stay.

I lift all the way off her. My cock slips free with a rush of fluid, and we both take in a sharp breath.

“Will you stay here for a few minutes?” I ask as I rise to my knees and fix my clothes. “I’m going to get something to clean you up.”

She hesitates, her delicate face strangely vulnerable, but then she nods.

“I’ll be back,” I say, wanting her to know I mean it. “Please don’t go.”

“I won’t,” she replies softly, and I get to my feet and rush out of the chapel.

Even though it takes me less than three minutes to dart to the spa, find a robe, a washcloth, and a bottle of water, I’m still terrified that I’ll open the chapel door to find it empty. That she’ll have realized the monumentally stupid thing we just did—again—and she’ll have fled to her room to get away from me. Because even if nothing counts until the wedding day, surely that excludes the bodyguard? Mark’s own former lover?

But when I open the chapel door, she’s still there. She’s sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and her eyes on the crucifix on the wall, her hair hanging down her back.

She’s lovely and lonely and my heart hurts just looking at her.

I step inside, shut the door, and go to her. I unscrew the bottle of water and make her drink while I kneel behind her and slowly start unzipping her dress.

“Do you regret it?” I ask softly, not knowing what I’ll do if the answer is yes, and not knowing what I’ll do if the answer is no?.?.?.?because I don’t know what the answer is for me yet. Only that, regrettable or not, this was inevitable.

From the moment I saw her and thought of blooming roses and frozen forests, this was inevitable.

“I regret that we have to weigh our regrets,” Isolde says. I peel the dress from her body, and she looks over her shoulder. Her eyes are rimmed red, but they are clear now, and dry. “I would do it again, just so you know. The other day. Tonight. Whatever else is to come. I would do it all again.”

The clarity in her voice matches the clarity in her eyes, and I’m reminded of her words on the deck. That she wanted to protect me.

I might have been the soldier, I might be the bodyguard, but I am growing increasingly aware that when it comes to fortitude, to focus, Isolde is the stronger of us.

In fact, she reminds me of no one else so much as Mark.

I kiss her naked shoulder and take the water bottle from her hand. I guide her to lie down on the rug, tugging her dress all the way off her body until it’s a green pile on the floor by the altar.

And then I take a minute to savor her, to enjoy the sinful display. Her hair in a gold halo around her head and her swollen mouth and the pink tips of her breasts.

All of her, save for the soft handfuls of her tits, is lithe and lean, and as she shifts under my gaze, I can see subtle lines of muscle move in her stomach.

But there’s something delicate about her too—in the architecture of her collarbone and the crescents of her ribs, in her slender feet, with their unpainted nails. The soft gold covering her sex. She reminds me a little of her knife, the one with the gold-and-ruby hilt. Far too pretty for something so dangerous.

“Tristan,” she murmurs, stretching a little. “What are you doing?”

“Looking my fill,” I say as I kneel between her legs. “I want to see every part of you. Every slope and curve. Every inch.”

The corners of her mouth tilt, but she’s still looking at me with that serious, certain gaze. “It’s yours to look at.”

“Until your wedding day.”

I don’t know why I repeat her earlier words—I meant it to be teasing, but it comes out mournful and mean. But she doesn’t flinch.

She just nods and says, “Yes. Until then.”

I duck my head to hide my face, not sure what it might be revealing. I find the warm, wet washcloth I stole from the spa, and I bring it slowly and gently over the place I just used.

And then her thighs clamp together as she giggles, rolling to the side. I watch, fascinated, as the muscles move in her stomach, as her teeth flash in a wide grin, as she tries to stifle her laughter and then snorts as a consequence and then giggles even louder.

She’s ticklish between the legs after she comes.

I file away this information for later and then roll her onto her back and pin her with a spread hand on her stomach. She squeals the whole time I clean up my mess, and I’m laughing too, until finally I toss the washcloth aside and lay my body over hers. I cover as much of her as I can, not wanting her to be cold. Not wanting a single inch between us.

“Why do you like it?” she asks after I’ve kissed the laughter out of her. “Your cum in me, I mean.”

I brace myself on my forearms to look down at her. “I think there’s something depraved about it. About it being messy, risky. But if I’m being truthful, I’m not sure there’s anything behind it. It just gets me off.” I tangle my hands in her hair, rubbing the strands between my fingers as I stay propped above her. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“What gets you off?”

Something changes in her expression. “I think you can guess what it is,” she says.

“The pain?”

She nods. But she doesn’t offer anything about why she likes it, and I don’t push.

I lift off her and find the robe I brought from the spa. I help her into it and then tie the belt snugly around her waist. “Can I meet you in your room?” I ask. I don’t want tonight to end. I want to shower with her, cuddle with her, sleep with my arms around her.

She kisses my jaw. “Yes.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later,and we’re in her shower, which is palatially sized considering we’re at sea, and we’re trying to hush our laughter as the motion of the waves occasionally sends us pressing into each other.

I’m busy massaging shampoo into her scalp when she says, “Don’t quit when we get to Manhattan.”

My hands go still.

She turns to look at me, tilting her chin up to meet my stare. Soap runs down her shoulders. “That’s what you’re planning, isn’t it? To quit working for Mark once we arrive. To martyr yourself to your own sense of loyalty.”

I frown. “I wouldn’t call it martyring.”

She doesn’t respond to that. Just continues to look at me. I sigh and frame her face with my hands, using my thumbs to wipe away stray bubbles of shampoo. “Yes, I’m considering quitting,” I say. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“You do?”

“Isolde, I’ve fucked my boss’s fiancée a few times now. I’d like to do it some more. I don’t think that makes me very employable.”

“Even if fidelity isn’t expected of me until I marry him?” she asks quietly. Her gaze hasn’t broken from my own.

I sigh and push my forehead to hers, briefly, before pulling back to rinse the shampoo from her hair. “Mark knowing you might have sex with other people before your wedding is one thing. But for it to be with his bodyguard, who would be around after the wedding? His bodyguard, who was supposed to be doing only one thing on this trip and that was ensuring your safety? Isolde, he should never trust me again. And if he can’t trust me, then I can’t do my job right. And if I can’t do my job right, then he deserves a bodyguard who will.”

Isolde looks down as I finish rinsing her hair, her eyelashes almost to her cheekbones as I turn her and reach for the conditioner.

“And if I want you to stay?” she asks. Softly. Not looking at me.

Vulnerability is etched into her voice, into the curl of her shoulders and tight line of her jaw. I rub the conditioner in her hair, not answering, my heart torn into chunks just like the moon on the sea.

Her request, raw and quiet, bruises me with its transparency, with what she’s admitting by it.

And the curse hearkens to it, seeking her, whispering Yes, yes, she wants you. She wants you like you want her.

But what can I do about my own feelings? My own sense of morality? What can I do about still loving Mark and knowing that sleeping with Isolde might worry him or displease him?

Wound him, even?

I rinse the conditioner from her hair, and then she turns. We don’t touch, just look at each other, and I stare down at this woman who lost her mother and then lost her dream of joining the church. Who’s about to lose so much of her freedom just to make her father happy.

I’m kidding myself if I think this is a real choice. All she has to do is ask, and I’m hers.

“If you want me to stay,” I say and bend my lips to hers, “then I’ll stay.”