Honey Cut E-Book

Sierra Simone

• Herausgeber: Sierra Simone
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Lyonesse
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 598

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

I have one job in this arranged marriage, and that’s to seduce my husband.

It should be easy; I’m the heiress to a transatlantic fortune, bred and raised to make a good match.  I’ve spent a lifetime building up my endurance, my discipline, my dedication to my god and my church. The danger lies in falling for the devil who put his ring on my finger—a mistake I made years ago, and can’t afford to make again.

There is one more danger: Tristan Thomas, former soldier and my new husband’s bodyguard.  A hero who stole my heart with salt-soaked kisses on the sea.

But Lyonesse is not like other places, and this isn’t like other marriages. Soon Tristan, Mark, and I are tangled in a knot of vicious jealousy and gorgeous wickedness, where suspicion is an aphrodisiac, and secrets and vows are one and the same.

And there is something far darker at play than my real purpose, darker even than the twisted longings of my own heart. Because my husband has secrets of his own, and the reason he’ll stop at nothing to possess me could slice my soul deeper than the honeysuckle-hilted knife he gave me once upon a time.

Because when it comes to Mark Trevena and his games, the first cut is more than the deepest—it’s the sweetest. 

And he always leaves you begging for more…

Leseprobe

honey cut

LYONESSE

BOOK 2

SIERRA SIMONE

contents

Content Note

Note on timeline

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgments

Also by Sierra Simone

About the Author

Copyright © 2024 by Sierra Simone

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Photographer: Michelle Lancaster (@lanefotograf)

Cover Model: Darcie Hamilton

Cover Designer: Hang Le

Editing: Bloom Books and Erica Russikoff of Erica Edits

Proofing: Michele Ficht

Without in any way limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

content note

There are brief, nonspecific allusions to clerical sex abuse in the prologue and Chapter Five.

To Jean and Flavia, for encouraging me to write a therapy-inducing, vengeful druid king in a suit.

note on timeline

Readers of the New Camelot series will notice there are some discrepancies in the timeline between American King and Honey Cut. This is so I could selfishly set the Lyonesse series a little further in the future and (even more selfishly) have some fun cameos later on.

Forgive me!

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

THOMAS HARDY

prologue

THREE YEARS AGO

Nothing bad could happen to him here, he told himself.

Archbishop Anthony Stitt strode through the lobby of the Hotel Vesta, relief easing his shoulders. Surely, there could be no danger while the hot Roman sun was beaming through these gracious windows? Surely there were no threats under the coffered ceilings or among the tasteful neoclassical art?

In fact, after he walked into his room and beheld the tidy opulence of the freshly made canopy bed and the luncheon already laid out on the dinner table, he almost felt ridiculous. Here was the life he was used to; here was the hotel he’d stayed at countless times while visiting Rome. And when he looked in the mirror, there was the same hard, bloodless expression he’d become famous for during his ecclesiastical career.

The world was the same; he was the same. Nothing had changed since last night.

Except…there had been that predawn rendezvous deep in a corner of the Vatican, the shaken whispers of his informant. Afterward, Stitt had taken his usual meetings and sidled along the web he’d spent the past twenty years weaving, but for the first time since he’d set his eyes on the Piscatory Ring, Stitt’s mind was elsewhere. Still in that murky corner, still listening to a story with implications so profound that he almost wanted to discount it entirely.

But his source had never been wrong before, and it… Well, there was a logic to it, wasn’t there? A feel of truth?

How did I miss it? he asked himself as he walked over to the table for his customary midday meal of salmon rillette, bread, and crudité. The aroma of fresh coffee drifted from a silver pot, familiar as incense, familiar as spilled wine.

How did I miss it?

Because if it was true, that meant His Eminence Mortimer Cashel had been building castles while Stitt had been spinning webs. It meant that Cashel had resources beyond what Stitt could hope to muster.

It meant that in the slow, clever dance for the mitre, Cashel was winning.

Ys, the informant had called it. The—well, what was it even? A network? An order of priests? A crime family? Even the informant hadn’t really known, but one thing the informant had known for certain: the Holy Father had no idea. Which gave Stitt an opening. A chance to outplay Cashel before Cashel’s hand grew too strong.

And that was what he would do, he determined. He would bring this to the Holy Father himself and expose Cashel and whatever this Ys was. And with Cashel gone, Stitt’s path to the Vatican would be clearer than ever.

Yes, of course. He’d do it today. And now that he was in his favorite room, about to have his favorite lunch, everything was suddenly right again. He had things in hand—more than in hand, actually, because this was a good thing, an ingot of good fortune dropped right into his lap, and how absurd that he’d been scared just a few minutes ago, scurrying like he thought Cashel himself was after him. No, if Ys were real, then Stitt finally had the means to destroy his rival. A rival who wasn’t interested in sex, wasn’t tempted by drink, and had no whiff of financial impropriety.

Cashel’s singular vice was power, but here at last would be the wage of that sin.

Confidence restored, Stitt poured himself a cup of coffee, took a scalding drink, and turned to face the deep-set window that looked out over the piazza. Except the piazza with its throngs of people and view of the Pantheon was blocked by a woman.

Standing inside his room.

He couldn’t help it—he took a step back. The coffee sloshed over his hand, burning over his bishop’s ring, and his cassock tangled around his legs. Then his mind caught up with the moment, and he was irritated with himself. It was just a hotel employee, wearing a neat suit and tie, red hair pulled into a demure ponytail. She’d probably just finished bringing up his food, and he’d been so distracted with this information about Cashel that he hadn’t noticed her.

“I need a napkin or a towel,” Stitt told her sharply, setting down his coffee.

She gave a small nod and went to the bathroom, returning with a damp washcloth. When she silently handed it to him, Stitt frowned at her. He’d have a word with management about this; the owner was a friend of his and would be appalled to hear that one of his employees hadn’t apologized for such an intrusion.

He took in details of her while he scrubbed at his hand—the unnatural sheen to her hair, almost as if it were a wig. The creases on her blazer, like it had never been worn before. The black gloves on her hands, thin and disposable.

Something shifted inside his mind then, and the fear from earlier began to trickle back in.

“Leave,” he ordered, to his own fear as much as to the young woman.

She didn’t leave. Neither did the fear.

“I think you should sit,” she said in English. It was American English, Stitt’s own English, common enough in certain Vatican circles, but unusual for a Roman hotel employee.

Stitt’s fingertips tingled and also his lips, and he thought it was the fear moving through his body. But then he tried to step back, and he stumbled again.

He didn’t know where his feet were anymore. Dizzy spots crept at the edge of his vision.

“I think you should sit,” she said again, and this time he sat. Heavily.

“What…” His voice sounded strange to him. “What’s happening?”

She didn’t answer, just looked at him with steady blue-green eyes. She was so contained, her face betraying nothing. Nothing but pink skin across the bridge of her finely shaped nose.

Locals didn’t have sunburns.

“You don’t work here,” Stitt said stupidly.

She nodded.

“Did Cashel send you?”

Could he already have discovered what Stitt knew? Stitt trusted his informant, but loyalty was cheap in Rome. Perhaps Cashel or one of his camp had already turned his source. Maybe they’d done something worse.

“God sent me,” the young woman corrected. She had the look of a zealot now, young and fiery-eyed. Practically vibrating with intensity.

“Nonsense. Was it Cashel or someone else?” he managed to ask.

“Nebraska,” she said, ignoring his question. “Nineteen years ago. I’m sure you remember.”

The skipping in his chest was a jumping now, a lurching. “It’s in the past,” he said. Wheezed.

“Our God is the god of the past as well as the present.”

She moved toward him. He had just enough energy left to flinch, but she didn’t strike him or even touch him at all. Instead, she took the used washcloth and coffee cup from his table and carried them to the bathroom. He heard the splash of the coffee down the drain and then the running of the sink from its gold taps.

For the first time in a very long time, Stitt found himself embarrassed. Of the palatial bathroom, with its marble floors and clusters of fresh flowers and the hydrotherapy tub large enough that a grown man could lie down flat and never touch the sides. Of the canopy bed, fit for a king; the suite itself, high and spacious and filled with every luxury. When he’d started his climb toward the Apostolic Palace, it had been normal for princes of the Church to live sumptuously; it had been expected. They’d had a proper pope then, one who understood the history and the power of the Church. But this new pope had sown a harvest of austerity—had shunned the opulent papal apartments and the plentitude that was his by right—and now the world seemed to expect the same of everyone else.

Stitt had refused, of course. Not unreasonably, because what was a Church that couldn’t reflect the grandeur of its own god? What was a Church that recalled sandals and sawdust rather than the glory of the prince of kings?

But as the young woman returned, the coffee cup empty and being slipped into a plastic bag along with the washcloth, he saw the judgment reflected in her eyes, and he was embarrassed.

Why? Because she knew about Nebraska?

“I did the best I could,” he tried again. The words came out in a whisper. “It would have hurt the Church.”

“You did what was best for your career,” she said. “And God has not forgotten.”

He was sick to his stomach now and clammy. “So this isn’t about Ys?”

He didn’t think he invented the confusion that flickered through her expression, but it was gone as soon as he saw it, replaced again by that eerily impassive expression, paired so incongruously with those fervent eyes.

“No,” she said after a moment. She sealed the plastic bag and then bent over to pull something from her ankle. A knife, sheathed there. Stitt saw a single silver-blond loop of hair trapped against her neck. She must have missed it while tucking her hair into the wig.

When she stood, the knife was in her hand, its handle inset with rubies and gold. It looked almost liturgical.

A thing for sacrifice.

Stitt’s stomach twisted up into his chest. “You’re going to kill me,” he rasped.

“I already have, Your Grace,” she said, and there was something else in her voice now, a sadness. She found a small bag she’d stashed near a chair and put the plastic-wrapped coffee cup inside. Then she produced an identical cup and set it on the table next to him. He watched dizzily as she poured coffee into it and then sloshed it over the rim and onto the table. Intentionally. As if the cup had been held by a man who’d abruptly felt weak and needed to sit.

She stood in front of him when she was finished. She was petite, slender. Aside from the sunburned nose and cheap wig, she was altogether lovely. An angel of death.

“You took too much of your heart medicine today,” she explained, and her voice was inflectionless once again. “An easy mistake for someone who’s so disorganized with their medications.”

“I’m not—” He stopped. She’d already been here when he walked in; she’d had the coffee and the tainted cup waiting. Of course she would have staged his medications, made it look accidental. A tragedy brought about by a busy man’s haphazard habits.

He stared at her and she stared back, the understanding crystalizing between them. It didn’t matter what he’d learned about Ys, about Cashel. It didn’t matter that he was going to be the next American cardinal, that the only thing between him and the papacy was gap-toothed Cashel with his amiable grin and mismatched eyes.

Nothing mattered because he was going to die. He was dying.

“Why?” he asked the young woman. His voice was gasping, grating. “Nebraska? Is that all?”

“All?” Disgust flitted across her face. “What would be enough, Your Grace? Two Nebraskas? Three? You with millions of souls already in your care having billions instead, and all for the price of your own? Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.” She stepped back, over to the window. The knife flashed, and he heard the snap of metal as she used its flat edge to pop open the lock. The window swung open.

“Where are you going?”

“There is one more after you,” she said. It looked like her hands were shaking the tiniest amount. “Just a couple streets over. A deacon.”

“You can’t—” Stitt found he could barely breathe. He was horribly cold. “You can’t,” he finished in a voice that was no longer a voice.

“But God can,” said the young woman, and she climbed onto the windowsill.

Stitt was dead before she was gone.

one

ISOLDE

PRESENT DAY

Manhattan crawls,seethes, in a summer haze below me, glass and metal and hot concrete choking the leafy tangle of Central Park.

It’s home, but it doesn’t feel like home. I feel like I’m still on the waves, untethered. Still on a yacht, being brought from my family’s ancestral seat to the home I know best, for a wedding I never asked for.

Maybe it doesn’t feel like home because of where I am—a slick high-rise stocked with blindfolds and rope and custom furniture. Or maybe it’s because of whom I’m in this high-rise with—Tristan Thomas, the man who stole my heart in the shattered moonlight of the Atlantic. Along with another man, the man who broke that same heart three years ago with the blood from my hymen still drying under his fingernails.

Mark Trevena. My fiancé.

I look down at the railing of Mark’s loft. My hands are pale and slender, the left hand glinting with rubies and gold. They are hands that have stolen, maimed, and killed. I try to keep them steady.

I have so much to do as Mark Trevena’s bride.

“You crawled to me here. Do you remember?”

Too late, I become aware of the presence in the loft, and I turn to see Mark coming to the glass half wall separating the space from the rest of the penthouse. Rather than stand beside me, however, he braces his right hand next to mine on the railing and stands just behind. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I’m thinking of touching now. Close enough that I can feel the measures of his exhales.

Our hands are less than an inch apart; his is an expression of power next to my own. Its size, its placement. Two of the fingers on it have been inside my body.

“I remember,” I say. A neutral tone is second nature to me, a by-product of growing up the princess of an Anglo-American banking empire. And even if it weren’t second nature, I would be a fool not to be careful right now. Not to see that the board is set and Mark is ready to move the first piece. He’s been ready since we met, I think, ready for four years.

Four years.

Can it have really been that long? Four years of his ring on my finger, three years since he made me bleed while I panted and begged for it.

Three years since the morning when I made someone else bleed their life out onto the sun-baked Roman cobblestones…a loss of innocence that cut much, much deeper than the loss of my virginity.

It feels like it’s been a lifetime. It feels like it’s been no time at all.

At any rate, I have to be mindful what I show him now that we’re together. I have to make him believe that I am reluctantly besotted. I have to show him the submissive wife he craves.

Stolen victories don’t come from playing fair, after all.

With that in mind, I turn to face him fully, having to press my back against the railing in order to look up at his face. He keeps his hand planted where it is, not stepping back to give me room.

My immediate thought is that he’s not playing fair either, looking like he does. His dark-blond hair is swept away from his suntanned face, exposing a high forehead and the harsh curves of his cheekbones. His jaw, even relaxed like it is now, is strong and graven, with the first hint of a five-o’clock shadow coming through. His eyes are the sky just after dusk, just before dawn. Dark but undeniably blue.

Elemental.

He looks every bit of his thirty-six years, a man fully in his prime, and for a moment, I feel the full fourteen years between our ages. I feel it like a thrill, a jolt, a challenge.

Which is nonsense. He has had so much longer than me to become dangerous, and that should only make me wary. Not…excited.

“I remember,” I repeat, and this time I let the memory seep into my words. For a year and a half while I’d been in college, he’d trained me. Not in submission, but in the pretense of submission. Our marriage had been arranged from the start, a transaction between him and my family, but it was crucial that it still appeared real, and that appearance hinged on my playacting as Mark’s submissive.

Except pretending is a blurry thing when it comes to kink. There are some things that must be done, must be ceded.

And I am willing to cede a lot to get what I’m here for.

Mark studies me. He has a way of looking that feels like I’m being pinned in place, an insect to a board, but I let him pin me. I let him look. He won’t believe that I’m easily won, so I let him see my skepticism warring with my desire. I let him see a young woman determined to play a part even as she’s slowly seduced by it.

And if it is almost too easy for me to pretend, if it’s too easy to call up the memory of his hands on me, of how I felt on his yacht wearing the clothes he’d picked out for me, I don’t think about it. Genuinely craving him and the things he will do to me will make me better at playing the game. And I can play without losing myself.

Mark finally nods, as if he saw what he expected.

“How is your shoulder?” I ask. He hadn’t been able to fetch me from Ireland as planned because he’d been stabbed in his own club right before, and the wound had struggled to heal. He doesn’t move like an injured man, though. The last three weeks must have done the wound some good.

He lifts a hand to it, like he’d almost forgotten. “Much better. Just another scar to add to the collection, if a memorable one.”

And then he says after a moment, “Now that you’re here, we will have to resume. But it’s been some time since we entered into our arrangement. We should discuss our new rules. Your new limits.”

I hadn’t ever wanted to stop, and here he is talking about resuming, as if I’d been the one to cry off. He’d been the one to end things years ago, to wedge his fingers inside me and give me an earth-shattering orgasm only to leave before daybreak, having gotten what he came for. My virginity, the warranty my father demanded to make sure I wouldn’t back out of the engagement.

But in those hours between Mark pushing his hand up my skirt and the break of morning, I’d believed—or hoped⁠—

It doesn’t matter now. He’d been using me. And now I’ll use him.

“I know we’ll need to resume,” I reply. “But my rules are the same. My limits are the same. Have yours changed?”

There is one long blink, dark-gold lashes sweeping to his cheeks and then back up again, and I realize that I’ve surprised him.

“Your limits have not changed,” he says. His voice is as expressionless as his face, and it’s filled with nothing but the cool huskiness that troubles my dreams, but I sense disbelief there nonetheless. “So you are still comfortable with, to use a likely example, being restrained by me?”

I lift my chin. “Yes. If the situation calls for it.”

“Punished by me?”

Heat seeps down my spine and pools in the cradle of my hips. I remind myself to be reluctantly besotted. “For the sake of selling our marriage? Yes.”

“Fucked by me?”

Between my legs, my clit pulses. Just a few days ago, it was against another man’s mouth. “Yes,” I whisper, and I’m not pretending anything right now.

Mark is closer now, his eyes hooded as he looks down at me. We’re still not touching. We wouldn’t be, when selling the appearance of our marriage was always about just that—the appearance. Yes, he might tie me up, mark my flesh, fill my mouth and holes with whatever he wants, including himself, but only while we are around other people. There’s no clause for what will happen between us in private; no provision for when it’s just the two of us. If I want him to trust me, I’ll have to breach that wall. Like we breached it three years ago on my father’s desk.

The thought makes my skin prickle and my belly swim. Half lust, half miserable nerves. There’s no room for me to fuck this up.

And despite what happened on the yacht on the way to Manhattan, there’s no room for me to feel anything for Tristan Thomas, Mark’s bodyguard, either.

“And your safeword is still hyssop?” Mark asks.

“Yes.”

“Use it for anything, even when we’re not performing for the people around us. Even when we’re alone. You understand?”

Yes, sir is on the tip of my tongue, without me having to remember that he’d like to hear it, without me remembering that it’s only supposed to be a line for my part.

Oh God, this is so dangerous.

I force myself to nod instead. And for a moment, we stay just like this, with him so, so close and our eyes burning against each other’s.

With a flare of his nostrils, Mark lets go of the railing and takes a step back. He turns away, walks over to the leather-upholstered table in the center of the loft.

The table is meant for bondage, punishment. Sex. There’s a hole in the middle that Mark once told me allowed a cock through. I wonder if Tristan was ever on it, if his erection had ever bobbed dark and needy through that very hole.

I don’t have to wonder if Tristan would have loved it, though. He would have because I would have loved it, because we are both sick with the same disease.

“So no new rules of your own,” I say to his suited back as I cut away every feeling about Tristan that’s still rooting and blooming inside my chest. Mark cannot know about Tristan and me and what’s happened since we set sail from Ireland.

Above all, Mark cannotknow.

Maybe later, maybe after the marriage. Maybe there will be a time when I can explain that I spent half the trip to New York spreading my legs for his bodyguard. That for some reason I can’t explain even now, I left the door between my room and Tristan’s unlocked. That I’ve spent the last three nights wishing I could scratch my own eyes out for the tears they’ve cried, all because I begged Tristan not to quit his job, to stay at Lyonesse for me, and Tristan’s price was a high one. But—perhaps a wise one. He knew severing ties and ending things before we got to Manhattan was the safest choice, at least if we wanted to hide what happened on the yacht from my future husband.

As it is, I’m still concerned we won’t be able to hide the truth. Mark isn’t stupid, and it used to be his job to slice the truth out of much more treacherous people than Tristan Thomas.

I’ve become plenty treacherous over the years, unfortunately.

Mark turns, but only partway. His fingers run over the top of the leather table, and I remember how it felt to be cuffed to that table, his finger trailing down my naked stomach and circling my navel.

“No,” he finally says. “No new rules. The same one remains.”

I know which one he means. “I remember,” I say. “After the wedding, there can be no perceived wedge between us. Total fidelity.”

“Yes, my bride,” he says, and then faces me. The sunlight pouring in through the double-story windows catches the gold in his hair, on his eyelashes. He is gilded against the metal and leather and wickedness behind him. “After the wedding, I’ll be as faithful to you as you are to me.”

two

TRISTAN

I stare at my unzipped suitcase, my entire body itching to leave this room and find the two people outside it.

I took the job as Mark’s bodyguard this spring hoping for a distraction—or whatever existed between distraction and pinning all of my time, movements, and decisions onto someone else’s—because it turned out that leaving the army had not fixed the ache that came with having killed my best friend.

I had not expected to fall in love with my employer. I had not expected to fall in love with his future wife.

And now I’m in love with two people—two people who are about to marry each other.

We’d arrived at Mark’s Central Park–facing penthouse a few minutes ago in a cloud of silence. Easy silence, on Mark’s part. He seemed pleased to have Isolde with him, and whenever his eyes met mine, I saw the banked heat there that never failed to steal my breath…a legacy of those heady weeks when I’d been his, fully and completely, until I’d learned that he’d never been mine in return.

But the silence hadn’t been easy between Isolde and me. It had been sticky, hot as fresh tar. We made sure that our eyes didn’t meet; I made sure that my gaze stayed on the world outside Mark’s Mercedes-Maybach. But God, how I wanted to look at her. At her delicate nose and her stubborn chin and her eyes the color of dark turquoise. At those adorable freckles and at that mouth, lush and curved with an unusually shallow notch on her upper lip.

At sea, I had kissed that mouth so much that I had the feel of it memorized, the taste. And yet I couldn’t look… If I looked, Mark would see everything in my face.

And the fourth occupant in the car would also see everything in my face. The fourth occupant who knew about Isolde and me.

Maybe. Maybe he knew.

Probably.

Sedge, the quiet assistant who kept Mark’s days productive and ordered, had told me that the yacht—the same yacht where Isolde and I had lost all self-control with each other—had cameras.

Cameras.

Fuck. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Lyonesse, Mark’s kink club, had cameras inside for the safety of its guests and employees. But I’d assumed his yacht would be like his apartment or Morois House in Cornwall. A residence, a private space, away from every concern…

My assumption had been a naïve one, and now someone knew about Isolde and me. And if Sedge knew, then surely Mark knew. Right? Surely loyal Sedge wouldn’t have kept a secret like that, especially when I suspected that Sedge was also in love with Mark in his own wary way.

Except Mark hadn’t acted like someone who knew that his bodyguard had spent eleven days railing his fiancée. After we dropped Sedge at the hotel where the rest of the Lyonesse staff would be staying while here in Manhattan, we’d arrived at the penthouse, and Mark put Isolde and me on one floor together, next to each other. While he would keep his usual bedroom upstairs.

Whether this was some nod to bridal propriety or an acknowledgment of the transactional, public-only nature of their relationship, I didn’t know. It had disconcerted Isolde, though, and her lip had stayed trapped between her teeth while she’d watched me carry her suitcase into her new room. It had been the single time our eyes had met since before we’d left the yacht.

Mark couldn’t possibly know. Despite Sedge knowing, despite the way he’d said much to discuss, on the dock.

But then what else had he meant?

I’m still trying to squeeze a feeling of certainty out of this latest turn of affairs when I hear a knock on the frame of my door.

I turn to see Mark, his blue suit still smooth and crisp, even though it’s now the afternoon and he’s been in the summer wind and Manhattan traffic.

“Tristan,” he says, and my name in his voice lifts goose bumps along my arms. I’m grateful he can’t see them underneath my own suit. “Come here for a minute. I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

The certainty vanishes, and panic rushes in, cold and tingling. My lips are buzzing as I nod and follow him out to the main living area of the penthouse, feeling like I’m on a patrol run in Carpathia and not in a crisply minimalist space overlooking Central Park.

Isolde is standing by the window, her hair the color of gleaming bone and soft as silk around her face as she stares down at the park. She’s wearing all white today, a bodysuit and trousers, already looking like a bride. The white makes her glow.

Mark takes a seat on a low leather sofa, stretching his arm along the back. There’s a glass of gin on the rocks on the table in front of him.

I heroically ignore the pert curves of Isolde’s breasts in her bodysuit and the way Mark’s suit trousers pull over the hard muscles of his thighs. I keep my face on his as I stand next to the sofa, my hands tucked neatly behind my back.

Does Mark look like he knows? Is that anger simmering in his eyes as he looks between Isolde and me?

I’ll take the blame. It was my fault anyway, what happened on the yacht. If I’d only stayed away from her, had more control. Found a way not to kiss her tear-salted lips, not to taste the wet place between her thighs.

If only I’d been stronger—but God, how could I have been? Isolde Laurence under a dark sky, spattered with sea spray, splintered and humiliated by the same man who’d splintered and humiliated me.

Isolde Laurence, who knew how wonderful it felt when the splintering came from a man like Mark Trevena.

If Isolde is worried that Mark knows, that this is the beginning of everything unraveling, she doesn’t show it. Her back is straight, her arms crossed, and her hands cupped elegantly over each elbow. In profile, she is graceful and aloof. It’s easy to forget that she wields a knife like it’s as natural as breathing. That she wakes up in the middle of the night with choked screams in her throat.

“So,” Mark says, his gaze moving to me and then Isolde again. I wish I could read his face, his eyes. I wish I knew what to brace for. “The engagement party is this weekend, and it must be a success.”

It is so far from what I expected him to say that I nearly buckle to the floor. There’s no way, no way at all that I could be this lucky.

“Of course,” continues Mark, “the party is to celebrate our coming union, and as long as you’re happy with it, Isolde, then I’ll consider it a success. So everything else is of little⁠—”

“Tristan knows,” Isolde interrupts, finally turning toward us. The ruby engagement ring winks on her hand, sending red beams dancing across the room. “I told him the truth.”

Mark’s fingers lift once from the back of the sofa and then settle. His head turns, but not all the way, before he says, “Is that so?”

Isolde’s gaze is steady. “I was surprised you hadn’t told him yourself, actually. He’ll be with us constantly. Did you think he wouldn’t see that we weren’t a love match? That this whole charade is engineered to benefit you and my family?”

“We must be careful, my bride,” Mark says. “The more people who know, the more danger the charade is in.”

Isolde doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Doesn’t react at all.

Finally, Mark relaxes. “I agree with you that eventually Tristan would have figured it out. And you are good at keeping secrets, aren’t you, Tristan?”

He doesn’t look over at me as he speaks, which is a very good thing because I’m keeping more secrets than I’d like to right now and I’m worried every single one of them is visible in my face.

“Yes, sir,” I manage.

“Well, then. We’re settled.” He leans forward to get his glass and then sets it to his lips, his eyes on Isolde as he drinks, like he’s not finished studying her.

For her part, she doesn’t look away.

I glance to the hot city outside the glass. It hurts to look at the two of them right now. I miss them both. I want them both.

“So Tristan,” Mark says, now looking down at the drink cradled in his hand, “you should know that this party is the beginning of Isolde and me as a public couple. We’ve had something of a debut at Lyonesse, years ago, but this is our inauguration into certain circles of society. I’m sure you’re aware, via Goran, about how tight I’ll need security to be—we have several high-profile guests coming. And undoubtedly, Isolde and I will need to circulate separately, and I want your eyes on Isolde when mine can’t be.”

My eyes are on Isolde far too much as it is, but I manage to sound professional when I say, “Of course, sir.”

“Wonderful,” says Mark, and then he smiles at his gin. “It is lovely to have you together. My bodyguard and my bride. My two pretty things.”

He doesn’t touch us, doesn’t lift a finger, and yet I think I might bruise anyway. Broken blood vessels across my chest, hairline fractures along my ribs. He doesn’t know how together Isolde and I have been, and the shame of it is going to kill me.

But he might know how she and I still ache to be his pretty things, no matter how he’s hurt us, lied to us, used us.

And the shame of that will definitely kill me.

For her part, Isolde steps away from the window. “I’ll be in my room,” she says. “Just so you’re aware, I go back to work tomorrow.”

Mark takes a drink, still smiling. “Me too,” he says.

* * *

That evening, after I leave the penthouse to meet with Goran in his hotel room about the engagement party and security, I detour into Central Park to make a private phone call.

My fingers shake as I dial the unfamiliar number. It had been emailed to me by Ms. Lim, Lyonesse’s concierge, while I was on the yacht with Isolde. Someone had come to Lyonesse looking for me. Someone who had every right to hunt me down and demand my time.

I took a breath and pressed send. Anything for the sister of the man I killed.

The phone rings and rings and rings, and I’m a fucking coward because the longer it takes for her to pick up the phone, the more relief swells in my stomach. I owe the family of Aaron Sims a debt I can’t repay, and the debt feels tenfold because I know them, because I’m known to them, because Aaron loved me and I loved him and I still killed him. That it was necessary and inevitable does nothing to requite what I owe.

A call is the least of what I can do, but I’m practically panting in relief as I drop the phone and prepare to end the call. My excoriation is delayed for now⁠—

“Hello?” comes a woman’s voice. “Hello?”

Shit. I lift the phone, mouth dry. “Hello,” I say. “It’s—this is Tristan. Tristan Thomas.”

There’s a silence on the other end, and I think she must be readying everything she wants to tell me. She’s unfolding handwritten notes detailing all the ways she hates me, she’s gathering her breath for a litany of curses.

And then she says, “Oh, Tristan, thank God.”

I’m standing still in the middle of a path, staring at nothing, her words not making any sense. “Chloe, I⁠—”

“It’s Cara,” she says quickly. “And we need to meet.”

Cara? Even before he’d died, Cara wasn’t much a part of Sims’s life. There’d been a bad boyfriend—and then a string of bad boyfriends—and then she’d skipped from town to town, running just ahead of a job gone wrong or a shitty ex. That Cara has emerged from the vortex of her life to find me is as odd as it is worrying.

“Of course,” I say. I’m walking again now, close to the edge of the park and looking at Mark’s high-rise across the street, at the people milling along the sidewalk in front of it—people texting or arguing or stopping to tie their shoelaces. Funny how the world keeps moving even when you find yourself stuck in place. “Where are you? If you need a place, you can stay with me⁠—”

“I’m okay for now,” she says, “but I have to go. I’ll call you at the number you called me from when I can again. Okay?”

“Okay, but⁠—”

There’s silence, followed by a beep in my ear. Cara’s gone.

I look down at the screen and then across the street at the high-rise again, my mind a mess of memories and everything I should have said to the sister of Aaron Sims. But my vision clears, and I see someone kneeling to tie their shoe in front of the building.

The same person I saw just a moment ago doing the same thing.

He looks away from his shoe and at the front door, just for a beat. Glass glints in the evening light—a phone—and then he’s standing up and sliding the phone into his pocket. I think he just took a picture of the entrance.

By the time I get across the street, he’s too far away to pursue.

I call Goran on my way up to the penthouse.

“I’ve never been with Mark here in Manhattan. Does he have external security feeds on the penthouse?” I ask by way of greeting. I’m a little ashamed because this is something I should know, something I would normally have committed to memory if I hadn’t spent the last three weeks daydreaming about my boss’s fiancée.

“Sure, kid,” Goran says easily. “Not that we’ve ever needed them. I’ll make sure you have access through the security portal on your laptop. Anything I should be worried about?”

I tell him about what I saw as I step into the penthouse and go straight to my room to find my work laptop. And yes—there they are, a handful of feeds nestled under the building’s address on our security portal. All of them are watermarked with the name of the building’s private security firm, so God only knows what kind of bribery—or worse—Mark employed to get access to them.

I click back on the recording until I find what I’m looking for: a glimpse of the picture taker’s face. Short hair the color of used dishwater, a tattoo on one side of his neck. Flat features like partially rolled-out dough. The screen grab is not as high-quality as I’d like, but it’s enough. I send it to Goran.

“There are roughly a hundred and twenty condominiums inside Mark’s building,” Goran points out as I’m doing this. “It’s very possible that he’s creeping on a different resident.”

“Still. Do you mind passing it around to the team?”

“Not in the least. And we’ll run it too, see if we can find any matches in law enforcement databases, although it usually takes us a bit to get the international hits. Might have to have Mark’s pet hacker Lox on that one. Either way, you can rest easy as long as you’re up in Mark’s little nest. He owns the unit beneath his floor and keeps it empty, and the floor above him is one of those mechanical fake floors. No one’s coming from above or below—or through the front door, for that matter.”

I believe Goran, but I still don’t like it. Ever since the attack on Lyonesse, I’ve been acutely aware of how quickly everything can unravel, and there’s more than just Mark to protect now. There’s Isolde too.

I hang up and shower, and then I do my best to set it aside. Years of combat have taught me not to ignore my instincts; years of sleepless nights between skirmishes and engagements have also taught me not to hyperfixate until I know something to be a threat.

But I still don’t like it, and between that and my abbreviated phone call with Cara, it’s a very long time before I fall asleep.

three

ISOLDE

I wake up struggling for air.

It’s the two priests in Seville, their eyes staring up at the moon as the Guadalquivir washed them away from the shore. It’s the surprised gasp of the billionaire in Gdańsk as I slipped my honeysuckle knife between his ribs. It’s the archbishop in Rome, coffee splattered on his cassock, his last words heavy in the Italian sunlight. You can’t.

But I could. I did.

And now I can’t breathe.

A shadow moves in my room, and a hand presses to my naked belly, warm and strong and big enough to splay across my entire stomach between my rucked-up tank top and my underwear.

“Breathe,” comes Tristan’s voice. “Honey, you need to breathe.”

Honey. The word is like honey itself—clear and golden and sweeter than anything. No one’s ever called me anything like that and meant it. Not since my mother died.

“Lift my hand,” Tristan urges quietly. “You can do it.”

I fight to inhale, my throat working, my chest like something hollowed out and filled with concrete. But there’s Tristan’s hand, the ring that Mark gave him cool against my stomach, the pressure of it so solid and sure, and suddenly I can do it, I can breathe. Air fills my lungs, and I choke a little around it, but Tristan just murmurs in approval, his eyes shining in the dark.

I inhale again, almost normally, and the nightmare is receding like a tide. Stealing away to hide until the inevitable gravity of night brings it back.

“Good,” Tristan says, and his voice is so lovely, a melody. A singer’s voice and not a soldier’s. “Good.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. He came into my cabin on the yacht last night too, even though we’d already ended things, and helped me just like he’s doing now. “You don’t have to do this. I managed to live with the nightmares for three years. I’ll have to do it for the rest of my life. I’ll be okay on my own.”

“I don’t want you to be on your own, though,” Tristan says, and there’s a world of pain in his voice. In the dark, I can’t read his face or follow his eyes, and so I don’t know if he’s looking at me or looking up at the ceiling, where just above us, my future husband sleeps.

Tristan still hasn’t lifted his hand from my stomach, even though I’m breathing just fine now, and I think I can feel every crease of his palm, every whorl of his fingertips on my skin. His hand is warm and a little rough. Lingering calluses from war, maybe.

And my body is singing, nerve endings flashing, as it recalls every single place that hand has been. Hard on my breast, spread over my backside. Inside me, inside me.

Clouds shift enough outside that I can see he’s looking down at where he’s touching me. His fingers twitch, and my belly quivers. A dark cloud blooms below my navel, lust and shame mixed, the kind of guilt that only feeds desire.

My own guilt is strange to me. I’ve accepted that with Mark, I must be Esther, Ruth, Tamar. That sex is the weapon I’m meant to use, a weapon for God’s will and therefore sanctified.

But sex with Tristan was never part of the plan—is dangerous to the plan—and is wrong on every single level.

“We’re not real in the dark,” I say in a whisper. Permission.

Tristan doesn’t say anything back, but I feel a shudder run through him.

How long has it been? A day? Two days? And already I’m starved to death, emaciated with greed. Craving Tristan like he’s what sustains my flesh and blood.

It can’t be that he’s the first person to learn my body inside and out—it can’t be that he’s gorgeous, that he’s strong, that he’s the kind of person anyone would want in their bed. And it can’t be love, it would be absurd for it to be love. I’ve only known him for three weeks.

But it is something. Familiarity, maybe, once I saw the torment he carried, the guilt and brokenness over the lives he’s taken. Or longing, possibly, for the goodness inside his heart, that bright, sweet, incorruptible core of him. Goodness he just seems to have, that he doesn’t have to reach for, atone to get, refine in a fire.

Or maybe it was that, from the very beginning, I knew he was Mark’s. Mark’s step-nephew, Mark’s bodyguard. When I’d learned he’d been Mark’s lover as well, it was a confirmation of a suspicion only barely felt in the hollow of my chest before then: Tristan was like me.

And if falling in love with Mark could happen to someone as good as Tristan Thomas, then maybe I’m not so broken after all.

Just as I take Tristan’s hand to push it farther down, we hear water running through the walls. Mark is awake.

Mark is upstairs, awake, doing things, and his bodyguard is here on my bed.

I hear Tristan’s ragged exhale. In the dark, I sense more than see him hang his head.

My skin is on fire with misery, but what can I say? What can I do? Beg him to keep touching me when Mark is up and moving around?

“I’m sorry,” Tristan mumbles, and there’s enough misery in his voice that I know that I’m not alone. That the minute he leaves, he’s going to touch himself like I’m going to touch myself, and we’ll both be hoping that will somehow make this lust of ours better, safer. Only half a sin instead of a whole one.

“Don’t be sorry,” I finally say. “We shouldn’t.”

“We have to be careful,” he says, and he looks at me. I can tell from the shine of his eyes in the dark.

“I know we have to be careful. I have more to lose than you.” I don’t speak the words with any bitterness—I gave all my bitterness to God years ago—but they come out so unvarnished, so starkly true, that I can tell it pains him to hear.

“I know you do,” he says quietly. “I stayed for you, remember? You’re why I’m here, and I’ll help in any way I can.”

The ache between my legs could collapse stars, but the rest of me is cooling and darkening. Turning to glass. I sit up.

“Thank you for staying,” I say, also quietly. When he’d told me on the yacht that he wanted to quit, that he didn’t feel like he could work for Mark after betraying his trust, I’d nearly shattered.

When I thought I’d have to do this all by myself, I’d been able to bear the idea of my future with all the stoicism of a martyr. But having had Tristan for just those few days at sea—it ate away at my strength and took it away with the tide. After the glow of his company, after being with someone who had also killed, who had also lost their mother, who had also lost themselves to Mark, it felt abruptly staggering to live without it. Without him.

How would I survive Mark without Tristan?

Tristan’s hand comes to rest over mine. “Anything for you,” he says, and he means it. I can hear that he means it. And I don’t deserve it.

I want to cry.

“I need to tell you, though, that I think Sedge knows,” he says. His voice is still soft enough to be a whisper. “Knows about what we did on the yacht, I mean.”

I process his words immediately, my mind whirring.

Sedge the assistant. Sedge who undoubtedly has Mark’s ear.

Sedge who looked at me with pale, suspicious eyes when he first met me on the dock this morning, his thin but pretty mouth set in a slight frown.

“Oh,” is all I say.

“There were cameras in the interior rooms of the yacht.” A long breath. “I’m so sorry, Isolde. I didn’t think to check for them. The security system the captain showed me was purely external.”

“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t check either.”

Stupidly. Foolishly. Why didn’t I check? Why didn’t I think of it? My uncle had drilled every care into me when it came to doing my job, and that included being caught on camera. But the rooms of a private yacht—I hadn’t even considered it. Because originally it was supposed to be Mark and me, and why would he need to have eyes on himself?

But it was an obvious oversight, one I shouldn’t have made. Mark had told me once that he’d played this game longer than me, with more dangerous people than me, and here is the perfect example of my inexperience knocking my own pieces off the board.

“Do you think Sedge has told Mark?” I ask.

“Mark is hard to read, so it’s impossible to say for certain—but I don’t think so.” Tristan squeezed my hand. “If I had to guess, I think Sedge suspects there’s something unusual about your marriage and is reluctant to embarrass himself by coming to Mark with something Mark won’t actually care about. But we should still be careful. Check our own rooms here for cameras. Assume Sedge is watching.”

I squeeze his hand back. I don’t want to let go. The simple touch is so reassuring, so anchoring, and it makes something protective flare in my chest. I want to keep him safe from Mark’s games. From my own. I want that goodness inside him to stay good, no matter how much I also want to eat it from its source.

I’ll have to be strong for the both of us.

“You’re right,” I say. “You should go. Tomorrow, we’ll search our rooms and we’ll be…better.”

He bends over, presses his forehead to the back of my hand. I allow myself one caress of his thick, silky hair and then lift my fingers away.

He exits with the heavy tread of a soldier, and I’m left with a loneliness so heavy and familiar that it feels like I’ve never known anything else in my life.

four

ISOLDE

“I think we met at a place much like this.”

I don’t turn as Mark joins me at the glass railing of the rooftop terrace. It’s the night of the engagement party, and Mark and I are waiting for the first of our guests. Behind us, servers are loading trays with flutes of champagne and canapés, and a quartet in the corner is warming up. Mark is wearing a tuxedo—Zegna, I think—the double-breasted jacket fitted tightly to his waist, the creases of the trousers razor-sharp. His shoes shine like an oil spill.

“You know we did,” I murmur.

“You look stunning, by the way.”

He had a late meeting today, and so we arrived here separately, not seeing each other until now. In fact, I’ve barely seen him since the day I came home to Manhattan. I wake early, in the dark, and pray until it’s time to go to the dojo, where I train until it’s time to go to the antiquities firm I use as a cover for my real job for the Church. Mark’s had his own work, his own meetings, and Tristan’s split his time between us, escorting me to the dojo and to the office and then home again.

At night, Tristan and I stay in our own beds, although when I finally shake off the nightmares and make myself breathe again, I can hear the brush of Tristan’s hand flat against my door, like it’s taking everything he’s got not to come in and help me.

At no point has Mark indicated that he knows about what Tristan and I did on the yacht. Even Sedge ignores me when he sees me.

But no matter how I rationalize it to myself, no matter how much I remind myself that I didn’t do anything wrong, Sedge knowing about Tristan and me feels dangerous. Omen-like, even.

And all I can do is wait and hope Sedge chooses silence.

“Thank you,” I say now. I’m in a periwinkle chiffon dress with a high slit and a bodice that drops in a daring, if narrow, plunge to my sternum. The collar of the dress comes high around my neck and then billows behind me like a scarf or a cape down to the floor. The whole effect is fluttering, traditionally feminine, perfect for a Laurence bride.

But the glimpses of skin, the collar, all speak to being Mark’s bride.

I glance over at him and wish I hadn’t. His dark-gold hair is styled back from his face, making him look more debonair than usual, and he’s freshly shaven, meaning there’s nothing hiding the carved jaw and cheekbones. If Tristan looks like a Victorian painting, then Mark looks like a statue of a god, the kind that stares vengefully up at whatever unlucky archaeologist happens to uncover it.

I look away before he can catch my gaze. The last thing I need are those blue eyes while I’m trying to stay steady. While I’m steeling myself for the job to come.

“Tonight will be threading a needle,” I say. The guest list for the party is a mix of society types, politicians, and businesspeople—and several of those guests are also members of Lyonesse. We’ll need to show a traditional power couple to one group of guests and a kinky one to the other.

Not to mention that my fiancé is someone who got stabbed in his own club less than two months ago. I can’t forget that Mark’s world is a perilous one…and that he is the one who makes it perilous.

He turns so that his back is to the wall and he’s facing the terrace. His hand is in his pocket now, and he’s leaning back with his elbow propped on the railing. “Yes. But you’re good at that, are you not? Pretending different things to different people?”

My pulse gives a heavy, cortisol-laced rush, but I betray nothing, breathing the same, blinking the same. He means our marriage. He doesn’t mean that I’ve been pretending not to be an assassin for the Catholic Church for the past three years. He doesn’t mean that I’ve been pretending to accept this marriage for my father’s sake rather than for God’s.

He doesn’t mean that I’ve been pretending I don’t know what his bodyguard’s mouth feels like.

“I’m out of practice with the Lyonesse version of myself,” I say instead of answering him directly.

“I’ll guide you if you need it,” he says. “You remember our signals?”

I nod. A thumb running over his fingertips for good. A thumb in the middle of his palm for watch me. A thumb and forefinger pressed together for stop.

“There is one more thing,” he says, straightening off the railing and coming to stand behind me. I look back at him as he brushes a length of chiffon from my shoulder. His hand leaves warmth behind it, electricity, even in the heat of this summer evening.

I hear everything in acute detail just then, like the world has become sharper. The honk and roar of traffic below, the clatter of the servers behind us. The breeze, ever present up here, ever split and sundered by glass and steel.

My pulse is surging again, lashing at the inside of my veins, and then Mark drops his mouth to my skin. To my shoulder, to be precise. And I only have a moment to marvel at the first touch of his lips since that day on my father’s desk before pain blares through me, my nerves sparking, my breath catching.

He bit me.

I feel the swipe of his tongue at the precise moment the pain decants itself into something else, something that makes me feel clean and dirty all at once. I want more of it. I want to be plunged into the place where pain turns into freedom, where pain becomes a refining fire and a cleansing water, a baptism unlike any other.

“For my Lyonesse guests. If they know what to look for,” he says. He runs a thumb over the bite, and I shiver. “You’re so lovely when bitten.”

He smooths the chiffon back over my shoulder. Just like my leg through the slit, the bite will only be visible when I move or when the breeze is just right.

I have so much practice finding my center. When I’m tired, when I’m hurting. When God feels so far away that it’s like losing my mother all over again. But right now, with the impression of Mark’s teeth stamped onto my skin, I’m struggling.

It isn’t until I turn to see Tristan at the far edge of the terrace, his stricken gaze on Mark and me, that I remember the Isolde I was just a few seconds ago.

“Ah,” says Mark, looking at the elevator. “There’s the first of our guests now.”

* * *

A few hours later, the sun is gone, the stars are out, and I’ve found my footing once again as Isolde Laurence. Despite the devil occasionally at my side—and his wicked bite on my shoulder—this is a familiar dance. The rich, the powerful, partaking in the fruits of capital while music plays and champagne circulates.