Salt Kiss – Episode 10
“Sir?” Dinah’s confidence faltered beneath Mark’s fury. Her hand left Tristan immediately, though she still held the leash. “Sorry, Mr. Trevena. He said he didn’t have an owner.”
Tristan tried to gather his thoughts. The drug still burned through his system, but Mark’s arrival had restored enough clarity for humiliation to set in. He was shirtless, restrained, and collared in front of the very man whose world he had condemned.
“Then he’s a lying little brat,” Mark said. His eyes remained on Tristan, making the rebuke feel like a touch. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle him on my own.”
Dinah released the leash. Whatever authority she held over Tristan disappeared the moment Mark claimed the room. The hierarchy of the Lyonesse was suddenly unmistakable: Mark did not need to raise his voice for others to yield.
“Make sure you tell every Dom in the club,” Mark instructed. He stepped beside Tristan and closed one hand around the lead Dinah had surrendered. “This one belongs to me.”
“Yes, sir.” Dinah left without protest, closing the door behind her. Tristan waited until they were alone before anger broke through the haze. Mark’s intervention might have protected him, but the public declaration felt like another violation of a boundary Tristan had stated clearly.
“I don’t belong to you.” He pulled against the restraints, forcing the words past unsteady breathing. The leash in Mark’s hand made his denial feel dangerously incomplete.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mark demanded. Controlled anger carried more force than shouting would have. His gaze moved over the restraints, checking Tristan even while he scolded him.
“I told you to blend in, not get tied up by the first Dom who shows you a little attention.” Mark’s jaw tightened. The criticism was professional on its surface, but nothing about his expression looked detached.
“Why not?” Tristan challenged. Defiance was easier than admitting how frightened he was by his own response. “I was having a good time.”
“You were drugged.” Mark delivered the fact without ambiguity. His anger shifted toward the situation itself, though Tristan could not tell whether Dinah had known what the cherries contained or merely exploited their effect.
The explanation should have relieved him. Instead, Tristan remembered that some part of his surrender had felt real. He reached for the sharpest weapon available. “You’re just jealous that I submitted for her and I wouldn’t for you.”
Mark went very still. The silence stretched between them, charged with everything neither had admitted since the moment he first ordered Tristan to kneel. Then Mark moved closer, bringing his face within inches of Tristan’s.
“You’d like it if I was, wouldn’t you?” His voice dropped, intimate and merciless. He did not confirm the jealousy, but the intensity of his gaze answered in ways words did not.
Tristan had stared down the barrel of a gun. He had stood inside chaos and forced fear into a distant corner until the mission was finished. Yet bound beneath Mark Trevena’s attention, he felt himself losing the disciplined control that had once defined him.
How was Mark doing this to him? The drug could explain the heat, but not the way Tristan’s pulse reacted specifically to that voice, that gaze, and the hand holding his leash. He resented Mark for seeing the conflict so clearly.
“Get me down now,” Tristan ordered. He pulled against the restraints again, desperate to put physical distance between himself and the truth Mark was drawing out of him. “I’m not drugged.”
“Fine.” Mark’s gaze dropped with deliberate slowness before returning to Tristan’s face. “Then why is your heartbeat racing? Why are you so fucking hard right now?” The questions destroyed every excuse Tristan had left. Still bound and burning beneath Mark’s scrutiny, he could no longer pretend that the drug was the only thing making him want to surrender.