Modern Fairy Tale: Twelve Books of Breathtaking Romance

by Kristen Proby

  I spread my legs, and he was right there, the huge head of him pushing against my entrance. It was so big, so wide, so much more than my fingers had ever been, and I cried out in real pain. I wanted this, I knew I did, but my body was at war with itself. My nerve endings shrieked in pain at the same time something much deeper and much more unknowable whispered to me to take it, to move into him, to be penetrated.

  “Jesus, Greer,” Embry muttered, shoving in another forceful inch. Sweat gleamed on his shoulders and chest, and his lips trembled. “You’re too tight. I can’t—”

  Another shove, another inch. I cried out again, tears spilling from my eyes.

  “I’m a virgin,” I blurted.

  He froze.

  “I don’t want to stop,” I said hurriedly. “I just—I felt like you should know.”

  “You felt like I should know,” Embry echoed, his blue eyes searching my face.

  Ash would have stopped, checked in with me. He would have asked if I really wanted this, to lose my virginity to him, in some anonymous hotel room. It was because Ash would have wanted so badly to be cruel to me, to take my virginity in the most crude and rough way possible, he would have forced himself to be circumspect until he knew it was what I really wanted. Then and only then, would he have let the beast out, the real monster.

  Embry was not Ash.

  His eyebrows drew together, his lips parted with an exhale so strong I knew that whatever control he’d had was finished, and then the ridged muscles of his flat stomach bunched together and he thrust all the way home.

  A sound tore from my throat—raw, real pain—but Embry was heedless above me, fucking into me like a man possessed. It felt like I was being wedged in two, like I was being split apart, and the invasion was brutal and absolute. I scratched at his back and at his ass, and one moment I scratched in anger and pain, the next in desperation to have him deeper and harder. I didn’t know my own body in that moment—my own body didn’t know itself—that there could be so much pain from such a natural act and yet so much desire. Not that there was pleasure right away, I don’t mean that, but that there was something deeper than both the pleasure and the pain, a deep, deep itch that was finally and blissfully being scratched.

  “You’re with me,” he grunted in my ear as he continued to force his way in and out of my virgin cunt. “You’re not with him. You’re giving this to me.”

  His words made me moan. They were possessive and dark and rude and fetishizing and I didn’t care. It turned me on to hear and see him so aroused by breaking my hymen, and it piled more fuel onto my jealous, bleeding heart. I was giving this to someone else. Ash would never have it, and I let myself imagine that made me satisfied. That it covered up the pain I felt tonight at seeing him with Jenny.

  Embry rose up on his knees, keeping his tip lodged in me, and his fingers dug hard into my hips as he swept his gaze over the place where we joined. I looked too, and it gave me some kind of strange delight to see the blood wet and dark on my thighs, smeared across his thighs and hips, glistening in streaks on the condom.

  “Yeah,” Embry said to himself. “That’s it. All mine.”

  He slid back inside me again, this time laying his whole body over mine. Our naked chests pressed together, sweaty and slick, our bloody thighs sliding easily past each other’s, and he wrapped his arms tight around me. His face was in my neck, my chin tucked in his shoulder, and all of his weight was on me. It didn’t feel heavy at all, or at least it felt like the right kind of heavy, especially when he began grinding in and out of me with short, rolling thrusts.

  And that’s when the deep, deep itch finally flared into true pleasure; the drag of his large helmet against my sensitive front wall, the friction at my clit from the base of his cock, the biological urge to be stretched and filled—all of it winding my body like a clock, whirring tighter and tighter.

  “You’re going to come for me, aren’t you?” Embry said in my ear. “You’re going to come on my dick. And when you do, when you’re shuddering underneath me with blood on your thighs, it’s my name you say, got it?”

  I was in no place to disagree. All I could feel was the hard male body above me, all I could think about was the hard maleness inside me, and there was no room between our sweaty, eager bodies for Ash. In this moment, it was only Embry, Embry, Embry, and as he pressed down even harder against my clit, I dug my fingernails into his back and held on for dear life as my body finally wound itself so tight that it broke apart.

  “Embry,” I chanted, “Embry, Embry,” as my pussy clutched at him, pulsing in tight, hot, painful waves. The thick length inside of me made all the difference, shifting the locus of my pleasure to deep inside my core, and I found myself bucking against him instinctively, trying to drive him deeper into the seizing, clenching heart of my orgasm.

  And all the while he was muttering into my neck, words I couldn’t catch but that sounded raw and urgent, and at the same time that he caught my lips in a scorching kiss, he drove himself deeper than ever before and held himself there, grunting into my mouth as he pulsed his own pleasure deep inside me. It went on and on, for both of us, his release so strong that I could feel the throb of his dick as he filled the condom with his orgasm, and I had a surreal moment of regret, wishing that there hadn’t been a condom, wishing that it would have been bare hard flesh buried deep into the soft. That there would have been the uncivilized mingling of my virgin blood with his seed.

  Embry lingered a minute more, dropping kisses on my forehead and cheeks and lips as my body gradually stopped quivering, kisses that were as tender as his fucking was rough, and then he circled the condom with his fingers and pulled out. He was gentle and easy with it, but it still stung, and I let out a wounded hiss.

  “I’m sorry,” he said distantly, climbing off the bed, and the sudden absence of his warmth and the reservation in his voice made me shiver. I felt extremely vulnerable, like my skin had been peeled away, like my chest had been cracked open and my heart was beating in the open air. My throat tightened, those tears from hours ago threatening to return.

  Did I just make a gigantic mistake?

  He got rid of the condom, and then came back and stood over me at the edge of the bed in the near-darkness. I had a sudden moment of fear—real, blaring fear—that he was about to ask me if I wanted a cab or an Uber. That he was about to hand me my clothes and wish me a safe ride home. But he didn’t do either of those things. He leaned down and lifted me effortlessly into his arms and carried me into the brightly lit bathroom. I was deposited on the cold granite counter while he turned on the shower, me blinking owlishly in the light, and he stepped in between my legs while he waited for the water to warm up.

  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, also quietly.

  He looked down at my thighs, where lines of dried blood had crusted into thin smears. There wasn’t that much blood, actually, it had felt like so much more at the time, but seeing it now without the heady sex hormones and in the bright light of a strange hotel bathroom, it seemed so much more barbaric. It looked violent and regrettable, even though it was neither of those things.

  Embry ran a long finger up my leg, stopping well short of my pussy. “I’m sorry,” he said, and there was nothing distant about his apology this time. His blue eyes were filled with guilt and his mouth was twisted with a bitter self-recrimination. “I was…I don’t know what I was. You deserved better for your first time than me.”

  I caught his hand and brought it to my lips, kissing his knuckles gently. He let out a low exhale and his sleepy cock gave a stiffening jerk.

  “It was amazing,” I said. It wasn’t my job to assure him or massage away whatever he was feeling right now, but I did want to be honest about myself and how I felt. “The way I felt when I came—the way it felt to have someone else inside me—I loved it. But I also feel really flayed open right now. Like I want to cry, but I don’t think I’m sad necessarily. Just aware. Or maybe unaw
are. I don’t know what the right word is. Happy or sad feel too far apart from this.”

  He leaned forward, resting his forehead against mine. “It was too rough, Greer. First times are supposed to be tender. Slow.”

  I shook my head against his, squeezing his hand. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

  The truth must have been clear in my voice, because he straightened up and looked at me warily as he helped me wriggle out of the dress that was still bunched around my waist. “You’re a dangerous girl.”

  “Dangerous for whom?”

  “Me,” he muttered, helping me down from the counter and leading me into the shower, but I caught a crooked flash of a smile when he turned away from me to close the glass shower door. My heart fluttered, and I realized he was the dangerous one. I would fall in love if I wasn’t careful.

  “I meant what I said,” I told him, closing the distance between us. “I wouldn’t do anything differently. I’m glad it was you. I’m glad you did it the way you did.”

  “And what is the way I take care of you now?” he asked. “Tell me what you need. Anything. After what you gave me, after what you let me take from you, anything.”

  That vulnerable feeling again, that heart beating in the open air. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

  The way his face looked after I said that, as if I’d broken his heart. “Jesus, Greer. You can stay with me for the rest of my life.” His hands found my ass, my waist, my hair, his face in an expression of combined awe and compassion. “Do you really think I’d kick you out into the night? Do you think that this evening meant so little to me that as soon as I came inside you, I’d want you gone?” He shook his head in disbelief. “And I’m over here wondering how much time I can steal away from you this week, wondering when it’s okay for me to ask for your number, meet your family, visit you at college. Yes, of course you can spend the night. I want you in my arms until it’s time to feed you breakfast in bed, and then I want you in my arms some more.”

  He leaned his head down to brush his nose against mine, and I melted. “You are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured with a smile. “I’m not stupid enough to let you leave my sight.”

  * * *

  I suppose now it’s easy enough to guess the end of this particular story. Embry and I fooled around in the shower until I was a wild woman in his arms, and then he took me back to bed, where he made love to me as slowly and softly as the first time was rough and hard. It still stung and hurt, the tears came again, but the pleasure found me faster this time, and soon I was coming apart under his expert touch, shuddering in quiet release. He came inside me, and then we cleaned up and fell asleep, me wrapped tightly in his arms. We woke up once more and I was too sore for sex, but Embry slid down my body and tongued me to a vicious, exhausted orgasm, and when I reached for him afterwards, he pushed my hand away and knelt up over my stomach. Within six or seven strokes, he was shooting a painful, long release onto my belly, and the sight of him climaxing over me was so beautiful I wanted to memorize it forever.

  What a man.

  What a heartbroken, funny, charming, moody man.

  And the eight-inch dick and muscled stomach and war hero past didn’t hurt at all.

  I’d texted Abilene from the Ferris wheel to tell her I was out with a guy and planning to spend the night at his hotel—which I gave her the name and the address for, a girl can’t be too careful—but when I woke up early the next morning, Embry’s naked hairy legs entwined with mine and his warm breath ruffling the hair at the back of my neck, I figured I should go home and show my face to Grandpa and Abilene and find a fresh change of clothes. But after that…well, Embry had mentioned he’d be in Chicago for another week, and my pussy blushed at the thought of all that time together. Funny how the wound created by Ash didn’t hurt any less, didn’t feel any less jagged or deep, but somehow there was this new space for joy and excitement carved out in my chest. For the first time in so long, I looked forward to the future. Had someone to make each minute feel exotic and newly washed, simply because his memory was stamped upon it.

  I extricated myself from Embry’s arms, biting my lip to still my huge smile as I looked down at him. He slept like a child, full lips parted ever so slightly, covers all kicked up and tangled around his long, muscular legs. I wondered if I would get to see him again like this, morning after morning after morning, my pussy aching from his attention and my heart thudding with nervous happiness.

  God, I hoped so.

  I left him a quick note on the hotel stationary—my number and hotel name and room number and promised I was just leaving to reassure my relatives that I wasn’t bobbing facedown in the river. I told him I wanted to see him today as soon as he woke up, and I’d be waiting for his call.

  I signed my name, and added:

  ps. I wouldn’t do any of it differently. Any of it. I can’t wait to see you again.

  But I didn’t see him again.

  He didn’t call, didn’t come to my hotel, didn’t write. Didn’t try to contact me or find me. I spent the week curled up in bed while Abilene brought me ice cream and counseled me through what she thought was a normal post-one-night-stand heartbreak. My grandfather flew back to Manhattan with me and tried to cheer me up by taking me to my favorite restaurants, my favorite Broadway shows, and for him I tried to fake smiles and happiness, but the moment I boarded the plane to London eight weeks later, I let the mask fall from my face and shatter at my feet.

  For the first time, I considered that Merlin’s admonition against kissing was meant for my own well-being. Perhaps he knew, with whatever foresight he seemed to possess, that I was simply doomed to heartbreak. That no matter how isolated I tried to make myself, the men I would invariably trust with my body and my heart would treat those gifts carelessly.

  Well, I wouldn’t make that same mistake again, I vowed. No more kisses, no more men. No more trusting and giving and hoping. No more of that girl who craved rough and wrong and reckless, no more wanting to crawl or be held by the neck and dominated. That Greer was over, through, suffocated and dead and buried. There would be books and libraries and manuscripts—things that I could trust—and I would build a life all by myself, without anyone else, without the chance of getting used up and brokenhearted again.

  I never stopped waiting though. For Embry to call. For Embry to show up with his crooked smile and colorful pants and the best excuse for not coming after me that week in Chicago.

  He never did.

  Except, of course, five years later when he strolled into my office at Georgetown and asked to take me to dinner.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Present

  I wake up expecting Ash to be long gone, for the bed to be cold and empty next to me, but that’s not what happens. Instead, I wake up nestled into a warm chest, a heavy arm draped over my side. For a moment, I forget where I am—when I am—and squint at the tall windows at the edge of the room, expecting to see the looming outline of Chicago skyscrapers. But no, it’s the weakening fall sunshine overlooking the South Lawn, and I’m not in a hotel room with Embry, I’m in the White House. In bed with the President.

  I roll over to look at him, taking care not to wake him up. He stays fast asleep, his breathing deep and even, his face relaxed and vulnerable. I stroke the thick black hair brushing against his forehead and finally indulge my urge from ten years ago and trace his mouth with my fingertips. Against my belly, I feel his sleepy erection, impressive and thick even at half-mast.

  My fingertips on his face wake him.

  His eyes blink open, finding my face immediately. “Greer,” he says, his voice sleep-rough and warm.

  I snuggle into him, kissing the warm space below his collarbone. “Good morning, Mr. President,” I say.

  “I fell asleep,” he says, sounding surprised. “I fell asleep with you.”

  “Wasn’t that the idea?”

  He kisses the top of my head. “The idea was for you to sleep in my b
ed. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since my first tour of duty.”

  I pull back to look up at his face. The thought sends a pleasant warmth to my chest, that I was able to give him something, that he had something with me that he hasn’t had in fourteen years. “Maybe I’m your sleeping lucky charm.”

  “In that case,” he says with a smile and a sudden move so that he’s on top of me, “I might have to keep you in my bed forever.”

  He pins me with his arms and kisses me, and my sighs turn into moans as he rocks his hips against me.

  “I want to stay in your bed forever,” I breathe. “Please.”

  And with the pert rap of awful timing, a knock sounds at the door, followed by Belvedere’s exasperated voice. “Mr. President, please. I’ve called every phone you own, and I more than anyone am happy you’re still in bed, but you have a meeting in your office in thirty minutes. It’s time to peel yourself away from Ms. Galloway and get in the shower.”

  I burst into giggles, and Ash grins down at me. “I should fire him,” he says, leaning down to bite my earlobe.

  I run my hands up the wide, muscled lines of his back, trailing my nails back down to his ass, regrettably covered up by his boxer briefs. “You should go,” I whisper.

  He nods, giving my earlobe a final nibble and then rolling off me. He goes to the door, opening it to an impatient but amused Belvedere. “I’m up, I’m up,” he says. “I’ll be down in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Sure,” drawls Belvedere. “You won’t have any temptation to linger while there’s a warm, sleepy blonde in your bed. Maybe I should stay.”

  “Goodbye,” Ash says firmly, closing the door on him and turning back to face me.

  I’m already up, searching for my clothes to get dressed and leave, but Ash walks over and pulls the dress out of my hands, tossing it on the bed. “Shower. Now.”

  My body tingles at his words, and I scramble to obey, shedding his T-shirt and my panties as I go. I step into the glass-walled shower just as he enters the bathroom, stripping off his boxer briefs as he does, and I have to force myself to breathe. Even though I had his cock in my mouth last night, this is the first time I’m confronted with his body completely naked, and there’s almost too much to take in all at once. Those vast expanses of warm skin, the irresistible curves of muscles and delectable lines of tendons, those angled lines of muscle coming down from his hips to his penis. And that part of him is mesmerizing all on its own, thick and proud even at rest, the crown wide and flared.