“I still think it’s unfair,” I maintain. “You did the best you could.”
“You’ve been in politics long enough to know that sometimes our best isn’t good enough.”
I turn so that I’m straddling the stump as well, scooting forward so that I can slide my legs over Ash’s legs and wrap them around his waist. I put my arms around him and press my face against his neck. “It’s good enough for me,” I say against his skin. “You are good enough for me. Always, always, always.”
He pulls back to look at me, brow furrowed. “I’m telling you that I fucked my sister and almost killed her, and you’re comforting me? I thought you’d want to run away. I told you this so that you could…escape.”
I press my hand against his jaw, my thumb touching his lower lip. It’s so soft and firm all at once, just like Ash. Strength and beauty and determination combined into one heady mix. “Is this why you were so unhappy earlier? Because you thought telling me about Morgan would make me leave you?”
He nods miserably. “I’d deserve it, Greer. And I couldn’t let us move forward without you knowing the worst of me. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Even if it wasn’t fair, I’d still stay. I’d endure anything to stay. But I don’t see this as the worst of you. These sins are the sins of a good man, not the sins of a cursed one.”
“I feel cursed sometimes.” His lips move against my thumb. “Only when I’m with you and Embry do I feel some sort of sanity. Like there can be good things in life for me, even after all the evil I’ve done.”
“Oh, Ash.” I look up into his eyes. “War may be evil, but you’re not, and if it took killing all those people to bring you here to me, then I won’t allow you to torment yourself with these things any longer. I don’t care what you’ve done, I care what you do, and that you’re here with me now.”
He sucks in a breath and searches my face. I see the faint sheen of unshed tears in his eyes, hear the swallow of his throat. “Do you really mean that?” he whispers.
“Yes.” It comes out clear, honest.
The truth of my answer hits him like a bullet to a Kevlar vest. Blunt force, ragged exhale, fractured man. He collapses into me, his arms pulling me so close that I can feel him even through the heavy wool of our coats, and he buries his face into my hair. “What did I do to deserve you?” he mumbles.
I’ll always love the other versions of Ash—the cool-headed politician, the beloved hero-President, the fierce Dominant—but this version? This broken-down, vulnerable man? There isn’t a word strong enough. There’s this vibrating in my bones, in my blood, somewhere on the cellular level, a vibration like every single one of my atoms wants to fly away and fuse to his atoms. This is more than wanting to bleed or bruise or kneel, this is more than listening to the same speech over and over, sacrificing sleep and time to go over policies and strategies. This is wanting to come apart for him, literally. This is wanting to burrow so deeply inside of him that he has to carry me with him forever. This is being flayed open, bleeding, whipped, scourged, just wounds on top of wounds on top of wounds, each wound a whisper of promise.
you can own me
because now I know I own you
give me more
and I’ll give you everything
And that’s when I find the courage to finally say it. “I love you.”
“God, those words from your mouth,” he says with feeling, moving his mouth from my hair to my lips. “I don’t deserve it, but fuck, I’ll take it.”
He kisses me, that trembling honesty heating into a molten urgency. “I love you,” he breathes into my mouth. “Surely you already know that. You must know.”
“I do now,” I pant in between kisses, cursing all the leather and wool that keeps our bodies from pressing together the way I need. But the moment I start rocking my hips against his, he straightens up and smiles.
“I have something for you,” he says, biting his lip like a shy child.
“A Christmas present?”
“Yes. I wanted to wait until after I told you about Morgan to give it to you…I didn’t want you to think I was trying to manipulate your reaction.”
I roll my eyes at his incessant chivalry. “You are so circumspect for a man who spends his nights spanking me until I can’t breathe.”
“That’s precisely why I’m circumspect,” he says and slides off the stump, and I immediately miss his warmth. Then I realize what he’s doing, and my entire body flushes with hot, happy disbelief.
He’s kneeling.
In two feet of snow, he’s kneeling.
Behind him, the stream is a twisted silver wire, the trees are leafless sentinels, the snow is a never-ending cloak of glittering fleece. There’s color high in his cheeks—from the cold or emotion, I don’t know—and he’s still boyishly chewing on his lip, nervous and excited. Between his leather-clad fingers is a ring, platinum and diamond, glittering in the fading light.
“I wanted to do this later tonight, but I can’t wait,” he says. “Greer Galloway, will you marry me?”
My heart thuds painfully against my chest, like it’s trying to punch its way out, and I feel my molecules leaving my body, blowing away like leaves before a storm to seek out Ash. Our breath, our life, it’s already tangled, and finally, finally, finally I understand what people mean when they talk about destiny. What they mean when they talk about meant to be. Why the fairy tales didn’t waste time explaining how the prince and the princess fell in love, because all along it was as natural and inevitable as breathing.
I join him in the snow, ignoring the cold, wet bite of it through my jeans. I cup the hand holding the ring with both of my own, and then drop kisses along the exposed line of flesh between his sleeve and his glove. I lift my head, dizzy with happiness.
“Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Embry’s nowhere to be seen when we get back to the lodge, and after we shuck our coats and unwind our scarves, Ash puts a finger to my lips. I nod to show that I understand, and then he’s leading me by the hand through the lodge, back to our bedroom. It feels like sneaking, like we’re cheating on Embry somehow by creeping so quietly back to our room, but I have no idea why I feel like this. Ash and I have every right to go to bed together, and maybe hiding it from Embry is the kindest thing to do…given the circumstances.
Oh God.
The circumstances.
I have to tell Ash about Embry and me now. After his confession about Morgan, after his firm insistence that we move forward without secrets, it would be shamefully dishonest of me not to tell him. But if I’m truthful with myself, I recognize that I’m afraid. Afraid Ash will be angry…and maybe I’m a little afraid that he won’t be angry enough. I’m afraid Embry will feel betrayed that I told our secret without asking him. I’m afraid that if I admit what happened in Chicago, Ash will suspect I still have feelings for Embry, and that will be the end of any real trust between us. Because really, how can the three of us ever trust each other once the truth is laid bare?
Trust without truth isn’t actually trust, I remind myself. And if there’s any time to rectify that, it’s right now. With a ring on my finger and Ash’s confessions still echoing in my thoughts.
But when I walk into our room and Ash shuts the door behind me, he presses his finger to my lips again.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the first time we met,” he speaks, pushing close to me. His erection presses into my belly. “I’ve been fantasizing about it for ten years.”
I take a short, stilted breath beneath his finger. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
His other hand drops down to find mine, to play idly with the new ring on my finger. “It’s not going to be easy, being my wife. There will be so much scrutiny and so much sacrifice, and I’ll forever be asking you to step between public and private roles—sometimes with no transition or warning. But right now…right now, it’s just the two of us. Right now those things are far away. And right now, I’m going to make y
ou completely mine.”
I look up into his eyes. “Is it…are we…” I feel like I can’t catch my breath.
He grins down at me. “Yes, my impatient angel. I’m not going to torture us any longer.”
I drop to my knees. Not because he’s going to fuck me—although that’s part of it too—but because I love him so much. Because I’m so grateful. Because he’s Ash and I’m Greer, and when we’re alone, I belong on my knees.
It’s as simple and as complicated as that.
He strokes my hair, tangled and messy from the hat I wore outside, and allows me to rub my cheek against his thigh. “My beautiful angel,” he murmurs down at me. “My little princess. How have I lived so long without you?”
I don’t know, God, I don’t know, but now that we’re together, I don’t know how I lived this long either. Survived, yes. But living—how did that ever happen before I was able to sit at Ash’s feet?
Reluctantly I pull back, bowing my head and placing my palms flat on my thighs. He lets out a long breath, and his hands leave my hair. And then he kneels down in front of me, his hands covering mine, his head ducking so he can meet my eyes.
“Greer, I want to give you what you want. This first time, I want you to let me serve you, and I want you to let me take care of you. There’s no need for our first time to be…well. You know.”
I’m shaking my head before he even finishes. So fucking chivalrous. So fucking wary of himself. It’s both commendable and painfully exasperating—especially now, with my nipples pulled into aching beads and my pussy already swelling with the thought of Ash inside of me. Part of me distantly recognizes that this is a first for him too—he’s been married and he’s dominated in a club setting, but this is the first time he’s ever mingled love with kink, and he wants to make sure that I get both in equal balance.
But still.
“I want what you want. You know that you aren’t forcing me, right? You know that I’m not merely playing along? I choose this. I choose you. Every time I kneel, I know that I can stand back up, and every time you push me, I know I can say your name and make it all stop. And when you do things to me, I have just as much power over them as if I were doing them myself, because I can stop you at any time. I’m choosing what I want, and what I want is you how you are.”
He’s peering deep into my eyes now, and I hope he can see the truth there, just like he always can. A tiny flume of anger courses through me, and I give it passage through my words.
“You want to know what else I want? I want what I dreamed about ten years ago too. I want to be dragged to the edge of shame and fear and darkness, I want to not recognize myself, and I want you to be the glorious, demanding beast that you are. You want to take care of me? Then fucking own me. Wreck me. Tear me up and sew me back together the way that only you know how.”
His lips crash into mine, a kiss not meant to convey love, but a kind of deep gratitude, a sort of hot joy. “You perfect thing,” he says huskily, his voice already melting into his Other Voice, the one that haunts my sweetest dreams. “You unimaginably perfect thing.”
And with the ease and grace that comes with strength, he rises fluidly to his feet. “Take off my shoes.”
Relief, happiness, rightness, it all twines around the arousal, making it sharper and brighter.
I do as he asks, trying to hide my happy smile behind my curtain of hair as I tug at the laces, but he sees the smile anyway.
“Are you a happy angel?” he asks. “Serving me?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I’m happy when you serve me. It pleases me to see you on your knees.” He resumes his idle caresses of my hair as I carefully lever one shoe off and start on the other. After I finish with that, he bids me to stand up and he starts undressing me, his fingers sliding between fabric and skin and lingering there before he peels the clothes from my body, his eyes hot on every new inch exposed. He strips me like you’d strip old wallpaper or faded carpet to get to the antique house underneath, utilitarian and anticipatory and disdainful and reverent all at the same time. And soon I’m completely naked, shivering in the cold room.
His fingers brush against my nipples and I squeak, my body starving for real stimulation.
He gives a chuckle. “Eager, are we?”
I don’t dare answer. Every time I play this game with Ash, it feels like the first time, like I’m peeling back a new layer of myself with every humiliation I endure, revealing a woman pink-skinned and raw and glowing underneath.
“Hands on the footboard of the bed. Legs spread.”
I obey, swallowing. I know what’s coming next, and sure enough I feel a large hand between my shoulder blades. It runs a gentle, almost exploratory, path down my spine, and then rubs circles on my ass and flanks.
“Breathe, angel.”
Crack.
The first one is never that bad. No, the first one is fun in a way, like being scared at a haunted house or jumping into a cold pool on a hot day. Startling, bracing, sending sensation sparking down your legs.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
“Breathe,” my master repeats.
I breathe in.
Crack, crack, crack.
I breathe out.
“Again.”
I breathe again.
Ash deliberately disrupts the rhythm, making sure I relax before he strikes, or that he strikes several times in quick succession so that my body has no choice but to yield to his dominance. Pain shimmers behind my sternum like a living entity, pulling at my lungs and stomach, and my hands shake as they try to grip the footboard. My whole body shakes, and there’s heat glowing in my eyes. I’ll be crying soon. Very soon.
My feet scrabble at the floor as Ash continues his assault, a leg involuntarily kicking up and trying to cover my ass with my foot. Ash pushes it back down with a noise that can only be described as evil delight, and spanks me all the harder for my resistance. Crack goes his hand, and there’s the heavy panting of his breath, and the pain in my chest like a familiar houseguest, rifling through my feelings like a pantry, tossing out fear and anger and humiliation and leaving behind a deep mindlessness that feels almost like bliss. There’s only the pain and Ash, and everything else shrinks to a pinpoint and vanishes.
Crack, crack, crack.
And then Ash is folding his body over top of mine, his jeans scratching painfully at my raw ass, his thick cock hard as steel against my flesh. He fists my hair and yanks my head back so he can kiss my cheeks.
No…so he can kiss the tears on my cheeks. The visible and undeniable proof of my submission.
In a wrenching instant, his body is gone over mine, and I actually moan a little at the loss. Only to moan again as I feel his mouth somewhere other than my cheek, somewhere much, much better.
It starts with a kiss on my pussy, an almost chaste one, if such a thing can exist. Then it blossoms into wet, warm caresses, his tongue tracing up from my clit to my entrance, firm on one stroke, flat and wide on the next. The pain where I was spanked flares around the hot point of his mouth like the corona of a sun, like the halo around a saint, the golden thing that highlights the beauty within its circle.
He rubs my back as he tongues me, pets my thighs as if I were a horse that needed gentling, and God help me, I love it. I buck into his touch, practically purring as he runs his warm hands over my abused flesh, and occasionally I hear him chuckle to himself as I get especially eager. The pain subsides, but the bliss stays, and all that nibbling and licking and sucking is stirring a twisting pressure in the cradle of my pelvis. I’m going to come soon, the delicious kind of orgasm that can only happen after pain and pain-triggered endorphins, but then something unexpected happens. Ash’s hands come to rest on my ass, and slowly, ever so slowly, they spread my cheeks apart so that I have no secrets from him. I’m completely exposed.
The twisting pressure freezes mid-twist, discomfort and embarrassment managing to gouge their way past the bliss.
He silences me with one lick. One brush of his tongue against my darkest secret. The sensation is like nothing I’ve ever felt, too shallow, too slick, too dirty, too everything, and I squirm frantically away from him. A hundred what ifs run through my mind, only to be chased away by a fingertip and Ash’s stern voice.
“This is mine, little princess. My hole. Yes?”
The fingertip is probing. Pushing. Gradually and almost lazily breaching my most elemental barrier.
His other hand comes up to slap my ass, right on top of the spots still raw from the spanking. My leg kicks up and he impatiently pushes it back down. “I asked you a question. Is this mine?”
Oh, the invasion. How small it must look and yet how big it feels. “Yes, Sir,” I answer, my voice cracking on the last word.
“That’s right,” he says arrogantly. “This one and this one”—a finger enters my pussy—“and your mouth. Every hole belongs to me, doesn’t it?”
“Y-yes, Sir.”
The finger finally tunnels past the first ring of muscle, sinking up to a knuckle. I sputter and pant and kick my legs, and all I get for my pains are more spanks.
“And this ass—this is mine to bite or to spank. And the hole there, that’s mine to lick. Mine to play with. Mine to fuck. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” I gasp.
“Mine to show off, mine to display. I could order you to display yourself in the middle of the Oval Office, to pull down whatever pretty pencil skirt you’re wearing and have you bend over for inspection, like a prize animal at a show. Would you like that?”
The thought is so degrading, so awful, that of course it triggers a wave of submissive lust.
Modern Fairy Tale: Twelve Books of Breathtaking Romance Page 43