For an eerie moment, him standing over me and me on my back covered in his orgasm, I have the strangest fear that he’s going to leave me here. Walk away, make me pick myself up off the ground and limp into the bedroom by myself.
But his anger isn’t spent, not completely. He leans down, and then I’m being hoisted over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, carried into our bedroom and unceremoniously dumped on the bed. He tosses a handkerchief at me.
“Wipe your face and spread your legs.”
“I—” But before I can get anything else out, he’s up on the bed and his mouth is on my pussy, hot and open.
My back bows off the comforter, the sensation after coming so close to climax and being denied almost too much. The orgasm rushes back at full force, and Ash shows no mercy or patience with his mouth, sucking and flicking and tonguing me with all the anger he used while fucking me.
“Come, goddammit,” he hisses. “And you know what to say when you do.”
I come, hard and twistingly long, my feet rubbing against the blanket and my hands fisting uselessly at the pillows above me, and my heart in my throat. I come so hard that everything fades away except the heat of my husband’s mouth.
“Thank you, Sir,” I pant, as the climax begins to recede and I can breathe again. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
He peers up at me from between my legs, his eyelashes long enough to cast shadows in the lamplight, and for a moment, his face is wide open, heartbreakingly open. And then he’s on top of me, kissing my mouth, claiming it like he claimed everything else tonight.
I taste my pussy in his kiss, and I kiss him back even harder, licking his tongue and his lips, which makes him groan. “You belong to me,” he says into my mouth. “You’re mine. My wife. My own.”
“Yes,” I breathe back. “Yes.”
He squeezes one of my breasts hard. “I need you again.”
I can feel his need against my thigh and I obediently spread my legs. This time he kicks his pants off all the way, but the bed and the kissing don’t make it any less urgent, any less brutal. He fucks me until I come again, he fucks me until sweat rolls down his chest and his lungs heave for air and finally, at last, something seems to let go of him. He comes with the force of a man returning back to himself, with the force of an exorcism. This time he empties himself inside me with a jagged breath that seems drawn from his very soul.
I’m almost sad when his green eyes light on mine and I see them filled with concern and love. He flicks on a brighter light and stands up, inspecting my cunt, examining the welts on my ass. Then he asks, “How do you feel right now?”
It’s standard check-in talk, the kind of question he’s asked me countless times before, but we both know this time is different, that we edged close to a cliff we’d always kept well in the distance.
“Delirious,” I say. “And a little shaken.”
“I pushed you hard tonight,” he says. “I count on you being honest with me. I count on you stopping me if it’s too much.”
I shake my head before he even stops talking. “It wasn’t. I’m not ashamed to safe out or ask you to pull back. But Ash, I—” I stare up into his strong face, noticing the way the stubble shadows his cheeks this late into the day, the tousled waves of his hair. The glint of his wedding ring on his hand. “—your anger is more frightening than a riding crop.”
He sits next to me on the bed and I sit up too, drawing my knees up to my chest. His eyebrows pull together. “Because you’re worried I’ll go too far in my anger?”
My chin quivers and I have to look away. “Because it hurts my heart.”
He makes a noise, and then I’m being drawn into his arms. “I’m so sorry, little princess. I should have told you what—I—I needed you. I needed what you do for me.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “So you weren’t angry with me.”
It’s his stillness that tells me. His silence. I pull back and find him watching me carefully. “Ash?” I say, my voice trembling.
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Let’s take a shower. And then there’s something I need to show you.”
The thing that drove Ash upstairs to punish my body is a three-minute video. It’s night vision, all greenish-hued and glow-eyed, but it’s clear enough. My blond hair is like white fire in the video, the silver duct tape flashing in the barely there light.
I had guessed there were cameras—why hadn’t I thought of that when I begged Embry to fuck me? Why hadn’t I guessed that Melwas would keep trying to destroy my life?
“You know I never held this against you or Embry,” Ash says apologetically, as if this video is all his fault. He closes the laptop on the coffee table in the living room and pulls me close to his body on the sofa. “But when I saw it, when Merlin told me, I was furious. At Melwas mostly. But also at you and Embry for being so careless. And Greer, if I’m being honest, there was a difference between simply knowing about it and then having to watch it.”
Suddenly, I need space from him. I stand up and cross my arms, walking over to the window. Panic is a fist clenched in my chest, but my voice comes out calm. “I’m sure there is a difference.”
“Greer, this isn’t just about us now.”
I press my fingers into my eyes, wishing I could drive out the shame with the pressure, squeeze it out of my head. “I know. Merlin has seen.”
“Not just Merlin. Not even close. It’s on the Internet. All the major outlets have seen it. Merlin, Kay, Trieste, Linette and Embry will be here tomorrow at seven for us to figure out a media defense.”
“So everyone will know I let Embry fuck me, but they don’t know about the kidnapping and nothing about that video suggests that it took place in Carpathia. And the video is date-stamped, so it looks like I fucked him while I was on my honeymoon with you.”
“You did fuck him, Greer. Be honest about that at least.”
That stings. His bitterness stings like acid. “Screw you,” I whisper.
He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says. “God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just…”
The distance between us suddenly feels vast, and the things I feel about myself I’ve never felt before, not like this. With Ash, I always felt safe in loving two men, whole and healthy and happy. And for the first time, I wonder if he thinks I’m a slut. I wonder if he thinks I’m a whore, and not in the playful bedroom talk way, in the way men think it about women they don’t respect.
I wonder if I think it about myself.
After all, I did fuck his best friend. I did it after my wedding. I enjoyed it. I’d do it again. And now the whole world knows.
Ash looks up at me, his face miserable. “Greer.”
“It’s my fault, my mess. I’ll deal with it.” My voice is as cold as my stomach is hot with pain, and I turn to wheel into the bedroom. I can’t be around him right now.
“Greer, stop. Come here.”
I don’t. I won’t. If he’s going to look at me like that, then I can’t even bear to look at him. If he’s going to judge me as harshly as I’m judging myself right now, then we should just get divorced, because—
He snaps his fingers.
My back stiffens at the sound, kinetic memory forcing me into better posture even before I turn around to look at him.
His face is still miserable, but the command and the control are back in those summer lake eyes, and suddenly I realize divorce was never on the table for him. He came upstairs to remind us both that he would never stop loving me and I would never stop belonging to him. He snapped his fingers to show me he still wants me at his feet.
He watches me attentively as I walk over and sink down onto my knees in front of him. I hear him let out a long breath as I settle back onto my heels and bow my head.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and I know he’s not apologizing for the scene or even his anger, but for not talking to me beforehand about it. For not communicating.
My hair is still wet fr
om our shower, but he plays with it anyway, stroking it and twining small pieces of it around his fingers. I can’t help the instinct to buck and nuzzle against his hand like a cat, and he makes a pleased sound when I do.
A couple minutes pass like this, my hot feelings beginning to cool in this familiar posture, his hands familiar and comforting in my hair.
“If I could have shielded you from this, I would have,” he says softly. “The things I promised you on our wedding day, I meant with all my heart. I take protecting you seriously.”
“I’m humiliated,” I admit in a barely there voice. “That people will know—”
“People will think they know. We will tell them otherwise. Videos like this are manifestly easy to fake, and that’s what we will tell the world.”
“But it’s a lie and you hate lying and oh my God—” my stomach flips over as I remember, and I feel violently ill. “—the re-election campaign. What if this ruins everything? What if I ruined everything for you? I couldn’t live with myself!”
“Shh.” Ash’s fingers are deep in my hair now, rubbing my scalp and massaging me. “I’ll do anything to protect you, angel, including lie. Yes, it may impact the campaign—I’m afraid no matter how convincingly we lie, the stain of suspicion will never be scrubbed out, not all the way at least. People will be watching you and Embry very closely from here on out, waiting for any sign that it’s all true. They’re wolves that way.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself to take deep breaths to quash back the panic. Of course that’s what Ash meant when he said that it wasn’t just about us any longer. It was about the campaign.
“I won’t allow you to blame yourself for this. You were kidnapped, toyed with by Melwas, and he’s continuing to toy with you. You, Embry and I have already sorted out how we feel about what happened in that bed.”
I look up at him, thinking about the welts on my ass, his bitter words. “Have we?”
His hand tightens in my hair. “As much as possible, little princess. It hurt to watch. Not only was I jealous watching the two of you fuck without me, but it hurt to remember how much I failed you. How I couldn’t be the one to save you or comfort you. But that wasn’t what made me angry, in the end.”
“What was it, then? The re-election?”
“Not even that. It was that once again, I couldn’t protect you. We should have guessed Melwas had something like this, we should have been ready. But now you’re going to be exposed to slander and vilification because of my failure. You don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve you.”
“It’s not your fault, Ash. You can’t think that. Embry and I are the ones who—well, and Melwas. It’s everybody’s fault but yours.”
He leans down and kisses the top of my head but doesn’t answer. And after several moments, he easily scoops me off the floor and carries me to bed, where he fucks me well into the night.
22
Embry
before
I didn’t wake up that morning thinking my life would change. In fact, I woke up hung over and alone, feeling horse-kicked right in the ribs because my heart hurt so much.
Ash had proposed to Jenny the night before. Had proposed to her in a beautiful Chicago restaurant with Merlin and me and her parents there. Got down to one knee and said all the usual words about love and promise and fidelity. Jenny cried. Her mother cried. Her father shook Ash’s hand. There were pictures.
I left right after, walking to my hotel alone.
I felt acutely aware that I’d never seen the ring he proposed to me with two years before. He’d never opened the box. That was strange, wasn’t it? Didn’t you normally open the box to show the ring to your lover? He did with Jenny, the pretty diamonds flashing in the light from the chandelier overhead. She was charmingly captivated by it, and then charmingly even more captivated with Ash when he started talking.
Maybe he never opened my box because he knew deep down that I’d say no.
But it wasn’t the ring that made me order up an entire bottle of Hendricks to my room, it really wasn’t even the proposal itself.
No, it was the look on his face.
Open and happy. Adoring. He loved Jenny—like, genuinely loved her. He wanted to marry her. Not to spite me or to please Merlin, but because she made him happy in her own uncomplicated, straightforward way.
I used to tell myself that Colchester was an extraordinary man with extraordinary needs. That the karmic balance of him saving lives and winning wars was his dark hours with me. That I gave him something no one else could, that the things I let him do to me under the cover of night enabled him to wake up the next morning and be a hero for everyone else.
But now I knew that was a lie. He was still a hero. He was still a hero having straight vanilla sex with a lawyer. He was still a hero in a relationship where a blowjob was a birthday present, not something he could take by force whenever he damn well pleased.
So where did that leave me?
What did that make me?
Extraneous? Damaged? Sick?
And couldn’t he have at least acted like it hurt a little? To propose to Jenny?
Because it hurt me a lot. And maybe that was the point. Maybe Ash couldn’t deny himself just a little taste of that old sadism to make me watch this, make me see how happy he was with someone else.
But I told him I’d stay with him, I thought bitterly as I got in the shower. My mouth still tasted like limes. I told him I still wanted to fuck even though I couldn’t marry him.
I remembered his face when I’d said that, as he’d slowly gotten to his feet at the top of my favorite valley, the ring box still in his hand.
“But I don’t want to just fuck you,” he’d said in a hollow voice. “I want to love you.”
“I’ll give you everything of myself,” I’d said, pleading. “Just don’t ask me to give that. Please.”
And I’d seen it in his face. The rupture. The hurt. The fury.
“Would you rather have it be all or nothing? Really?” I’d demanded. “Isn’t it better to have something?”
He hadn’t answered, and so I’d answered for myself, out of my own ruptured fury and hurt. “Fine,” I’d said. “I thought you meant you’d take me any way you could have me, but apparently that’s changed. So maybe it’s better if we don’t have each other at all.” And I’d left him there clutching the unopened ring box.
It was a testament to his faithful nature that he’d still sought my friendship afterwards, that he still trusted me with his life in combat, that he still kept me close. A lesser man than him would have pushed me away, but he didn’t, and I was grateful for it because I still craved him. I still craved the smell of his skin when he accidentally got too close, hungered at the way sweat slid down the cords of his neck during the hot summer days. I was starved for him and willing to chase after scraps.
But that had to stop now. It had been two years since that day in the valley and he was engaged now. I had to move on; as my Aunt Nimue told her son Lyr often enough when he got in trouble, “This is your dishwater, now you have to soak in it.” I’d made the choice to put Ash’s future before any future we had as a couple, and now I had to live with that choice.
I had a text from Ash when I finished my shower. I’m doing lunch with Merlin—want to come?
I manifestly did not. It still hurt too much to be around Ash for one thing, and for another, I resented Merlin almost more than any human on earth. Even though this had all been my decision, my choice, and I owned it as such, a juvenile part of me still blamed it all on Merlin. On that day in the train car and all his talk of sacrifice.
Besides, I had to go to his birthday party that night and that would be more than enough of him for me.
I spent the rest of the day napping and fussing and finishing off the Hendricks, and when it came time to go to Merlin’s party, I was tipsy and resigned. I’d see Ash and Jenny, Merlin would see me seeing them, and it would all be terrible, but there would probably be an open bar and I wasn
’t above prostituting my emotions if there’d be alcohol present. But I never made it to the party.
Life had other plans.
“Fuck,” the girl who’d just run into me muttered.
“My favorite word,” I said automatically, but also amusedly. But my amusement faded as she looked up and I saw her face. Her fucking gorgeous face.
Waves upon waves of waist-length hair in hues of gold and platinum. Soft, pretty lips. An arresting beauty mark on her cheek. A small cleft in her chin. Huge silver eyes limned with lashes longer and darker than Ash’s and that were now pooling with tears.
She was someone who didn’t cry often, I saw that immediately. People who cry often are good at hiding it or at least betray a certain amount of comfort with it, but she was neither hiding it nor was she comfortable. She was miserable with it, her shoulders hunched up defensively under her leather jacket, her chest juddering with jerky, unhappy breaths.
“Pardon,” she managed thickly and pushed past me.
Fascinated, I turned to watch her go and my shoe knocked against something. Her phone. She must have dropped it when she ran into me.
Fate at work, I decided. I wasn’t about to miss the chance to render aid to a beautiful girl like that. So I grabbed the phone off the floor and decided to go find out what could make such a pretty girl so sad.
When I was twenty-nine, I met a princess.
Her heart was broken, and so was mine. She had a raspberry dress, I had bright blue pants and deck shoes. She had tears and I had a hand to wipe them away. She had something she wanted to give me and I had something I wanted to take.
Maybe I knew it was love the moment she smiled through her tears at me on a Chicago curb. Or maybe it was in the Ferris wheel, kneeling at her feet as she pressed her hands to my face. Or maybe it was the moment I claimed a place in her body no other person had.
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