We’ve just been so intimate, his fingers in my cunt and his cock in my mouth, but for some reason the kiss on my hair reverberates through me like a church bell. It’s gentleness and desire all at once, and after what we just did together, that kind of warm affection seems more precious for all the abuse that came before it. Tears smart at my eyes again, this time for a very different reason than physical pain.
He picks up the brush, and it starts to pull it through my hair with even, soothing strokes. I only have a few tangles, and Ash works through them with care, so that I barely feel any tugging or stinging. “But of all the things I thought about,” he continues, “it was brushing your hair that I thought about the most. Just watching it glint in the light, hearing the brush move through it. There would be nights in Carpathia where we’d be out on patrol in the mountains, freezing in the darkest hours of the night when it was too dangerous to light a fire, and to pass the time, I’d imagine brushing your hair. Sometimes you were the age you would have been at the time—seventeen or eighteen—and other times I’d imagine you older. Pregnant and at my feet, with my ring on your finger.”
The image gives me a moment’s pause. In my loneliest hours, I have imagined something very close to his little fantasy, and hearing him admit it sends another church-bell-style shiver through me.
The brush pauses in my hair. “Does that make you uncomfortable?” Ash asks. “I know that I’m basically confessing to a history of obsession. And I don’t want that combined with my position as President to make you feel coerced or threatened.”
“I don’t feel that way at all,” I murmur, and the brush starts back through my hair again.
The brush is replaced by his fingers, running through the tresses over and over again, smoothing and separating and smoothing them again, like a hand moving through running water. It’s impossible to describe being touched like this when no man or woman has ever touched me this way before. When I was a child, I was touched with a parent’s or grandparent’s love, and when I was a teenager, there had been the inevitable tickles and snuggles with my best friend and cousin. But I’ve never been touched as a woman by another adult this way—with reverence and care. With sex still hovering in the air. It thrills me and unnerves me at the same time, because what if it ends? I’m not a woman of low self-esteem, but how can I possibly be worthy of the love of a man like Ash? What will happen if he realizes this?
“I know I probably haven’t earned this privilege,” Ash says after several long moments of stroking my hair, “and that it will mean that things will change, but I would love it if you spent the night with me. If you slept—and I mean that literally—in my bed with me.”
“How will things change?” I ask.
“There’s a chance the press will see you leave. There’s a chance a staffer will recognize you as you exit the Residence. There’s a chance I’ll be doodling your name on every bill I sign tomorrow.”
I can’t stifle my girlish grin at that, and I’m glad he can’t see my face. I take a minute to think. After what we shared, after learning about the emails—it hasn’t shrunk my fears about delving back into this life, but the fears are put in perspective. Ash is worth it. The Greer I used to be is worth it.
As my answer, I turn to face him. “We could do more than literally sleep, you know.”
A reproachful tap of the brush on my upper arm. “Don’t tempt me. I think we’ve committed enough sins for one night.”
Vulnerability must have flashed in my eyes, because before I know it, I’m being raised to my feet and kissed deeply. Ash’s tongue slides against my own, his lips firm, and his hands are sliding up my back to find my zipper. He tugs it down, and soon I’m standing in a pool of blue cotton, wearing nothing but my panties and bra. Ash pulls back with a smile and takes my hand to press against the front of his still-unbuckled pants.
“See?” he asks as I wrap my fingers around the thick erection I find there. “Trust me, Greer, there’s hardly anything I want more than to throw you onto my bed and rut into you until I’m too tired to move. But I’ve waited so long to have you here…” He reaches out and twines a strand of gold hair around his finger. “I want to take my time. I know that sounds horribly old-fashioned, but we only get to have these first times together once. I want to savor them.”
That touches me, strangely. I want to savor these times too, although the idea of waiting for them is almost unbearable. “I guess when you put it like that, it’s hard to argue with.”
“I’m hard to argue with,” he informs me. “That’s why I’m the President.”
He scoops me up into his arms with a sudden movement, carrying me to his bedroom, and I let out a stream of giggles like bubbles underwater. Each one seems to light up his face more and more until he’s practically glowing as he sets me down on the bed. “You have the most incredible laugh,” he says, dropping a kiss onto my waiting lips. He walks over to his dresser and retrieves a plain white T-shirt for me to put on. “Has anybody ever told you that?”
“Only you.”
He sighs at that, the idea of being an only or a first for me seeming to please something deep inside of him, and when our fingers brush as he hands me the T-shirt, I resist the urge to grab his tie and pull him to me so we can get started on some other firsts.
He returns to the dresser and removes his tie bar and cuff links, dropping them slowly into a dish inside his top drawer. His handsome face turns uncertain. “Greer…if this—if us spending the night together, is too much, I want you to tell me. I know I can be controlling, and sometimes I forget to ask people how they feel before I demand to have my way. It’s probably a good quality for a soldier or president, but it’s not necessarily a good one for a lover. That’s one of the reasons your emails had such an impact on me—even before I knew who I was and what I wanted, you seemed to know exactly what you wanted. You wanted to have done to you the kinds of things I wanted to do to you, and it made me feel like…maybe…” He pauses, does the thing where he rubs at his forehead with his thumb. It’s sweet, somehow, seeing this famous orator, the President famed for his certainty and surety, at a loss for words. For me.
I stand up, still in my bra and panties, clutching the shirt in my hand. I go to him and hand him the shirt, and then turn back to face the bed. He understands immediately, his strong hands unfastening my bra hook by book.
“I still want those things,” I tell him. I look at him over my shoulder. “I want you to do them to me. Do you remember what I asked you in my last email?”
He lets out the kind of breath that tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them.”
The bra is loose, and I turn to face him again, letting it fall from my shoulders and onto the floor. His eyes darken into the deepest green at the sight of my naked breasts. “That hasn’t changed,” I whisper. “If anything, it’s truer today than it was then. I promise to tell you everything—even when I think you won’t like what I have to say—but I want you to know that it’s not too much. I know it’s fast right now, but we’ve also had ten years leading up to this. And even though I told myself I was over you, past that time in my life, I think without knowing it that I’ve been waiting for you all along.” I brush my fingers along his jaw, and he closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m ready to stop waiting.”
He opens his eyes and smiles. “Me too. Arms up.”
I don’t miss the way his gaze sweeps hungrily over my breasts as I raise my arms, and I hope that he’ll change his mind about having sex tonight, but despite the erection bulging the front of his slacks, his self-control is ironclad. He pulls the T-shirt over my arms and head, and then gives me a little smack on the bottom. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. Brush your teeth and then get in the bed.”
I obey, walking through his dressing room and into the bathroom. As I brush my teeth, I can’t help but gaze around, tr
ying to wrangle the surreal feeling of brushing my teeth in the President’s bathroom. The bathroom is as modern as the dressing room is traditional—clean lines of black marble and white tile, clearly recently renovated. But the dressing room still retains its antique feeling, with an ornate fireplace in the corner and richly red drapes hanging around the windows. An unused vanity sits against the wall next to a tall window, its mirror spotless and its surface clean, except for one picture frame. I remember seeing pictures of First Ladies sitting in here, at this very vanity, and my chest feels hot. I never wanted this, never pictured myself living here, either as a president or the First Lady, yet for a moment, I see it. I see it and I don’t hate it. Not for the fame or power or even the beautiful old house, but for Ash. For Ash, I think I might be able to live here.
I wander a little closer, looking at the picture. It’s Ash with two women, both black, one old and one young. I recognize the young one right away—Kay Colchester, Ash’s foster sister and current Chief of Staff. The older woman must be Ash’s foster mother. I scan the picture for every single detail, as if it contains a biography of Ash’s life, but it all it shows me is love and warmth. All three of them grin at the camera as the sun shines on a tidy little bungalow behind them, and even though the media always painted Ash’s orphan backstory as nobly tragic, there’s nothing sad or tragic about this picture at all. Ash had a happy childhood. That touches me in a very deep place, so deep that I almost want to cry, but I don’t.
Instead, I turn abruptly from the vanity and go back into the bathroom to finish up. Ash joins me, and while I want to stay and watch him brush his teeth, he waves me away with a look that tells me he hasn’t forgotten that he gave me particular instructions. With a stifled pout, I go to the large four-poster bed and crawl under the soft, gray blankets.
When Ash enters, he’s only wearing his slacks, the white shirt and tie abandoned somewhere along the way. My mouth gapes a little at the sight; those powerful muscles shifting under all that warm skin, the lines of his hips tapering in from his wide shoulders, the V that disappears into the low waist of his tailored slacks. Smiling at the way I’m gawking, he unzips his pants and steps out of them, draping them over a low sofa, and stalks toward the bed.
I can’t believe this is happening. That this is real life right now. The President—the Ash of my dreams for ten years—wearing tight boxer briefs and walking toward me with a hungry look in his eyes. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
But no. He clicks off the light and slides into the bed, his iron arm snaking around my waist and then pulling me tight into him, my back to his chest. I let out a happy sigh at the feeling of his long, big body curled protectively around mine, and then I wriggle my hips suggestively when I feel the thick rod of his erection nestle against my ass. He gives me a light pinch. “Don’t be naughty,” he breathes in my ear. “I’ve had ten years to dream up punishments for you, and I can’t wait to try them out.”
“Neither can I.”
“I think you really mean that. And it pleases me more than you can know.” He pulls me a little tighter and kisses the back of my neck. “Have you ever slept in a bed with a man before? Just slept?”
As much as he loves knowing he’s my first at things, I can’t lie. I nod my head against the pillow. “Yes. The night I lost my virginity.”
He stiffens a little, and I can practically feel his jealousy roiling through him.
“You’re not…mad…that I’m not a virgin, are you?”
“Oh, Greer, of course not. How could I be when I was married to someone else? I begrudge you nothing. But him—whoever he was—I begrudge him fucking everything.”
There’s a kind of dark bitterness to his words that thrills me, with my craving to be possessed. But they also scare me. Because for some reason, just now, it hits in a real and concrete way.
Ash doesn’t know I slept with Embry.
Ash doesn’t know that the man he wants to begrudge everything is also his best friend.
The quiet worry I pushed aside this afternoon comes back, no longer quiet but shrill and keening. I no longer feel as if Ash is holding me by the neck, forcing me to face some reckless, unknowable fate, but that I am holding him. That we are both on the precipice of some terrible and beautiful and inevitable destiny, and that if I don’t stop us, we’ll both go tumbling headlong into its welcoming teeth.
I shift, suddenly restless, at odds with my own thoughts, and Ash is there with a kiss to my shoulder. “Keep still for me, angel,” he murmurs. “Let me hold you for a few minutes longer.”
How can I deny him—or myself—that? I still my limbs and relax back into him, deciding to muffle my thoughts about Embry until tomorrow. My body folds into Ash’s as if it was made for it.
“I have to tell you that I’m still not a great sleeper,” he says after a couple of quiet minutes, and I remember noticing the smudges under his eyes this afternoon.
“I’ve heard meditation helps,” I say, a little dryly.
“You know, I’ve heard that too,” he says, just as dryly.
“I shared a bed with my cousin for years, and she kicks and grunts in her sleep. I can handle you.”
He laughs a little laugh. “I wish I could get to the point where I can sleep long enough to talk in my sleep. But probably I’ll end up going over to the office to work at some point in the night. I just don’t want you to feel abandoned or worried if you wake up and don’t find me next to you.”
I rub my ass against his cock again. “I’ve heard of something other than meditation that puts men to sleep.”
That earns me a real pinch, and I let out a little yelp.
“Go to sleep, Greer,” comes his voice in the dark.
“Yes, Sir.”
And I do.
11
Five Years Ago
When I was sixteen, I lied by omission twice. Both lies landed with cats-paw softness, light and silent, and for many years I thought that both were harmless.
I thought wrong.
The first lie was to Ash. I wrote to him that the girls at my school were obsessed with him, obsessed with the fact that Abilene and I had been at the same party mere weeks before his heroic act launched him into fame. I didn’t tell him that Abilene herself was the most obsessed with this fact.
And the second lie was to Abilene.
It wasn’t abnormal for me to keep things to myself for a few days before I confided in her, and so I didn’t tell her about Ash and the kiss for a week after it happened. And then the story broke about the village of Caledonia. The news showed a formal picture of Ash in his uniform, and his face was strong and noble on the screen in our dorm common room.
Abilene, who had refused to speak to me since the night of my birthday, forgot her anger and turned to me with her dark blue eyes alight. “I remember him!” she exclaimed. “He was at the party in Chelsea!”
Which is when I should have said, I know, I made out with him in the library.
What I said instead was, “I remember seeing him there too.”
And then Abilene went and told every girl she could find about our brush with the famous.
As the news and Internet outlets began churning out detailed profiles of Ash, Abilene’s fascination only grew. She printed out his military photo and carried it in her binder. She obsessively memorized every fact about his life: his absent parents, his early life in a foster home, becoming valedictorian at his high school. She started telling anyone who would listen that she would marry him some day. She joined groups online dedicated to Colchester fan-worship. And I knew, with all the perception that Grandpa Leo had drilled into me, that the truth would wound her instantly and fracture whatever peace we’d managed to restore after the night of my birthday.
Anyway, it had only been a kiss, and as the weeks wore on and my emails to Ash went unanswered, I decided that a kiss wasn’t worth destroying our friendship over. In the heat of her adoration for the newly famous war hero, she had once again welco
med me into her confidence, and things were finally back to how they’d been before the party. I couldn’t bear to give that up. Not again.
And aside from our repaired trust, I also assumed she would get over Ash as quickly as she got over most things. Abilene wasn’t flighty by any means, but she was passionate, and one passion could easily drive out another. After a few months she would meet a new boy or start a new sport and she would forget all about Maxen Colchester.
How wrong I was.
The years passed. I turned seventeen and stopped writing to Ash, although my chest never stopped squeezing when I heard his name. I turned eighteen and graduated from Cadbury Academy. Abilene left for college back home, I applied to Cambridge and got in. I turned nineteen and picked a major that definitely wasn’t politics or business, much to Grandpa Leo’s disappointment. I turned twenty, glanced around at my barebones flat with its beat-up teakettle and air mattress, and bought a plane ticket home for the summer.
I’d been home frequently to visit Grandpa, but something about that summer felt different. Maybe it was the ten solid weeks in America looming ahead of me or maybe it was the fact that Grandpa was traveling for work and I had the Manhattan penthouse mostly to myself, but I felt displaced and lonely. So when Grandpa invited Abilene and me out to Chicago to stay with him while he worked on his latest green energy acquisition, I jumped at the chance, finding a flight the very next day.
My plane landed at the same time as Abilene’s, and when we met each other, we fairly collided into an embrace, jumping up and down.
“My God,” Abilene said, pulling back, “you finally figured out how to do your own makeup.”
“Nice to see you too,” I teased.
She smiled, her eyes flicking from my hair to my bright pink dress, but there was a new shadow in her smile.
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