American King (New Camelot #3)

by Sierra Simone

  That all sounds so grim, and I don’t mean it to be, because I wasn’t depressed or lonely. I had friends, I had fun, I didn’t feel the lack of passion like a weight or a burden. It was only at night, my homework done and my eyes tired, when my mind wandered back to Jareth’s words, back to the fear me and love me and do as I say. I wanted to own, I wanted to possess, I wanted to bruise willing flesh with rough fingers and push someone down to their knees and have them like it.

  I wanted someone to look up at me with their whole world in their eyes.

  In my human sexuality class, we learned the term aromantic, and so I thought I’d figured it out. I was an aromantic bisexual, and I could be content with my life, with friendships and meaning beyond romance, and it would be fine. Surely it was telling that I hadn’t fallen in love by the time I’d finished college? Surely it was a sign that the only thing that made my heart beat faster, that made me think of things like vows and forever, involved kneeling and arched throats and the most sinful kinds of discipline? That wasn’t romance—not at all, it was just what I had to think about in order to climax when I fucked my fist in the shower.

  The problem was that the two things were—and still are—hopelessly tangled together for me: my capacity for love and my craving for power. And those in turn were, and are, tangled with my bisexuality. Did I fool around with more boys than girls in college because they liked the rougher stuff, even if it still wasn’t as rough or cruel as I wanted? Did I date more girls in high school because it was so easy to indulge in small exercises of power? Picking the restaurant? Driving the car? Paying the check? All of it was rooted in culture, in how society told me the ways boys should be with boys and the ways boys should be with girls. Yet so much of it was rooted inside me as well, in this tangle I couldn’t unravel, and wouldn’t attempt to unravel at the expense of a lover’s comfort or safety. It might seem laughable for a devout Catholic to indulge so guiltlessly in debauchery but balk at power exchange—but I’ve always believed the heart of Christian sexual ethics was consent and respect. And so with every lover, I poured all of my energy into those two things. Negotiating consent. Engaging respectfully. Even my hottest, dirtiest encounters started with questions and answers.

  Is this okay?

  God, yes.

  Can I see how wet you are?

  Fuck, please.

  Can I rub you where you’re hard?

  Hurry, please, hurry.

  And every encounter ended with kisses and a glass of water and help cleaning up if necessary. For the baby Dom in me, the after part was my favorite, because that’s when my lovers were as I liked them best: grateful and pliant and so very, very sweet.

  But because I took consent seriously, it meant I rarely allowed my darker side out to play. Never, actually.

  Never until Prague.

  The final piece grew inside of me at the same time as all of this, something just as insistent and hardy and impervious to outside damage as was my bisexuality, and it was this old-fashioned idea of honor. A sense that there was an objective standard of goodness and honesty and morality; that justice was necessary, that fairness was important, that safety shouldn’t be a privilege assigned by skin color or gender. I say old-fashioned not because I believe justice and safety have ever been unpopular, but because I believed in it with such a naïve, almost Victorian, zeal. I believed that honor was available for the earning so long as you did the right things, said the right things, believed the right things. That was how you became honorable. That was when you could feel noble.

  It was an idea that died in the valleys of Carpathia.

  But that’s not important now. What’s important is that I couldn’t escape this idea that it wouldn’t be honorable to share a bed with someone if I couldn’t do it honestly. If I had to pretend to be something else, to want different things, if I had to close my eyes and imagine more in order to come. I recognize now how heteronormative this belief was—even with bisexual desire—centering meaning on penetration, when really sex is a spectrum of activities that far exceeds the narrow boundaries of intercourse. But back then, I believed there was a difference between the grinding, sweaty encounters I’d had and taking someone to bed to intentionally join my body to theirs. And however mistaken that belief was, it braided itself into me until I didn’t think about it any longer, I didn’t question it. I wanted my first time to be with all the things I’d dreamed of, and if I couldn’t have it the way I wanted, then I would rather not have it at all.

  Which is how I ended up a virgin in a war zone.

  Anyway, I’m telling you all of this, about Labyrinth and Catholicism and boys and honor, so that you understand what a precise constellation of unmet desire I had become. So that you can see how I’d grown around this empty space, keeping something clear and untouched without even really knowing why. I was holding a door open to a room I didn’t know I had, keeping a hidden garden free of weeds, sheltering a hollow meant for someone or something I couldn’t yet see.

  And then came Embry Moore.

  And then came Greer Galloway.

  How does a man end up loving two people, you ask? This is how.

  Six

  Ash

  now

  I’m waiting for Greer when she walks into the Residence.

  I shouldn’t be, honestly. I should be back in the West Wing, I should be with Merlin and Kay and Trieste, I should be meeting and working and planning, but I’m not. Surely I’m allowed a day? A couple of hours? To come to grips with this?

  But even as I think it, I feel irritated at myself. No, I’m not allowed those things, I’ve never allowed myself those things. I didn’t allow myself sick days or rest days during the war, and I certainly didn’t give myself breaks during the campaign—the only exception being the two weeks before Jenny died and the day of her funeral.

  There’s something about denying myself that’s satisfying in a deep, purging sort of way. I’m not masochistic: I don’t enjoy the pain for the pain’s sake, and furthermore, I don’t need pain to help me access vulnerability or emotion or connection. But the pain is proof of my discipline, and the flare of misery is evidence of my self-control. When I marched through Carpathia burning with fever, when I shook hands on the campaign trail while my wife’s grave was still a pile of fresh dirt…every moment that I persevered, every second that I chose strength over weakness, was testimony to a truth I couldn’t live without: that I was worthy of the life I’d built. Worthy of the trust of others. I had earned it, and I was strong enough to keep it.

  Until last night, I thought being strong was enough. I thought caging all my weaknesses—anger and fear and vulnerability—meant I was a better person for it, but I see that now for what it really is, which is the pride of a man addicted to control. Perhaps I’m not boastful, perhaps I’m humble in every other respect, but when it comes to discipline and sacrifice, I’ve taken great pride indeed.

  Fix this, goes the thrumming headache creeping behind my eyes. Fix this, goes my heartbeat, beating wildly still for Embry and his blue eyes. Fix this, goes my pulse, a staccato rhythm, reminding me that I’m alive and strong and that it’s my job to keep my kingdom together.

  But it’s not as simple as laying down my pride, you see. If it were, Embry would be back in my arms right now. The problem is that I still know I’m right. War isn’t a game, it’s not a declaration of love or proof of devotion. When it is unnecessary, it is the worst sin a man can commit because it’s not just death, it’s the grossest and most careless kind of waste. It’s rubble and fire and rape and lives forever upturned, and that’s if the people are lucky—and they are so very rarely lucky.

  My little prince thrilled at battle, even craved it sometimes, and so he’ll never understand my reluctance. He’ll never understand the ghosts that follow me to this day, the women and children and young men who deserved better. I hated the way I felt after a fight—like a live wire, exposed and sparking into the empty air, and I hated the animal I became after, undisciplin
ed and savage with lust. The opposite of death is desire, I’d read once in a play, and it was as if I needed to make up for every death at my hands with untrammeled excesses of depravity. If Embry remembers nothing else from the war, surely he remembers that. All the times I fucked him like I wanted to tear him limb from limb with my teeth and fingers, like I wanted to conquer his body like it was the next outpost. Those weren’t fucks of victory and exhilaration. They were fucks of pure, mindless despair.

  All this to say that I’m here in the Residence, somewhere between surrendering my pride and protecting what needs to be done, and when Greer opens the door to our bedroom, I do the only thing I can.

  I go and I kneel at her feet.

  “Ash?” she asks softly, running her fingers through my hair. I hear and feel her surprise, her gentle pleasure. Never have I done this, never have I wanted or needed to, but right now, it is undeniably right. With my arms wrapping tight around her legs and my face pressed against the sweet curve of her hip and her hand on my head like a priestess conferring a blessing.

  I lift my face to hers, and I think for one crystalline, perfect moment that I could live like this forever. Drinking in her silver eyes and long, dark lashes with gold at the very tips, as if her eyelashes remembered too late that they were supposed to be blond. No one is beautiful like Greer, no one else has that same combination of regal poise and secret knowledge and fragility and joy. My young bride, with her pretty pink mouth and her yielding strength, the kind of bride I’ve craved since I was old enough to crave. And her hair tumbling over her shoulders in a tousled mess of light and dark gold…I revise my earlier wish. I could live forever like this if only I had her near and her hair unbound.

  I close my eyes and remind myself not to be selfish. What I want is comfort, her strength and vulnerability laid bare to me, but it would be cruel to demand it after she’s come straight from her dead grandfather’s house. Instead of biting her thigh through her dress like I want to, I hug her tighter, still gazing up at her face.

  “How are you?” I ask. “How can I help?”

  Her fingers twirl idly through my hair as she gives me a sad smile. It cracks my heart open to see, that mouth curling in such a melancholy way. When I saw her last October after all those years apart, what struck me most was how sad she seemed. How lonely. Her delicate face arranged in an expression of pained reserve, as if she’d kill herself before she sought comfort, and I got the sense then that she hadn’t smiled or laughed in years, that pretty mouth going long untouched by kisses or possessive fingertips. Nothing gave me greater delight than surprising her, than petting and pleasing her and spoiling her with every display of tender affection that I could dream up. Whenever she laughed, I felt at that moment that I could die satisfied, having made her safe and happy and loved enough to feel joy.

  “I’m okay,” she answers after a moment of thought. “I’m sad and it hurts knowing he’s gone, but…there’s something clarifying about death. It’s like all the extra stuff gets swept away—anger and hurt and sharp words—and all that’s left behind is what matters. And what matters is you and Embry.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been so hard on him, when I know better than anyone how cruel Abilene can be.”

  My chest tightens at the mention of Embry, but I don’t speak yet. I let her finish.

  She gives me another smile, less sad this time, more rueful. “I’m sorry for keeping us apart these last few weeks. I’ve been selfish and angry and I don’t even know what point it served now. Punishing Embry only punished us, and God knows you least of all deserve to be punished. What was it you said to me on our wedding day? Living without the pain means living without each other? I choose the pain, Ash, and I always will. I choose the three of us, no matter what.”

  “Greer,” I say, muffling my voice with her body as I hold her even tighter. I finally give into that dark urge and I bite her thigh, just a little nip, just enough to make her whimper and tighten her fingers in my hair. I love her so fucking much, and I want to give her everything—every single thing she wants and needs and wishes for, and all the things she doesn’t know to wish for yet—but she wants the one thing it’s no longer in my power to give. The three of us.

  Once again, the weight of my missteps and my pride and what I know to be right and honorable hangs on me. It feels like a sword too heavy to wield, like a crown too heavy to wear. I can’t carry all of this. I can’t lose my heart to save my soul. But I must. I have to. Even though, for once, I take no pride in the pain it will cause me.

  I stand up and kiss my wife. “Are you really okay?” I ask her, cradling her face in my hands. “Tell me if you aren’t.”

  My tone is authoritative, and her body responds like a flower to the sun, tilting and opening to me. Despite everything, I don’t bother to suppress the tendril of satisfaction that curls through me at her response. She’s always been like this. Responsive. Open. Frost on a window that you can melt and mar with a single fingertip.

  She peers up at me, sliding her hands up my chest. Out of habit I take her wrists in my hands and fold her arms so that they are behind her back, and she gives a small shiver of delight. Suddenly my barely dulled need from earlier comes roaring back, and I’m hard; when I’ve got her like this, trapped and panting and wary, I feel ten fucking feet tall.

  “What’s your safe word?” I ask, wrapping one hand around her forearms so that I can use the other to take her chin between my fingers.

  “Maxen,” she breathes with fear and with trust and with the whole fucking world in her eyes. She’s too good to be true. Too perfect to be real.

  I’m hers. Forever.

  But then I feel Embry’s absence like a living thing, a cold sucking of air and wind where his body should be right now; he should be shaking with need right next to us, his eyes as wild and skittish as an unbroken stallion’s, just waiting for the right hand to coax him into obedience.

  I was that hand once.

  And that thought brings me away from the edge of my need, just enough to remember who I am. A snarled tangle of kink and honor, and honorable kink means consent. Unconditional respect. I owe it to Greer to tell her everything now, because it affects her as much as it affects me, and she deserves to know. She deserves everything I can give, in fact, and this simple courtesy is the least of what I owe her.

  “I want to play,” I say, loosening my grip on her arms and releasing her chin. “But perhaps we shouldn’t right now.”

  She rises up on the balls of her feet and nuzzles her face against my neck, rubbing and making noises like a needy little cat. “Please, Mr. President,” she begs, and oh, she begs so beautifully like this.

  “Greedy thing,” I scold her with a reluctant smile. I can’t resist her, and yet I love her too much not to. “We need to talk, angel.”

  “Can’t we talk after? Sir?” She’s practically purring now, her fingers seeking out my chest and my belt and my shirt buttons without my express permission, and all I want on this earth right now is to yank her over my lap, flip up her skirt, and spank her for her sauciness.

  But I can’t yet.

  With a quick move, I scoop her up and over my shoulder, her ass up in the air and her legs kicking fruitlessly as I carry her over to the chair by the window and set her on the floor. I snap my fingers, and she drops to her knees so gracefully and gratefully, a relieved smile on her downturned face.

  I sit in the chair in front of her kneeling form. “You may look at me,” I inform her, and she does immediately with spots of color beginning to bloom on her cheeks. She’s excited, and she wants this, and if the world were normal, I’d already be guiding her head onto my waiting cock.

  The world’s not normal though, and she doesn’t even know it yet, which is why I can’t. But there’s more to this way of life than fucking and spanking, and if we both crave the comfort of the exchange, then there is another way.

  “It pleases me to have you like this,” I tell her. “It comforts me.”

  In response
, she leans forward and rests her head against my knee with a contented little noise, and I allow her the informality. I enjoy it, this contact, her contentment and trust, the way she acts like there’s no place she’d rather be than kneeling at my feet and resting against me. I run a hand through her magic hair, watching the sunlight glint through the strands. She could be anywhere right now—giving lectures at an academic conference or meeting with members of her grandfather’s party or doing the endless publicity and charity expected of a First Lady—but for right now, she’s chosen to lay all that power and acclaim aside and kneel. It’s heady, what that can do to a man.

  “I would prefer to talk like this,” I say, still playing with her hair. “And I think you would too—” I feel her nod against my thigh, but I keep going “—But I want you to know that you can stand up at any time and talk to me as an equal. You are also permitted to speak freely and ask questions.”

  This sends the first arrow of suspicion through her, and she lifts her head. “Sir?”

  I trace the line of her lower lip with my thumb. “Embry left me today.”

  I see the moment the words register, the second they transform into terrible, terrible meaning. “What?” she whispers.

  Her lips are so soft, and the place where they blush from skin into plump rosiness is unbearably silky. “He visited last night actually, to tell me in person. But he called with his official resignation this morning. He’s leaving so he can join the Republican Party and run against me in the next election.”