“I’m up here,” Ash says amusedly as he steps into the shower with me, walking past the knobs without turning the water on.
I drag my eyes up from his cock, barely making it to his face for all the distracting ridges of muscle and flat, brown nipples and wide, powerful shoulders. “You’re beautiful,” I tell him honestly. “I want to stare at you forever.”
“We don’t have forever,” Ash says. “We have about ten minutes. And those ten minutes are going to be for me.”
“For you?” I ask to clarify. I don’t understand, even though I can’t think of anything he’d do that I would object to. And I have my safe word if he does.
“Turn around,” he orders. “Hands on the wall, legs spread. This is the first time I get to see you naked too, don’t forget, and I’m not going to miss a thing.”
With a happy shiver racing down my spine, I do as he asks, trying not to feel self-conscious as I feel his hands on my ass, squeezing and separating so that the most basic parts of me are exposed for his viewing. He squats down behind me, to look at my cunt more closely. “Perfect,” he says in a whisper, kissing me there. I moan and shove my hips back, wanting more, and he stands up with a laugh and slaps my ass. “Turn around, angel.”
I turn and he catches my wrists in his strong hands, moving both above my head. “Keep those there,” he says as he lets go and takes a step back to look at me. The posture has my chest jutting forward, my breasts pert and high, and my stomach stretched taut, and his gorgeous cock thickens and stirs. He doesn’t take it in his hand though, and neither does he touch me. He simply takes in every shadow and curve of my body, every inch, every secret and public place.
Finally, when my nipples are hard under his gaze and my cunt wet and swollen from wanting him, he comes close to me. He fingers the ends of my hair, idly, almost like a horse buyer does with a horse’s mane. “This is all mine now, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I pant.
“This hair and these tits and that pussy—all mine.”
“Yes, Ash, all yours. Please—”
He gives me a stern look. “When I want you to beg, I’ll tell you.”
My cunt is so tight it hurts. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good,” he nods, looking back down at my hair between his fingertips. “On your knees.”
I kneel, the cold tile hard on my knees, but I ignore it, enraptured by the man in front of me. His hands are running through my hair, smoothing and stroking it, and then it’s only his left hand while his right slowly fists his cock. Slowly moves from the root to the crown, as surely and deliberately as Ash does anything. I’m lit on fire by the sight of that hand, strong and big and scarred. There is the faintest dusting of dark hair on the back, only near the wrist, hair a shade lighter than the black hair leading like an arrow down from his navel. Everything about him—legs shoulder-width apart, muscles in his arm flexing as he strokes himself, that insatiable dick ridged with veins—is so male and rough and greedy.
“That hair,” he says, wrapping it tighter around his hand. I begin to feel the tug on my scalp, but I don’t mind. I want my hair pulled, I want my eyes to water, and more than anything I want to see Ash come.
He wastes no time, his hand working hard and fast, his eyes searing trails from my face to my tits to my bare knees on the tile and finally landing on the skein of blond hair circling his hand. He lets out a low exhale, the furrowed lines of his stomach tensing, and then those dark eyelashes flutter as he comes, aiming not for my tits or my face, but for the hair he’s so obsessed with. I watch in hungry fascination as he erupts, thick and hot and long, my gold hair now seeded with the white pearls of his climax.
I could stay like this forever, I think dizzily. On my knees, marked by him, beside him.
But we don’t have forever. I have to fight off a serrated bite of frustration as I remember how limited his time is and will be for years to come. There will be no days where I’m his only focus. No long lazy mornings in bed, no time spent without an eye on the clock. I’ll never be anything more than a ten-minute mistress when he’s married to a nation.
I reach for his legs and bury my face in his hip, trying to hide my thoughts, and he lets me for a moment, stroking my head and allowing me to nuzzle against him. My wet desire has receded in the wake of this desperate need to be close to him, to reassure myself that he’s real, that right now, in this moment, he is mine to press against and I am his to use and pet as he sees fit.
After a long minute like this, he tugs my head back by my hair—gently this time—and searches my face. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask me what’s wrong, and he doesn’t need to. He gives a small nod to himself, as if he saw what he expected, and then reaches for my elbows to guide me to my feet.
“Stay there,” he says. In a few seconds’ work, the water is on and warm and he’s guiding my head under the spray. He doesn’t let me do anything myself—he wets my hair and then massages in the shampoo. Rinses it and then massages in the conditioner. I relax and let his strong fingers do all the work, washing away the traces of his orgasm.
The shampoo and conditioner are for women’s hair, brand new, and I wonder if he had them sent for as early as yesterday afternoon. As early as a few days ago, when I told Embry I’d meet him. And I’m about to remark about how skilled he is at washing a woman’s hair when I remember that he’s a widower. He was married for years. Of course he’s done this before.
And of course I’m not jealous of a dead woman. Of course not.
In any case, he’s as efficient as he is gentle, and within a few minutes, we are both washed and clean and wrapped in towels. I sit down on the bed and watch him get dressed, the act of fastening cufflinks and knotting his tie almost as erotic as anything else we’ve done in the last twelve hours.
I’ve almost worked up the courage to ask when I can see him again when he turns to face me, fixing a silver tie bar into place. “I hate this as much as you do, you know,” he says, looking at me. “I hate squeezing you into the margins. I hate that I can’t give you all of my time. All of myself.”
He walks over to the bed, tugging at my towel, rendering me naked and damp. Goose bumps erupt everywhere, my nipples hardening into stiff furls. “You deserve more than me. You deserve a whole man, not a man who can only give you scraps of himself.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” I say, shuddering with pleasure when he runs a pensive finger down my neck to my nipple.
“I know,” he says, and his voice sounds almost sad. “But it isn’t kind to you. Lie down and spread your legs.”
I shift on the bed, opening myself to him, the act of such wanton obedience still triggering a wave of modesty and shame. But I cling to the shame, delight in it, and let it guide me.
His fingers caress my pussy, parting the petals to find the wetness within. “I want to give you everything it’s possible for me to give. I want to give you everything I can. And I don’t want you to be a secret.” His long middle finger slides inside me, and my back arches off the bed. He sits next to me and then there are two fingers, crooking expertly against my sensitive front walls as the heel of his palm grinds against my clit. My body takes to his touch like dry tinder, sparking immediately.
“I know you’ve stayed away from this world for a reason. I know it might be asking a lot of you.” He looks up from where he’s touching me to meet my eyes. “But I don’t just want you at my feet. I want you by my side.”
It’s so hard to think with his hand moving like that, fucking me so perfectly. “I don’t want to be a secret either,” I manage, my thighs tensing and my belly clenching. I’m so close to the edge already, and it’s ridiculous that it should take so little, but nevertheless here I am clenching around his fingers. Any second now I’m going to come, any second now, any second now…
“Good, then you’ll come to the state dinner next week,” Ash says, pulling his fingers out of me and standing up.
My pussy wants to sob. So close. Without even thinki
ng about it, I snake a hand down to my clit, ready to finish myself off. And then, with a movement so quick I don’t even see it, Ash is on the bed kneeling over me, one knee planted firmly on each side of my rib cage and my hands both trapped over my head. He circles my wrists with his left hand and then shoves the fingers of his right hand into my mouth—not gagging me exactly, but keeping me from talking. I remember what he said last night—that I could snap my fingers to safe out if I couldn’t speak—but I don’t want to. I’m instantly, deliriously wet, my whole body trembling with burning need as the President kneels over me and pins me to his bed.
I smell leather. I smell fire. I smell and taste myself on his skin. I could die right now and be happy.
“You don’t get to come unless I say so,” Ash says. “I don’t care if you’re alone, if you’re with me, if I’m holding a Hitachi to your clit while I fuck you—your orgasms are mine and if you have one without my permission, then you’re a thief. You’re not a thief, are you?”
I shake my head, his fingers still deep in my mouth. I can still taste myself on them—a lot sweet, a touch of sour, that rich smell that only seems to come from a cunt.
“Good,” Ash says. Kneeling above me like this, he looks more like the soldier I know he is, and with a frisson of electric fear, I can suddenly imagine him fighting someone. Killing someone. I can’t explain how I can know this and also still feel completely safe, I can’t explain the deep thrill of having a dangerous man mounted on top of me like I’m a lamb about to be tied up and carted off to slaughter. But it’s there. Undeniable and addictive.
I can feel the tension in his thighs as he keeps me restrained underneath him, see the turgid outline of his erection pushing against his expensive slacks. “Do you know what they used to do to thieves?” he asks.
I do, actually. Incidental to studying medieval literature is some familiarity with medieval law. But that’s not part of the game right now, so I shake my head again.
“I’m not going to cut off your hands, of course,” he murmurs, his eyes now on my hands. His grip on my wrists tightens. “But I think I could devise my own version of the stocks. Or I could punish you according to Biblical law, and make you return what’s mine but again sevenfold. That would be seven orgasms you would have to give me for each one you stole. But either way, angel, there’s going to be punishment.”
His fingers leave my mouth and then he’s back on his feet beside the bed, wiping his hands on his handkerchief and carefully adjusting his slacks before he finds his suit jacket.
“Why are you leaving me like this?” I whimper in frustration. “You could have finished me.”
“Because,” he answers, swinging on his jacket and buttoning the middle button, “I want you to say yes to the State Dinner.”
I groan, searching the ceiling as if there’s an answer written there. “If I attend that dinner, then there’s no going back. You and I will be…real.”
“We’re already real,” he says, bending down to brush his lips on my forehead. “And I don’t want to go back. I want you to be mine in here, and I want to be yours out there. And besides, if you go to the State Dinner, I’ll let you come afterwards.”
“That’s not until next week,” I squeak.
He shrugs, tucking his phone into his inside pocket and walking over to the door. “Then I know you’ll really, really want to be there.”
“You aren’t playing fair,” I accuse, rolling up on one elbow to glare at him more directly. I’m not really playing fair either, since I know that I’m displaying my tits and hips to their greatest advantage here, and sure enough, his eyes blaze at the sight of me when he turns around.
But his control is absolute. He simply smiles and says, “I never said this would be fair. But if we do it right, it may just end up being fun.” He opens the door and pauses. “It’s what we both need, Greer. Isn’t it?”
I bite my lip. I nod.
I’m rewarded with a lion’s smile, and then the door closes and he’s gone. I flop miserably back down on the bed, my cunt awake and pulsing and my chest threatening to crack with happiness.
He’s right.
The bastard is right.
Chapter Fifteen
The Present
That day Belvedere arranged for me to get home, and somehow I had to pretend life was normal. I taught class, I went to faculty meetings, I tried to work on the book. But I couldn’t pretend, not when every time I closed my eyes, I could see Ash sitting in that chair in front of me, powerful legs sprawled out, eyes hungry as he watched me touch myself. Not when I could still smell smoke and leather and not when I could still feel the weight of his arm as we slept together in his bed.
No, there was too much to pretend, not to mention that I didn’t want to pretend things were normal. I wanted that flutter in my chest as I remembered that Ash wanted me, and wanted me in every way. I wanted the nervous trembling in my hands as I thought about seeing him again. I wanted that deep, itchy frustration as I remembered I couldn’t touch myself, couldn’t come without his explicit permission.
But with the wanting came doubt. I’d had this feeling, this wanting, three times before—after meeting Ash in London, after our afternoon in the sculpture courtyard, and after I’d slept with Embry. Three times, I’d felt the dizzying pull of falling in love, only to have the embers of my heart ground out on the cold ground.
Could I really trust this feeling again? Or did it even matter? Even if I decided I wasn’t going to fall in love with Ash again—if I’d ever even stopped loving him—could I really stay away from him? Was I doing what I wanted to do or was I listening to parts of myself that didn’t need to be listened to?
I spent the next two days going round in circles with myself. I loved Ash, I wanted him, but I also doubted Ash, I doubted our happiness.
It was this doubt that made my happiness feel sharp and brittle, as if it would shatter and cut me at the slightest touch. Well, the doubt plus two other reasons. One reason was Embry.
The other was Abilene.
* * *
A few days after my night with Ash, I’m walking into a trendy NoMa office building in search of my cousin. I’m jittery, both with the anticipation of talking to Abilene and also with three days of pent-up lust knotting in my cunt. Though we haven’t been able to meet again, Ash has called me every night, sometimes ordering me to finger myself but not come, sometimes ordering me to listen to him as he strokes himself. Sometimes just to talk, and after we hang up, I realize with a pang how lonely I’ve actually been all these years that I’ve avoided romance.
And I hear it in his voice—he’s been lonely too.
Corbenic Events is on the fifth floor, a striking office of glass walls and bright colors, and it’s Abilene’s very own. After she graduated from Vanderbilt, she used seed money from Grandpa to start her own event-planning firm in the heart of D.C. Weddings, cocktail parties, galas—you name it. Her calendar was full after two weeks in business, and she was able to pay Grandpa back after only six months. That Abilene was able to build such success in such a short time surprised Grandpa and her parents, but it didn’t surprise me. She always was passionate, and when she wanted something, she went after it with a single-minded zeal that would shame a saint. It was more surprising that she kept the venture going after three years, since her interest in things usually fizzled out long before that. But there were—and are—exceptions.
Which is why I’m here today. I’m here to undo my silence about Ash from ten years ago. I’m here to confess.
I walk through the busy office, crowded with harried young interns and planners snapping at people on speakerphone as they leaf through stationery books. Abilene’s office is in the very back, with an impressive view of the shiny new condos that have sprung up here recently, and I find her inside, bent over a glass desk spread with papers.
I take a moment just to watch her without me knowing. She really is beautiful, and there’s something undeniably sexy about the way she holds
herself, every movement and gesture so graceful and deliberate it looks like she’s performing for some unseen audience. In fact, I know she is—she used to spend hours in our dorm room watching movie clips and mimicking the most mundane things. The way Zoe Saldana stretched her neck. The way Scarlett Johansson glanced up from under her eyelashes. The way Kiera Knightley held a teacup. It was hypnotic to watch, the way that watching a 3D printer is hypnotic; I watched Abilene create herself, form herself into a predetermined image to her liking. And this is the result, a woman whose movements are sensual and studied, so rehearsed that they’re ingrained, and even though it should make her seem distant or forced, it doesn’t. It only makes her more intriguing, more mysterious.
I shove down a resigned sigh—that old, familiar jealousy—and push the glass door open. “Hey.”
Abilene looks up and smiles at me, her long red hair moving against her slim black dress. Abilene always makes black look classic and stylish. On me, it always looks like funeral wear. “Greer,” she says, glancing back down at her work, “is it our lunch day? I must have totally forgotten. This malaria benefit next week is scrambling my brains, seriously.”
“No, it’s not our lunch day,” I say, taking a seat in front of her desk. I see a pair of Louboutins in the corner of the room, a sparkly clutch perched on a credenza nearby. “Date tonight?”
Abilene sighs dramatically, throwing her head back. “Yes, though I’d rather break my ankle than go. Some Hill staffer I met at the gym. He didn’t have his shirt on when he asked me to dinner, and I couldn’t stop staring at his abs long enough to figure out how to say no.”
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