American Queen

by Sierra Simone

  Except I was certain that—somehow—he’d know I was lying. I knew those green eyes would blaze into mine and illuminate the outline of every lie and half-truth I’d ever told.

  “Tell me you’re eighteen,” he whispered.

  “I’m not.”

  “Damn you.”

  And then he tilted my face back up to his, and his mouth came down over mine anyway.

  I’d never kissed a boy or a girl, never even tried, and now I had a man’s lips firm and warm over mine, insistent and demanding. If I had been thinking clearly, I might have worried that I would be bad at kissing, that I would be laughably awkward and a disappointment to this beautiful stranger. But I wasn’t thinking clearly, the only thoughts I had were single words—fire and leather and more—and I didn’t need to know what to do.

  He knew. And that was how it was supposed to be.

  One warm hand cupped the nape of my neck while the other pressed against the small of my back, and his lips parted my own. I gasped the moment I felt him lick inside my mouth—it tickled.

  It was soft—dangerously soft—silken, and warm. Every nerve ending I had came frighteningly alive, crackling with need.

  And all from one lick of his tongue.

  I opened my mouth more to him, sighing as he pressed me closer, so close that I would have lost my balance if he let go of me. It felt so right to open to him, to mold against his body, and I wanted to offer him every inch of my skin. The column of my neck, the space between my breasts, my inner thighs…everywhere.

  The thought made me bold, and I realized I wanted to kiss him back. He groaned as I tentatively licked inside his mouth, and I felt his entire body shudder as I did it again.

  He tasted sweet and clean, like mint and gin, and the more I kissed him, the more I could taste the lingering salt-tang of my blood. My finger stung from the cut, and I wanted him to suck on it again, I wanted it so badly, and so I pressed it against his lips and into his mouth.

  His eyes burned as he closed his lips around my finger and sucked, and everything felt throbbing and swollen—especially the space between my legs. And then his lips were hot on my neck, covering the dip of my clavicle, nibbling on the lobe of my ear.

  “Greer,” he breathed. “God, where did you come from?”

  I don’t know, but I feel like I’ve always been waiting for you.

  And then his forehead fell against my neck. “And why aren’t you eighteen?” he mumbled into my skin.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  He lifted his head, resignation and regret in his eyes. “Twenty-six.”

  His grip on me loosened, his hands sliding away from my body. I made a noise as he let me go, a noise of pure pain and loss, and he gave a breath like he’d been punched in the gut.

  “Please,” I begged. “Please.”

  He inhaled raggedly. “You don’t even know what you’re asking for.”

  “I don’t care. Anything—I’ll let you do anything to me.”

  “I believe you. That’s why you’re so dangerous.”

  We stared at each other, and I lifted my fingers to probe at my lips, which thrummed with blood and heat, swollen and soft. “That was my first kiss,” I said, more to myself than to him.

  His own lips parted in surprise. “It was?”

  “I haven’t…” He doesn’t need to know you’re a virgin, Greer. It’s embarrassing enough that you’ve never been kissed. “Yes. You gave me my first kiss.”

  His eyes blazed a deep green, a summer forest about to catch fire, and there was a moment that I thought he was going to reach for me again. As if the idea of being the first man for me ignited a sense of possession in him. But at that moment, the door to the library opened and Merlin Rhys came in from the hallway.

  Keep your kisses to yourself.

  Tell me you’re eighteen.

  Oh my God, what have I done?

  We both froze, and then Colchester stepped back and cleared his throat, slipping back into cocktail party mode. “Merlin, hello. Ah, this is Greer…um…”

  “Greer Galloway,” Merlin supplied, and his friend swiveled his head to look at me.

  “As in Vice President Galloway, Greer Galloway?” Colchester asked me, his strong face both interested and vulnerable.

  “Former Vice President,” I mumbled, not for the first time in my life and certainly not for the last.

  “Ah, okay. And Greer, this is Merlin Rhys. He’s a family friend and invited me here tonight. I’m in between assignments, but I didn’t want to go home, so he graciously let me tag along.”

  “Much good it did if you spent the night hiding on the patio,” Merlin said mildly.

  Not the whole night, I wanted to say, but then Merlin’s dark eyes raked over my lips, and somehow—somehow—he knew. He knew that I’d kissed his friend. He knew that I wanted to do it again. He knew that I wouldn’t have stopped, would have surrendered every bit of myself right here in the library.

  “We should go,” Merlin said shortly, his eyes still on me as he addressed Colchester. “It’s getting late.”

  Colchester stepped away and then looked back at me, biting his lip. It made him look almost boyish, almost my age, until I looked closer and could see that he bit his lip not out of uncertainty, but to control himself.

  Merlin sighed and left the room. There was a second when I was certain Colchester would follow him right away, catching the closing door in his large hand and ducking out without a word of goodbye, but then the door closed. And my stranger was still in the room with me.

  He was on me in a second, pressing me against the wall, stoking my body to flames once more. “I don’t want to leave,” he told me, tracing his nose along my jaw.

  “Then don’t,” I practically pleaded, and he swallowed my pleas with his mouth, kissing me and kissing me and kissing me until there was nothing but his hot mouth and the blood pounding deep in my core.

  He stepped back with a heavy breath. “I have to go,” he said with genuine regret, after running a hand through his short hair. He looked as put together and collected as when he’d first strolled in from the patio, as if the kissing hadn’t even happened. As if I hadn’t even happened.

  “Wait!” I called out as he reached the door to the hallway that Merlin had walked through moments earlier. “I just realized…I don’t know your first name.”

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked down at it. “Captain Maxen Ashley Colchester.” He bowed his head. “At your service.”

  “Maxen,” I echoed.

  He glanced up and a shy smile crossed his face. “I think I’d like it if you called me Ash.”

  And then he was gone.

  6

  Ten Years Ago

  Dear Captain Colchester,

  I hope it’s not too forward of me to email you—or too awkward. But I asked my grandfather if he could find your email address for me, since Merlin is a mutual friend, and I wanted to tell you that it was really nice to meet you last Saturday. I know we didn’t talk about it very much, and it’s probably nosy of me, but I was thinking more about your insomnia and I thought you might like a couple of the attachments about meditation I have at the bottom of the email.

  I hope you’re enjoying London!

  Sincerely yours,

  Greer Galloway

  Dear Ash,

  Is it okay if I call you Ash? You said so the night we met, and I would like to, but it also feels strange to call a near-stranger by their first name. Especially a military stranger, because Grandpa Leo has so many military friends that I’m pretty much trained to salute whenever I see a uniform. I also hope I didn’t bother you by not mentioning my last name while we were talking. Sometimes at parties like that the Galloway name means certain things—usually that people want me to pass on messages to Grandpa or ask for favors. Sometimes it means they don’t want to talk to me at all because they hate my grandfather and his political party. Or sometimes it just means that I can’t start from scratch when I
meet someone new. I know that seems like a silly thing to care about, but my whole childhood I was introduced to the world as Leo Galloway’s granddaughter. Here at Cadbury, I’m always ‘Abilene’s cousin’ or ‘Abilene’s roommate.’ I’m never just Greer, and I got to be that with you, and that was special for me. I hope you don’t feel like I was trying to hide something from you?

  Anyway, if you’re still in London, I hope you’re having a good time.

  Sincerely yours,

  Greer Galloway

  Dear Ash,

  I wasn’t going to bother you any more since it’s been almost three weeks since I sent my first email (and I was certain that I was annoying you) but when I was watching the news about the Krakow bombing last night, Grandpa Leo called. We talked about what the bombing meant for Europe and NATO and America, and then he mentioned that you’d been reassigned back to the Carpathian region the week after the party. I feel so terrible for emailing you such trivial stuff when you were back on duty, and I just wanted you to know that I had no idea. I’ll make sure to light a prayer candle in church for you and pray a rosary for you every night.

  Be safe please.

  Sincerely yours,

  Greer Galloway

  Dear Ash,

  It’s a real war now. Officially. The Carpathian problem has been around for so long that I’m not sure even Grandpa Leo ever thought it would really come to a head like this. But the Krakow bombing last week—over nine hundred dead—there’s no way war wouldn’t be declared. At least that’s what Grandfather said.

  Did you know that my parents were killed by Carpathian separatists? Almost ten years ago now. They blew up a train bridge and killed almost a hundred people, my parents included. All that death, my childhood completely torn apart with God only knows how many other children’s, and for what? A small chunk of land squashed between Ukraine and Poland and Slovakia? It makes no sense to me.

  Except, in a weird way, it does. I have every reason to hate the Carpathians, but I can’t. I can’t actually transpose my own pain and grief over the images of the war I’m seeing. Instead, I keep thinking of the Carpathian children who might lose their own parents. I keep thinking about how peaceful and quiet I feel when I remember my childhood in Oregon, when I remember what home feels like. There’s no doubt that a handful of the militant separatists have done terrible things, and I understand why there is war now. But part of me wishes that we could simply sit down and grant them what they want—their home. Sovereignty is a complicated thing, and creating a new nation is a fraught prospect in a region already as carved up as Eastern Europe, but what if there could be a way forward without war? I’ve been raised in politics and I’m not naive enough to believe that we can erase killing and violence, but even if we could reduce it just a little…wouldn’t that still be worth trying?

  I’ve been praying for you every night like I said I would. I hope wherever you are that you can feel that. Somehow.

  Sincerely yours,

  Greer

  Dear Ash,

  You’re famous now. Imagine my surprise yesterday at waking up to your face all over the news. My horror when I found out what you lived through, my relief that you were unharmed. It’s unthinkable to me that you were able to fight your way out of a building surrounded by separatists, all while carrying that wounded soldier. I can’t fathom what kind of courage it took for you to stay with your friend when the rest of your squad escaped. What kind of skill it took for you to fight off your attackers and eventually save yourself and him. But after reading and watching all the profile pieces on you, I shouldn’t have been surprised. You have a history of being a hero, don’t you? And I’m not trying to tease you or make you uncomfortable. I’ve been around every sitting president, vice president and first lady since I was a baby, and I have seen how tiring it can be to have people fixate on your accomplishments. But I can’t write this letter without telling you that I’m in awe of how many times you’ve risked your life for your fellow soldiers. ‘No greater love than this’ is what Jesus says about men like you, and I’m honored to say that I’ve met you in person, and that you’re even kinder and more humble than all the profile pieces and journalists say.

  That being said, to me you are still Ash. Our acquaintance lasted only an hour, but the things that I remember about you—the cut on your jaw, the way your hands felt as they worked the glass splinter out of my finger—are more than your battles. You are a hero to me, but you are a man too. Maybe even more man than hero.

  Yours,

  Greer

  Dear Ash,

  It’s been six months since we met, and part of me is embarrassed to look at this chain of emails—a chain with only me in it. I tell myself it’s because you’re at war, because you’ve been saving lives—last week, that high school building where so many civilians were taking shelter!—but I guess I’m also not foolish enough to believe that a twenty-six-year-old war hero wants unsolicited emails from a boarding school student. So I should stop bothering you, I know I should, but it feels as if I have taken you up as a sort of hobby. Reading about you, thinking about what I should write to you. The girls at school are obsessed with the fact that Abilene and I were at the same party as you this summer, and even though it’s one of the only times anyone has been interested in actually talking to me, I hold what happened between us as my own private secret. I don’t want anyone else to know what it felt like to be in your arms. I don’t want anyone else to know about the little groan you made when we kissed for the first time. I’m greedy for you, or at least for those memories of you. I’m not stupid—I know that you must have a girlfriend or that you’ve had them—I know I’m not the only person who’s heard that little groan or felt the heat of your hands on their back. But I like to pretend. I like to feel possessive of these small parts of you, the parts that don’t belong to the public imagination, and maybe that’s the real reason I can’t stop writing.

  Yours,

  Greer

  Dear Ash,

  It’s my seventeenth birthday today. It’s been exactly one year since we met, and while you’ve fought in several crucial battles and saved countless lives, I’ve completed a year of high school. The two don’t really compare, do they? I told myself after my last email that I wouldn’t bother you again, both for your sake and for my pride, but tonight I feel strange. Restless, I guess. It’s hot for England, even for May, and muggy. I have the windows thrown open and a fan blowing, but I can’t seem to cool down. Every part of me feels flushed. And Abilene is gone from our dorm room and I found a bottle of Prosecco stashed in her mini fridge, and so I’m tipsy and alone, on top of being restless and hot.

  It feels like the kind of night to make a bad decision. I think normally girls my age find boys my age to make their bad decisions with—at least that’s what Abilene is out doing right now—but I don’t want that. There’s something really pedestrian about the kind of fun Abilene seeks out, and this is not me trying to force morality onto her, because I don’t think there’s anything immoral about having sex, but it’s more of an…aesthetic…thing, I guess. I don’t want boring, common ways of being bad. I want ways that rattle me to my bones, that send me to my knees in repentance, I want to be the kind of bad that leaves me wrung out with bite marks blooming purple on my body. I want to go the brink of not knowing myself, I want someone to take me there and hold me by the neck and make me stare at an entire reckless realm of possibility. What’s the point of sex if you don’t feel like every dark crevice of your soul has been exposed to the light? If someone doesn’t take your lust and your shameful thoughts, and twist them into a spell that leaves you panting like a dog for more? I think I want that for myself. I want a normal life too—I want an education and career and my own house and to make all of my own decisions—but whenever I think about sex, about what sex would be like when I’m older, I don’t ever imagine the Titanic hand-hitting-the-car-window thing. I want to feel like my veins are being sliced open by the sheer desire of someone powerf
ul, I want to be handled and cherished and used and worshipped. 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. I can have that someday, right?

  Right now, as I type, I’ve got one leg slung over the arm of my computer chair because it’s so hot, but also because it makes it easy to tease myself in between writing sentences to you. I do this a lot when I’m thinking about you. (I am guessing you probably don’t know that, and tonight, for some reason, it just feels like I should tell you.) I started by running a fingertip under the lace of my panties, imagining it was you. Imagining that we are back in the library and we were never interrupted by Merlin. I imagine you pulling up my skirt after I tell you that you were my first kiss, because you want to know if I’m a virgin. You want to feel if I’m still intact, if I’m wet for you, you want to know what I’d feel like wrapped around your dick.

  God, I’m so wet right now. I wish it were your fingers inside me, your thumb on my clit. You’d be so good at that. I can’t stop thinking about your hands, how big and strong they are. I bet your eyes would burn green as you rubbed me, I bet you would lick your lips at the thought of tasting me, of being the first man to ever taste me. I think about what it would have been like if you’d fucked me that night, right there against the wall maybe, or on the large desk in the corner. Abilene says boys should always wear condoms, but I wouldn’t have wanted you to. I would have wanted to feel your skin, if it was hot and if it was smooth and silky. I would have wanted you to feel me. I would have wanted you to whisper in my ear how good I felt, what a gift I was giving you, how you could stay inside me forever and ever if only I’d let you.