I can’t not marry him. Every cell in my body cries out for his presence, pines for the slightest brush of his hands or words or eyes; I am as destined to marry Ash as much as I am destined to have my gray eyes or my blond hair.
So why the tears, Greer?
But of course I know why. Ash would know why too if he could see me right now. Because I can’t help loving Embry, because neither can Ash, because the three of us have some sort of twisted, fucked-up love that no church would agree to sanctify, much less the American electorate.
I’ll marry Ash as Embry watches, as Embry hands Ash the ring that will seal our vows, and the three of us will quietly ache together, quietly die together, even as Ash and I are quietly born anew as man and wife.
There’s no way around this, nothing that can be done, at least nothing that I can see. I can’t not marry Ash. I can’t stop craving Embry. Both of them love me, and both of them love each other. Whichever way we move, there will be heartbreak, and Embry knows—has always known maybe—that if he forces me to choose, if he drags my choice into the open air and says me or him, then it would be Ash.
It would always be Ash.
And maybe that’s why I want to cry, because my heart is breaking for Embry just as much as it’s breaking for me.
A knock sounds at the door, and I shake off my thoughts, expecting Abilene and the veil. “Come in,” I call, blinking a few times to rid myself of the lingering tears.
I hear a keycard snick in the lock, and the heavy door opens. I step away from the window, prepared to fake a smile and a laugh for Abi, prepared to take the veil from her and pin it to the delicate tiara set in my hair.
But it isn’t Abilene who walks through the door.
It’s the best man.
“Embry,” I whisper. I breathe his name like it’s the last breath I’ll ever take.
He walks in and turns to close the door behind him, shutting it and carefully swinging the deadbolt closed. My heart pounds—even with his back to me, he can do this. Set my pulse racing, send heat flaring to the deepest part of me. But then he does turn, and the heat kindles to flame. Burning, roaring flames.
We haven’t been alone together for so long, weeks and weeks and months and months, but now here we are, alone at last. But I’m dolled up to be the American Bride of the Century and he’s in his tuxedo, and so the wedding hovers in the air like its own entity, a third presence in the room.
I train my eyes on the floor, not trusting myself to look in his face, not wanting to see the torment I know will be written there. Not wanting him to see the torment written on my own face. Isn’t this hard enough as it is? Why is he here? Why come and force this moment between us when we could have simply gone on as we always did—ignoring, denying, avoiding? Silently dying?
Embry steps deliberately toward me—so unlike him, so unlike the turbulent, impulsive man he is. He stops just out of reach, his dress shoes black and gleaming against the carpet.
“Greer,” he says quietly.
I force my eyes up to his, trailing up his long legs, up that perfectly-fitted tuxedo jacket which highlights the lean, hard lines of his waist and shoulders, and then finally up to his face, where pain is stamped onto every handsome feature.
The moment my eyes lock with his, I know it doesn’t matter that we aren’t touching. The electric heat in his eyes is desperate, and I know he can see the same in mine, and in that instant, in my mind, we share a thousand scorching kisses, he trails caresses over every inch of my skin, I come a thousand times under his slender, muscled body.
Those ice-blue eyes blaze with heat and I shiver. “What are you doing here?” I ask in a whisper.
“I wanted to see you. You know…before…” he trails off.
He steps closer, lifting a hand. I shouldn’t let him touch me, not on my wedding day, not in my wedding dress, but my chest is filled with that tight ache, and so I close my eyes and hold my breath as he reaches forward.
The backs of his knuckles graze against my cheek, sending shivers chasing down my back, and every brush of his fingers over my skin makes me want to scream, makes me want to cry.
My eyes flutter open to find him staring intently at me, those blue eyes glacial with pain. My gaze drops down to his mouth, where his lips are parted ever so slightly, as if he has to catch his breath.
I can’t stop staring at them, those firm, straight lips with their barely-there tilt at the corners, the tilt that can turn from a smirk to a sneer to a smile, depending on Embry’s mercurial moods. I want those lips. I want them against my mouth, I want them pressed to my throat, I want them between my legs. I want his lips and his hands and his cock, and I want him to rip off my wedding dress and do what his searing stare promises and fuck me. Ash be damned.
Except…
Except I love Ash. Except I promised him I wouldn’t touch Embry until the three of us had finally talked.
I suck in a breath and take a step back. It’s too dangerous, Embry here and my heart so twisted in knots. Embry notices my step back, and his eyebrows draw together the tiniest amount, confusion and hurt simmering under the surface of his expression. I hate hurting him, and I hate myself for doing it, but what’s the alternative? How can there be any other way?
“You have to go,” I choke out, turning away from him, unable to look at his wounded face any longer. “You can’t—and I can’t—just. Please.”
“I can’t go yet,” Embry says, and his voice has lost its earlier husky uncertainty. In its place is the dispassionately icy tone he usually uses with recalcitrant senators or the puerile hordes of reporters and paparazzi that follow his every move. It’s his Vice President voice, and it makes me shiver, partly because of its coldness…but partly because of its power. Embry is a refined blade, sharp and discerning and deadly, and when his edge is pressed to your throat, there’s the keen thrill of fear coupled with desire. “Ash asked me to deliver a present to you. I made sure Abilene would be occupied so I'd have enough time to give it to you personally.”
I let out a long breath, wondering if this is how it will always be. Alone together only when there’s a pretext, forever divided by the one man we love more than each other or ourselves.
“Greer.” The ice in Embry’s voice thaws the tiniest amount when he speaks my name. “Please let me give you your present. You know how Ash was about seeing you today, so he asked me to deliver it.”
I finally turn back to him and he holds out his phone, indicating that I should take it. Confused, I reach for it, and then the screen lights up with Ash’s name.
My heart soars at the same time that it sinks. I grab the phone and touch the accept button, pressing the phone eagerly to my ear as if it has been weeks since we last spoke instead of hours.
“Ash,” I say, my voice hiding nothing. I know he can discern every doubt, every guilty thought, every needy pang I've felt in the last six hours and he can do it all just from that one syllable. What’s more, I welcome it. With Ash, I never need to be shriven. He knows each sin the moment he hears my voice or looks at my face, and then all is immediately forgiven.
“Greer,” he says, his voice soothing and sure. “I wish I were with you right now. I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” I say, ignoring the way Embry’s eyes are pinned on me as I speak.
“I know you look beautiful right now,” Ash says, his voice going a shade deeper, a shade rougher. “I won’t be able to keep my hands off you after you walk down the aisle to me.”
“Can’t you come see me before then?”
A warm laugh. “You don’t care for this particular tradition?”
“What point does it serve, other than to keep our guests waiting longer while we take pictures?”
“It serves the point of marking the moment I first see you. When I first lay eyes on my bride, I will be surrounded by our family and friends and watched over by God. I want the first moment I see you to be special and apart from any other moment, just like today is special and apart
from any other day. Greer, today is the most important day of my life.”
My throat tightens. “Oh, Ash.”
“And,” he adds in a voice heavy with promise, “patience is always rewarded, my little princess. Always.”
His voice—and the murmured little princess—makes my cunt ache and my pulse pound, and when I think about tonight after the wedding, when I think about Ash’s broad, muscled body pinning mine to the bed, I can barely breathe.
“I miss you so much,” I say. I’m repeating myself at this point, but I don't care. When I can hear Ash—or see him or touch him—my world makes sense. My fears thaw and melt into the floor. My body and my heart and my soul are his to command, and command them he does, with strength and confidence.
“Greer, I want to give you your present now.”
“The phone call isn’t my present?”
That warm laugh again. “I’m not that stingy. No, it’s not your present. I want you to hand the phone to Embry for a moment.”
I obey, as I always do with Ash, and Embry takes the phone. He paces away from me, back towards the suite’s sitting room, so that I can't hear what he's saying to Ash. They speak for a few minutes together and when Embry returns, his face reveals nothing, although I think I detect a hint of a frown on that perfectly shaped mouth.
He hands the phone back to me, and I hold it up to my ear. “Ash? What does this have to do—” I break off my words.
Embry is getting to his knees. In front of me.
“Greer,” comes Ash’s voice through the receiver. “I want to be there so badly right now. I want to touch you and taste you and tell you how beautiful you are. I want to make you feel good.”
While Ash speaks, Embry tilts his face up to mine. Something pulls at the edges of his calm mask now, but I can't tell if it's pleasure or pain, joy or contrition. And then his elegant hands with their long fingers reach for the skirt of my wedding dress.
I freeze.
“Embry…?” My voice is no louder than a raindrop coursing down a window, but both men hear it. Embry bites his lip but starts lifting the hem of my dress.
Ash, on the other hand, says, “Stand still, Greer. Are you standing still?”
“Yes,” I say, unable to tear my eyes away from Embry’s, unable to move away from this terrible, terrible, delicious thing. I tremble with a molten heat low in my belly as Embry’s able hands slowly gather up all of the layers of petticoat under my dress.
Ash continues talking. “I kept thinking about what I wanted to give you today, and honestly, Greer, there isn’t really anything I couldn’t give you. Jewelry or exotic vacations or rare editions of the books you love, anything I could have dreamed of, I could get for you—but they were just things. I didn’t want to get you a thing for a curio cabinet or a jewelry box. I wanted to give you something that you could carry with you through our new life together. Something that would make you a promise.”
Embry’s hand brushes up against my stocking-covered ankle and I gasp.
“What is it, princess?” Ash asks in a low voice.
“Embry…I mean, Ash, I—" I can't find the words just then, because Embry’s hand slides up my calf and everything stops. My thoughts, my feelings, my guilt—my world shrinks to Ash’s voice on the phone and the fingers moving past my knee and Embry’s face, so controlled. But lust and anger and determination are fissuring across that control, and I can see his wide pupils and the pulse pounding in his neck and the trembling of his lips.
What is happening? I think distantly to myself. What am I letting happen…and all while I’m on the phone with my soon-to-be husband?
And then the world slams back into motion, and I make a strangled noise, stumbling backwards, away from Embry. He starts to stand and come toward me, and I hold out one of my hands, moving backwards until my back is pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the skyline.
Embry looks down at my shaking hand and then back up to me, those fissures in his control now full-on fractures, and he says, “Greer…”
“Don’t test me,” I whisper, not sure if I'm whispering to the groom or the best man. “Don’t test me like this.”
Ash’s voice comes into my ear. “Relax, Greer. I want to give you this. I want to give you something you want…something you deserve.”
This isn't happening. I missed a connection somewhere, misunderstood something vital, because there is no way, no fucking way, that Ash is offering his best friend to me as some sort of wedding present, not when we agreed that Embry was off-limits until we figured everything out. This is my wishful thinking turned toxic, this is my darkest fantasies turning into delusion—
“I want you to let Embry give you my gift,” Ash tells me. “While I listen. That’s what you’ll give me in exchange: every single moan, pant and cry will be for me.”
“You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying,” I say. "We agreed…you know what we agreed to. This isn't it!"
"I know, but I can't wait any longer," Ash says with a growl. "Today is hard enough without denying ourselves."
"But what about you—"
"Oh, don't worry, angel. I'll have something out of this for me too."
I hear the dark roughness in his voice and I realize I'm so very, very wet.
As if he knows, Ash asks, “Are you wet right now? Are you wet from Embry reaching under your dress?”
I lick my lips. I can't lie—Ash would know. But how can I admit the truth? Yes, I am wet. Yes, I want Embry’s mouth on me. Yes, yes, yes to all of it.
“Close your eyes,” Ash orders.
I do, my panting somehow louder in my head when I can't see anything. The glass window against my back is cool and strong, just like Ash’s words in my ear.
“I know you’re wet. I know it like I know Embry is hard right now, just from the mere thought of touching you. You want it, don’t you? You want it so much that you’re shaking with the effort it’s taking to hold yourself back.”
I feel the hem of my skirt lift again. Embry is back in front of me, but this time I don't try to move away. I keep my eyes shut, wishing I had the strength to open them and tell Embry to stop. The strength to flee temptation.
“Answer me,” Ash demands. “Are you wet right now? Do you want it?”
“Yes.” The word comes out strangled and hopeless.
“I knew you did,” Ash says. “I knew you wanted it. Spread your legs, sweetheart, and let Embry make you feel good.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you.” It's my final plea, my final argument, my final grasp at some semblance of sanity. My skirts are almost up at my waist now, and I know the moment Embry catches sight of my delicate, hand-embroidered French panties because he takes in a sharp breath, as if punched in the gut.
“It all hurts,” Ash says. “It hurts watching you two watching each other. It hurts watching him with other people. It hurts knowing that I've asked him to walk down the aisle to me twice and he's refused me both times. There’s no part about this that doesn’t hurt, but what’s the alternative? Living without the pain means living without each other.”
My eyelids burn with unshed tears, and it takes all my willpower to keep them from falling.
“At least this way,” Ash says, “I can have some control over it. At least this way, I can make it feel good just as much as it hurts.”
You’re breaking my heart, I want to say, but that's a lie, because my heart is already broken. Instead, I just say, “I can’t bear to hurt you any more than you already are, please. Please don’t do this.”
“No.” The word is final. “I want this. God, Greer, I’m so fucking hard right now, it hurts. If I were there—" He stops and I hear one long sigh. “Tonight,” he says instead of finishing his thought. “Tonight.”
It is a promise. A gift and a curse, because tonight when my cravings are relieved by Ash, it will be in our wedding bed, and Embry will be somewhere else, alone.
Or worse, not alone.
My chest tig
htens with unreasonable jealousy at the thought.
Embry transfers the heavy material of my skirt to one strong hand, and then I feel his other hand run up the inside of my thigh.
I let out a soft whimper. My skin cries out for Embry, just as the rest of me cries out for Ash. What I wouldn’t give to have Ash here, ready to take all my pent-up lust and mold it into something that won't kill me with guilt.
Because I will die with guilt.
But somehow it doesn't stop me from squirming with want as Embry’s hand runs up my other thigh. And then it happens. With one deliberate, grazing touch, Embry’s fingertips skate across the lace covering my folds, and I gasp. Embry looks up at me with hooded eyes, and I stare back.
“I can smell you,” he says, his voice cracking a little at the end. “It smells so good.”
I shiver. A thousand voices, a choir of warnings, seem to sing in my mind. Stop this. Stop this. Stop this.
But his words, the way his voice roughened, as if being able to smell my need is the one thing that can break him…
I don't stop him. In fact, I reach down and gather my skirt into my arms so that Embry’s hands can be free, something he immediately takes advantage of by sliding his palms to my ass and squeezing. The groan he lets out when he does goes straight to my clit.
His fingers once again graze over my folds, tickling the lace, and it feels as if everything has become electric. The air, his skin, my skin, everything hums with insatiable need.
Embry leans forward so that the only thing I can see below the heavy bunches of fabric is his light brown hair, and then he kisses the tops of my thighs, lingering soft kisses that trace the lines of my stockings and the clips of my garter belts. I'm already panting by the time his lips brush against my mound.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “Oh my God.”
“Tell me what’s happening,” Ash demands. “Tell me everything.”
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I mumble, “I have to stop.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Ash says.
American Queen Page 31
