Ash groans but nevertheless wrestles the gown out of the way so that we can wave some more as we pull away and drive towards our hotel. The minute we’re away from the crowd, Ash lets the dress swallow us again.
“This reminds me of playing with a parachute in kindergarten,” he says, glancing at the fabric.
“A parachute?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Did you not do that at your fancy boarding schools? Is my plebeian public school background showing?”
“I went to a Montessori school outside of Portland. We used parachutes more than most kids use pencils. But we sat underneath them rather than drag them inside a Cadillac.”
Those dark eyebrows slant together as I get a wicked smile. “I’m happy to sit underneath your skirt, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I’m sideways on his lap, with my legs slung over the large wooden hump in the middle of the seat that houses Ash’s communications systems, and he takes advantage of my position, reaching for my legs under my dress and then following the lines of my stockings until he reaches my bare cunt.
“You never put on more panties?” he asks huskily. “Your pussy was bare this whole time?”
“Why do you think I had you pull the garter from my knee instead of my thigh? I was trying to make sure the essentials stayed covered.”
His fingers probe the soft skin of my lower lips. “Did it bother you that I had your panties in my tuxedo pocket?”
I lean my head back against the window, parting my legs to give him better access, though he stays away from the flesh that wants him the most, opting instead for the soft creases between my vulva and my thighs. “I thought it was unbearably hot.”
“Me too.”
“Did you and Embry…” I look for the right words and can’t find them. English has more words than any other Western language and yet I can’t find the ones that convey curiosity and arousal and permission and jealousy all at the same time.
All the same, Ash seems to know what I’m asking. “We kissed. In the groom’s dressing room at the church. He walked in and I took one look at him, and then I had him up against the wall.” Ash leans his head back against the headrest of the seat. “We kissed for a very long time, until I made sure that I had tasted every trace of your cunt on his mouth, and then I marked his neck. Did you see? I wanted you to see. I can’t decide if that was cruel of me or kind.”
“I can’t decide either,” I whisper.
Ash’s fingertip lightly runs up my seam, exposing how very, very wet I am. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“Or it does matter, but I don’t care.”
But we’re interrupted by our arrival at the hotel, a Gilded Age skyscraper with a gorgeously ornate lobby. As we climb out and I grab my clutch, my phone buzzes inside the small purse and I pull it out.
Abilene: tell me when u get to ur hotel safely so I don’t worry about u
Me: just got here! It’s so pretty!
Abilene: which hotel did u end up at?
Just like in Geneva, the security team vetted a few hotels before picking a final one only hours before we left the venue. It’s an inconvenience and a lot of extra work and not part of the normal protocol, but Merlin with all his mysterious sources of information advised Ash and his security team to go to the effort since it was such a high-profile event.
I don’t think twice about it as I text back, we’re at the Sorella.
Abilene: sounds amazing, I’m so jealous! Enjoy ur wedding nite!
“Who are you talking to?” Ash asks. We’re in the elevator now, riding up to the Presidential Suite.
“Abilene.” I notice he’s sliding his own phone into his tuxedo pants. “Who were you talking to?”
“Embry. I invited him up to our room to talk.”
“Ash…”
I step into him, tilting my head back so I can peer up into those stunning green eyes. “No matter what happens tonight, I want you to know that I will never regret marrying you. If I had to choose, it would be you. Every time.”
“You don’t know how much I wanted to hear those words,” he says roughly, sliding his hands through my hair. “Oh Greer. What have I dragged you into?”
His lips on mine are hungry and searching, and I let him take my mouth like I’ve let him take everything of mine, the simple surrender of the act clearing my mind and stirring my blood. We’re still kissing as the elevator doors open, and Ash kisses me all the way down the hallway to our room. Luc opens the door for us, Ash kicks it closed behind us, and then we’re alone.
“Do we wait for Embry?” I ask as soon as Ash lets me up for air.
“I’m not waiting to do what I’ve wanted to do all day, which is this,” and then he lowers his mouth to my neck. The scooped neck of my dress—modest enough to pass Merlin and Trieste’s “America’s Sweetheart” test—still dips low enough to give Ash access to my collarbone and the tops of my breasts, which he bites and sucks with pleasure. And then he’s back to my neck, kissing and nibbling and sucking until my knees are weak and he’s supporting all of my weight in his arms.
“This dress,” he murmurs. “I’ve been staring at this perfect neck all day. It’s been driving me crazy.”
My hands fist his lapels as he continues taking his pleasure, appreciative noises coming from the back of his throat as he tastes my skin. He’s coming back up to my lips for a proper kiss when we hear a soft, tentative rap at the door.
We look at each other, and then I let go of Ash’s jacket and go to the door, not even bothering to check through the peephole before I open it.
It’s Embry.
He gives a quick look over his shoulder at the Secret Service agent standing nearby. “May I come in?”
“Please do,” Ash says from behind me, and Embry steps inside. He’s lost the tuxedo jacket and vest, although his bow tie still hangs loose around his neck. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, exposing strong, sinewed forearms that flex and harden as he closes the door behind himself and then shoves his hands in his pockets.
“You wanted to see me?” he asks. There’s something almost defensive in his posture, in the way his shoulders are ever so slightly hunched, in the way he squares off to face Ash.
“Yes,” Ash says. “We did.”
And then he walks right over and kisses his friend, cupping a hand around the back of Embry’s neck to hold him there.
Embry’s eyelashes flutter and a small breath leaves him, but he doesn’t pull his hands out of his pockets, he doesn’t relax. “What are you doing?” he asks as Ash pulls away. “I thought today was to get it out of our systems before the wedding ceremony. Not…more.”
“I told you the last time I asked you to marry me,” Ash says softly, “that I don’t want you out of my system. No matter how many times you want me out of yours.”
Embry looks away, emotion ticking in the muscles of his cheek and jaw. “It was for the best I said no. You know that.”
“Greer says you told her that you loved me. Is there a reason you can’t tell me that?”
Embry doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at Ash.
“Because I love you,” Ash confesses in a torn-up voice. “I’m sorry if I didn’t say it enough before. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I only wanted to use you, to fuck you like I owned you. I do want to use you and own you, but because I love you.”
“Stop it,” Embry whispers, squeezing his eyes closed. “Just—stop it.”
Ash takes a step forward, changing tactics. “The three of us—we all love each other. We’ve all tried to live without each other. It obviously didn’t work.” A rueful smile. “So we need to try something different.”
“Like what?” Embry asks, still turned away from us.
“We need to find a way to be together.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Embry asks, turning back to Ash. There’s a scowl on his face, but his eyes are wet. “You and Greer are married now. There is no together for us three.”
“Says who?” Ash responds. �
��We know what happens when two people fall in love. It’s happened between each of us. We have to find out what happens when three people fall in love. All together, all at once.”
“This is fucked up.” And then Embry frowns. “And I don’t want to be the third wheel in your marriage. A guest who gets kicked out when he wears out his welcome.”
“You’re not and you won’t be,” I speak up, and Embry turns toward me. It’s the first I’ve spoken since he walked in. “It’s supposed to be the three of us, can’t you see that? Can’t you feel it? Today in my dressing room or the night of the Polish State Dinner—couldn’t you feel what was happening between us all? God, Embry, don’t you want us? Don’t you want to fuck me again? Have Ash inside you again?”
His cheeks flush red against his fair skin. “Of course I fucking do,” he says. “Of course I fucking want it. That doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“Just because it’s not common doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” I say, pleading almost. I walk up to him and take his hand in mine. “I can’t live the rest of my life like this. Torn between the two of you. Watching Ash watching you. It will rip my soul in half.”
Embry exhales.
“But we can’t do anything without you wanting it too,” I say. “If you can’t be one of three, then you have to be one alone. We have to decide the boundaries here and now, because when Ash and I get back from our honeymoon, we will need to know exactly where we stand with you.”
“This can’t work,” Embry says, looking down to where I’m holding his hand. “You understand that, right? There’s no possible way the three of us could make this work.”
“It will be hard,” Ash says, coming up next to us. “It won’t be easy at all.”
“People will suspect. They’ll learn the truth. If it ever gets out, all three of us will be ruined. Forever.”
“That’s right,” Ash says, and he takes Embry’s other hand. “We’ll have to be extremely careful.”
“And we’d have to have boundaries of our own. For the sake of your marriage and my sanity, everything would have to be crystal clear about what’s on and off limits.”
“Yes,” I agree, looking at Ash. “We would have to figure that out too.”
“And the minute it hurts too much, the minute it stops working, we have to be honest about it,” Embry says, and his tone has shifted from resistant to something quiet, begging. “We have to be able to stop it if it ends up wounding us.”
Ash and I are holding hands now too, the three of us standing joined in a circle. It feels very solemn, very surreal, with the low sconces throwing off patterns of gold light and the patter of May rain sounding on the window.
“Yes,” Ash affirms. “But we have to promise each other that we’ll try to make it work. That we won’t run away when it gets hard. That we will love each other as best as we can in all the ways we can for as long as we can.”
His words hang in the air, serious and spiritual.
I take a deep breath and go first. “I promise.”
“Me too,” Ash says.
Embry looks at us, our faces, our wedding outfits, our joined hands. He looks down to where we hold his hands too. He takes a deep breath and a tear spills over and races down his cheek so fast that I barely see it before it falls to the floor.
“I promise too,” he says finally, heavily.
The moment is almost more sacred than the actual marriage vows I recited earlier, almost like God knows that this is the real promise that needs to be made.
This is the real wedding that will happen not with incense and boutonnieres but with words and skin and sweat.
29
The Wedding Night
Ash is the first to move, and he lets go of Embry’s hand, gesturing towards the large bed at the end of the room. Embry nods wordlessly, and they both lead me back to the bed, each one holding one of my hands. I have to remind myself to breathe, seeing both of these powerful men in front of me, muscled arms straining against their shirts as they tug me to the bed. Together.
We reach the bed, and Ash turns me to face Embry.
“Kiss her,” he orders his friend softly.
And Embry, looking like a sinner already in hell, cups my face in his hands and does as the President asks. When his lips brush against mine, I taste scotch and need, but he’s too eager to stay on the surface for long, parting my lips with his own and licking into my mouth with searing intensity, making me stumble back.
Ash catches me, positioning me so I can rest against his chest as Embry kisses me like he’ll never be able to kiss me again. I feel a tugging in my hair and I understand why Ash had me face Embry: he wanted to pull the elegant ballet bun loose and have my hair down and available for him. It spills over my shoulders in silky waves as Embry continues to ravish my mouth, his tongue firm and seeking, his breaths in between kisses fast and desperate.
We didn’t kiss earlier today, I realize. This is our first kiss since Chicago.
I’ve waited five years for this man, and he kisses me like he’s waited one hundred and five years to kiss me.
There must be a signal I don’t see, because then Embry pulls away and Ash is coaxing me onto the bed, onto my back. The men lay on either side of me, propped up on their elbows, stretched out in long lines of muscle and expensive fabric.
And I forget to breathe again.
Ash reaches over me and takes Embry’s hand, and Embry lets out a low groan as Ash guides his hand to my leg and presses it against my calf. Slowly—so slowly that I think I might perish—Ash moves Embry’s hand higher and higher and higher, lingering at the lacy tops of my stockings, and then moving up to the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. The sight of both of them reaching under my skirt, my husband forcing his best friend to touch my pussy, threatens to rip the breath right from me, and when I feel the tangle of warm, blunt fingertips against my quivering flesh, I come to life, gasping in a breath and spreading my legs.
Ash smiles down at me. “What do you want, angel?”
“We’ll give it to you,” Embry whispers. “We’ll give you anything you want.”
I chew on my lip a moment, hoping he means that. Because I want to be finger-fucked and eaten, I really do, but there’s something I want even more than that. Something I haven’t had before. “I want to see what happens when you two do more than kiss.”
“Oh really?” Ash asks, and two thick fingers slide inside me. I sigh happily. “Would that turn you on?”
“You have no idea.”
“I might have some idea. Feel how wet she is, Embry. Feel it.” A third finger, this one from a different hand, slides in and my hips lift off the bed at the sensation.
Embry nuzzles his face into my neck, I think at first to kiss me. But as the seconds pass with his lips lingering on my neck, I begin to wonder if it’s because he’s nervous about kissing Ash.
“Embry,” I murmur. “Let me see you and Ash together. Let me have that.”
And when he lifts his head, I see his eyes are glassy again, like melting glacier ice. His hand leaves me and he gets to a kneeling position. Ash mirrors him, and I’m the luckiest woman in the whole goddamn world to be witnessing the President of the United States deliberately palming his cock through his pants as the Vice President watches with his lip between his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Embry finally says. His voice is throttled, his eyes glazed with unshed tears. “I’m sorry I said no. I never stopped loving you. I just wanted to do the right thing.”
“You’re here now,” Ash answers gruffly, one hand still on his erection as his other reaches for Embry’s shirt. “You’re here now.”
I think they’re going to kiss, that they’re going to come crashing together over me in a tangle of muscle and long-stifled desire, but they don’t. Instead, Embry traces Ash’s mouth with his forefinger—the finger that was just inside me. And then he pushes it past Ash’s lips.
Ash sucks on the finger, shoving two of his own in Embry’s mouth, the two that he fe
lt my wetness with, and I watch them as they lick the taste of my cunt from each other’s fingers the same way I’d lick melted chocolate from my own. Ash’s eyelids are hooded as Embry takes his fingers deep into his mouth, and Embry is breathing hard at the sight of his own finger between Ash’s lips. He lets his hand fall free, and then suddenly the kiss happens, fast and hard like a clap of lightning.
“Ash,” Embry breathes. “Oh, Ash.”
Ash grunts in response, leaning into Embry’s neck and biting the mark he made earlier. Embry practically buckles in response, and then Ash is off the bed and hauling Embry off too. Ash kisses him again, this time pressing the length of his body against Embry’s. They are thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, and I can tell the moment their cocks brush against each other’s because they both let out identical noises, twin unfs of helpless pleasure. Embry’s hands are all over Ash—fumbling with his vest buttons and shirt buttons—while Ash is the one holding Embry’s neck, his other hand running possessive lines up and down Embry’s back that make Embry shiver.
Ash moves his attention to Embry’s throat again, and Embry’s eyes close. And then fly open in near-agony as Ash presses his wide palm to Embry’s cock.
“Jesus,” Embry moans, pushing against Ash’s hand. “Jesus, that feels good.”
“You like that?” growls Ash. “You like having my hand on you?”
Embry nods, his mouth opening to make words, but they don’t come out. And I’ve gone from lying on the bed to kneeling, fighting the urge to run my fingers over my clit as I watch. I want to spend all my orgasms all on their bodies, not waste one on my own. But fuck it’s hard to hold back, especially with the rough way Ash rubs Embry, rougher than I would ever dare to be with a man.
And Ash is different with Embry than he is with me, not just rougher but faster and more demanding, like he’s less afraid of hurting Embry than he is of hurting me. He fists a hand in his best friend’s hair and yanks him down to his knees, while his other hand undoes his fly in a few jerky, savage motions. Embry and I exhale in unison as he draws out his erection, which so hard that the skin on his shaft looks shiny. There’s already pre-cum beaded at the top of the swollen, fat tip. His cock is so obscene like this, framed by his tuxedo pants, dark and hungry as it bobs in front of another man’s mouth.
American Queen Page 33
