She blinks once, her mouth parting, and I know that she’s already grasping all the political and administrative ramifications of this news. The PR, the strategy, the math of states and votes and polls. She’s better at that than I am. Better at seeing and understanding, when it feels like all I’m good for right now is standing still.
“Kay and Merlin know?” she asks. Then talking mostly to herself, she says, “Of course Kay would know. You’ve asked her to fill Embry’s role, I’m sure. Which means you would ask Trieste to be Chief of Staff. And what does Merlin say about the election? We’ll have to—”
“We don’t have to do anything,” I say in a gentle voice. “Embry left me, Greer, not you. He doesn’t have to be your enemy, and I would never ask you to help me campaign against him.”
She stares at me. “You must be joking.”
“I’m not,” I say firmly. “I mean every word of it. Embry loves you and you love him and I love you both. It’s my intention to honor that as much as possible.”
“But you’ll still run, right? You’re not stepping aside out of some misguided nobility?”
I smile weakly at that. “It may still be misguided nobility, but no, I’m not stepping aside. I’m afraid that my disagreement with Embry is too fundamental.”
She bites her lip for a moment. “Is it about me?”
“Yes.”
She waits expectantly for me to elaborate, but I won’t. I shouldn’t. “It’s Embry’s story to tell,” I explain. “He should be the one to give you his reasons. It would be wrong for me to speak on his behalf.”
“Oh Ash,” she murmurs, pressing her face back into my leg. “Stop being so good for just a second and talk to me.”
“I’m not being good,” I promise her. “If I were really being good, I would have accepted his resignation without provoking him. But I couldn’t do that, and we—”
I take a breath. “It got messy.”
“Messy how?”
My curious little cat. Even with everything that’s happened, I’m still charmed by her fascination with Embry and me. “We fought and then we came, so business as usual,” I say. “It wasn’t good of me to do. He wanted dignity in that moment and I made sure he didn’t have it.”
“He wanted whatever you wanted,” she says, glancing up at me. “And you wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t know that he wanted it too.”
“That’s pleasant to think, but I’m not sure how true it is.” I smooth her hair away from her face. “The most important thing for you to know is that I gave Embry my blessing to be with you. And I’m giving you the same blessing. I don’t expect or want this shift in loyalty to break the two of you apart. I certainly won’t curtail my relationship with you, and should the moment arise between Embry and me again, I can’t imagine I would stop myself from doing what I want.”
She has no answer to this, and I can see the tiny pulls and parts of her mouth as she struggles for words. “Ash, I don’t think I can…cheat on you,” she finally manages. “There were times when it was just me and him, but that was when we were a three. If we aren’t a three anymore, then I don’t know how I feel about being with Embry.”
“You won’t ‘be’ with him, you’ll fuck him. And at the end of the day, you’ll come home to me. My bed. My body. I will always be your husband and your king and your master, and it doesn’t matter who I let you fuck, you’ll always belong to me, understood?”
“Yes,” she breathes, her eyes wide and open. Her body has gone hot and pliable in front of mine, practically begging to be handled.
I ignore it for the moment, ignore the angry throb of my cock against the wool of my suit pants. “This isn’t cheating, Greer. We promised each other on our wedding night, and we keep our promises. That means you and Embry have my full consent and permission to be together, and that means I don’t expect you to help me campaign against him or to do anything else that would divide your loyalty. I care too much for you to do that.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” she insists. “And this will hurt you, I know it will.”
“I choose the pain too, angel. I always have.”
“And I’ll campaign by your side,” she says. “No matter what.”
I’m touched by her loyalty—more than touched, I’m fed by it in all the wrong ways—but I don’t tell her that. Instead I say, “You should wait until you talk to Embry to decide that. You might agree with him that I should no longer be President.”
“Never,” she vows. “There’s nothing he can say that will convince me you shouldn’t be in this office.”
“I didn’t keep you safe from Melwas.”
Her mouth drops. “Is that what this is about?”
I don’t answer.
“Ash—”
I shake my head. “It’s Embry’s story to tell. I’m not going to interfere between the two of you. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fuck fair,” she protests, her voice rising. “What about what’s fair to you? What about what’s fair to me? Do I really lose the right to talk about Embry with you because you want to be fair? We promised, even back before the wedding, that we would talk about him with each other, that we wouldn’t hold back or hide, that everything had to be completely honest.”
“Princess,” I say, looping her hair around my finger and tugging gently. “That was about missing him, not about anger. Not about pain. It’s a world of difference.”
“But you still miss him,” she points out. “Even if you resent him at the same time. And I know he’s going to miss you. I know he still loves you.”
I sigh, releasing her hair. “That’s what Morgan said last night.”
“You talked to Morgan last night? She knew about this before I did?” There’s a hint of insecurity in her voice, and with some shame, I realize I’d forgotten about her disastrous interaction with Morgan last year…and with even more shame, I realize I still need to tell Greer the worst part of it all.
“She knew even before I did, Greer. She’ll be Embry’s running mate.” I pull my wife up into my lap, gathering her to me until she’s nestled against my chest and enclosed by my arms, her legs tucked up in the chair and her head resting on my shoulder. I stroke her hair as I say as kindly as I can, “There is one more thing, though.”
“About Morgan?” I can hear the wariness in her voice, and I wish I could spare her this part, so soon after finding out about Abilene and Embry’s baby, so soon after finding out that she isn’t carrying a child of our own. But Greer is strong; she doesn’t need to be protected from the truth.
“It is about Morgan,” I agree, holding her a little tighter. “There was a baby—a son. Her aunt raised him, and no one knew the boy was hers, not even Embry. Not even me."
Greer's gone completely still, her body braced for it, and I wish to God I could say anything other than what I say next. "He was mine, Greer. He is mine."
I expect her to stay frozen or maybe even to rage at me, to call me all the words I've already called myself—sinner, pervert, a twisted, incestuous bastard—but she doesn’t. She looks up at me with eyes the color of the sea under moonlight, and then she presses a cool hand against my face. I turn and kiss her palm and taste salt—she’s caught tears I didn’t even know I was crying on her skin.
“Oh Ash,” she murmurs. “Is this why you knelt when I came in?”
I close my eyes. “I knelt because nothing feels real anymore. Only you.”
“You didn’t know, Ash. You can’t be angry with yourself for something you didn’t know about.”
“I should have known,” I say, my eyes still closed. “Before Glein, she wanted to speak to me so badly, she wouldn’t leave until we’d talked, and I mistook it for…I don’t even know. An infatuation I didn’t have time for, maybe. Something I couldn’t even entertain because I’d fallen so hard for her brother by then and the war was really starting and…” I open my eyes. “All along, she was trying to tell me that we had a child. And I couldn’t be bothered to give h
er five fucking minutes of my time.”
“You were fighting a war,” Greer reminds me. “And she could have written, she could have called, she could have served you with a paternity test—anything other than melting into silence after Glein.”
“I think there was no hope of anything else after Glein. I failed her and our baby too badly for her to trust me again.”
“God!” Greer practically explodes. “Of all the things to hold against you! That wasn’t even your fault!”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say heavily. “At the end of the day, a person is held to account for their choices, by history or by God or by something else, and what happened at Glein amounted to the results of my choices. I was green, I was young, I was doing my best, but I still chose what I chose. I can’t blame Morgan for hating me.”
I can tell by her huff that Greer disagrees, and it makes me smile. “My loyal young bride,” I say, pressing my forehead against hers. But then I pull away and search her face. “I will understand if this changes how you feel about me. It is one thing to have fucked a sister in ignorance, but now that there’s a son…it’s a much heavier sin. You would be well within reason to divorce me over this.”
She sits up in my arms, her cheeks going red with anger. “I can’t believe you’d even say something like that.”
I run a hand along the curve of her thigh, soothing my restless filly. “There’s more to contend with than just Lyr’s existence, Greer. Aren’t you curious how Embry found out when Morgan hid it from him for so long?”
There’s a stubborn set to her jaw. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, unfortunately. Your cousin was the one who told Embry. In fact, she was using Lyr as blackmail to manipulate Embry into dating her. He was hurting you in order to protect me and my image from the truth. You are allowed to resent me for that at least.”
“Dammit Ash, I can’t resent you. Not now, not ever.” She flings her arms around my neck, twists until she’s straddling my lap with her forehead touching mine. “I hate her and I’m furious with him, but this is not your fault. None of it is.”
“You’ll find that Embry disagrees. And Morgan. And certainly the public will have a different opinion.”
Greer stiffens slightly as she realizes what I’m saying. “The public?”
“Abilene’s threat was to go public about Lyr. For now, with Embry thoroughly trapped and you thoroughly miserable, she might be content. Especially if she has a chance of taking your spot in the White House. However, that same chance might be too much of a temptation; she could just as easily disclose the information about Lyr in order to destroy my chances at re-election. We’ll have to hope she’s wise enough to see how it would tarnish Embry’s ticket, since Morgan is his running mate.” I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know her well, not like you and Embry know her, but she strikes me as fundamentally unpredictable. And so you see why I want to give you a choice. It’s one thing to forgive me such a sin in private, but it’s quite another to stand by my side when the entire world knows. You’ll be tainted by association.”
“I’m already tainted,” she says tiredly. “The video of me and Embry, remember? It doesn’t matter how loudly we said it was fake, I’ll always be suspect now.”
“But we have to make our choices where we have them. And I hope I’ve done a thorough job laying out your choices, as much as God knows I secretly wish for you to have none. To stay with me. Moments like this, I feel like I’ll dissolve without you.”
She holds me tighter, snugging her body closer to mine and pressing down harder on my dormant erection. “I’ve made my choice,” she whispers. “I told you before, I’ll always choose the pain.”
My body responds to her words and her loyalty, surging with heat and desperate need.
“You mean that?” I murmur, ducking my head so I can peer into her face. “With Lyr? With Embry gone? After all that Melwas did and with all the terrible things that might happen?”
She brushes her lips against mine, and my entire world is the smell of her skin and the glint of her moon-sea eyes. “Yes. I choose it all.”
I want to weep. And I nearly do, holding her close. I don’t deserve her pain, I don’t deserve her trust, but somehow she’s choosing to give them to me anyway. I’m humbled and grateful with the kind of gratitude that can flay a man alive, and my entire body is trembling with the urge to reward her devotion the way I know best.
She must be thinking along the same lines because she kisses my jaw and then whispers in my ear, “Use me today, make yourself feel better inside of me. Master me. Break me.”
Always and forever, my queen.
Seven
Ash
now
“Sir, the Beast is ready.”
The Beast is my car—the presidential car, though there are multiple vehicles that fill the role—and it’s time for the Luther Center Gala. I nod to Belvedere, indicating that I heard and that we’ll be outside shortly, and he vanishes back out of the living room to wait for us.
I’m fastening my cuff links as I walk into my bedroom to find my wife panting and squirming on a chair, trying to stay quiet so Belvedere can’t hear her out in the hallway. Her ball gown is rucked up around her hips, her chest flushed, her knuckles white as she grips the edge of the seat. And the wand vibrator buzzing between her legs makes an ominous whirr against the wood as she tries to shift away from it.
“Sir, please,” she gasps.
I glance at my wristwatch; she’s been on the chair for twenty minutes, forced to sit with her cunt snug against the vibrator duct-taped to the seat and not allowed to come. This is after I spent an hour teasing her with my mouth before my meet and greet, and after I spent another thirty minutes in the shower with her afterwards, slowly fucking her ass until she could barely stand up. She was not given permission to come then either. In short, she is currently a wet, writhing mess, and I plan to take her to the gala that way.
“You may get up,” I allow.
She’s up in an instant, a little whimper of both relief and bereavement coming out of her pretty mouth. Red lipstick tonight, immaculate and classic, just like her, and I can’t wait to smear it all over her face. But for now…
“Knot my bow tie, please,” I order her, and she walks to me on shaking legs, the tulle and silk of her ball gown falling back to the floor and covering up her swollen pussy. God, that cunt will feel so good to fuck later, so puffy and so wet. And when she finally comes, I’ll get to see the way she unravels down to her very soul. It is one thing to break someone open with pain—some might even say an obvious thing, if not an easy one—but it is another thing entirely to break someone open with pleasure. It takes a different kind of skill and care, a different brand of attention to keep someone so torturously aroused for so long.
“You did ask to be mastered,” I remind my wife with amusement as she has to steady herself with a hand on my shoulder.
“I thought you’d belt me,” she admits with a breathless laugh. “Or choke me with your cock. I wasn’t ready for this. It’s almost harder than being worked over.”
“It is harder, and you’ve pleased me very much,” I tell her, lifting her chin with a finger so she looks up into my face. “You are still pleasing me. I’m so very proud of you for taking my cock up your ass and for rubbing your pussy on that toy. I’m even prouder that you could do it all without restraints.”
She flushes happily, and I enjoy lighting her up with my praise. It’s well earned too; it’s hard to endure twenty minutes of that even when you’re bound to the chair, unable to move. But because of the gala and her sleeveless gown, I decided not to tie or tape her—nothing that would leave visible marks. Which meant she had to keep herself on that chair with sheer willpower; every moment she sat on the chair, she was suffering and enduring that vibrator for my sake. For me.
Her smooth, pale arms, free of any mark or stripe from my ropes, display the difference between force and choice, and while both things are delicious
to me, right now the choice carries so much more weight. Perhaps it’s because it’s all a choice at its heart—even when I pretend to force her, she has her safe word, she still has a way to escape, and we both know it. But an exercise like the chair strips away all the pretenses and leaves our exchange for the naked, gleaming thing it is.
A decision. A willing surrender. A display of love.
And it’s as she’s slowly knotting my bow tie, her normally practiced movements made slightly fumbling by her hyper-aroused state, that I finally feel like myself for the first time today.
I am a man who loves. A man whose love demands much in return.
And I will survive this.
I mark every flutter of those long eyelashes against her cheek, every tiny furrow of her brow as she pulls the fabric around my neck into the right shape. She’s so fucking beautiful all the time, but now, with her eyes glassy and her cheeks flushed and her full attention on the task I set her to, I’m so fucking in love that I can barely see straight. My young wife, my regal little queen, so willing to be unspooled at my whim.
She finishes with the bow tie, plucks the corners into sharp peaks, and then smiles up at me, all bright red lips and white teeth. I bend my head and bite the small cleft in her chin and she laughs.
“I want to kiss you,” I say, biting her again. “I want to kiss all the air right out of you until the only thing you can breathe is me. But the fucking gala.”
“We could cancel,” she suggests with a coy smile. “Pretend we’re sick.”
“Naughty thing. You just want to be fucked sooner.”
“I would never presume, Sir,” she says in a voice that says she would do exactly that.
I sweep her into my arms, honeymoon style, and carry her out of the bedroom.
“My shoes!” she protests, feet kicking adorably under all that tulle. She’s also not wearing underwear, but she’s smart enough not to ask for it.
American King (New Camelot #3) Page 6
