Sure enough, when I pulled back, Embry’s face was a vivid painting of lust and defeat, and I knew I had his surrender, I knew I’d won. Won what, I still wasn’t sure, but it would either show us heaven or burn us alive, and I couldn’t wait to see which it would be.
Twenty-Six
Ash
now
All of my life, I’ve been lucky. In the big ways—with my mother and sister and lovers and friends—and in the small ways, down to good grades and laws getting passed and the generally favorable course my life has run. I suppose there are parts of my life one could call less than fortunate—my week with Morgan and the resulting son chief among them—but I’ve never felt that those things were unlucky. They were mistakes, debts of judgment that eventually came collecting, and I earned every ounce of pain or scorn that came with them.
Now, however, I feel truly, actually, painfully unlucky.
Stupidly unlucky.
Cruelly unlucky.
Merlin was right on the bridge. I am going to do everything I can to stop this from happening.
I leave the nature park with unfamiliar memories swirling in my mind and still so many doubts, and the first thing I do is call Trieste, then Belvedere. The debate is a week from today. Embry could be dead a week from today.
I will not allow that to happen.
Trieste tells me that a venue switch would be difficult, but not impossible—but it has to be decided by tomorrow for the Secret Service to have enough time to vet the building.
Belvedere tries to patch me through to Embry’s phone, but there’s no response from him or his campaign manager—which makes sense in the aftermath of Abilene’s suicide but is beyond frustrating. I leave him a message, as clear and as explicit as I can make it without sounding ludicrous.
“Embry, I’m sorry to call you again today, but I have information that the debate might be a staging ground for something dangerous. I want to move it to a new venue or figure out something else. Call me back.”
I put Trieste and Uri to work on finding a new venue and liaising with the television network hosting the debate to get their cooperation. I ask Gawayne to pull all of the threats made to Embry and cross-reference them with the final debate location in Richmond. I ask for a huge increase in Secret Service agents present at the event.
But strange things start happening. Phone calls get dropped. Emails vanish between servers. The television network balks at a change of venue. No one can get a hold of Embry, and both Kay and Trieste act as if I’ve lost my mind.
After two days, Embry sends word through his campaign manager that he’ll agree to a change of venue so long as it won’t interfere with Abilene’s funeral arrangements—but then Harrison Fasse kicks up a fuss and starts a media flurry around the venue change, and the outcry forces our hand in revealing the new venue options.
After three days, Gawayne’s team turns up nothing, no evidence for any attack happening at the debate at all. Kay and I argue about the message increasing the Secret Service presence sends.
Embry won’t return my calls.
We manage to get the venue switched and the extra agents, but everything else has gone to shit, and I’m worried Embry’s just as exposed as ever; Merlin asks me about doing the debate remotely, and I call Embry and ask if he’d be willing to do that in a voice message.
No response.
I decide it’s better if I’m with him anyway, not sequestered away in some remote location. I want him close, near to me, so I can intervene if need be.
I ask Merlin if I should tell Embry and Greer about it all. The other memories. What Merlin sees in our futures. He doesn’t give me a real answer, and I don’t have one for myself. Do I tell them this insane story and hope it somehow keeps Embry safe? Or if I tell them, will that make Embry less inclined to believe me about the debate threat?
Do I even really believe the debate threat? Or any of it? Am I fighting for nothing?
Or is this the beginning of the end? A week of stupid mistakes and pointless errors, when everything that could go wrong did go wrong, until the only thing left to offer the universe is my own tiny life?
I don’t know.
I don’t know anymore.
And the entire week I have the dream, the same dream always—water and fog, a waiting boat. Four waiting queens. In the dream, I know there’s someplace to go.
A better place, over the water.
Abilene’s funeral is a somber affair. There had been some fretting at her church about the seemliness of a suicide funeral, but as it isn’t against church doctrine, and also as I had Kay call them on my behalf, the fuss was quickly stamped out.
The bleak reality, however, is another story.
Galahad in particular is difficult to see in his little suit, holding tight to Embry’s hand and asking There, Mah-mee? There Mah-mee? every time he glimpses the large portrait of Abilene near the casket at the front. Greer stands slim and regal through it all, her head up and her gaze clear. Only the smudges under her eyes reveal her sleepless nights, only the clench of her hands folded together show how deeply this has ripped through her. I hold her close when I can. I wish I could do the same for Embry. For Galahad. Just gather my prince and his little son into my arms and shield them from anything hard or difficult ever ever ever.
I stare at the casket during the service, as I hold my wife’s hand and go through the motions of a mourner, and I think of the debate tomorrow. Of the danger I’ve done everything I can to avert.
There is one last thing to try, and I’ll try it tonight.
The truth.
When Greer and I go through the receiving line, Embry looks like a ghost, shaking hands mechanically with the mourners, nodding and presenting a facsimile of a smile when required. But when Greer steps in front of him, a shock passes over his face.
She leans in, kisses a spot that could charitably be called his cheek but is really the corner of his mouth. He closes his eyes, exhaling slowly as she pulls away.
“Tonight,” I say quietly. “Where will you be?”
He opens his eyes and stares at me, his lips parted. For a moment I think he’s not going to answer, but then he says, “My townhouse. I’ll be alone by midnight.”
And I give him my own kiss, not caring who’s watching, only wanting to the feel the clean-shaven velvet of his cheek on my lips before I leave.
“We’ll be there.”
Seven hours later, Embry’s neighborhood is dark and silent as our car rolls up to the front of his house. A hard frost has gathered in the cracks and edges of the sidewalks and streets, a veined spread of white under the streetlights.
Before an agent comes around to open Greer’s door, I say, “I think you should go in first. Alone.”
She turns to me, pretty eyebrows drawn together. “Alone?”
I turn so that I can face her, take her hands, watch her eyes as I speak. All through this last week, I’ve been thinking about tonight, about the debate tomorrow, and two things grew very clear to me. First, I would not let anyone harm a hair on Embry’s head, and second…that means, if Merlin is right, that I must be harmed in turn. It means I will have to lay down my own life for his.
Which means a host of other things I can barely look at, but primarily it means I need to make sure both my prince and my queen are taken care of if all my other contingencies fail, and I am asked to die tomorrow. Part of that care starts tonight.
“You and Embry share a connection through Abilene,” I tell Greer gently. “There should be time for the two of you to feel this together. To mourn together.”
“I don’t want to mourn her,” Greer says in a tight voice. But her eyes betray her. “She tried to kill me, she hurt both you and Embry.”
“Greer,” I say, using my Sir-tone so that she’ll listen to me. “Mourning isn’t about missing someone. It’s about reflection. Examining all the places a person affected your life. Mourning isn’t for the dead—it’s for the living.”
She sighs. “Yes,
Sir.” But then she looks over at me. “We need you, though. He and I.”
I smile and brush some hair off her forehead. “And you’ll have me, sweetheart. I’ll be in to see him after you, and then you and I will share the rest of the night together. But I think it’s for the best if you two have some time alone.”
And I’m selfish and I want to have you each to myself when I say goodbye.
And I’m scared, and if I have you both with me together tonight, I’m worried I won’t be brave enough to do what I need to do tomorrow.
Greer gives me a kiss on the cheek—sweet, quick, unburdened by the knowledge of what tomorrow will bring. “Will you wait outside?”
“Yes.”
And then the agent opens her door and she walks to the front door of the townhouse and disappears inside. I watch from the car window as Embry’s silhouette moves against the glass front of the window, and then I watch as their shadows meet, as Embry’s head drops onto Greer’s shoulder, as Greer holds him, as they finally lift their faces for a kiss I can feel all the way out here in the car.
I smile to myself fondly, a little sadly, as I watch them. It is a strange thing to have jealousy nestled so close to generosity and love, but it is a beautiful thing. It is both haunting and divine that I can take joy in seeing them together, that as I watch them kiss I am brimming over with every good and pure feeling, and at the same time feel fear prick like icy pins along the curve of my heart. The two complement each other, love and fear, hot and cold, light and dark. Perhaps the same algorithms that suit me to kink suit me to loving like this, with the pain too close to the pleasure to tell apart.
I watch my lovers’ shadows move away from the door, and I imagine what they’ll do next. Talk? Slow and awkward, because death makes clumsy speakers of us all? Or will Embry take Greer’s hand and press it against his heart, and in turn she’ll take his hand and press it against where she needs him? Will he drop to his knees and use his mouth under her dress until she cries out? Will she climb onto his lap and ride him with the hard desperation of the grieving?
Because they are both grieving, even if they hated Abilene. No life leaves this world without a ripple, simply erases itself without a trace. Even if Abilene only left behind scars and smoke, those scars have to be tended to before anyone can move on. Especially Embry, with his little boy. Especially Greer, who used to count Abilene as her closest friend.
I lean my head back in my seat and close my eyes for a moment, imagining the two of them together. Remembering the strange new memories Merlin gave to me. In that other life, it was my favorite thing too, to watch them together. To watch Embry tease laughter out of Greer’s mouth, to watch her arguing with him about court politics and crop yields. In that other life, my heart had squeezed just as it does now, with the greatest happiness possible and the greatest jealousy. Because for the two of them I felt an almost God-like love: just that they were alive, just that they existed, was enough to thrill me with measureless joy. That on top of that, they were also happy and in love with each other gave me peace, and because I loved them like I loved nothing and no one else, their happiness was a greater prize than my own.
But like God, I was also jealous of their love, possessive of their hearts. God, I believe is jealous of his people in the purest way, but me—well, then and now, I was jealous because I was afraid. A king, a warrior, a strong man, secretly undone by the fear that those closest to him didn’t love him.
In that other life, I had figured jealousy as the price of the extraordinary love I felt. Who could love as a three, even for years and years, and not still feel the occasional pang of neglect or shame? That didn’t mean I was willing to lose a single moment of their love or loving them, but in this other life, it had meant that I hadn’t thought enough of the future. I hadn’t taken care of the people I loved because it hurt too much to think of them going on together without me, being happy without me.
But that is going to change. This time, in this life, I embrace the jealousy, I embrace the pain, and I let every thorn and burr dig into my skin, and I relish every second of it, because it reminds me that I’m alive and that I can still do the right thing.
And I know what the right thing is for Greer and Embry.
I call Merlin.
“About tomorrow,” I say after he picks up.
“Yes?”
I watch shadows move across the bedroom window on the top floor. “There’s one more thing I need your help with.”
Two hours later, Greer steps out of the townhouse with flushed cheeks and messy hair. I open her door, and I can’t help it, the moment she’s inside, I yank her to me and kiss all the sex right off her lips. I lick into her mouth, hungry for her taste, and I run my fingers up her leg to feel that she’s been well-used by Embry.
“God, that turns me on,” she gasps into my mouth. “How you touch where Embry’s been inside me.”
“Mmm,” I say, moving my mouth to her neck to nip at it. “It turns me on too.”
It does, and it does more than turn me on, it makes me love as God loves—unselfishly, eternally. Their pleasure is my own.
“Thank you,” she says. “It was what we needed.” And she lets out a breath that tells me even more than her words, because it’s a breath shaky with hormones and grief. They cried and they fucked. I feel like a doctor who’s watching a compliant patient heal, thanks to his advice.
“He’s ready for you,” she adds.
I give her throat a final kiss and remove my fingers from her cunt, sliding them in her mouth for her to clean. “Will you go home to wait for me or stay here?”
“I’ll go home, I think. But you will be back tonight?”
“Yes, my queen.”
Back to say goodbye.
Twenty-Seven
Ash
now
Embry opens the door for me clad in only sweatpants, a glisten of sweat still stippling his collarbone. The contours of his arms and chest and stomach are on perfect, sweaty display, and I know he worked up that sweat by fucking my wife.
I have to take a deep breath to keep myself in control.
I want to lick that sweat right off him, I want to reach into those sweatpants and grip what’s mine by right. I want to shove him to the floor and give him everything he’s ever given me, all the anguish and the longing and the happiness, I want to hammer it back into his body until it becomes part of him forever…but that’s not why I came here tonight.
I came here for a goodbye. No matter how much I hope telling him the truth will save him, no matter how much I hope that all my diligence this past week has succeeded, I have to be prepared for tomorrow. In another life, I wasn’t prepared, I wasn’t ready, and when I died, I died leaving a kingdom in ruins.
This time will be different.
“Achilles,” Embry says as he closes the door.
“Patroclus.”
“Do you want a drink?”
I do, oddly enough, and I tell him so. Together we walk into his study, where he opens up a globe bar and pours us each a healthy glass of scotch. He leans against the edge of his desk and I lean against the doorframe, and I take a minute just to appreciate him. To savor the picture he makes. Those tight, flat muscles along his stomach and chest, the compact swells of his arms.
He’s always been like this—lithe and graceful, sculpted in the slender, idealized ways of a Greek statue—the kind of body built to make my heart pound and my cock ache. Where I’m rough with dark hair across my chest, he’s almost boyishly smooth, and where I’m curved and clad with muscular power, he is light and lean.
The differences and samenesses between our bodies fascinate me not because we are both men, but because we are both people, because he has a body and I have a body and we love each other with those bodies, and every secret of his body is fascinating to me because he is fascinating to me. I want to find every place where we are different and every place where we are the same and compose hymns to them both.
“I can’t
think straight when you look at me like that,” Embry complains, taking a drink.
I smile at him, knowing it will flash the dimple that torments him so, and he groans. To think it might be the last time I hear him fret about my dimple has my stomach clenching in fear and grief.
You can’t stand here staring at him forever, I chide myself. Do what you came here to do. Say your goodbye in case there is no chance for it tomorrow.
“Have you ever wondered about what you had to do to make me say yes?”
The way his hand freezes in midair, the scotch glass hovering near his lips, tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Ash…”
“You see, at first, it was simply the delight of denying you, and after our night together in the woods, it was the only thing left to deny. But I never meant to deny you long. I thought, soon enough, there will come a moment that will perfectly mark all this denial and waiting, and we’ll both remember it forever. You know how unhealthily obsessed I am with firsts.”
Embry doesn’t respond, those sooty eyelashes blinking slowly as he takes a drink, as he processes what I’m saying.
“And then that moment never came because I proposed and scared you off. But the second time—the second time, I made a real decision. I thought, when he says yes to me. When he says yes to me and there’s nothing left between us, then we’ll have our last first. That’s what I wanted you to do to earn it, Embry. I wanted you to say yes to me.”
I take a step forward, and he closes his eyes, looking pained. “Ash.”
“What I didn’t realize,” I say quietly, ignoring him as I take another step forward, “was that you were saying yes to me all along.”
The air between us seems to hum and throb, destiny again, fate, except there is no other memory of this, I never did this in my other life. This moment, in both of my lives, is happening for the first time.
American King (New Camelot #3) Page 34
