American King (New Camelot #3)

by Sierra Simone

  “Ash.” Embry’s voice is strangled.

  “Every time you gave me your trust, your obedience, and your surrender. Every time you fought me knowing you would lose, every time you carried me when I couldn’t limp along myself, and every breath and kiss you ever shared with me—it was all you saying yes, every moment of it. You’ve said yes to me so many times I’m surprised I could even hear the word no.”

  Embry’s head is ducked down; he’s breathing hard. “Stop,” he begs. “Please.”

  “You were saying yes, Embry, and I wasn’t listening. But I’m listening now.”

  He looks up at me, and I’m close enough to touch him now, so I do. I take his right hand, and from my pocket, I pull out the ring I’d wanted to throw into the lake three years ago but couldn’t bring myself to. And I slide the ring on his finger, an older, slightly different twin to the one on his left.

  He watches as I do it, his jaw tight, his chest shuddering with every breath, and when I’m finished, I bring the finger wearing my ring to my mouth. “You are just as much mine as Greer is,” I tell him. “And I am just as much yours as I am hers. I wish to God it hadn’t taken me so long to see, that I could have told you this years ago. That I could have given you this years ago.”

  He watches my lips against his finger with something like agony. “Given me this ring?”

  “No. What comes after.”

  “Our last first?” he asks raggedly.

  “Our last first.”

  And then he’s on me, grabbing at my tie and yanking me to his mouth, and we kiss like we used to kiss in the early days—hard and searing and uncertain—and then we’re both stumbling out of the study and up the stairs, kissing frantically as we climb, and Embry’s hands are so eagerly stripping away my jacket and belt that I have to laugh, and then we’re in his bedroom.

  “Galahad is with my mother,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “Not that it matters—if he was here, I’d just close the door and fuck you anyway. Do you have any idea how fucking much I want this?”

  I laugh again because I do have some idea. His erect penis is straining hard at his pants, his chest is flushed a very appealing shade of red, and his fists are clenched at his sides.

  He glares at me. “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s a little funny.”

  More glaring. “You’re a bastard and an asshole.”

  “All true,” I say, “although I was hoping to hear the word ‘asshole’ in another context tonight.”

  His mouth twitches in a way that makes my chest tight. What if this is the last time I get to see that smirk, that smile of secret amusement? “Shit, I can’t laugh now,” he says. “It will ruin the moment. Take off your clothes.”

  “Am I your submissive tonight?” I ask as I unknot my tie and unfix my cufflinks.

  “No,” he says immediately, softly. “No. You will always be my king. That’s how I want it.”

  An uncomfortable warmth chokes at my throat. “Little prince.”

  He steps forward and takes my cufflinks from me, sets them on his dresser and returns to me to help me peel off my shirt. “You asked me two years ago how I wanted it,” he says after we’ve bared my chest. He drops down to untie my shoes, and the sight of him kneeling at my feet and tending to me sends an extra—and unnecessary—jolt of heat to my cock. I’ve been hard since the moment I saw him, but I’m leaking now. Pulsing and needy.

  Embry tugs off one shoe, then moves to my other foot. “For a long time, I thought I’d want to fuck you the way that you fucked me sometimes. I would be the man and you would be the youth, I would be the king and you’d be the knight kneeling in supplication. But after the last debate, I realized—” the other shoe comes off and he moves to my socks “—that’s not what I really want. At all.”

  “What do you want?”

  He stands up, taking my hand and then curling it around the back of his neck and pulling our foreheads together. “To serve you.”

  It’s my turn to breathe raggedly now; I can’t even remember how to breathe. “You know it’s all pretend, Embry. Every bit of it—the kneeling, the bruising, the humiliation. It’s a game. Make believe.”

  I’m telling the truth.

  “Liar,” he breathes, stepping in so that our stomachs and chests press and heave together. “I told you before, everything has been real with you from the very start.”

  And he’s telling the truth too.

  Maybe that’s why so many people don’t understand kink, because we’re both right. It’s real and it’s make believe, it’s deadly serious and sinfully playful, the truest expression of ourselves and also an elaborate game of pretend. Both, both, both, and to forget either is to forget the reason behind the kink, which is to be intentionally and vulnerably and happily…human.

  That’s it, that’s the heart of it. To be human.

  He kisses me again, gently this time, taking care to kiss around the edges of my mouth, to kiss the special spot behind my ear, to rub his cheek against my own. He sighs as my stubble chafes his still-smooth cheek. “The first time I saw you, I knew you were a man who couldn’t keep his shave.”

  “I should shave more.”

  “And then where would I go for such scratchy kisses? Don’t you dare.”

  He kisses my chest and stomach, and then he carefully unfastens my pants, undressing me as carefully as a valet, folding my clothes and setting them aside as I prefer instead of just dropping them on the floor. We both make a noise as he peels off my boxer briefs and my erect cock springs free, glistening at the tip, and then he repeats, “I want you to be my king when we do this. Please.”

  “Do you want me to be in charge?”

  He breathes out, and it seems to free him and shame him as he answers, “Yes.”

  “Hey,” I say, taking his hand. “We can change at any time, okay? If you don’t want me to have the reins five minutes from now or sixty minutes from now, you just tell me and we’ll change. I can be your submissive or we can meet each other as equals. Nothing’s permanent tonight.”

  Even as I say the words, a knife of fear slices a wedge out of my happiness, reminding me that tonight won’t last forever and that some things are permanent. Death, for example.

  I shake away the fear, returning my attention to Embry. “Do you understand?” I ask. “I don’t care which way the power flows tonight or if it flows at all. I told you once that I’d be any kind of man for you, and I meant it. I want to share my body with you, whichever way you want it.”

  Embry stares at me in the near dark. Our only light comes from the open door to the hallway and the streetlights glowing outside the window. “When you say you’ll be any kind of man for me,” he whispers, “my heart beats so fast. But oh, Ash, I don’t want you to be any kind of man for me. I just want you to be the man you already are.”

  I kiss his sweet forehead, understanding. “Okay, little prince. We’ll start now, and just know we can stop at any time.”

  “It’s insane that you need to tell me I can safe out when I’m going to be the one fucking you,” he says with a choked laugh. “But it makes sense somehow. You are more dangerous wielding love than you are wielding pain.”

  It makes sense to me to me as well, and I suppose it’s always made sense, because it’s what I’ve wanted from the very beginning. People don’t look at you with the whole world in their eyes because they fear you—they look at you like that because they love you.

  I pull away and walk over to the bed, where I recline against the pillows and make myself comfortable. “Show me your cock,” I order him. I don’t bother fisting my own—I’ll make him suck it in a minute anyway—and instead I turn all of my attention on him, on this last time I’ll get to see him go red with humiliation. This last time I’ll see him hook his thumbs in his pants and reveal the v of his abdominal muscles, the spread of dark hair at the end of his happy trail, the narrow lines of his hips. The bounce and sway of his full, hard cock.

  He’s struggling w
ith himself as he kicks his pants away on the floor, and it’s another last too, seeing him plunge through every depth of shame at my command.

  “That’s just exposing your cock,” I say lazily, imperially. “Show it to me.”

  He takes a deep breath and then uses a thumb on his staff to push it down, to make it jut perpendicular from his body. And then he takes a step closer, turning so that I can see his body in profile, the hard penis and the tight stomach above it. The glow coming from the window puts a silver burnish on his skin, limns every hair with light. He’s all man, all perfect.

  “Mmm,” I say. “I suppose that will do.”

  The tiniest flicker at the corner of Embry’s mouth relieves me—he realizes what game I’m going to play—but then he ducks his head again, and I’m reminded that the game has power, that the game is real.

  I spread my legs. “I need to be cleaned,” I say, again like a magistrate, bored almost, although I’m anything but bored as I watch the tremors ripple through Embry’s body as he approaches me. He climbs onto the bed with shaky limbs, his sides heaving hard as he lowers himself to his stomach and slides his arms under my thighs.

  I watch his head dip low to my most secret place.

  I feel the hesitant flicker of his tongue across sensitive, creased skin.

  It’s unbearably carnal to witness, the dark crown of his head between my legs, and I have a moment when I realize this is what women see. This is what Greer sees when we eat her. I’ve seen a lover bob up and down on my cock, their every flinch and gasping inhale exposed to me, but this—it feels so private somehow, truly intimate, because there’s so much I can’t see—I see only the flutter of his eyes and the wrinkle in his brow as he concentrates so hard on rimming me properly. But I can only feel the bump and press of his nose against me, the sides of his cheeks smoothing against my hair-rough thighs—even the point of his chin feels like a new discovery as he turns his head this way and that to lick and nibble.

  “We’ve never done this either,” I murmur, sliding my hand through his hair. “So much I’ve missed out on.”

  He moans his agreement, and I feel the vibrations against my skin, which makes me moan. It’s so wet, so dirty, and so loving and servile, and intimate and earthy, and everything I’ve ever loved about sex all rolled into one. When I look down the length of Embry’s body, I see the hollows in his ass cheeks that reveal how hard he’s pressing his cock into the mattress right now. I wish I had the time to make him come all over the sheets first, I wish I could see his body trembling with an inadvertent orgasm while he had his tongue inside me, but alas.

  Maybe in our next life.

  I grab his hair tight and guide his mouth to my cock for a moment, purely so I can see and feel it one last time. The stretch of those refined lips, the flex of that perfectly chiseled jaw. Those dark eyelashes resting on his cheeks. His mouth so hot and wet and good on my skin.

  Last time, goes the voice in my head. Last time.

  I ignore it. “Put your cock inside me,” I say, as if I’m ordering him to give me a massage. As if I’m a spoiled king making the most depraved demands of his courtiers. “Make me feel good.”

  Embry comes off my cock with color high in his cheeks and a gasp. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I will.”

  He slides off the bed to get to the night stand and opens a shallow drawer. Inside there’s a bottle of lube and a silicone toy. No condoms, no baby wipes, nothing that speaks to partners or to the anticipation of partners. Just a lonely life.

  That’s going to end, I think, and the thought gives me relief. That it’s pain I will be able to soothe away, that like a good Sir, I’ll be able to give Embry aftercare for all these hard years. The best aftercare I’m capable of giving.

  Embry is careful but thorough, using his finger to coat me inside and out, his eyes flicking up to mine constantly, gauging my expression. I can see his heartbeat in his cock as he works his way inside, the pulse hammering at the side of his neck, the stunned bite of his lip as he slides his finger all the way to the knuckle and feels the full clench of me around his digit.

  “Fuck,” he whispers. “You’re so hot inside. Burning hot.”

  “Give me more,” I say, keeping my tone imperious, although I’m not fooling anyone with my cock dripping onto my stomach and my hips making slow rolls against Embry’s hand. “I want more.”

  “Yes, Sir,” he says with a comely flutter of his eyelashes and adds a second finger.

  I arch a little at the feeling of fullness, at the protest of the muscles around my entrance, and he puts a calming hand on my stomach, sliding it underneath my erection so that he can press down on my stomach at the same time his fingers hook upward and stroke a spot that has my toes curling.

  “Remind yourself that it’s not pain,” he says, echoing his instructions from that long-ago night in Lyonesse. “And you want it because I’m the one giving it to you.”

  “I want it because you’re the one giving it to me.”

  The fingers stroke in exploration, in preparation, and right now the kink is so thin and light, like a sheet thrown over furniture, showing the shape of the real thing underneath.

  When I say, “Service me with your cock,” what I mean is let’s share everything, let’s leave nothing else between us.

  And when he removes his fingers and slicks up his erection with a trembling hand and I say, “Such a good, eager boy,” what I mean is I love seeing you shake with love for me because I am always shaking with love for you.

  And when, for the first time in both my lives, he presses his tip against a place I’ve never shared with anyone and I say, “Make me feel good,” we both know I mean I want to make you feel good, I want us to feel good together, I want to see your face as you feel it and as you come for me.

  Embry closes his eyes and pushes in. Just an inch. Just enough to send a frisson of electric pain up my spine.

  Another inch. He lets out a moan like he’s dying, his eyes still closed.

  I inhale sharply at the new invasion, and I can’t help but arch again, which makes him open his eyes and look down at me with a dazed expression. It seems to take him a moment to remember where he is or what’s happening. He pulls back enough to run his hands up my inner thighs and spread me wider, and then he pushes my knees ever so slightly up. Opening up my center, baring my hole to him.

  And then he guides himself back to my anus, his massive cock pressing in past the ring of muscle more easily this time.

  “Jesus, you’re big,” I grunt, and he laughs—which hurts, and I groan, which makes him laugh even more.

  I reach up and collar his throat with my hand, pleased to feel how fast and eager his pulse pounds under my fingers. “Serve your king now.”

  “Yes, Sir.” And Embry gives a slick thrust, pulls out, and then slides all the way home.

  “Fuck,” I mumble, my grip on his neck growing tight as my body breaks out into a shivering, happy sweat. It’s a feeling so close to pain, so close to pleasure, but it’s not quite either yet, something unformed and unshaped, something that is sensation in its rawest form. And it’s dirty, it’s so fucking dirty, making him fuck me while I choke him, watching his stomach muscles flex and work to push into me and stroke me from the inside out.

  “Fuck is right,” he pants, closing his eyes again. A drop of sweat rolls along his temple. “Jesus Christ, it’s tight. It’s better—God—better than I ever could have dreamed. Fuck.”

  “Open your eyes,” I order. “Watch my face as you serve me.”

  He obeys, opening his eyes with what appears to be a struggle, his mouth all parted and his cheeks flushed and his pupils blown wide. And whatever he sees in my own face unravels him.

  “Oh God, Ash,” he says in a choked voice, his hips still moving in dirty, delicious thrusts. “Oh God.”

  I can’t fucking handle how handsome he is like this. How perfect. I pull him down for a hot kiss, sloppy and urgent, and whatever change in angle that creates sends a bolt of pl
easure straight to my core.

  “Oh,” I breathe. “Oh.”

  I think I see now why Embry likes this so much. I mean, I’ve always known in an abstract way that it must feel good, and it felt good when Embry fucked me with that toy at Lyonesse, but it’s nothing like now, nothing like having a virile, beautiful man between your legs, nothing like having something hot and vital seeking out your own hot and vital places. And then that man being someone you’ve loved for so fucking long, that man shivering with how good you’re making him feel…

  Another slow thrust against my prostate, and my vision sparks along the edges.

  “Oh Embry,” I say. “Oh, fuck. Fuck me.”

  That earns me another urgent kiss, more of those exquisite strokes. And then we fall into each other, the kink sliding away as easily as a sheet, the thing underneath as naked and needy as our bodies in this deep, filthy moment. Embry braces himself on a forearm over me, sliding his other arm under my waist to crush my body tight to his, and then we kiss like we’ll never get to kiss again. Each kiss is mirrored by a piercing stroke down below, each stroke is followed by ripples of muscle and flesh, each ripple is followed by pants and moans that we swallow up from each other again and again, hungry for the other’s hunger, thirsty for the other’s thirst.

  And each kiss, each slide and stroke, each brush of thigh against thigh, seems to say last time, last time.

  The first and last time.

  He breaks the kiss so he can gaze down at me, his eyes soft, and the light catches on a few silver hairs near his temple, on the fine crinkles around his eyes, and I think of the spoiled young prince I met almost twenty years ago, how young and eager to fuck and fight we both were. How little we knew of ourselves and the world and love. What bloody, aching messes we made of each other’s hearts.

  I wouldn’t trade away a single second of it. Not for anything.

  I reach up and trace the tiny lines around his eyes. “We’re not young men anymore,” I murmur.

  He drops his face so he can whisper the words against my mouth. “You make me feel young.”