American King (New Camelot #3)

by Sierra Simone

  And there are no more words after that.

  He crushes me against him once more, lying flat and full along the length of me, so that I feel every pound of him, every inch. Every stroke comes with the weight of his body, each pound of his heart is echoed by mine. And we make each other feel young, with something we should have done in our youth but are now sharing instead as men in our prime, and it’s painful to think of the years we missed of this—and somehow all the more perfect that we waited until we were almost forty to do it. There’s a reverence in our touch now, an awe and a gratitude that comes with having lived-in bodies and scarred, wise hearts.

  I come first, my cock pinned between our stomachs, and he kisses me the whole time I come, cherishing me, thanking me, and when our mouths part he tells me all the things I’ve ever told him—you are so handsome when you come, so pretty like this, you make me feel so good. And I come like fucking death itself, nearly blacking out with the ecstasy of Embry inside me and above me and around me, each wave of wet pleasure hotter and more airless than the last. Until I am nearly blacked out for real, my vision hissing with sparks and my ears ringing as my cock pumps spurt after spurt of cum onto us both, as my orgasm unspools from a place so fucking deep inside that it doesn’t even feel real, it feels like a part of me so old and elemental that it must have existed before time itself.

  And then Embry follows me over the edge, and I don’t let him kiss me because I want to see every second of it on his face, every flutter of his eyelashes and part of his lips and furrow of his brow as he grunts his release into me, ejaculating so hard and so hot that I can feel the pulse of him in my ass, I can feel the heat of his semen scorching the insides of me.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you,” I say back. And neither of us moves for a long time, even as the semen on our bellies cools and goes sticky, even as we go soft, because we want to savor this moment forever, live in it forever and never leave. The final gift.

  Our last first.

  “Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?” Embry asks. We’ve showered—Embry looking so puppy-dog eager that I allowed him to slake his lust inside me again…and then I flipped him around and returned the favor—and now we’re in his bed.

  There’s something hard and small under my back; I reach behind me and pull out one of Galahad’s binkies. My chest tightens, so does my throat. I’m never going to have that. Binkies in bed, children wriggling and messy in my house. I missed my chance with Lyr, and tomorrow will be the end, and I’ll never know the feeling of a warm little body snoozing against my chest, or the sound of baby giggles or the sight of my wife or my lover cradling a child of my own flesh and blood.

  I place the binky on an end table and then turn back to Embry, pulling him into my arms and feeling his cheek against my chest.

  Last time, last time.

  “What would I have to forgive you for?”

  “Saying no to you. Leaving you. Everything.”

  I kiss the top of his head. “There’s nothing to forgive. I know now why you said no. I know why you left. And Embry, even if I didn’t know, even if it still broke me in half knowing you didn’t want to marry me, I couldn’t have faulted you for needing what you needed. Asking you to marry me—both times—it had implications beyond us simply loving each other. I was asking you to be publicly queer. Even now, it isn’t always safe, and there’s no way I could have promised you that we wouldn’t lose our jobs—or worse—over being out together. The only thing I could promise you is that I would have loved you no matter what, stayed by your side no matter what the price.”

  “I know that,” he sighs against my chest. “Which is why I worried you thought I was cowardly, because you were willing to do that, and you thought I wasn’t.”

  “Safety isn’t cowardice, Embry. I was hurt, of course I was hurt, but how could I blame you for taking care of yourself?”

  “And now it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow will come and we will fight each other, and all these years of back and forth will have been for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” I say, running a thumb along his arm. “We got to have tonight.”

  “And your wedding night.”

  “And your wedding night.”

  “The forest after Caledonia.”

  “That night in Rome with the wine bottle.”

  “The night after the Inauguration.”

  “You couldn’t walk for a day afterward, remember?”

  He laughs. “It was worth it.”

  “It’s all been worth it, little prince. For me.”

  He presses his lips to skin above my heart. “For me too.”

  Last time, last time.

  “If I asked you not to go to the debate tomorrow, would you listen?”

  He groans and rolls onto his back. “Is this about that non-existent Carpathian threat? I saw the files, Ash. There’s nothing there.”

  “Merlin says there’s something. I’m terrified there’s something. What if I didn’t go—if I pretended to be sick or there was an emergency or a crisis—would you agree to postpone the debate then?”

  “It would throw off my entire campaign schedule. I can’t.”

  It’s my turn to groan. “Not even for your own safety?”

  “I’ve come too far to fuck this up,” he says, propping his head up on his arm to look at me. “I’m sorry, Ash, but I’m not going to throw away my shot at the White House just because Merlin has a bad feeling. You can play hooky from the debate all you like. I am going to be there.”

  “Is making war on Carpathia that important to you still? They’re done, Melwas is gone. Greer is safe.”

  Embry looks down at my chest, biting his lip in thought, and when he raises his eyes back to mine, what I see there gives me some hope. “You might be right about Carpathia,” he says softly. “And war. Putting Abilene in the ground today reminded me that even if you’re burying an enemy, it doesn’t feel good. And seeing Galahad ask for her…” he breathes out. “I don’t know if I have a taste for making orphans,” he says, attempting a joke.

  I stay serious. “Do you really mean that?”

  Can I trust this country with you?

  He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean that.”

  “But you still want to win.”

  He gives a one-shouldered shrug that manages to look elegant even though he’s propped up on one elbow. “Even if I didn’t, it feels too late to turn back now.”

  “I’m worried it’s too late for a lot of things.”

  It’s like everything is arrayed against me at once, everything has gone wrong, and the one person who could fix it all just by listening won’t.

  Is this what fate feels like from the inside? All those tragic heroes Embry told me about in Berlin, is this how they felt as their lives converged in inevitable ruin around them?

  Embry leans down to kiss me. “It’s not too late for us to love each other.”

  And I almost tell him. It’s what I came here to do after all—to tell him the truth. I almost spill out every last insane detail about this other life, which may or may not be a hallucination, but it’s a hallucination I share with Merlin, and for some reason I can’t help but believe in it. It feels so right to me. So true and so real. I could tell him about a flat-topped hill and an isle called Avalon and about the queen we both loved. I could tell him how it ended in the worst possible way—broken, unfinished, every last one of us betrayed—every last work unraveled by ambition and years-old hurt.

  But I don’t tell him, even though it’s what I came here to do, because it still sounds too impossible even in my own mind. He’d never believe me. I barely believe me.

  Instead, I let him kiss me, I let him hold me, and in the silvery dark, we make love one last time. He doesn’t know it’s our last time, but I can feel it in every kiss and whisper of flesh, singing as loud as a cathedral choir.

  Last time, last time.

  Twenty-Eight

  Ash

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  It’s close to four in the morning when I get to the White House, and Greer is tucked into our bed, softly dreaming with her hair webbed gleaming and gold over the pillows. I sit on the edge of the mattress, and I watch her for a long time. The rise and fall of her chest, the little twitches behind her eyelids, the rosy part of her lips.

  And then I’m crying.

  I thought it would make it easier to say goodbye separately, I thought I could minimize the pain to myself, but I’d indulged in a lie, because this is no fucking easier. I’ve had so much practice saying goodbye to Embry, but to my Greer—

  No, I’m as weak as a child right now, as lost as a lamb in the dark fields. How can I say goodbye to her? The keeper of my soul and my heart? The queen of broken glass?

  My crying wakes her, and she stirs slowly, beautifully, a sleeping beauty straight out of a fairy tale. When her eyes flutter open and she sees me, she reaches for me, just like a kitten should reach for her Sir, and I let her, I pull her into my arms and hold her as tight as I can and as I let my tears fall into her hair.

  “What is it?” she whispers against my throat. “Do you need me?”

  “Yes. God. Please.”

  “Then take me, Sir,” she says. Her words tickle the skin of my throat, and I tilt her head back, searching her eyes.

  I wonder about telling her. Greer knows the myths and legends better than anyone, and unlike Embry, her self-worth and self-image aren’t wrapped up in resisting me. She of anyone might be the most likely to believe all of it, as staggeringly impossible as it is. But then what would it change? If she did believe me? There’s nothing I will do differently—I will still stand next to Embry tomorrow and I will still lay down my life if necessary. The only purpose it would serve would be to make her as miserable and as fearful as I am, and if I can spare her that at least, then I am delivering a mercy. Perhaps it’s better to be her Sir in this too, and protect her from as much as I can.

  Her eyes are searching mine right back. “What is it?” she asks softly. “What is it?”

  I think I’ve finally found my right sacrifice, I want to tell her. I think I’ve learned the day I’ll be asked to set down my sword and my crown.

  It wasn’t enough for me to live, and now I have to die.

  I don’t tell her that. Instead I kiss her lips, as gently as I’ve ever kissed her, just enjoying the silky brush of her mouth against my own, and I turn her over on my lap so that she’s draped across me and her ass is presented for my hand.

  I spank her without warning, without warm-up. After each smack, I plump and soothe her stinging flesh, but I don’t take it easy on her, I don’t let up. I spank until I feel the sweat beading along my hairline, until she’s crying into the sheets, until her bottom is the color of cherries in the summer. And I play with her pussy in between the abuses, since it’s so available to me, swollen and wet and flushed and almost insolently peeking up through her ass cheeks. When I slide my fingers inside for the first time, I’m reminded that I am not the first man to use her body tonight, and oh, how that gets me hard. Especially as I feel the tender place in my own body where I was used by the same man.

  I stroke her inner walls with demanding, cruel strokes. “It gets me off to feel you so slippery and messy from Embry.” I give her ass a hard slap. “Do you like that? Having your husband feel how wet you are from another man? To be your sloppy seconds?”

  She moans against the sheets, wiggling her ass higher, and I give her cheek a final slap before I toss her roughly across the bed and crawl over her. I pin her hips in place with my thighs, rising up to yank off my shirt.

  “All I’ve ever wanted,” I breathe, “from the first moment I saw you, was to cuff you to my bed and keep you forever. To trade my heart for yours, so that wherever we went, we were inside each other.”

  She offers me her wrists, and she’s such a fucking picture right now with her nipples furled tight and her chest flushed and her delicious hair tangled everywhere. Offering herself. “Keep me forever, Mr. President,” she begs. “Please, please, please.”

  God, how will I bear this? How will I disobey her tomorrow and let her go?

  I unbuckle my belt and slide it free from its loops with a leathery hiss, cinching her wrists tight and threading the tail through the clasp. “Flex your fingers,” I tell her, and she does. I pinch one of her fingertips, then I put my palm against hers. “Squeeze my hand.” She does, her eyes glassy and her body trembling underneath me.

  It was one of the sweetest discoveries of our relationship when it started—I’d already known she wanted the darkness—but her delight in the minutiae of kink gratified the careful Dom in me. More than gratified—it fed me, nourished me in ways I never even knew I needed. She thrived on the smallest of cares and attentions, and I delighted in giving them to her, watching my lonely little princess bloom into a formidable queen as I tended to her the way she needed. Every safety check, every negotiation, every pre-scene discussion was foreplay to her, and every shower and snuggle and morning when I chose what I wanted her to wear was the most tender aftercare. There are as many ways of being a submissive as there are of being a human, and while Embry’s brand of pugilistic submission was ambrosial in its own way, it was nothing compared to the intoxicatingly complete surrender of Greer’s.

  Greer wants to submit.

  She needs to.

  That young man dreaming of the Goblin King had never even come close to dreaming of this.

  Satisfied that her circulation is good and we’re not risking nerve damage, I give her hand a squeeze back. “Hands above your head, sweetheart.”

  She raises her bound wrists above her head, which serves the purpose of making her mouthwatering breasts jut closer to me with their tempting peaks. “What’s your safe word?”

  “Maxen.”

  I give one of her breasts a vicious slap, loving the arch of her underneath me as the pain sizzles through her body. Her eyes are still wet with tears from her spanking, and I know the blanket underneath her sensitive ass must feel sandpaper-rough. I lean down, one hand on her throat and the other running through her hair, and I have a moment when I’m frozen, hovering above her lips, the tips of our noses dancing together.

  I’m frozen because it’s too much, she’s too much, she’s too interesting, too intelligent, too slyly funny, too honest, too brave, too fucking beautiful for me to say goodbye to her. My hand at her head could spend weeks stroking her hair, my other hand at her throat could feel the thread and thrum of her pulse for years. I was born to sit with her body between my thighs, and my lips could spend eternity slipping and breathing against hers.

  How could I have thought I could say goodbye in one night? When I could spend years and years and never get enough of her?

  I’m crying again.

  I kiss her hard, kissing down all the questions and worries I know she must have, and then I clap a hand over her mouth as I move my lips to her jaw, to her throat, to her collarbone. And there I do my goddamned best to make a farewell of her body, my hand stifling her moans and my body keeping hers still as I nurse at her breasts and lick into the little well of her navel. I don’t pull my hand from her mouth until I’m moving down to her hips and her thighs, leaving no place unkissed, untasted, not even the backs of her knees or the rough pads of her toes.

  I flip her over, making the same tour over her warm, spanked ass, over the dimples in her lower back, up to the angel wings of her shoulder blades. Kisses and bites and licks and sucks, anything a hungry mouth can do to a sweep of willing flesh, all the way up to her neck. I kiss her ears, the base of her skull, the winding loops of her cool, silky hair, remembering with pained fondness all the times I’ve rubbed that hair over the most private parts of me just to feel the cool silkiness on my most sensitive skin. Wrapped around my cock, sliding against my sac. Tickling my inner thighs. It would make her eyes glow with lust as she laid her head on my thigh and watched my face as I despoiled her hair. It would make her so wet that I could se
e the arousal shining on her thighs, so wet that I could smell the faint honey scent of it on the air.

  Tonight, however, I move back down her body, kissing down the pearl necklace of her spine until I reach the spot I want to be. I grab her hips to hoist her up, and then I part her cheeks and give her a flat, long lick from clit to ass.

  She cries out, rocking from side to side, and I give her a little swat. “Hold still, angel. This part’s for me, not you.”

  “Mmph,” she says, pressing her face into the blanket as I return to her seam and begin fucking her with my tongue. “Mmph!”

  I wasn’t lying though, because this part is for me. I can’t imagine dying without tasting her one last time; I can’t imagine leaving this life without the lingering memory of her on my tongue. She tastes so fucking sweet, with just that bit of salt and earth that makes her all woman, and I’m so hard as I eat her, as I wonder which parts of her taste are uniquely hers and which are uniquely Embry’s.

  I must have tasted her at least once a day since we’ve been married, but it will never be enough. Fuck. Never ever.

  I make her come like this…then a second time, rolling her to her back so that I can see her face as I peer up at her over the rise of her pussy. It’s not a position I’ve used often, which is partly because it’s a very passive, docile way to eat a woman, although I meant what I said to Embry about positions being irrelevant to the heart of kink. No, it’s more that the temptation of her is too great like this, when I can see her lips working silently and her gray eyes massive with lust and love—and the minute I make her come again, I’m unfastening my pants and sliding home.

  Every part of it I savor. Every part I commit to memory. The gasping way she says my name. The frantic rock of her hips when I slow down. The tremors in her thighs after I pinch her ass for being an impertinent slut and moving when I didn’t tell her to.

  The wet, sweet clench of her cunt as she comes a third time.

  And finally, the look in her eyes as I surge over her and give her everything, everything of me.