“I’ve always had a conscience,” I informed her. I grinned, even though her eyes were closed and she couldn’t see me. “I’m just really good at ignoring it.”
She heard the grin in my voice and fought off a smile of her own. “You’re incurable.”
“And I’ll never make you forgive me for it.”
“Embry,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at me again. “Before I go home, I wanted to tell you…” She paused, her eyes moving up to the ceiling, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. She ran her fingers across her forehead, and for a minute she looked so much like Colchester that it stunned me. But then she dropped her hand and sighed, as if she’d changed her mind about something.
“Be careful around Maxen,” she said finally. “He’s not the man you think he is.”
“You don’t have to be coy, Morgan. I saw what your body looked like after a week with him.”
She chewed on her lip again. “I could see what he was. Is, I mean. I see what he is because I’m like him in what I want, how I love. But Embry—you’re not.”
“Not what? Game for being spanked?”
She rolled her eyes, looking like a teenager again, like the bossy older sister that would bother me when I was trying to watch TV.
“It’s a lot more than spanking, you know.” Her expression turned serious. “He wouldn’t just want your body. He’d want your mind, your thoughts, your heart. Your surrender. That’s more than a few playful slaps. It’s power and pain and control. He might be able to live without it, but even if he could, the need for it would gnaw at him every day.”
“And you think I can’t handle that?”
She looked incredulous. “Embry, you are the most selfish person I’ve ever met. You don’t take anything seriously, all you want to do is drink and fuck, and on top of that, you brood all the time. Or at least, you brood when you’re not fucking and drinking. Do you really think you’re the ideal person to bear the brunt of Maxen’s needs? You can’t even handle your own!”
She had a point. Several good points, actually. I couldn’t imagine willingly allowing someone to hurt me, allowing someone to take the reins in bed. I was too much of a fuck-up emotionally to even play around with giving up my emotions to someone else.
“How do you know about all this kinky shit anyway?” I asked my stepsister. “You are way too knowledgeable.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want the answer to that?”
I thought for a moment and said quickly, “You know what? I don’t.”
She laughed.
I stood. “I guess I should go. Are you sure you’re okay leaving the hospital?”
“Yes, Nimue is picking me up and flying with me.”
Nimue was my mother’s youngest sister, closer to our age than to hers, and as a genuine, quinoa-eating, crystal-wearing Seattle hippie, she was a perennial embarrassment to Lieutenant Governor Vivienne Moore. But she was nurturing and kind and also a professor of sociology, so she was fiercely intelligent. Morgan would be in good hands.
I bent down and hugged my sister as best as I could in her hospital bed, careful of her injured shoulder. “Love you, sissy.”
“Love you too, bubby. I still don’t forgive you.” She pulled back from the hug so she could look up into my face as she spoke. “And don’t forget what I said about Colchester. For the sake of your own happiness, you should stay far, far away from him. Find a nice girl. Maybe a quiet blonde who likes books. She’ll be much less trouble.”
10
Greer
after
President Melwas Kocur sits across a table from me. The table is wide enough to accommodate serving dishes, flowers, candles, and wineglasses—Melwas has ordered the servants here not to disturb us as we eat, and so we serve ourselves, me only eating things that he’s eaten first. I taste nothing of the food, save for—strangely—the paper-thin apple slices in the salad. They are too tart, pulling my tongue to the top of my mouth, making me swallow unnecessarily. No matter how much water I drink or whatever else I eat, that tartness lingers and stings.
Melwas is as handsome as I remember him, blond hair and a strong face, a wide, muscular build that he clearly dresses to show off. But up close that handsomeness is compromised. By the hardness of his eyes, which are the flat color of acorns pressed into winter mud. By his mouth, which is almost too thin for how broad his jaw is. By the softness of his hands as they cradle his wineglass and pluck idly at the linen napkins.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” he says finally.
I haven’t said anything since I’ve gotten to the table, save for a quiet thank you when Melwas complimented my appearance. I didn’t want to say even that much, but I had decided to be Queen Guinevere and it’s what she would have done. Both to indicate her personal sovereignty was intact and to set the tone for the interactions to come. Much as I resented the idea of being polite to a kidnapper, it was expedient for me to keep Melwas within the bounds of civility for as long as possible.
“Ask what?”
He gestured around the lodge. “Why you’re here. Why I’m here. Why I had you spirited away in such a manner.”
“I assume it’s a move meant to provoke my husband,” I say. I sound much calmer than I feel.
Melwas nods. “Yes, partly that. But Greer, you cannot have forgotten the words we exchanged in Geneva.”
Someday I’ll see what the great hero gets to enjoy every night.
I have not had a challenge in a very long time.
I remember them very well. They are the kind of threats that stay with you, particularly because I knew Melwas meant them as he said them. They weren’t idle words.
I drop my hands into my lap so that their trembling can’t betray me. My face I keep schooled into a mask of perfect calm. “I remember, President Kocur.”
He stands up and comes around to my side of the table, standing behind me and dropping a hand on my shoulder. His touch is corrosive; I feel it peeling away my flesh and my calm, burning through my resolve of politeness like acid. I glance around the room under my lashes—his guards are situated discreetly around the large central room. I could take advantage of his nearness and try to hurt him, but I’d be overpowered quickly and there’s nothing to hurt him with other than a few serving platters and my own fists.
“I want this to be enjoyable, for both of us,” Melwas says. His voice goes softer, the accent more pronounced. “Did you not enjoy the clothes I’ve provided for you? The lovely room? Even my wife does not have such nice things.”
He plans on raping me and yet expects me to find it enjoyable? “The clothes are a thoughtful gesture,” I say. A lifetime of watching diplomats at work helps me find the right words. “But I’m unsure how to feel about our situation.”
“I will win you over,” he says.
“I thought you wanted me as a challenge. To break my spirit.”
The hand on my shoulder squeezes. Hard. “Yes. I do want that. Know this, Greer, if you fight back, I will enjoy it all the more.”
“So what do you want, President Kocur? For me to enjoy this or for me to fight it?”
His hand wanders from my shoulder to the back of my neck, where he fists it in my hair. Tears spring to my eyes at the pain in my scalp. “This will be a compassionate arrangement for you. Women like you are satisfied by such roughness—” he yanked at my hair “—and men like me are satisfied by giving it. I was told about the marks my men found on your body the night they took you. So do not pretend that it will be a great cruelty, me being with you.”
One more hard yank—hard enough to make me cry out—and then he releases me. But as he sits back down, his manner is changed. One of his unpredictable mood swings. “It will be good for you, you’ll see,” he says earnestly, almost contritely. “You will see how much I am willing to do for you, and you will enjoy me when the time comes.”
I stare at him as he resumes eating, willing my pulse to go back to normal. And I realize that Melwas is more
dangerous than I thought.
He’s a sadist who thinks he’s kind, a narcissist who thinks he’s humble.
And unless I can find a way to stop him, I am completely at his mercy.
“That’s enough,” he declares abruptly. He raps his knuckles on the table and servants appear from nowhere, scrambling to clear the surface. He gets to his feet and walks back over to my side, wrapping a hand around my upper arm and jerking me to my feet so fast that my chair topples over behind me. “We’re going to your room.”
Dread hammers in my chest as he pulls me down the wide staircase to the second floor, and I realize this is it. Queen Guinevere has failed, hoping to steer my captor into civility has failed, and now I have a choice—yield to a man who almost certainly wants to rape me, or fight back. And for the tiniest second, I wish I were any other woman than Greer Galloway-Colchester. I wish that I were a fighter, a boxer, a cop, or a soldier. I wish that I were the kind of woman that shot arrows and brought down empires, that knew all the ways to make men like Melwas hurt. But I’m not.
I can name all twelve of King Arthur’s battles, I can recite Chaucer by heart, I can speak Old English as fluently as any Mercian warrior. I can spy on politicians, I know how to leverage a bill into a law, I know how to word statements so they can mean everything or mean nothing at all. I can wield power over a classroom of thirty students, I can wield power over the press or in rooms with large conference tables and stone-faced lawmakers—all of that I have been trained to do since birth. But here? Against someone who would do me bodily harm, who has guards with guns and batons at the ready?
I don’t know what kind of power I can possibly wield here.
We reach the door to my room, and I see Melwas’s men ready behind us, and I make a calculated gamble.
“Please,” I say quietly. “I want it just to be the two of us.” I put enough of my real desperation into my words to make them tremble the slightest bit. Let him mistake it for excitement.
He does. He licks his lips, staring at my face and then dropping his gaze down to my chest, where the red silk dips low over my breasts.
“Stay out here,” Melwas orders his men, and then pushes me into my room. He locks the door behind himself and takes off his jacket, tossing it on the floor and starting in on his cufflinks.
I watch for a minute, disoriented. How many times have I watched Ash do this exact same thing? Unfasten his cuff links, slide off his tie bar, forearms flexing as he rolls up his sleeves? How can two men have so many of the same ingredients and yet come out so differently?
I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling window and stare out into the darkening evening, pressing my forehead against the glass. I’m exhausted, the tendrils of a fierce headache working their way into my brain. I can still taste those apples.
But this is my chance. Locked alone in a room with Melwas, without his guards. I don’t know what my plan is after I subdue him—or if I can even subdue him at all—but it will be the best chance I have.
He might want to tie you up, I think. You have to do it before then.
Sleeves rolled up, Melwas stalks toward me, pressing my body into the cold window glass with his own. Every inch of me, every corner and curve of my skin, is alive with disgust, is alive with no, as if no were an emotion, as if no were a physiological response. But I hide it, resisting the urge to shudder or shove him away because I know from the one self-defense class I took in college that timing is everything. Strike to the eyes, knee to the groin, knee to the head. I can do that. Eyes, groin, head.
Eyes, groin, head.
One, two, three, easy as that.
Melwas’s hand comes up around my throat and his other hand slides across the silk to my stomach, going down to cup my pubic bone. His grip is hard, painful, and I can’t help the hot flush of shame and fear that stabs through me, the tears that spring to my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this.
Eyes, groin, head, the Queen in my mind reminds me. Wait for it.
But waiting is the worst thing I can imagine, standing still as Melwas murmurs things into my ear that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind, these disgusting lies that are no less insidious for how disgusting they are. That I want this, that he’s doing me a favor by giving it to me, that women like me—women who like surrendering control—welcome being taken by force.
I hate it, I hate it all so much, I hate the lies, I hate the hard, hurting hand that kneads my unwilling flesh as he says it. I hate the way his lies connect to my darkest fears, like confirmation that there is something wrong with me and the way I want sex.
But I know they’re lies. The very way my body reacts right now—with terror and revulsion—is evidence of that. And that certainty gives me the patience to wait just a moment longer, until his grip has loosened and the hand at my genitals drops back to fumble with his belt.
Now.
I prepare to spin, pressing my fingertips together so they all meet in one concentrated point, and I’m ready to drive those points right into his flat acorn eyes when there’s a knock at the door.
Melwas groans and snaps out something in Ukrainian.
Not-Daryl responds through the door, sounding both apologetic and urgent.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Melwas echoes, his hand moving away from my throat. He walks back toward the door and I turn to follow him with my eyes, my body still tensed and my hands still formed into beak-shaped weapons.
Melwas conferences with Not-Daryl for a few minutes, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes, and then seems to come to a decision. “I am very sorry,” he says, “but I must cut our evening short. Some business awaits me and I must tend to it personally.” He reaches out to stroke my hair and I pull back on instinct. I hear Not-Daryl make a noise in the doorway.
Melwas frowns. “Perhaps it would be good for you to consider the things we’ve talked about tonight.” He nods at Not-Daryl and two other men in the doorway, and before I can stop it, I’m being gagged and bound and tossed carelessly on the bed.
“I won’t blindfold you,” Melwas says kindly, in one of his lightning-mood shifts. “I’ll turn off the lights so you can see the stars through the window. They are quite lovely in the mountains.” And he runs a hand up my stomach to palm my breast. “I hope to be back tonight. But if not, we shall continue tomorrow.”
And then he and the men leave me alone, locked in from the outside, and I finally let myself cry.
11
Embry
after
I watch Melwas fist a large hand in Greer’s hair and yank her head back, exposing the pale column of her throat, and I leap to my feet, a growl building in my chest.
Wu pulls me down with a hiss. “Stay down or we’ll be seen.”
I squat back down with Wu and Gareth, my blood hot and boiling. I raise the binoculars to my face and aim them at the window of the lodge again. I see her sweet mouth part in a pained cry as he pulls her hair again, and then I feel Wu’s fingers digging into my arm.
“Wait,” Wu says, but I don’t want to wait. It was hard enough to sit still on the plane to Poland, hard enough to keep myself sane on the drive into Carpathia—all hills and horse tracks in the Jeep we’d rented, to avoid Carpathia’s fledgling and as yet ineffectual border control. It was hard to take the time to survey the lodge, hard to pick our way though the steep rocks and thick trees to scale the first fence, hard to stop and wait every time the drones flew overhead. And the very minute we were able to surveil the lodge itself, I see Greer being manhandled by that monster?
I don’t have very much wait left in me.
Thankfully, Melwas releases Greer, and I can breathe again, think again.
“There’s a service entrance on the bottom level, on the side closest to us,” Gareth says. “Just a lock, no guard.”
“There might be cameras or motion sensors,” Wu says.
“So we go when something else is moving up there,” I say, swinging my binoculars down to the roa
d. “The break-in at his house should be happening any moment.” Gareth had arranged the ruse on our way here, a decoy burglary at his presidential palace in the Carpathian capital, a couple hours’ drive from here. We hoped it would be enough to lure Melwas away, or at least some of his security team.
A noise from Gareth has me pointing my binoculars back at the house, and I see the light to a room downstairs flip on. Melwas and Greer are alone, and he’s stripping off his jacket.
“Bastard,” I swear. I’ll kill him, I swear I’ll kill him if he actually attempts to rape her.
Rape.
God, that word. It hung like a fog over the Carpathian mountains during the war, this ever-constant violation ripping through the towns and villages Melwas claimed. The faces of those women—some of them barely budded past childhood—dirty and tear-stained and blank. We’d go in and get them medical help, assure them they were safe, but they still shied away from us, flinched at our male voices. Ash and I had made sexual assault a key issue during the campaign for exactly that reason. For all the women we were too late for.
I won’t be too late for Greer.
Greer’s face is almost as blank as the ones I remember from the war. She has her forehead pressed to the glass and I see her taking slow, deliberate breaths, as if she has to remind herself how to breathe, how to keep her body working.
And then he touches her again, one hand on her throat and the other hand on her cunt. He squeezes and a tear slips out from under those long, dark lashes of hers.
I’m to my feet before Wu can stop me, moving out of the cover of trees to the lodge, and I’m almost to the service door before he catches up to me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demands in a low voice. “What happened to the plan?”
“Fuck the plan,” I snarl. “I’m going in there before he hurts her.”
“Getting killed isn’t going to help—”
“Boys,” Gareth’s voice comes in over the earpiece. “Melwas is leaving.”
American Prince (American Queen #2) Page 8
