American Prince (American Queen #2)

by Sierra Simone

  I also made sure to let go of Ash at the appropriate time, even though I wanted nothing more than to fist my hands in his shirt and crush my mouth to his lips. Shove my hips into his so he could feel what the sight of him did to me. But Merlin’s warning hung over me like a thundercloud, and seeing Ash here, surrounded by his men and these mountains, made that warning all the clearer.

  Ash had to stay here. Ash had to have his career, his future. And my feelings were a very small speck in a seething world of pain and chaos. A world that needed his order and his control.

  Late that night, as I laid in bed and my thoughts bounced from anxiety to anxiety, as I recalled in painful detail all the things I’d said to Ash that Merlin must have read, as I thought about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and wondered how big a risk it all actually was, my door opened. There was no knock, no permission, no greeting. My door opened and then it closed, and then Ash was on me, kissing and biting and impatiently pushing the blankets off my body.

  “The bed squeaks,” I gasped into his mouth, and he grunted in response, hauling me off the bed altogether and onto the cold vinyl floor. His hands were trembling as he found the waistband of my boxer briefs and then he laughed to himself.

  “I’m like a schoolboy,” he murmured, dropping a kiss onto my forehead. “I can’t decide what I want to do—or what I want to do first.”

  “Do it all,” I whispered. “Do everything.”

  “I’m going to, little prince. Don’t worry.”

  But as he brought me in for a bruising kiss, the fear flared past the desire. I pulled away from his mouth. “Ash, we have to be careful.”

  He followed me, leaning forward to kiss me again. “We will.”

  “I mean it. No one can know. Your career—”

  “I don’t care about that,” he said simply. “It would be worth it.”

  My heart tore with fear, because he refused to be afraid for himself. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “I’m not,” he said, sharpness creeping into his voice. “I’m serious, Embry. This—you—I’d rather have it than anything else. If there’s a cost, then I’ll pay it. I’ll sacrifice anything to be with you.”

  His words were so close to Merlin’s—if you truly love him, then there’s nothing you can’t sacrifice—and suddenly I knew Merlin meant more than an uncloseted relationship. I was going to have to sacrifice something much, much worse.

  I almost didn’t. There on the floor, my bare legs tangled with his clothed ones, I almost gave in and let myself be carried away by the reckless abandon with which he was willing to love me. After all, we might not be caught, and even if we were, there were so many levels of discretion between us and DADT protocol. Was the risk really so great?

  I looked up at him in the darkness, his eyes dark and shining, the moonlight hitting the angles of his cheeks and jaw, the strong lines of his neck. And in the shrouded silver light, I saw not only the man he was now—powerful and smart and kind—but the man he would be. And that man took my breath away.

  The air left my body as a new truth scratched itself on the glass of my mind: I would do anything to see that future man come to be. No matter how painful.

  “I’m telling you that I’m not willing to sacrifice anything,” I lied, hoping the darkness masked my expression. He’d know I was lying, he was too perceptive for that. But maybe in the dark, and maybe with some distraction…I palmed his cock through his pants and squeezed.

  He groaned and I took my chance. “I want to be with you,” I said, and that at least wasn’t a lie. “But I need you to understand that I can’t ever give you that kind of love. The kind that comes with a price.”

  My voice was shaking, my hand on his cock was shaking. I was an accomplished liar and never one to feel guilty about any lie that made my life easier, but fuck, this was hard. My voice seemed to burn into Ash like a brand, he flinched at my final sentence, which was such a cruel echo of his own words. And in that moment, even though I was doing it all for him, I hated myself more than I’d ever hated myself before.

  “I see,” he finally said. “I understand.”

  No, you don’t, I wanted to yell. You can’t. God, I wanted to take it all back, beg forgiveness, expose it for the lie it was, because wounding him hurt me worse than anything I could have ever imagined. It gutted me to make him think I didn’t care as much as he did, that I didn’t want him as much as he wanted me. I cared more, if anything, I wanted him more, but he had to believe otherwise. Because if he knew that his future was my concern, he’d wave off any and all considerations about it. He’d lay it down like it was a burden he had never wanted, all so he could give me—fucking selfish, miserable me—a white picket fence?

  No, I couldn’t allow that.

  But if he thought it was about my future, my wants and desires…then he’d honor that. Even as it killed him.

  He pressed his lips together and nodded, seeming to come to a decision. “Okay,” he said, and I could hear his heart closing up over the pain, the sound of it turning malignant in his blood. “I’ll take you any way I can have you.”

  “It’s for the best,” I supplied weakly.

  He narrowed his eyes, the attention unbearable because it was paired with a look pleading and bleeding and lost.

  I hated being alive in that moment. Hated it. And then his wounded scrutiny transformed into something else, something hot and violent and full of promise. It elated me. I craved his anger, I craved pain at his hands; I deserved it, didn’t I? And if he hurt me, if he used me, then maybe I could pretend to myself that the score was settled. The debt paid. I’d hurt him one way, he’d hurt me another.

  Fair, fair, fair. It was fair.

  I pushed him over the edge, and in that moment, I couldn’t have told you if it was to seal the decision I’d made for his own good or if it was to provoke the monster inside him to hurt me the way I’d come to crave. “It can just be this,” I said, pushing my hips against his, “and this is just as good as whatever you wanted.”

  “This?” Ash asked, glancing down at our tangled legs. “This is what is going to be just as good for me?”

  There was no mistaking the danger now. I welcomed it, with every cell, every molecule and atom.

  Atonement.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “This is just as good.”

  He slapped me. Hard, and right on the fucking face.

  “Go to hell,” said Ash.

  I rolled onto my back, hand pressed to my stinging jaw, my fist clenched. I was ready to fly at him, but the change in angle meant I could see the unshed tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. Colchester, the great hero, the sadistically handsome man I’d given my heart to—he was on the verge of tears. Because of me.

  And before I had a chance to react to this, I was forcibly flipped onto my stomach, something cool dripping into the divot at the top of my ass. An uncapped bottle of lube was tossed in front of my face, and then I felt two fingers, cruel and slick, shove into me.

  “This is just as good, right?” he asked me, twisting his fingers in a way that made me arch in that particular kind of delightful pain. Wrong but good, dirty but right. “Answer me, goddammit. Isn’t this just as good?”

  “Yes,” I moaned, but I didn’t know where the moan came from. My ass? My heart? My head, which still told me this was the right thing to do?

  “Really?” he asked savagely, twisting his fingers again and moving behind me. I heard his zipper, and the sound of that metallic purr made my cock go from mostly erect to so-hard-it-hurts erect within the space of a few seconds. “Do you really believe that?”

  His fingers left me, replaced almost instantly by the thick head of his cock, pushing in without warning. I cried out and he clapped a hand over my mouth.

  “I’ll stop,” he said, “if you want me to. But then you have to admit this isn’t just as good. You have to admit you’re wrong.”

  He shoved in another two or three inches and I groaned against his palm. Fuck me, but that
was rough…and so fucking hot. I’d never be able to explain that to him, though. Not even if I had a thousand years, because I couldn’t explain it to myself. Because of course furtive fucking would never be as good as loving him the way I goddamned wanted, of course not. But being brutalized like this, subsumed by Ash and his indomitable will and his indomitable cock—well it wasn’t bad. If my consolation prize for saving Ash’s future was this, well…

  I mean, it was hard to complain about in any way more than in an abstract sense.

  I licked the inside of his palm—which in my mind is the only consent stronger than the word yes—and he groaned, bracing his knees on either side of mine and pushing all the way in. The pressure was insane, not quite like being shot, but not quite unlike it either, and the moment he curved out of me and then pushed back in, I felt it. The elemental, orgasmic glow of it.

  “Fuck,” I marveled against his hand.

  He ignored me, moving his hand from my mouth to the back of my head, pressing my face into the floor as he fucked me the way he wanted, deep, piercing thrusts that bottomed him out and left me seeing spots. “Come,” he ordered. “I want you to come all over this dirty fucking floor, and after you do, tell me it’s better this way.”

  So I did.

  I came from being pounded into the vinyl, from squirming my hips against the hard floor as a massive dick drilled into me, and when I was finished, Ash grabbed my by the hair and spun me to face him, his own cum dripping out of my ass.

  “It’s better this way,” I told him.

  A flash of sadness, a flash of anger. “Then this is what you get to have,” he said, yanking me up and bending my over my bed, cruel fingers back inside me. “It’s better this way,” I told him after I’d come all over my sheets.

  “It’s better this way,” I told him after he made me wash his cock and then choked me with it for an hour.

  “It’s better this way,” I whispered as the orange-peel light of dawn crawled through the window and he left my room.

  And it was. Better this way.

  I almost believed it myself.

  20

  Embry

  before

  Things continued like this for a long time—three and a half years, to be precise. Three and a half years of furtive fucking on the periphery of war, of stolen kisses, of long nights tracing our breath as we stared up at the cold stars. He liked the company when he couldn’t sleep—which was always—and I liked falling asleep next to him, safe in his presence.

  He never grew less bruising or rough, I never stopped fighting it, and even though we hid it, not a day went by without something from each other. Maybe a hurried kiss in the long pantry by the canteen, the one that locked from the inside, or maybe he’d call me in for a meeting in his office and then wrestle me into sucking him off after he closed the door. And some days, it was as simple as teaching him to dance. The waltz, the foxtrot, even swing-dancing for no other reason that it was fun and swing music made him smile.

  It was the purest heaven in the midst of the worst hell, and I loved every minute of it, even though it was all underpinned by a lie—my lie—and I knew one day it would burn down around me.

  I had two reminders of the impermanence of our relationship, and the first came early on—very early, in fact, within the first year of my return after being shot.

  I woke up barely able to walk that morning; the night before, Ash had tied me to a chair and rubbed me with his hand until I writhed in delight, pulling his hand away just before I started to come. And instead of spurting all over my stomach, cum leaked out of my tip like tears and the orgasm fell flat, a punctured balloon, a stalled motor. But I stayed hard and hornier than ever. And he started rubbing me again, once again pulling away just as my balls drew up, and I had the same kind of ruined orgasm.

  Twice more he did this, and when he was done, he sat back on his shoeless heels and observed his handiwork. I was straining against my ties, my cock so hard that the skin shone like bruised silk, like the skin itself was about to split apart. I was covered in sweat and my own semen, every muscle bulging and flexing and every vein standing out in sharp relief. And best of all, my thoughts were quiet. My mind was open, my heart was still and brimming full of him.

  His gaze traced over the rigid ache of my erection and he nodded to himself. “I’m going to fuck your mouth now,” he said, “and if it’s good enough, then I’ll let you come for real.” A small smile. “On my skin. Would you like that?”

  I nodded so enthusiastically that his smile grew bigger, his boot-on-my-wrist smile that was all sharp corners and white teeth. He untied me and yanked me by the neck down to my knees, his other hand fumbling with his belt. His cock was hard and heavy enough to push its way out of his fly after he unzipped it, and the single glimpse of ridged shaft was all the warning I got before it was down my throat. I could taste the salty slick of his precum, so much of it all over him, and I groaned to myself. He’d been hard all this time, his ignored erection weeping softly in his pants.

  He cradled my face with his hands, not as a tender gesture—he was good about hiding his tenderness from me in those early days, still trying to respect my wishes—but to hold my face still so he could fuck my mouth the way he wanted. I flattened my tongue and let him, wishing I could reach down and ease the ache in my cock while he did it, but not wanting to jeopardize the chance to come on him. He’d use any excuse to deny me; it was one of his very favorite things to do, and more effective than any pain or coercion he could devise. So I kept my hands on the front of his thighs as he flexed in and out of my mouth, instead enjoying the feel of those hard muscles under my hands, the taste of his clean skin on my tongue.

  When he came, he moved his hands around the back of my head and pushed in so deep that tears streamed from my eyes and my throat convulsed in reflex. He held me there as he grunted and pulsed, and then abruptly released me, pulling out and wiping at a corner of my mouth with his thumb.

  “You did a good job, Embry,” he praised. “Swallowing all my cum like that. Are you ready to come now?”

  “Yes,” I said hoarsely.

  He did something unexpected then, and pulled his already-loosened pants all the way off, along with his socks and shirt. Seeing my expression, he chided me. “You’re not going to fuck me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  I was, in fact, wondering that. I’d never been with a man longer than a day where these things weren’t clearly intuited or discussed, and frankly, I always discussed with them that there were no assigned roles. The fact that Ash topped me every single time was something I noticed and thought about often.

  Except…it also wasn’t. When I noticed and thought about it, I was far away from him, removed from the leather and smoke smell of his skin and the skillful pull of his fingers. But when I was with him, ideas like top and bottom ceased to have any meaning, or at least, ceased to have the meanings they used to have for me. Rather, top meant the way Ash bit my shoulder when he came in my ass, the way he cleaned me up afterwards, looked over the bruises and scratches on my body like a host looking over a living room after a party. And bottom meant the way he made my cock throb with his cruel words and teasing tongue, the way the world sang its otherwise hidden song when he’d hurt me or humiliated me or conquered me.

  Things were the way they should be, and yet I had to admit, the idea of fucking Ash was beyond arousing. It was consuming.

  As if he knew my thoughts, he smiled and shook his head, grabbing a blanket and stretching himself out on the floor on top of it with his hands laced behind his head. “I promise you, Lieutenant Embry Moore, I’ll let you fuck me someday.”

  “When?” I asked, my eyes raking along the thick, hard lines of his naked body. Even sated and asleep his cock was heavy and impressive, curved along his thigh.

  “When you’ve earned it.”

  “Am I close to earning it?”

  He smiled. “Not even.”

  Well, shit.

  But what
he gave me was almost as good. He beckoned me down and for the first time, I laid my body on top of his, stomach to stomach and chest to chest. Even underneath me, he felt in charge, biceps and abdominal muscles moving as he helped me lay the way he wanted—with my freshly lubed cock between his thighs.

  “I haven’t done this since I was in high school,” I breathed, my hips moving hesitantly. My cock slid between his muscular thighs, the squeeze tight and slick and warm.

  “Do you feel like you’re in high school right now?” Ash asked from underneath me, entertained. I looked down at him—the muscles, the warm skin, the bossy hands that rearranged me how he wanted, and I had to admit that this was much, much better than any of the fumbling dorm-room escapades I had as a teenager.

  “No. I feel like I’m with a man.”

  “Good,” Ash said, his hands running along my back. “Because you are one.”

  The Greeks fucked each other’s thighs to get around the thorny issue of passivity—two men of equal birth could couple without troubling the gender roles of the era. But even with my body thrusting and sweating on top, there could be no doubt who was in charge. It was Ash. Digging his fingers into my hips, ordering me to go faster or slower, sending up the occasional cool remark—is that as hard as you can go, really? Look how desperate you are to come, I can see it in your face.

  When the orgasm came, the breath was driven from my body as if I’d been struck; my poor, tortured cock turned each pulse into a barbarity, a crime of pain. The abused flesh seized, the deep parts of my groin seized as well, and then Ash murmured, “On my stomach, Embry.”

  I pulled from between his thighs just in time to fist myself and ejaculate onto the ridged lines of his abdomen, unable to breathe because it was too fucking much, the pleasure, I hurt with it and ached with it and would perish with it. But even as I perished, I made myself watch the thin white line of my seed arc over his muscled belly. After all those orgasms, I hardly had anything left to give, but still, watching that small spatter mark his skin was unbearably arousing. I could pretend, for just a moment, that he belonged to me as much as I belonged to him.