Maybe I shouldn’t answer that. But I do. “It was…like this. Him on top.”
Quick as lightning, Ash is stretching his body over mine, his cock pressed against my clit. I can’t stop the moan that I let out.
“What else?” Ash asks. His voice is rough. Rougher than I’ve ever heard it. And his eyes are so dark, no longer green but black.
“He, um, he sucked on my breasts. Bit them. Like he was nursing, but hard and kind of desperate.”
Ash lowers his head and nips at the tender curves of my breasts, sucking and teething and kissing, and within half a minute, I’m panting.
“What else?” Ash growls against my tits. “What else did he do?”
“I didn’t tell him I was a virgin until he was trying to get inside. And when I did tell him, he got…mean. Like it turned him on too much for him to control himself.”
In the here and now, there’s a wide cock pushing against my folds and then Ash stabs inside so hard I gasp. “Mean like this?” he asks, punctuating his question with several savage thrusts.
“Yes,” I cry out. “There was blood. He liked it. I liked it.”
Ash stills, his cock quivering. “There was blood?”
“A lot. It hurt. I came so hard.”
“I bet you did,” Ash says, jabbing in again. “It should have been me, my cock. That blood and pain should have been mine.”
“Everything can be yours now, Mr. President.”
“Yes, it can,” he growls, rolling his hips and grinding against my clit. I make a low keening noise. “How did he come—on you? Inside you?”
“Inside me,” I say, my voice breathless. “He wrapped his arms behind me and put his weight on me. Oh God, yes, just like that.”
Ash feels entirely different than Embry—wider, stronger, more deliberate—but in this position, I can so easily summon the memory of Embry’s body over mine. I can so easily pretend.
“I want to feel what he felt,” Ash tells me, his lips against the place where my jaw and my neck meet. “I want to pretend I’m him. Are you pretending, angel?”
“I…I don’t know.” And I don’t. One moment it’s Ash over me, the next moment it’s Embry, and the moment after that it’s both of them, and I’m the center of a hurricane of hands and mouths and eager flesh.
“I believe you,” he says, his hips rolling so perfectly in and out. This third orgasm is like a key turning in a lock; there’s an abrupt shift and suddenly everything in me is open and ready, and the climax rushes in, vicious and cruel, each pull so painful and bright that I can’t catch my breath. It’s my orgasm that sends Ash over the edge, and he gives a rough grunt and releases, this time fucking his way through the orgasm with those slow rolls, his entire body shaking.
And then he moves off me, disappearing into the bathroom and returning with a washcloth. He cleans me carefully, meeting my eyes.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
He returns the washcloth, and to my great relief, joins me back in bed, wrapping me in his arms. “Are you mad at me? At Embry?” I ask.
He lets out a long breath, his chin resting against my head. “No.”
“But you’re feeling something.”
“Oh yes,” he answers. “Definitely that.”
“Jealousy? Because you don’t need to be jealous, I swear to you.”
“I know you believe that.” A hand sweeps up my back and strokes along my spine. “Jealousy is such a limiting word, isn’t it? Because there’s so many kinds of jealousy. There’s feeling possessive, which I do of you…but then again, I also feel possessive of Embry. There’s insecurity—that maybe Embry was able to give you something I can’t, and that you’re able to give Embry something that will change his relationship with me. And then there’s this strange kind of desire—thinking about you with him makes me hard. I don’t know why. It just does. And I know desire doesn’t always make logical sense, that it’s inherently politically incorrect, that sometimes we crave depraved things.”
The hand moves to my hair, loving and lazy and indulgent. “But even knowing all that, I couldn’t have predicted how I would actually feel knowing that he fucked you. Desperate and a little angry and scared and…excited. Jealousy on its own can’t hold all of those feelings, but I don’t know what other word can. So I suppose it’s good enough for now to say that yes, I am jealous. Of both of you.”
I know how that feels, don’t I? To be jealous of Embry and Ash at the same time, jealous of them having each other in a way that I’ll never have, with their war history and fraternity and close working relationship. It’s a circle I’ll never be inside of, and it stings, stings, stings.
“Go to sleep, Greer. We have all the time in the world to think about this.”
I want to protest, want to resist him, because there’s no way I can fall asleep after our first time having sex, after he learned about Embry and me. No way at all, no matter how languid my limbs are, how thoroughly and utterly wrecked my body is, no matter how warm Ash’s arms are and how steady and reassuring his breathing is…
* * *
I wake up alone, the bed cool next to me. Ash must have gotten up to work—is it morning already? I blink at the clock on the nightstand for a moment, waiting for the numbers to make sense. 11:13 p.m. I’ve been asleep for three or four hours, and my stomach reminds me that I didn’t eat before that. I sit up and stretch, and then hunt through the room for pajamas and slippers.
I won’t bother Ash if he’s working, but I plan on bothering the shit out of some crackers and cheese. I open the door and head out towards the living area, seeing the twinkly-gold light of the Christmas tree spilling out around the corner. There’s nothing better than that light on cold winter nights. Cozy and quiet and joyful.
I turn the corner with a smile on my face and then freeze.
Ash is standing underneath the mistletoe.
Kissing someone.
My blood pounds in my ears and my throat is immediately tight with pain, but I can’t look away and I can’t interrupt. I’m as useless as a pillar of salt, doomed by my inability to look away.
Ash is wearing a thin T-shirt and low-slung pajama bottoms that highlight his flat stomach and narrow hips. His hair is tousled and even from here, with only the light of the Christmas tree, I can see the stubbled outline of a day-old beard. His hand is fisted tight in the shirt of the person he’s kissing, yanking that person close and holding them there.
And when they turn I see that the person is—inevitably, fatefully, tragically, wonderfully—Embry. Still in his sweater and jeans, barefoot and rumpled, with his hands underneath Ash’s shirt and digging into the small of his back.
The kiss is so slow and lingering and deep. They meet and explore, and then their lips pull apart and there’s fluttering eyelashes and long breaths, and then they’re kissing again. There’s both a familiarity and a hesitation there, as if they’re relearning something they used to know. Ash will come in, his lips a breath away from Embry’s, his body and face painted with longing, and then Embry will press forward, all passion and no thought, kissing hungrily until Ash slows him down, his hand going flat on Embry’s chest and his mouth pulling back just the tiniest bit until Embry cools off. And then Ash moves in again, these soft, gorgeous noises coming from his throat.
After a few minutes of this, Embry’s hand finds the waistband of Ash’s pajama pants and moves down. I can’t hear what he says to Ash, but I hear a small groan and I can guess.
And with that groan, my brain sputters back to life like a neglected engine, and I wish I could turn it back off because there’s too many thoughts, too many questions, all contradicting each other, all fighting each other.
I’m aroused.
I’m angry.
I’m curious.
I’m betrayed.
I don’t ever want this moment to stop.
And seeing this now, in this way, I realize I already knew. Not con
sciously maybe, but the knowledge was there like a shipwreck waiting for the sands to shift, waiting for me to finally turn my head and see what part of me has suspected from the beginning.
Suddenly what Ash said back in the bedroom makes sense. Jealousy is a word with too many meanings. It’s a TARDIS of a word, bigger on the inside, a small, mean thing on the surface, but a complicated dance of emotions and negotiations within. I’m suffering with every single meaning of the word jealous.
I’m relieved that now I’m not the only one in this engagement that kept an important secret. I’m terrified of what happens next. Because really. What could possibly happen next? This was supposed to be my fairy tale, with me as the princess and Ash as the prince, but there’s a third person here, a person we both want and who wants both of us.
None of the fairy tales I read as a girl had three people.
My thoughts are interrupted by another groan from Ash, but he’s stepping back and adjusting himself inside his pants. Both men have bee-stung lips and wide, dark eyes, both men seem a little thunderstruck with each other, awed and incredulous and as yet unsatisfied.
“Merry Christmas, Embry,” Ash says in a roughened voice.
Embry’s voice is husky too. “Merry Christmas.”
Ash turns away, his thumb at his forehead and then touching his lips, and Embry stands stock still under the mistletoe as Ash leaves and walks toward the office. He stands there for several long minutes, his eyes on the hallway where Ash disappeared, and then he finally turns around and goes to his bedroom, his hands scrubbing through his hair.
And me, I’m left alone the cold hallway. Confused, wanting, hurt.
Jealous.
In love.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Colchesters arrive Christmas morning, bringing presents (and bags of groceries since Ash’s mother refused to let anyone else prepare Christmas dinner.) She and I spend the day in the kitchen while Kay, Embry, and Ash huddle around the table and work. I’m hopeless with cooking—Grandpa had a full-time chef when I was a girl and my meal prep in college consisted of eggs and instant noodles—but even so, she gives me a big hug after dinner and proclaims me “one of the family.” And when she learns that my mother died when I was seven, she holds me tight, smelling like the piecrust she just rolled out and Elizabeth Taylor perfume, and tells me to call her Mama. I almost cry.
The day is so busy from start to finish that I never have time to bring up last night to either Embry or Ash, even though I can feel a kind of fracture in me, a fissure across the surface of my soul, and wisping from that fissure are all sorts of questions. Was that their first kiss? Do they kiss often?
Do they do more than kiss?
Have they fucked before, and are they fucking now?
It’s like I woke up and the world was sideways, but I’m the only one who notices. I’m dizzy and fragile and uncertain, while everyone else is as steady and normal as ever. Because the men don’t know that I know. And Embry doesn’t know that Ash knows about us. And probably there’s something else I don’t know, and what if it is that Ash and Embry are cheating on me with each other?
Is a kiss cheating?
Is it cheating if they haven’t fucked each other but want to?
And there go all the different jealousies again, flying like an evil witch’s monkeys to swarm my mind, filling my head with memories of the kiss and also images of them fucking. Fucking naked, fucking in their tuxedos, fucking in their army uniforms…
And at one point, that train of thought sent me to my bedroom with the excuse of a headache, although really I had to relieve another kind of ache, rucking up my sweater dress and pulling my panties aside the moment the door closed, coming in less than a minute to the image of those two strong bodies grinding together.
(And of course Ash knew—somehow—that I came without him, and I spend that night biting his belt while he switches my ass with nettles he found growing next to one of the lodges.)
The day after Christmas, the world explodes. There’s a pipeline leak in central Wyoming, and the day after that, a terrorist attack in Germany. Colombia falls apart, the VA reform bill needs to be reworked, and Ash is set to give an important speech on sex trafficking in front of the United Nations. And suddenly I go from having Ash and Embry all to myself to not seeing them at all. Both are hopping all over the country, both are working non-stop, and the one night I get to spend with Ash, he wraps his arms around me and falls asleep immediately, even before I’ve had a chance to turn off the light.
Two weeks mostly without him, and I’m a fidgeting, daydreaming wreck, twirling my ring on my finger, sighing at the snow, sleeping in a shirt of his I borrowed and never returned. So when Ash invites me to join him and a few others—Merlin and Embry and the Secretary of State—at a public meeting between the United States and Carpathia in Geneva, I jump at the chance. Maybe I’ll finally find a way to extract the answers to all my questions.
At the very least, I can steal another shirt.
* * *
“Thank you for letting me bring Abilene.”
Ash looks up from his desk, a surprised smile lighting up his face. “You’re awake.”
Air Force One thrums around us, and I’m constitutionally unable to resist white noise and soothing vibrations. Once the plane took off, Ash insisted on tucking me in for a nap in the Executive Suite, a nap that lasted almost as long as the flight itself. I’m currently standing in the doorway holding my briefcase with one hand while the other tries to untangle my messy blond waves.
“I am, and I’m going to get some work done, but I thought I would tell you thank you first.”
“Of course.” He leans back in his chair. “I’ll probably be busy most of the trip. It seemed like it would be more fun for you to have your friend nearby. Speaking of…any chance you’ll reconsider the sleeping arrangements?”
I grin at him. “God, I wish. But Merlin said absolutely under no circumstance could we room together.”
Ash drops his head back against the chair. “You would think being engaged would be enough for propriety’s sake.”
“Apparently not.”
His eyes slide to my briefcase. “What work do you need to do?”
Sigh. What work don’t I need to do? “I’m finalizing the syllabi for my three classes this semester, and pulling together their initial assignments. Plus I told myself I’d work a little more on the book before the semester kicks in. Oh, and your social secretary won’t stop emailing me.”
“About the wedding?” His eyes are soft when he says the word, and it drains the annoyance right out of me.
“Yes. She wants it to be as big as the royal wedding. Bigger, if she can manage it.”
“And what do you think?”
“That I don’t care as long as my dress is pretty and I have time to teach.”
Ash looks thoughtful when I say the word teach, but he doesn’t say anything. I didn’t ask for his input about me continuing to teach because it felt too much like asking for permission, and I would have done it no matter what he said anyway. I know Ash supports my decision, but I don’t know about everybody else…especially the American public. As far as I know, I’ll be the first First Lady to have a job that isn’t giving speeches or writing the occasional column.
Merlin certainly doesn’t like the perception it sends out, but while I’m willing to wait to move into the White House and willing to sleep in different hotel rooms, my career is not up for discussion. And as far as perception goes, who would have more respect for the White House than Leo Galloway’s granddaughter?
“What do you think about the wedding?” I ask.
“Come here and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m not falling for that old trick,” I say, and yet I’m crossing the office to his desk anyway. He spins in his chair so that he’s sideways to his desk, and he pats his knee. I climb up there, all my stress about the work and the wedding dissolving away in the strength of his arms.
“Wh
en it comes to the wedding, I want two things,” he tells me, his tone unusually serious. “If you’re not attached to having it in a particular place, I want it to be at the church I grew up going to in Kansas City. And I don’t want to see you the day of the wedding. I know it’s parochial and a little superstitious, but I want that moment where I see you for the first time at the foot of the aisle.”
“Okay,” I agree, entranced by his solemn mouth. “Whatever you want.”
The solemn mouth breaks into a smile. “Those words are so delicious on your lips, angel. Can I have whatever I want all the time?”
“Of course,” I say, fluttering my eyelashes at him.
“You flirt. What about right now?”
“Yes, Sir.”
His breath hitches as I smooth his tie down his chest. “Go close the door, little princess. I have an idea about what I want at the moment.”
* * *
Abilene is polished as always in knee-high boots and a cut-out blue dress that only a willowy redhead can pull off, her pretty features arranged into an expression of cool boredom. But I see her blasé facade thin as we’re ushered around by the Secret Service, when we’re surrounded by the most powerful people in the world arguing over who gets the last clementine on Air Force One. She’s eager and girlish, even though she’s trying to rein it in, and nowhere is it more apparent than when she is around Ash.
I’m almost grateful we are taking a different car than him to the hotel; watching her around him is difficult. She clearly lied earlier when she said her crush on him was over, and I’ve clearly been lying to myself that I’m not still insecure around Abilene. She’s so beautiful and so vivacious compared to me, and especially with the mistletoe kiss in the back of my mind, it’s hard not to worry about what Ash really wants, ring or no ring.
We pull up to our hotel, an agent opening the door for us and helping us out of the car, and Abilene looks up at the marquee with a puzzled frown. “I thought we were staying at the Four Seasons?”
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