Anger flashes quick on his face at the dig at his masculinity, and his shoulder tenses under my hand. “You test me, Miss Galloway,” he says, and his hold on me tightens. “Do you also test your hero in this manner?”
I lift my chin. “I don’t need to.”
“You know, if you were my wife, I’d make sure you never talked this way to me again.” He yanks me close to him and I stumble with a small gasp. “And I would enjoy giving you that lesson very much.”
Another yank and I feel him. Feel it. He’s hard.
If I ever wanted to know if there was something wrong with me, if I ever felt confused by the dynamic between me and Ash, all of that blurriness is wiped away. I see it clearly now, the difference between consensual power exchange and the actual violence men can do to women. I know immediately what Melwas means by teaching a lesson and it wouldn’t be playful spankings bounded by a safe-word and affection. All I feel at Melwas’s words is nausea and the urge to run.
I try to pull back, but he doesn’t let me, making sure I feel exactly how much stronger he is than me. “I didn’t mean to be ugly,” he apologizes suddenly, as if struck with a sudden mood swing. “Not to such a beautiful woman. Perhaps you could visit me tonight, and I could make amends.”
I refuse to struggle against his hold, even though the erection pressing into my stomach is triggering all sorts of instinctual alarms. I look him in the eye. “You know that won’t happen.”
He gives a shrug that is so very Slavic. “Maybe not tonight. But someday I’ll see what the great hero gets to enjoy every night.”
He’s jealous of Ash. It’s so obvious that I’m surprised I missed it, but it makes so much sense. Melwas fought in the same war, emerged as his fledgling country’s ruler, and yet outside of Carpathian borders, Ash is the one venerated like a saint.
“And your wife?” I ask, looking over to Ash and Lenka. Lenka is leading Ash through the steps, and they’re both laughing—the smile and color in her cheeks doing wonders for Lenka’s beauty.
I feel rather than see the irritation run through Melwas’ body, although I’m not sure if it’s at Lenka’s happiness or the fact that Ash is the one giving her the happiness.
“She has no say in these things. I’ve made that very clear to her.”
Poor Lenka. Does she pretend not to see Melwas with other women? Or is she secretly relieved that she alone doesn’t have to bear the brunt of his lust?
And then for no reason at all, I think of Embry and Ash under the mistletoe, Ash’s fist in Embry’s shirt and my heart pounding in the dark. Am I like Lenka? Standing passively by while my partner cheats on me?
The thought is like a tuning fork, humming along my bones, deep into my teeth, and all of my priorities fall right back into order, and I’m Greer Galloway again, the professor, the spy, the political princess.
“I suppose you have made that clear to her. And I will make it clear to you—I’m not interested. Tonight or ever.”
“A challenge,” he says, his accent growing thick. “I have not had a challenge in a very long time.”
“You will lose,” I say, and I say it with such certainty and calmness that it throws him. His grip on me loosens.
“May I cut in?”
I look up to see Embry next to us, unsmiling and warlike, all of the meanings of his interruption obvious.
Get away from her.
She belongs to someone else.
I’m not afraid of you, and I don’t give a shit about diplomacy.
I don’t think Melwas really gives a shit about diplomacy either, which he makes apparent by stepping forward and pointedly adjusting his tuxedo jacket to cover his erection. Embry sees this, his face contorting into an expression of wolfish rage, and for a minute, I wonder if he’s going to take a swing at the Carpathian leader. But then Ash and Lenka are coming up to us, and Ash is saying something in Ukrainian as he bows and kisses Lenka’s hand and then gestures to Melwas.
Lenka giggles. Giggles. And the sound jars Melwas out of his locked stare with Embry. He says something brusque and demanding in Ukrainian and then stalks off the dance floor, Lenka scurrying after him.
“I’m going to kill him,” Embry says quietly once they’re gone, his hands curling into fists.
Elsewhere, I see other couples spilling onto the dance floor, more or less oblivious to the crisis that was just averted by a giggle. Adrenaline is pumping through me like I’ve been fighting, like I’ve been attacked, and Ash steps to me and takes my head in his hands.
“Are you okay?” he asks seriously, searching my face. “I came over as soon as I saw something was wrong. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you when you needed me.”
“I’m okay.” I take a deep breath and realize my hands are shaking. “He…it doesn’t matter. I’m fine, and I didn’t need help.”
“You’re not fine though,” Embry hisses, turning to Ash. “Did you see how he was holding her? Touching her? We can’t let him near her again.”
Ash looks at me thoughtfully, on the surface all cool analysis while Embry seethes and mumbles threats next to him. But when I meet his eyes, there’s nothing cool or composed in their deep, clear depths. In them, I see the soldier. I see lead and fire and blood.
“He wants you,” Ash says finally. “That much is clear. I’m doubling your security for the duration of your stay, and you tell me the moment he says or does something untoward again. Understood?”
“I can take care of myself,” I say, a little snappishly. “I don’t need you to rescue me.”
Ash looks impatient. “This isn’t a game, Greer. You were just sexually assaulted by the leader of a country hostile to ours. Like it or not, you are an extension of my office now—your safety and the safety of our country are intertwined, and aside from all that, you are the most precious possession of my heart. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
I don’t even know why I’m so riled up right now, so peevish, because none of this is Ash’s fault, but I bite off a caustic, “I’m not anyone’s possession” and glare at him.
And then he’s leaning into my ear, his hand on the small of my back. “That’s right, you’re not my possession. You’re going to be my wife. My wife who kneels at my feet, who presents her cunt to me without question when I demand it, who trusts me with her heart and soul and future. You think it’s either/or that you belong to yourself or belong to me, but I’m telling you right now that it’s both/and. You belong to yourself and you belong to me, and I don’t fucking care that it seems like a contradiction because we both know it isn’t. Now if you can’t accept that, then say my name right now and we will step back and renegotiate our relationship. But if you are willing to submit to the fact that I will move fucking heaven and earth to keep you from harm, then say yes, Sir.”
My irritation leaves instantly, my emotions taking a crash as the adrenaline in my blood begins to plummet down to pre-Melwas levels. “Yes, Sir,” I say, feeling instantly guilty for taking out my fear and anger on him. “I’m sorry, Ash. I’m not angry with you. I’m just shaken up.”
“I know.” He gives me a lingering kiss on the lips, parting them with his own and sliding his tongue inside my mouth. I taste mint and whiskey and Ash. “I love you,” he whispers, pulling back. “I have to go talk to Merlin, though. This…complicates things.”
“Please don’t let me undo all the work you’ve done for the treaty,” I say, instantly filled with unease.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says flatly. “This is on Melwas. The treaty must go forward, but I think more precautions need to be put in place immediately. Stay with Embry—you don’t leave his side, got it?”
The irrational desire to pick a fight with him has disappeared. “Got it.”
He gives me another quick kiss and then he’s off to find Merlin.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Shall we dance?” I ask Embry, taking one of his still-fisted hands in both of mine. He still looks like he’
s squaring off for a duel, and people are going to notice soon if he doesn’t stop.
“Dance?” he asks blankly, like I’ve just asked him to donate a kidney.
“We are still on a dance floor,” I point out. “And we still have to pretend that we’re here for diplomacy.”
“I guess,” he scowls.
“Come on,” I coax, sliding a hand up his shoulder to his neck. I did it to make him dance, but the second my hand touches his neck, I realize what a mistake it was. It’s the first time I’ve really touched him since he came to my office at Georgetown. Firm, deliberate touch.
And it’s the first time he and I have been mostly alone together, without Ash.
His lips part and his pupils dilate into black pools of lust. I make to drop my hand, but his hand covers mine, and he moves it back up to his neck as we slowly start dancing. Both of us are good enough dancers that we don’t need to pay attention to the steps or the music. “That feels good,” he murmurs. “Having your hand on me.”
I want my hand to be everywhere on him—his flat abs and curved ass and thick penis—I want him trembling underneath my touch as sweat springs up on his forehead, I want him so desperate for me that he can’t form words, I want to sit on his face and have him eat me while he reflexively tries to fuck the air.
The brief fantasy is so vivid and so unlike me that I have trouble catching my breath. Is it possible to be a different person with two different lovers? For a woman to be different with one man than she is with another? With Ash, I never want anything other than what we have. But for some reason when I think of Embry, I think of him moving beneath me, of blind passion without negotiation, him sometimes rough and fast and me sometimes cruel and teasing. Not a power exchange, but a power dance, back and forth, side to side, mindless and spontaneous.
“You okay?” Embry asks, eyebrows slanting together, and I snap back to reality, my cheeks warm.
“Yes,” I say, and then add quickly, to steer us away from more dangerous topics, “Where’s Abilene?”
Embry sounds weary, not sarcastic, when he answers. “You mean my date?” He tilts his head to the side, and I follow the gesture, seeing her dancing with one of the men from the Carpathian delegation. He can’t stop staring down her dress, and there’s a certain satisfaction on her face that I can’t quite read. “I hope she’s having fun,” I say. “I hope they hit it off. But I am sorry she wasn’t a very good date.”
Embry looks down at me. “I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good date either. The whole time I was wishing I was with someone else.”
My throat tightens. Does he mean me? Or Ash?
Does it matter?
“I told Ash about us,” I blurt out for no reason. Well, no reason other than the thought of him longing for Ash’s touch across the ballroom sends electricity skating across my skin, almost more than the thought of him longing for me does. Electricity quickly followed by betrayed anger.
God, what the fuck is wrong with me that I’m turned on and jealous at the same time?
Embry sighs. “I know.”
“Have you guys talked about it?” I ask. “I feel like it’s this big thing looming over us, the fact that I’ve slept with both of you.”
He looks miserable. “I feel like that too. And no, we haven’t talked about it much. He told me on Christmas Eve. He told me that he knew and that he was jealous and that…” He stops, his vision growing hazy and his skin hot under my touch, and I realize he’s remembering the kiss. My skin also gets hot as I remember it. “Anyway, we haven’t had a chance to talk since then. So I don’t know where we stand.”
“Neither do I,” I say.
“And sometimes he’ll say things—like he’s trying to needle me or test me. Or maybe torture me.”
“Like what?” I ask, puzzled.
Embry’s eyes close, his skin still impossibly hot. “Like that you’re not wearing anything underneath your dress tonight.”
My breath stutters and he opens his eyes.
“Do you know what it’s like,” he says in a hollow voice, “to have him tell me things like that? Or to be in the same building and know that, at that very moment, he’s inside you? Or to remember what you taste like and not even be able to hold your hand?”
“Embry,” I whisper.
“I couldn’t go back to you in Chicago, not after he told me about seeing you. You know he read those emails every day? Rain or snow, hot or cold, on base or sleeping on rocks and pine branches. I’d find him with his miniature flashlight in his teeth and his hand on his belt. I’d hear him grunting in the shower stall next to me and know he was thinking of you. That went on for years…and then to find out this mysterious email girl was you. The girl I’d decided to marry after less than eight hours together.”
The girl I’d decided to marry…
His words sink like anchors, finding my most vulnerable depths, but I push them aside as typical Embry hyperbole. I have to. The alternative is taking them seriously, and if I take those words seriously, I might fly apart.
“I thought you didn’t want me,” I say slowly. “It…well, it hurt a lot. For a long time. Because I gave you something, and I don’t mean my virginity necessarily, but myself; you were the first person I allowed myself to be vulnerable with. That I exposed my heart to. And then you just vanished, like it had meant nothing to you.”
He gives an empty laugh. “You thought I didn’t want you…Greer, I burned with wanting you.”
My stomach flips over.
And then his lashes lower. “I still burn with wanting you.”
“Don’t do this,” I beg. Because if he says the words out loud, if we drag this out into the open—
“I can’t pretend any more,” he croaks. “I thought it was just an infatuation—who wouldn’t be infatuated after a night like we had? But all the time I’ve spent with you these past few months has made me realize it’s worse than that. I’m in love with you. I’m consumed with you. And I’m in hell watching you with Ash.”
I look away, fighting the pain in my throat. He’s in love with me. And I think I might still be in love with him. Which puts us both in hell.
“But all the women…all those dates…” I can’t keep the pain and jealousy out of my voice, even though I’m desperate to. I keep my eyes on the other dancers, trying to distract my mind from the endless rotation of longing and betrayal. I see Belvedere dancing with Lenka, Melwas talking with our secretary of state, no trace of Abilene, who must be off grabbing a drink with her new acquaintance. But even an entire ballroom of political leaders can’t keep my eyes from sliding back to Embry. His sharp jaw and high forehead and invitingly wicked mouth, which is currently tight with emotion. “I just didn’t think you could want me if you were fucking all those other women.”
He looks at me helplessly. “I ache with wanting you. All the time. And at the end of the day, you two get to go fuck, and I have to know about it.” His voice grows frustrated. “Don’t I get something to take the edge off?”
A childish part of me wants to stamp my foot and yell “No!” Which is ridiculous and selfish for every reason under the sun, especially if he loves Ash too, if he’s aching for two people instead only one. I don’t answer him because I can’t answer with the thing I should say, which is do what you want.
“I won’t any more,” he breathes suddenly, “if that’s what you want. I won’t see anyone else. I won’t fuck anyone else. I’ll be completely celibate so that you can know exactly how fucking lost I am to you. Oh, Greer, please. Please just tell me if you feel the same way. Tell me this is eating you alive too and that I’m not alone.”
I should lie. I should lie and tell him that I don’t love him, that I don’t want him, that being around him isn’t torture. Because I see in the flutter of those long eyelashes and the agony written on his Darcy-esque brow that despite the carefully applied veneer he’s adopted as Vice President, he’s still no more in control of his emotions than he was five years ago. His passions and urg
es master him, drown him, and I see now that Ash has been trying to protect him. That he tells Embry things about me not to torment him, but to share what he can of me. To help soothe the constant storm contained inside this beautiful, vulnerable soul.
Don’t make him suffer for loving you. I don’t.
Ash knew all along. Ash always knows. And instead of reacting in any number of fair or understandable ways—with demands or denial or coldness—his reaction instead has been to be honest about his feelings. To share. To stay and not pull back. To remain in a relationship with a best friend and a fiancée who secretly love each other.
All of a sudden, my heart hurts for Ash most of all. As if it weren’t enough to be President, to have to shoulder the burden of us, Embry and me, and still remain loving and honest as he did so?
Well, honest about everything except whatever exists between him and Embry.
I feel impaled with all these contradictory feelings, and I can’t fight it any more.
“Yes, I love you,” I admit brokenly. “I fell in love that night in Chicago and I couldn’t stop being in love, even after you abandoned me. I couldn’t stop being in love with you even when I started seeing Ash. Yes, I want you. All the time. I want you both, I want you and Ash, and I can’t stop myself from all this wanting, even though it’ll damn me to hell. And I almost like it when you fuck all those other women because it gives me a reason to hate you, to feel like, just for a moment, I’m free from loving you. But I’m lying to myself. I’m never really free. You could walk in smelling like another woman—tasting like her—and if I could, I’d still throw myself at your feet.”
I can see that I’m hurting him, every word a slice across that beautiful face as we whirl across the dance floor.
“It makes me desolate, Embry, hollow and hurting and I hate myself sometimes but I can’t stop wishing for you. I feel like a liar. Like a snake or a…I don’t know, a man eater or something.”
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