American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)

Two hours later, Embry and I were swinging high above the ground in an enclosed car, alone, our mouths sweet from cotton candy and our bodies warm from wanting each other. I could smell him now, something with citrus and heat, like pepper, a smell that made my toes curl in my shoes, a smell that made me restless with the urge to kiss him.

On one side of us there was the relentless glow of the city, and on the other the relentless black of Lake Michigan, and Embry and I were two twilight figures in the middle, half in shadow and half in the heady light of the city and carnival rides below us. We sat on the same side of the car, our bodies near but not near enough, and just a minute before, Embry had taken my hand in his. There had been some accidentally-on-purpose brushes of fingers and shoulders throughout the night, a moment where he’d smilingly wiped a pink smear of candy from the corner of my mouth, but there was something so deliberate and intentional about the way he reached for my hand and placed it firmly against his own. Then our fingers interlaced, and my heart flipped over.

The only other man I’d held hands with had been Ash, and that had been four years ago. I’d forgotten what it felt like, palms sliding against palms, large male fingers stretching and squeezing against my slender ones. I’d avoided romance and sex in any form since Ash, for reasons I didn’t entirely understand myself, and now because of a moment of weakness, I found myself alone with a man who seemed to be romance and sex personified. Even his flaws were attractive: the occasional scowl and frown as we talked about our pasts—me staying studiously away from the topic of Ash or my grandfather and him even more studiously avoiding talk of battles and Carpathia; the somewhat presumptuous way he flirted so filthily and with such confidence; the fleeting giddy grin when we talked about the future and the places we wanted to go and see.

He felt like a real person, a person who exuded confidence but had moments of insecurity, a person who laughed because he knew no other way to drive out the darkness, a person who craved connection but couldn’t let go of something inside of himself in order to reach for it.

In other words, with all of my gifts of perception and analysis, I couldn’t escape the feeling that he felt a lot like me.

And the entire night, through all our wandering talks about Cambridge and literature and the beautiful corner of the Olympic Peninsula where he’d grown up, he hadn’t once asked me about the party. Hadn’t asked why he’d found me crying and gin-soaked and trying to hail a cab. And for that I was eternally thankful. So thankful that I found it possible to confess the events of the party to him, even if only in vague terms.

I looked down to where our hands were linked, up to his face, which was watching mine with an expression of interested but reserved hunger, the way a cat looks when you toss a toy their way but before they pounce to get it.

I took a breath. “There was someone at the party tonight.”

He nodded, as he’d been waiting for me to speak these words all night. “A man someone?”

“A someone I had feelings for. And yes, it happened to be a man.”

I could tell from the amused quirk of his lips that he was fighting back the urge to banter about heteronormativity with me, and I appreciated it. I liked bantering with Embry, but I wanted to get this off my chest more.

“It’s been years since he and I…well, we weren’t together in any real sense. But I still had feelings. We met unexpectedly this afternoon, and there was a moment where I thought maybe he felt the same way. But then I saw him at the party tonight with someone else, and it hurt. It hurt and I was so furious with myself for feeling hurt, because I had no right. No normal person would have feelings for four years with no encouragement, no interaction to bolster them, and then feel wounded at the actual proof that there was no hope of a relationship.”

I leaned my head back against headrest of the seat and concluded, “I’m disgusted with myself.”

Embry’s hand left mine, and for a painful second I wondered if I’d disgusted him too, if something about my story conveyed neediness or clinginess or delusion, but then he was on the floor of the car kneeling in between my legs and taking both my hands in his. The car had a glass floor, and beneath Embry’s blue-clad knees, I could see the dizzying spin of the carousel far below, the tiny toy-people moving and shopping and eating like miniature dolls in a miniature dollhouse.

Embry moved my hands to his face, and I needed no encouragement to slide my hands over the carved lines of his jaw and cheekbones, to run my fingers over the strong ridge of his straight nose and up the swell of his proud forehead. My hands roamed through his sandy-brown hair, thick and soft, almost curly, and then down to his neck, where I stroked the warm skin along his collar.

“Sweet Greer,” he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning his head against my knee. “I’m disgusted with myself too.”

My hands paused as I absorbed his words.

“I know exactly how you feel. There’s a someone for me—they’ve been a someone for me for years—but they aren’t my someone. No matter how much I plead, no matter how much—” his breath catches “—how much I give of myself. I’m wrecked with it, so much that I think it’s never possible I’ll find another someone and I’m doomed to be miserable forever.”

My fingers resumed their stroking, my heart breaking for him and for me and for both of us, and then he caught my wrists and gave the inside of each one a gentle kiss. On the second one, I felt the faintest flicker of his tongue, right over the blueish veins, and something deep inside my body clenched. I was the girl who’d written those emails once again, the girl who wanted bad, who wanted wrong, and wanted it in the most soul-thrumming, reckless ways possible.

“I don’t want to be miserable tonight,” I whispered, and Embry lifted his head, his blue eyes unreadable in the shadows. “I don’t want to feel doomed or disgusted. I don’t want to think about him.”

“I can do that for you,” he said, his voice low. “If you ask me.”

Everything smelled like him in that moment. Pepper and lemon and promise.

The brave Greer spoke for me. “Then do it.”

Ash would have hesitated, not out of disinterest, but out of caution, out of a need to establish consent and boundaries, because Ash was—is—a self-aware monster. Acutely aware of the marks he would leave on his lovers’ souls and bodies, of exactly how dangerous he was.

Embry didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ask for clarification, for hard limits, for a safe word. He didn’t ask what I needed in bed or what I wanted, how many people I’d been with, whether I wanted him with a condom or bare. He left all of those questions unanswered, unasked, and with a searing kiss, showed me the thrilling joy of abandoning safety and leaping feet-first into passion. I kissed him back, not forgetting Merlin’s chains, but intentionally throwing them off, intentionally abandoning them.

I wouldn’t keep my kisses to myself, I’d give them to Embry instead.

And damn the consequences.

When the Ferris wheel landed, we were already rumpled and breathless, and when we finally got a cab, there was no keeping our hands off each other. I had never made out with someone, and at any rate, my last kiss had been over four years ago, and so the experience was intoxicating. The way Embry breathed against my mouth, those tiny stitches of breath when my hands found someplace new, the tiny growls when I opened for him—my lips and arms and legs—heedless of the cabbie in the front seat.

We hurriedly paid the driver, and then Embry fairly yanked me out of the cab, pulling me through his hotel lobby so fast that my feet unexpectedly skipped into tiny jogs to keep up. And then the elevator doors closed and I was pinned against the wall, my legs around his waist and his erection right against my center, his mouth open and hot against my neck and collarbone. All the times I’d fingered myself, gotten myself off with vibrators, none of it could compare to the actual sensation of having a willing, eager male between my legs. The sensation of narrow hips shoving against me mindlessly seeking relief, hands cruelly yanking down my dress and bra cup, the sight of a man’s head ducked against my breast, nuzzling and biting and sucking.

And then the doors opened.

Once again, I was yanked along, and since the hallway was empty, I didn’t bother pulling down my dress, didn’t bother readjusting my bra. Instead, I stood behind him as he fumbled for his hotel keycard, skirt rucked up, hair tousled, breast exposed, begging him in a wild, impatient chant, “Hurry, hurry, hurry…” And when he looked back and saw me exposed and whining with need, he gave an almighty groan. The door snicked and unlocked, and he turned the handle and pulled me inside the dark room, lit only by the skyline outside the window.

He’d pulled so hard that I stumbled as I crossed the threshold, but it didn’t matter, because he caught me and swung me into his arms, carrying me straight to the bed. He stood over me, stripping off his shirt and vest and blazer, not even waiting to toe off his shoes before he lowered his body over mine. I heard the shoes clunk, one by one, onto the floor, heard the slow creak of my leather jacket as he bracketed my body with his forearms, heard the hitch in his breath as our bodies met, heard my answering moan as he roughly kneed my legs apart and ground his erection against me.

His mouth crashed down over mine, and I was lost once more. He kissed me like a man who was facing down death, kissed me like he would never see me—or any other woman—ever again. He kissed me like he knew me and knew my pain, something I’d never felt from anyone ever before.

I scratched my nails down Embry’s bare chest, catching those flat nipples and making him hiss, reaching for his belt. He knelt up, and I sat up with him, my shaking hands struggling with the belt, the task made all the harder by Embry’s insistent hands tugging at my jacket. There was fumbling and pulling and frustrated moans punctuated by leaning, awkward kisses, and then suddenly his belt was gone and his pants unfastened and my jacket was somewhere in the shadowed depths of the room. He was back over me and I arched underneath him, needing the contact, needing the pressure, which he was all too happy to give. I kicked off my heels and used the balls of my feet to work the waistband of his pants down past his firm, muscled ass, and then his cock and my pussy were separated only by the silk jersey of his boxer briefs and the demure cotton of my panties. He swiveled his hips against my cunt, and I cried out with pleasure, my nails digging into his back.

“Fuck,” he grunted into my neck, giving another trial thrust. “I’m going to come just like this. Humping you like a teenager.”

I could come too, just like this, with the rough grind of his cock against my clit, with the thin fabric between us adding an angry sort of friction. But it wasn’t enough for Embry, wasn’t enough for me either, because we’d both unlocked the worst kind of desperation in each other, the kind of desperation that wouldn’t be satisfied until it had cannibalized itself, caught flame and burned itself to ashes.

Too impatient to pull my dress off properly, Embry tugged on the straps and yanked it down so that it was bunched around my middle.

“Your tits,” he murmured, “I want to see them.”

I managed to squirm out of my bra, and then he was on my breasts with his mouth and his rough fingers, making me whimper, and suddenly our breastfeeding conversation from earlier didn’t seem so insane, so ridiculous. In a weird way, it was almost like he was nursing from me, in a metaphorical, vampiric sense, he was seeking succor from my body. Seeking nourishment and release and life, and I wanted to offer it to him.

He licked and sucked and bit with abandon, completely lost to himself and his need. Unlike Ash, who had touched and kissed with such deliberate intention and skill, who awoke my soul with a single brush of his lips, who would later awake the submissive animal within me, Embry kissed with nothing but mindless fire and passion. He awoke the female in me, the woman, and only underneath him could I have found this writhing, assertive version of myself.

Without thought, without anything but blind need, I pushed Embry’s head farther down, past the bunched raspberry fabric, past my navel, my fingers fisting in his hair when he pressed his mouth and nose against the damp white cotton that covered my cunt. He inhaled and his ensuing groan seemed to thrum inside my very bones.

He wrapped his fingers around the sides of the panties and pulled them down, tossed aside to join the leather jacket on the floor. And then he was back at my secret place, one arm sliding underneath my hips to lift me to his mouth, the other positioned so he could easily stroke my belly. A kiss on my mound, a kiss to each inner thigh, and then his mouth was there, there, and my hips jerked involuntarily at the sensation.

It was too much, too much, even though he’d just started, but I’d never felt this before, never felt what a silky wet mouth could do to silky wet flesh. Never known how the gentle nip of teeth would feel on my clit, the sucking of lips on the same, never guessed what having my hole circled and then fucked with a strong tongue would be like. If I had known—Jesus, if I had known, I would have never turned down those myriad offers of dates and drinks at Cambridge.

“You taste so good,” Embry growled from between my legs. “You going to come for me now? Going to make me taste you as you do it?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me, nodded against the pillow, writhing and panting, holding his head in place while I rubbed against him. While I fucked his mouth and face, taking my pleasure with each grind of my clit, with each masterful stroke of his tongue. And my body built and built and built its pleasure from that, like a castle of tightly strung tension, each block taking me higher and higher, each buck of my hips and fluttering suck of his mouth sending me soaring.

I raised my head, looking down my bared breasts and dress-covered stomach to my hips, which were still lifted to his mouth. He looked beautiful just then, the light from the window showing his eyelashes dark on his cheeks, the sensual curve of his muscular shoulders and arms, the slight curl of his thick hair. And—oh—his hips moving against the mattress as he ate me, as he mindlessly fucked the bed with his face in my pussy, so needy, so desperate for contact and friction.

That sight—of this powerful, gorgeous man driven to rutting against anything by the taste of my cunt—was what finally did it. I clenched against his mouth and released with something like a scream, my first ever orgasm from someone other than myself, rolling and thrusting and quivering. He pinned my hips in place to hold me still and lapped it all up, licking me until the waves finally stopped cresting, and then he was up on his knees again, wiping his mouth with his forearm. His cock was so hard that the dark tip had pushed its way out of the waistband of his boxers, standing up almost past his navel, the dim city light catching the bead of moisture at his slit.

And his eyes—he was gone. He was raw now, a hard body of speechless need. He stood and shucked his pants and boxer briefs and went into the bathroom, emerging a moment later with a small foil packet in his hand. He handed it to me wordlessly, his hands shaking.

“I need,” he said in a trembling voice. That was all.

Not I need you, not even I need to fuck.

Just I need.

The honest primal nature of it took my breath away. I needed, too. Just for tonight.

But as I slid to the edge of the bed and tore the foil packet open, I remembered the uncomfortable hurdle of my virginity. I was Catholic, yes, some would even say a devout one, but I wasn’t particularly traditional when it came to premarital sex. It was merely that Ash had ruined me for any other touch…at least until tonight.

Should I tell Embry? Should I slow this down?

I don’t want to slow down.

I wanted to be fucked, hard. I wanted to come again. I wanted the cruel, vicious knowledge that I’d had a man’s cock inside me so that whenever I saw Ash again, I could guard myself with my own experience. He wouldn’t be the only one who didn’t wait, he would no longer be the only one who’d moved on. I would have fucked his best friend, cried out another man’s name, and I wanted that satisfaction so much I could taste it.

Yes, I needed. Yes, in any universe I would be right here, right now, doing this very thing, but in this universe, the jealousy and pain fueled the fire, and from the way Embry’s eyes hooded at the sight of my hand grasping his erection, I guessed that I wasn’t the only one wanting to fuck away my demons tonight.

I had never rolled on a condom before, but Embry helped me, holding his dick steady as I slowly worked the latex down his length. He had a beautiful cock, eight thick inches, straight and proud with a purple-dark tip and close-cropped curls at his base. Even the heavy sac underneath his dick was beautiful, looking so full and ready for release, and I laid back on the bed and beckoned for him to join me, ready for him to spill himself inside me. Ready for him to relieve the ache there.

He followed me, his body still trembling with the effort of holding back, and settled on top of me.

“Open up,” he demanded through clenched teeth. “Open yourself for me.”

There was no question in his tone. No permission. I might have been any woman underneath him, any warm pussy he’d found for the night, and that thought was freeing and exhilarating in how dirty and impersonal it was.

I spread my legs, and he was right there, the huge head of him pushing against my entrance. It was so big, so wide, so much more than my fingers had ever been, and I cried out in real pain. I wanted this, I knew I did, but my body was at war with itself. My nerve endings shrieked in pain at the same time something much deeper and much more unknowable whispered to me to take it, to move into him, to be penetrated.

“Jesus, Greer,” Embry muttered, shoving in another forceful inch. Sweat gleamed on his shoulders and chest, and his lips trembled. “You’re too tight. I can’t—”

Another shove, another inch. I cried out again, tears spilling from my eyes.

“I’m a virgin,” I blurted.

He froze.

“I don’t want to stop,” I said hurriedly. “I just—I felt like you should know.”

“You felt like I should know,” Embry echoed, his blue eyes searching my face.

Ash would have stopped, checked in with me. He would have asked if I really wanted this, to lose my virginity to him, in some anonymous hotel room. It was because Ash would have wanted so badly to be cruel to me, to take my virginity in the most crude and rough way possible, he would have forced himself to be circumspect until he knew it was what I really wanted. Then and only then, would he have let the beast out, the real monster.

Embry was not Ash.

His eyebrows drew together, his lips parted with an exhale so strong I knew that whatever control he’d had was finished, and then the ridged muscles of his flat stomach bunched together and he thrust all the way home.

A sound tore from my throat—raw, real pain—but Embry was heedless above me, fucking into me like a man possessed. It felt like I was being wedged in two, like I was being split apart, and the invasion was brutal and absolute. I scratched at his back and at his ass, and one moment I scratched in anger and pain, the next in desperation to have him deeper and harder. I didn’t know my own body in that moment—my own body didn’t know itself—that there could be so much pain from such a natural act and yet so much desire. Not that there was pleasure right away, I don’t mean that, but that there was something deeper than both the pleasure and the pain, a deep, deep itch that was finally and blissfully being scratched.

“You’re with me,” he grunted in my ear as he continued to force his way in and out of my virgin cunt. “You’re not with him. You’re giving this to me.”

His words made me moan. They were possessive and dark and rude and fetishizing and I didn’t care. It turned me on to hear and see him so aroused by breaking my hymen, and it piled more fuel onto my jealous, bleeding heart. I was giving this to someone else. Ash would never have it, and I let myself imagine that made me satisfied. That it covered up the pain I felt tonight at seeing him with Jenny.

Embry rose up on his knees, keeping his tip lodged in me, and his fingers dug hard into my hips as he swept his gaze over the place where we joined. I looked too, and it gave me some kind of strange delight to see the blood wet and dark on my thighs, smeared across his thighs and hips, glistening in streaks on the condom.

“Yeah,” Embry said to himself. “That’s it. All mine.”

He slid back inside me again, this time laying his whole body over mine. Our naked chests pressed together, sweaty and slick, our bloody thighs sliding easily past each other’s, and he wrapped his arms tight around me. His face was in my neck, my chin tucked in his shoulder, and all of his weight was on me. It didn’t feel heavy at all, or at least it felt like the right kind of heavy, especially when he began grinding in and out of me with short, rolling thrusts.

And that’s when the deep, deep itch finally flared into true pleasure; the drag of his large helmet against my sensitive front wall, the friction at my clit from the base of his cock, the biological urge to be stretched and filled—all of it winding my body like a clock, whirring tighter and tighter.

“You’re going to come for me, aren’t you?” Embry said in my ear. “You’re going to come on my dick. And when you do, when you’re shuddering underneath me with blood on your thighs, it’s my name you say, got it?”

I was in no place to disagree. All I could feel was the hard male body above me, all I could think about was the hard maleness inside me, and there was no room between our sweaty, eager bodies for Ash. In this moment, it was only Embry, Embry, Embry, and as he pressed down even harder against my clit, I dug my fingernails into his back and held on for dear life as my body finally wound itself so tight that it broke apart.

“Embry,” I chanted, “Embry, Embry,” as my pussy clutched at him, pulsing in tight, hot, painful waves. The thick length inside of me made all the difference, shifting the locus of my pleasure to deep inside my core, and I found myself bucking against him instinctively, trying to drive him deeper into the seizing, clenching heart of my orgasm.

And all the while he was muttering into my neck, words I couldn’t catch but that sounded raw and urgent, and at the same time that he caught my lips in a scorching kiss, he drove himself deeper than ever before and held himself there, grunting into my mouth as he pulsed his own pleasure deep inside me. It went on and on, for both of us, his release so strong that I could feel the throb of his dick as he filled the condom with his orgasm, and I had a surreal moment of regret, wishing that there hadn’t been a condom, wishing that it would have been bare hard flesh buried deep into the soft. That there would have been the uncivilized mingling of my virgin blood with his seed.

Embry lingered a minute more, dropping kisses on my forehead and cheeks and lips as my body gradually stopped quivering, kisses that were as tender as his fucking was rough, and then he circled the condom with his fingers and pulled out. He was gentle and easy with it, but it still stung, and I let out a wounded hiss.

“I’m sorry,” he said distantly, climbing off the bed, and the sudden absence of his warmth and the reservation in his voice made me shiver. I felt extremely vulnerable, like my skin had been peeled away, like my chest had been cracked open and my heart was beating in the open air. My throat tightened, those tears from hours ago threatening to return.

Did I just make a gigantic mistake?

He got rid of the condom, and then came back and stood over me at the edge of the bed in the near-darkness. I had a sudden moment of fear—real, blaring fear—that he was about to ask me if I wanted a cab or an Uber. That he was about to hand me my clothes and wish me a safe ride home. But he didn’t do either of those things. He leaned down and lifted me effortlessly into his arms and carried me into the brightly lit bathroom. I was deposited on the cold granite counter while he turned on the shower, me blinking owlishly in the light, and he stepped in between my legs while he waited for the water to warm up.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I answered, also quietly.

He looked down at my thighs, where lines of dried blood had crusted into thin smears. There wasn’t that much blood, actually, it had felt like so much more at the time, but seeing it now without the heady sex hormones and in the bright light of a strange hotel bathroom, it seemed so much more barbaric. It looked violent and regrettable, even though it was neither of those things.

Embry ran a long finger up my leg, stopping well short of my pussy. “I’m sorry,” he said, and there was nothing distant about his apology this time. His blue eyes were filled with guilt and his mouth was twisted with a bitter self-recrimination. “I was…I don’t know what I was. You deserved better for your first time than me.”

I caught his hand and brought it to my lips, kissing his knuckles gently. He let out a low exhale and his sleepy cock gave a stiffening jerk.

“It was amazing,” I said. It wasn’t my job to assure him or massage away whatever he was feeling right now, but I did want to be honest about myself and how I felt. “The way I felt when I came—the way it felt to have someone else inside me—I loved it. But I also feel really flayed open right now. Like I want to cry, but I don’t think I’m sad necessarily. Just aware. Or maybe unaware. I don’t know what the right word is. Happy or sad feel too far apart from this.”

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against mine. “It was too rough, Greer. First times are supposed to be tender. Slow.”

I shook my head against his, squeezing his hand. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

The truth must have been clear in my voice, because he straightened up and looked at me warily as he helped me wriggle out of the dress that was still bunched around my waist. “You’re a dangerous girl.”

“Dangerous for whom?”

“Me,” he muttered, helping me down from the counter and leading me into the shower, but I caught a crooked flash of a smile when he turned away from me to close the glass shower door. My heart fluttered, and I realized he was the dangerous one. I would fall in love if I wasn’t careful.

“I meant what I said,” I told him, closing the distance between us. “I wouldn’t do anything differently. I’m glad it was you. I’m glad you did it the way you did.”

“And what is the way I take care of you now?” he asked. “Tell me what you need. Anything. After what you gave me, after what you let me take from you, anything.”

That vulnerable feeling again, that heart beating in the open air. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

The way his face looked after I said that, as if I’d broken his heart. “Jesus, Greer. You can stay with me for the rest of my life.” His hands found my ass, my waist, my hair, his face in an expression of combined awe and compassion. “Do you really think I’d kick you out into the night? Do you think that this evening meant so little to me that as soon as I came inside you, I’d want you gone?” He shook his head in disbelief. “And I’m over here wondering how much time I can steal away from you this week, wondering when it’s okay for me to ask for your number, meet your family, visit you at college. Yes, of course you can spend the night. I want you in my arms until it’s time to feed you breakfast in bed, and then I want you in my arms some more.”

He leaned his head down to brush his nose against mine, and I melted. “You are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured with a smile. “I’m not stupid enough to let you leave my sight.”

I suppose now it’s easy enough to guess the end of this particular story. Embry and I fooled around in the shower until I was a wild woman in his arms, and then he took me back to bed, where he made love to me as slowly and softly as the first time was rough and hard. It still stung and hurt, the tears came again, but the pleasure found me faster this time, and soon I was coming apart under his expert touch, shuddering in quiet release. He came inside me, and then we cleaned up and fell asleep, me wrapped tightly in his arms. We woke up once more and I was too sore for sex, but Embry slid down my body and tongued me to a vicious, exhausted orgasm, and when I reached for him afterwards, he pushed my hand away and knelt up over my stomach. Within six or seven strokes, he was shooting a painful, long release onto my belly, and the sight of him climaxing over me was so beautiful I wanted to memorize it forever.

What a man.

What a heartbroken, funny, charming, moody man.

And the eight-inch dick and muscled stomach and war hero past didn’t hurt at all.

I’d texted Abilene from the Ferris wheel to tell her I was out with a guy and planning to spend the night at his hotel—which I gave her the name and the address for, a girl can’t be too careful—but when I woke up early the next morning, Embry’s naked hairy legs entwined with mine and his warm breath ruffling the hair at the back of my neck, I figured I should go home and show my face to Grandpa and Abilene and find a fresh change of clothes. But after that…well, Embry had mentioned he’d be in Chicago for another week, and my pussy blushed at the thought of all that time together. Funny how the wound created by Ash didn’t hurt any less, didn’t feel any less jagged or deep, but somehow there was this new space for joy and excitement carved out in my chest. For the first time in so long, I looked forward to the future. Had someone to make each minute feel exotic and newly washed, simply because his memory was stamped upon it.

I extricated myself from Embry’s arms, biting my lip to still my huge smile as I looked down at him. He slept like a child, full lips parted ever so slightly, covers all kicked up and tangled around his long, muscular legs. I wondered if I would get to see him again like this, morning after morning after morning, my pussy aching from his attention and my heart thudding with nervous happiness.

God, I hoped so.

I left him a quick note on the hotel stationary—my number and hotel name and room number and promised I was just leaving to reassure my relatives that I wasn’t bobbing facedown in the river. I told him I wanted to see him today as soon as he woke up, and I’d be waiting for his call.

I signed my name, and added:

ps. I wouldn’t do any of it differently. Any of it. I can’t wait to see you again.

But I didn’t see him again.

He didn’t call, didn’t come to my hotel, didn’t write. Didn’t try to contact me or find me. I spent the week curled up in bed while Abilene brought me ice cream and counseled me through what she thought was a normal post-one-night-stand heartbreak. My grandfather flew back to Manhattan with me and tried to cheer me up by taking me to my favorite restaurants, my favorite Broadway shows, and for him I tried to fake smiles and happiness, but the moment I boarded the plane to London eight weeks later, I let the mask fall from my face and shatter at my feet.

For the first time, I considered that Merlin’s admonition against kissing was meant for my own well-being. Perhaps he knew, with whatever foresight he seemed to possess, that I was simply doomed to heartbreak. That no matter how isolated I tried to make myself, the men I would invariably trust with my body and my heart would treat those gifts carelessly.

Well, I wouldn’t make that same mistake again, I vowed. No more kisses, no more men. No more trusting and giving and hoping. No more of that girl who craved rough and wrong and reckless, no more wanting to crawl or be held by the neck and dominated. That Greer was over, through, suffocated and dead and buried. There would be books and libraries and manuscripts—things that I could trust—and I would build a life all by myself, without anyone else, without the chance of getting used up and brokenhearted again.

I never stopped waiting though. For Embry to call. For Embry to show up with his crooked smile and colorful pants and the best excuse for not coming after me that week in Chicago.

He never did.

Except, of course, five years later when he strolled into my office at Georgetown and asked to take me to dinner.