American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)

I wake up expecting Ash to be long gone, for the bed to be cold and empty next to me, but that’s not what happens. Instead, I wake up nestled into a warm chest, a heavy arm draped over my side. For a moment, I forget where I am—when I am—and squint at the tall windows at the edge of the room, expecting to see the looming outline of Chicago skyscrapers. But no, it’s the weakening fall sunshine overlooking the South Lawn, and I’m not in a hotel room with Embry, I’m in the White House. In bed with the President.

I roll over to look at him, taking care not to wake him up. He stays fast asleep, his breathing deep and even, his face relaxed and vulnerable. I stroke the thick black hair brushing against his forehead and finally indulge my urge from ten years ago and trace his mouth with my fingertips. Against my belly, I feel his sleepy erection, impressive and thick even at half-mast.

My fingertips on his face wake him.

His eyes blink open, finding my face immediately. “Greer,” he says, his voice sleep-rough and warm.

I snuggle into him, kissing the warm space below his collarbone. “Good morning, Mr. President,” I say.

“I fell asleep,” he says, sounding surprised. “I fell asleep with you.”

“Wasn’t that the idea?”

He kisses the top of my head. “The idea was for you to sleep in my bed. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since my first tour of duty.”

I pull back to look up at his face. The thought sends a pleasant warmth to my chest, that I was able to give him something, that he had something with me that he hasn’t had in fourteen years. “Maybe I’m your sleeping lucky charm.”

“In that case,” he says with a smile and a sudden move so that he’s on top of me, “I might have to keep you in my bed forever.”

He pins me with his arms and kisses me, and my sighs turn into moans as he rocks his hips against me.

“I want to stay in your bed forever,” I breathe. “Please.”

And with the pert rap of awful timing, a knock sounds at the door, followed by Belvedere’s exasperated voice. “Mr. President, please. I’ve called every phone you own, and I more than anyone am happy you’re still in bed, but you have a meeting in your office in thirty minutes. It’s time to peel yourself away from Ms. Galloway and get in the shower.”

I burst into giggles, and Ash grins down at me. “I should fire him,” he says, leaning down to bite my earlobe.

I run my hands up the wide, muscled lines of his back, trailing my nails back down to his ass, regrettably covered up by his boxer briefs. “You should go,” I whisper.

He nods, giving my earlobe a final nibble and then rolling off me. He goes to the door, opening it to an impatient but amused Belvedere. “I’m up, I’m up,” he says. “I’ll be down in twenty-five minutes.”

“Sure,” drawls Belvedere. “You won’t have any temptation to linger while there’s a warm, sleepy blonde in your bed. Maybe I should stay.”

“Goodbye,” Ash says firmly, closing the door on him and turning back to face me.

I’m already up, searching for my clothes to get dressed and leave, but Ash walks over and pulls the dress out of my hands, tossing it on the bed. “Shower. Now.”

My body tingles at his words, and I scramble to obey, shedding his T-shirt and my panties as I go. I step into the glass-walled shower just as he enters the bathroom, stripping off his boxer briefs as he does, and I have to force myself to breathe. Even though I had his cock in my mouth last night, this is the first time I’m confronted with his body completely naked, and there’s almost too much to take in all at once. Those vast expanses of warm skin, the irresistible curves of muscles and delectable lines of tendons, those angled lines of muscle coming down from his hips to his penis. And that part of him is mesmerizing all on its own, thick and proud even at rest, the crown wide and flared.

“I’m up here,” Ash says amusedly as he steps into the shower with me, walking past the knobs without turning the water on.

I drag my eyes up from his cock, barely making it to his face for all the distracting ridges of muscle and flat, brown nipples and wide, powerful shoulders. “You’re beautiful,” I tell him honestly. “I want to stare at you forever.”

“We don’t have forever,” Ash says. “We have about ten minutes. And those ten minutes are going to be for me.”

“For you?” I ask to clarify. I don’t understand, even though I can’t think of anything he’d do that I would object to. And I have my safe word if he does.

“Turn around,” he orders. “Hands on the wall, legs spread. This is the first time I get to see you naked too, don’t forget, and I’m not going to miss a thing.”

With a happy shiver racing down my spine, I do as he asks, trying not to feel self-conscious as I feel his hands on my ass, squeezing and separating so that the most basic parts of me are exposed for his viewing. He squats down behind me, to look at my cunt more closely. “Perfect,” he says in a whisper, kissing me there. I moan and shove my hips back, wanting more, and he stands up with a laugh and slaps my ass. “Turn around, angel.”

I turn and he catches my wrists in his strong hands, moving both above my head. “Keep those there,” he says as he lets go and takes a step back to look at me. The posture has my chest jutting forward, my breasts pert and high, and my stomach stretched taut, and his gorgeous cock thickens and stirs. He doesn’t take it in his hand though, and neither does he touch me. He simply takes in every shadow and curve of my body, every inch, every secret and public place.

Finally, when my nipples are hard under his gaze and my cunt wet and swollen from wanting him, he comes close to me. He fingers the ends of my hair, idly, almost like a horse buyer does with a horse’s mane. “This is all mine now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I pant.

“This hair and these tits and that pussy—all mine.”

“Yes, Ash, all yours. Please—”

He gives me a stern look. “When I want you to beg, I’ll tell you.”

My cunt is so tight it hurts. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good,” he nods, looking back down at my hair between his fingertips. “On your knees.”

I kneel, the cold tile hard on my knees, but I ignore it, enraptured by the man in front of me. His hands are running through my hair, smoothing and stroking it, and then it’s only his left hand while his right slowly fists his cock. Slowly moves from the root to the crown, as surely and deliberately as Ash does anything. I’m lit on fire by the sight of that hand, strong and big and scarred. There is the faintest dusting of dark hair on the back, only near the wrist, hair a shade lighter than the black hair leading like an arrow down from his navel. Everything about him—legs shoulder-width apart, muscles in his arm flexing as he strokes himself, that insatiable dick ridged with veins—is so male and rough and greedy.

“That hair,” he says, wrapping it tighter around his hand. I begin to feel the tug on my scalp, but I don’t mind. I want my hair pulled, I want my eyes to water, and more than anything I want to see Ash come.

He wastes no time, his hand working hard and fast, his eyes searing trails from my face to my tits to my bare knees on the tile and finally landing on the skein of blond hair circling his hand. He lets out a low exhale, the furrowed lines of his stomach tensing, and then those dark eyelashes flutter as he comes, aiming not for my tits or my face, but for the hair he’s so obsessed with. I watch in hungry fascination as he erupts, thick and hot and long, my gold hair now seeded with the white pearls of his climax.

I could stay like this forever, I think dizzily. On my knees, marked by him, beside him.

But we don’t have forever. I have to fight off a serrated bite of frustration as I remember how limited his time is and will be for years to come. There will be no days where I’m his only focus. No long lazy mornings in bed, no time spent without an eye on the clock. I’ll never be anything more than a ten-minute mistress when he’s married to a nation.

I reach for his legs and bury my face in his hip, trying to hide my thoughts, and he lets me for a moment, stroking my head and allowing me to nuzzle against him. My wet desire has receded in the wake of this desperate need to be close to him, to reassure myself that he’s real, that right now, in this moment, he is mine to press against and I am his to use and pet as he sees fit.

After a long minute like this, he tugs my head back by my hair—gently this time—and searches my face. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask me what’s wrong, and he doesn’t need to. He gives a small nod to himself, as if he saw what he expected, and then reaches for my elbows to guide me to my feet.

“Stay there,” he says. In a few seconds’ work, the water is on and warm and he’s guiding my head under the spray. He doesn’t let me do anything myself—he wets my hair and then massages in the shampoo. Rinses it and then massages in the conditioner. I relax and let his strong fingers do all the work, washing away the traces of his orgasm.

The shampoo and conditioner are for women’s hair, brand new, and I wonder if he had them sent for as early as yesterday afternoon. As early as a few days ago, when I told Embry I’d meet him. And I’m about to remark about how skilled he is at washing a woman’s hair when I remember that he’s a widower. He was married for years. Of course he’s done this before.

And of course I’m not jealous of a dead woman. Of course not.

In any case, he’s as efficient as he is gentle, and within a few minutes, we are both washed and clean and wrapped in towels. I sit down on the bed and watch him get dressed, the act of fastening cufflinks and knotting his tie almost as erotic as anything else we’ve done in the last twelve hours.

I’ve almost worked up the courage to ask when I can see him again when he turns to face me, fixing a silver tie bar into place. “I hate this as much as you do, you know,” he says, looking at me. “I hate squeezing you into the margins. I hate that I can’t give you all of my time. All of myself.”

He walks over to the bed, tugging at my towel, rendering me naked and damp. Goose bumps erupt everywhere, my nipples hardening into stiff furls. “You deserve more than me. You deserve a whole man, not a man who can only give you scraps of himself.”

“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” I say, shuddering with pleasure when he runs a pensive finger down my neck to my nipple.

“I know,” he says, and his voice sounds almost sad. “But it isn’t kind to you. Lie down and spread your legs.”

I shift on the bed, opening myself to him, the act of such wanton obedience still triggering a wave of modesty and shame. But I cling to the shame, delight in it, and let it guide me.

His fingers caress my pussy, parting the petals to find the wetness within. “I want to give you everything it’s possible for me to give. I want to give you everything I can. And I don’t want you to be a secret.” His long middle finger slides inside me, and my back arches off the bed. He sits next to me and then there are two fingers, crooking expertly against my sensitive front walls as the heel of his palm grinds against my clit. My body takes to his touch like dry tinder, sparking immediately.

“I know you’ve stayed away from this world for a reason. I know it might be asking a lot of you.” He looks up from where he’s touching me to meet my eyes. “But I don’t just want you at my feet. I want you by my side.”

It’s so hard to think with his hand moving like that, fucking me so perfectly. “I don’t want to be a secret either,” I manage, my thighs tensing and my belly clenching. I’m so close to the edge already, and it’s ridiculous that it should take so little, but nevertheless here I am clenching around his fingers. Any second now I’m going to come, any second now, any second now…

“Good, then you’ll come to the state dinner next week,” Ash says, pulling his fingers out of me and standing up.

My pussy wants to sob. So close. Without even thinking about it, I snake a hand down to my clit, ready to finish myself off. And then, with a movement so quick I don’t even see it, Ash is on the bed kneeling over me, one knee planted firmly on each side of my rib cage and my hands both trapped over my head. He circles my wrists with his left hand and then shoves the fingers of his right hand into my mouth—not gagging me exactly, but keeping me from talking. I remember what he said last night—that I could snap my fingers to safe out if I couldn’t speak—but I don’t want to. I’m instantly, deliriously wet, my whole body trembling with burning need as the President kneels over me and pins me to his bed.

I smell leather. I smell fire. I smell and taste myself on his skin. I could die right now and be happy.

“You don’t get to come unless I say so,” Ash says. “I don’t care if you’re alone, if you’re with me, if I’m holding a Hitachi to your clit while I fuck you—your orgasms are mine and if you have one without my permission, then you’re a thief. You’re not a thief, are you?”

I shake my head, his fingers still deep in my mouth. I can still taste myself on them—a lot sweet, a touch of sour, that rich smell that only seems to come from a cunt.

“Good,” Ash says. Kneeling above me like this, he looks more like the soldier I know he is, and with a frisson of electric fear, I can suddenly imagine him fighting someone. Killing someone. I can’t explain how I can know this and also still feel completely safe, I can’t explain the deep thrill of having a dangerous man mounted on top of me like I’m a lamb about to be tied up and carted off to slaughter. But it’s there. Undeniable and addictive.

I can feel the tension in his thighs as he keeps me restrained underneath him, see the turgid outline of his erection pushing against his expensive slacks. “Do you know what they used to do to thieves?” he asks.

I do, actually. Incidental to studying medieval literature is some familiarity with medieval law. But that’s not part of the game right now, so I shake my head again.

“I’m not going to cut off your hands, of course,” he murmurs, his eyes now on my hands. His grip on my wrists tightens. “But I think I could devise my own version of the stocks. Or I could punish you according to Biblical law, and make you return what’s mine but again sevenfold. That would be seven orgasms you would have to give me for each one you stole. But either way, angel, there’s going to be punishment.”

His fingers leave my mouth and then he’s back on his feet beside the bed, wiping his hands on his handkerchief and carefully adjusting his slacks before he finds his suit jacket.

“Why are you leaving me like this?” I whimper in frustration. “You could have finished me.”

“Because,” he answers, swinging on his jacket and buttoning the middle button, “I want you to say yes to the State Dinner.”

I groan, searching the ceiling as if there’s an answer written there. “If I attend that dinner, then there’s no going back. You and I will be…real.”

“We’re already real,” he says, bending down to brush his lips on my forehead. “And I don’t want to go back. I want you to be mine in here, and I want to be yours out there. And besides, if you go to the State Dinner, I’ll let you come afterwards.”

“That’s not until next week,” I squeak.

He shrugs, tucking his phone into his inside pocket and walking over to the door. “Then I know you’ll really, really want to be there.”

“You aren’t playing fair,” I accuse, rolling up on one elbow to glare at him more directly. I’m not really playing fair either, since I know that I’m displaying my tits and hips to their greatest advantage here, and sure enough, his eyes blaze at the sight of me when he turns around.

But his control is absolute. He simply smiles and says, “I never said this would be fair. But if we do it right, it may just end up being fun.” He opens the door and pauses. “It’s what we both need, Greer. Isn’t it?”

I bite my lip. I nod.

I’m rewarded with a lion’s smile, and then the door closes and he’s gone. I flop miserably back down on the bed, my cunt awake and pulsing and my chest threatening to crack with happiness.

He’s right.

The bastard is right.