American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)

That day Belvedere arranged for me to get home, and somehow I had to pretend life was normal. I taught class, I went to faculty meetings, I tried to work on the book. But I couldn’t pretend, not when every time I closed my eyes, I could see Ash sitting in that chair in front of me, powerful legs sprawled out, eyes hungry as he watched me touch myself. Not when I could still smell smoke and leather and not when I could still feel the weight of his arm as we slept together in his bed.

No, there was too much to pretend, not to mention that I didn’t want to pretend things were normal. I wanted that flutter in my chest as I remembered that Ash wanted me, and wanted me in every way. I wanted the nervous trembling in my hands as I thought about seeing him again. I wanted that deep, itchy frustration as I remembered I couldn’t touch myself, couldn’t come without his explicit permission.

But with the wanting came doubt. I’d had this feeling, this wanting, three times before—after meeting Ash in London, after our afternoon in the sculpture courtyard, and after I’d slept with Embry. Three times, I’d felt the dizzying pull of falling in love, only to have the embers of my heart ground out on the cold ground.

Could I really trust this feeling again? Or did it even matter? Even if I decided I wasn’t going to fall in love with Ash again—if I’d ever even stopped loving him—could I really stay away from him? Was I doing what I wanted to do or was I listening to parts of myself that didn’t need to be listened to?

I spent the next two days going round in circles with myself. I loved Ash, I wanted him, but I also doubted Ash, I doubted our happiness.

It was this doubt that made my happiness feel sharp and brittle, as if it would shatter and cut me at the slightest touch. Well, the doubt plus two other reasons. One reason was Embry.

The other was Abilene.

A few days after my night with Ash, I’m walking into a trendy NoMa office building in search of my cousin. I’m jittery, both with the anticipation of talking to Abilene and also with three days of pent-up lust knotting in my cunt. Though we haven’t been able to meet again, Ash has called me every night, sometimes ordering me to finger myself but not come, sometimes ordering me to listen to him as he strokes himself. Sometimes just to talk, and after we hang up, I realize with a pang how lonely I’ve actually been all these years that I’ve avoided romance.

And I hear it in his voice—he’s been lonely too.

Corbenic Events is on the fifth floor, a striking office of glass walls and bright colors, and it’s Abilene’s very own. After she graduated from Vanderbilt, she used seed money from Grandpa to start her own event-planning firm in the heart of D.C. Weddings, cocktail parties, galas—you name it. Her calendar was full after two weeks in business, and she was able to pay Grandpa back after only six months. That Abilene was able to build such success in such a short time surprised Grandpa and her parents, but it didn’t surprise me. She always was passionate, and when she wanted something, she went after it with a single-minded zeal that would shame a saint. It was more surprising that she kept the venture going after three years, since her interest in things usually fizzled out long before that. But there were—and are—exceptions.

Which is why I’m here today. I’m here to undo my silence about Ash from ten years ago. I’m here to confess.

I walk through the busy office, crowded with harried young interns and planners snapping at people on speakerphone as they leaf through stationery books. Abilene’s office is in the very back, with an impressive view of the shiny new condos that have sprung up here recently, and I find her inside, bent over a glass desk spread with papers.

I take a moment just to watch her without me knowing. She really is beautiful, and there’s something undeniably sexy about the way she holds herself, every movement and gesture so graceful and deliberate it looks like she’s performing for some unseen audience. In fact, I know she is—she used to spend hours in our dorm room watching movie clips and mimicking the most mundane things. The way Zoe Saldana stretched her neck. The way Scarlett Johansson glanced up from under her eyelashes. The way Kiera Knightley held a teacup. It was hypnotic to watch, the way that watching a 3D printer is hypnotic; I watched Abilene create herself, form herself into a predetermined image to her liking. And this is the result, a woman whose movements are sensual and studied, so rehearsed that they’re ingrained, and even though it should make her seem distant or forced, it doesn’t. It only makes her more intriguing, more mysterious.

I shove down a resigned sigh—that old, familiar jealousy—and push the glass door open. “Hey.”

Abilene looks up and smiles at me, her long red hair moving against her slim black dress. Abilene always makes black look classic and stylish. On me, it always looks like funeral wear. “Greer,” she says, glancing back down at her work, “is it our lunch day? I must have totally forgotten. This malaria benefit next week is scrambling my brains, seriously.”

“No, it’s not our lunch day,” I say, taking a seat in front of her desk. I see a pair of Louboutins in the corner of the room, a sparkly clutch perched on a credenza nearby. “Date tonight?”

Abilene sighs dramatically, throwing her head back. “Yes, though I’d rather break my ankle than go. Some Hill staffer I met at the gym. He didn’t have his shirt on when he asked me to dinner, and I couldn’t stop staring at his abs long enough to figure out how to say no.”

“Maybe he’ll be good in bed?” I suggest.

She looks at me with a smirk. “With all those muscles, he better be, although it’s usually the pretty ones who are the worst lays.” She pauses. “I take that back. It’s the senators who are the worst lays. Three pumps and a gasp, and then you’ve got a sweaty fifty year old on top of you who’s already feeling guilty about lying to his wife.”

I laugh. “It only happened that one time, Abi. Hardly a real data set.”

“One time was enough,” she mutters, back to the papers.

“Maybe try an ambassador next. At least they have accents.”

“How do you know I haven’t tried them already?” she challenges playfully.

She’s always been like this about sex, regaling her friends with her exploits over cocktails, casually referencing men she’s slept with or expensive hotel rooms she didn’t have to pay for. Only I out of all her friends know the truth—that Abi has never taken a man to bed that she didn’t respect or who didn’t respect her. That the hilarious blind dates and furtive one night stands with politicians are few and far between, and most of her lovers have been men she felt genuine affection for, or at least genuine attraction. To Abi, sex is something to be taken or consumed, and then mostly forgotten, like a good cup of coffee. But like most coffee connoisseurs, Abi is still choosy about what she drinks.

I sigh. “I wish I were like you.”

She tosses her hair in that joking, faux-smug way of hers—a move perfected from watching Emma Stone interviews—and shrugs. “Of course you do. What is it today that’s made you realize the obvious?”

I lean back in the chair, running a finger along the dark wood of the armrest. I think about waking up with Ash, his words as he left the room. It’s what we both need, isn’t it? “I wish I could be as comfortable with sex as you are. As confident and, well, casual isn’t the right word. But I guess it’s the closest word I can think of.”

“Honey, you can have all the casual sex you want. Any bar in the District—I can find you a lawyer in less than two minutes. A rich one in less than five.”

I shake my head, smiling. “I know I can do that, but it’s not what I need. I need it to be…” God, how can I describe this in a way that won’t make me sound like I’m into tentacle porn or something? Just use the right words, Greer. If you do it in bed, you should be able to say the words. “…I need it to be, um, controlling. Dominating and submitting. That kind of thing.”

Her blue eyes light up. “I knew it!” she crows. “I knew you were secretly kinky. You are totally in the right city, my freaky cousin. I mean, it’s not my scene, but I know everyone in this town and I can get you anything you like. Congressmen who like being whipped, pegged, electrocuted, you name it.”

I can’t help the small giggle that escapes, and I’m waving my hand for her to stop. “No, no, I don’t need someone—” I was going to say, I don’t need someone who wants to be whipped, I want to be the whip-ee, because I know that Abilene wouldn’t immediately guess I’m submissive. She may not be into kink, but she’d be a Domme for sure if she was, and she would assume I’d be too, simply because that’s how her mind works.

But maybe it’s something in my tone or my face, because she misinterprets my sentence and by doing so, correctly interprets everything else. “Because you’ve met someone already?” Her eyes go wide and she scans my body, from my knee-high boots to my sweater to my face. “You have, haven’t you? You have that glow! Oh my God. Have you had sex? Is it someone powerful? Why didn’t you tell me the minute it happened?”

My stomach flips with nervousness, and I smooth my skirt over my gray tights. “It just happened this week. It’s really new…or I guess, it’s kind of old too. And we haven’t had sex yet. We agreed we would take our time with it.”

Abilene smirked. “What is he, religious?”

“Sort of. I mean, yes, but I don’t think he’s a monk or anything. He lost his wife recently.”

She leans forward. “A widower? Greer, is this an older man?”

Tell her. You have to tell her now. My stomach flips again, and I want to lie. I detest lying, and yet telling the truth seems so unnecessarily awkward and provocative…

But then I remember the State Dinner this week. If I don’t tell her myself, she’ll hear about it anyway, and that will be so much worse.

I take a breath. “Do you remember that party in London, the one Maxen Colchester was at?”

She looks a little thrown by the change in subject. “Yes, but what does that—”

“I kissed him,” I interrupt. “In the library. After you and I fought, he came in from the balcony, and we talked and then we…kissed.”

Abilene’s eyebrows rise and her mouth gapes. “What?”

“We kissed, and then after that, I was going to tell you, I swear, but you seemed so taken with him and I didn’t want you to be angry with me, especially when I thought I’d never see him again. It wasn’t worth it. So I didn’t tell you.”

She blinks. I’ve never seen her this stunned, this slow in gathering an emotional response. The vacuum of anger—anger I know will explode out of her at any second—gives me the courage to finish.

“And in Chicago I saw him again, and we had a moment…but it didn’t matter because then we all saw that he was with Jenny. That night, the man I slept with who never called me back? It wasn’t some random guy I met at the party. It was Embry Moore.”

“Holy shit,” Abilene says, still blinking.

“And so Embry Moore came to me a week and a half ago, and told me Maxen wanted to see me. And we met and kissed and it was just as magical as the first time, and we—” Once again, I struggle for the right word. Dating sounds too informal, and it’s too early to claim love, at least anywhere outside my own head. “He’s asked me to go to the State Dinner this week with him,” I say, and I planned on being soft, being giving, because I’m the giving one in our friendship, always, always, but instead, I find my voice getting stronger and my chin lifting defiantly. “And I’ve agreed to go.”

She doesn’t respond, and I see signs of that Abilene rage fluttering under the surface of her skin: a dangerous flush on her neck, a brightness in her eyes, a tightness in her lips.

“Abi,” I say. Plead. Don’t do this. Don’t make this into a fight.

But then she swallows and gives me a forced smile. “Well, I’m happy for you. My crush on Maxen Colchester was so long ago, I barely remember it. And if anyone is going to be with him, it should be you.”

I want to believe her. I want it so badly. “Are you sure?”

This smile comes a little easier, although there’s still that same strange brightness in her eyes. “Yes, Greer. It would be ridiculous for me to carry a torch for someone I’ve only seen in person once. I’m glad you told me.”

“I was so scared to tell you because I knew how much you adored him when we were younger,” I say on a relieved breath. “Thank God you don’t hate me now.”

“Of course I don’t hate you.” She sits back, tapping a fingertip on the glass desk. “So the President and the Vice President too, huh?”

“No, no,” I rush to clarify. “What happened between Embry and me was a very long time ago. And I was upset about Ash and Jenny, and obviously Embry didn’t enjoy it that much, since I never heard from him again.”

Abilene’s head cocks at my casual use of Maxen’s middle name, but she doesn’t comment on it. Instead she says, “Are you sure there isn’t something between you and Embry still? You’re blushing.”

I press a hand to my cheek, and sure enough, the skin is warm and flushed. I try not to think about that night in Chicago. I try not to think how handsome he looked in the candlelight at our dinner last week, how that citrus and pepper smell of him seemed to follow me home and taunt me while I tried to sleep.

Just because you want to forget who you are doesn’t mean the rest of us can forget you.

“There’s nothing between Embry and me,” I repeat, but my response took too long and my face betrays too much. I never was a good liar.

Abilene’s smile curls into something sharp. “Whatever you say, cousin mine. Just be careful. This city is full of wolves, and they are always hungry.”

“There’s nothing for them to be hungry for,” I say again. “Embry isn’t a problem.”

The smile curls sharper. “I think he’s very much a problem for you. And for the President too.”

I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just this, Greer, that men like them have secrets. You don’t get to be that powerful that young without some big skeletons in your closet, and I guarantee you that the President and Merlin Rhys would be willing to do anything to keep those secrets contained. Anything.”

“I feel like you know something I don’t.”

“If you’re dating the President, you’ll find out soon enough,” she says and there’s something cruelly gleeful about her voice. “And I think some women might be able to live with his past, but you’re not one of them, honey.”

I flick my mind over my mental log, trying to scan Ash’s past for any whisper of scandal, but I come up short. Before I can say anything else, Abilene waves off my words. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously. I’d hate to scare you off of a romance you just started. Now, I have a meeting in about five minutes. You’re welcome to wait in here until I get back and then we can grab lunch or…?”

The meaning is clear. It’s time for you to leave.

Grateful for the exit strategy, I stand up. “I’ve got to get back to work. A new batch of projects have come in for grading.”

Abilene stands too and comes around her desk. She gives me a hug that isn’t any lighter or shorter than any other hug she’s given me, but all the same, I can tell there’s something new between us. Something ugly. And while half of it is her jealousy, the other half is this new doubt she’s sown in my mind, this new fear.

You’ll find out soon enough.

I shiver as I leave her office and step out into the chilly November air.

What does that even mean?

And what if I don’t want to find out?