American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)

Dear Captain Colchester,

I hope it’s not too forward of me to email you—or too awkward. But I asked my grandfather if he could find your email address for me, since Merlin is a mutual friend, and I wanted to tell you that it was really nice to meet you last Saturday. I know we didn’t talk about it very much, and it’s probably nosy of me, but I was thinking more about your insomnia and I thought you might like a couple of the attachments about meditation I have at the bottom of the email.

I hope you’re enjoying London!

Sincerely yours,

Greer Galloway

Dear Ash,

Is it okay if I call you Ash? You said so the night we met, and I would like to, but it also feels strange to call a near-stranger by their first name. Especially a military stranger, because Grandpa Leo has so many military friends that I’m pretty much trained to salute whenever I see a uniform. I also hope I didn’t bother you by not mentioning my last name while we were talking. Sometimes at parties like that the Galloway name means certain things—usually that people want me to pass on messages to Grandpa or ask for favors. Sometimes it means they don’t want to talk to me at all because they hate my grandfather and his political party. Or sometimes it just means that I can’t start from scratch when I meet someone new. I know that seems like a silly thing to care about, but my whole childhood I was introduced to the world as Leo Galloway’s granddaughter. Here at Cadbury, I’m always ‘Abilene’s cousin’ or ‘Abilene’s roommate.’ I’m never just Greer, and I got to be that with you, and that was special for me. I hope you don’t feel like I was trying to hide something from you?

Anyway, if you’re still in London, I hope you’re having a good time.

Sincerely yours,

Greer Galloway

Dear Ash,

I wasn’t going to bother you any more since it’s been almost three weeks since I sent my first email (and I was certain that I was annoying you) but when I was watching the news about the Krakow bombing last night, Grandpa Leo called. We talked about what the bombing meant for Europe and NATO and America, and then he mentioned that you’d been reassigned back to the Carpathian region the week after the party. I feel so terrible for emailing you such trivial stuff when you were back on duty, and I just wanted you to know that I had no idea. I’ll make sure to light a prayer candle in church for you and pray a rosary for you every night.

Be safe please.

Sincerely yours,

Greer Galloway

Dear Ash,

It’s a real war now. Officially. The Carpathian problem has been around for so long that I’m not sure even Grandpa Leo ever thought it would really come to a head like this. But the Krakow bombing last week—over nine hundred dead—there’s no way war wouldn’t be declared. At least that’s what Grandfather said.

Did you know that my parents were killed by Carpathian separatists? Almost ten years ago now. They blew up a train bridge and killed almost a hundred people, my parents included. All that death, my childhood completely torn apart with God only knows how many other children’s, and for what? A small chunk of land squashed between Ukraine and Poland and Slovakia? It makes no sense to me.

Except, in a weird way, it does. I have every reason to hate the Carpathians, but I can’t. I can’t actually transpose my own pain and grief over the images of the war I’m seeing. Instead, I keep thinking of the Carpathian children who might lose their own parents. I keep thinking about how peaceful and quiet I feel when I remember my childhood in Oregon, when I remember what home feels like. There’s no doubt that a handful of the militant separatists have done terrible things, and I understand why there is war now. But part of me wishes that we could simply sit down and grant them what they want—their home. Sovereignty is a complicated thing, and creating a new nation is a fraught prospect in a region already as carved up as Eastern Europe, but what if there could be a way forward without war? I’ve been raised in politics and I’m not naive enough to believe that we can erase killing and violence, but even if we could reduce it just a little…wouldn’t that still be worth trying?

I’ve been praying for you every night like I said I would. I hope wherever you are that you can feel that. Somehow.

Sincerely yours,

Greer

Dear Ash,

You’re famous now. Imagine my surprise yesterday at waking up to your face all over the news. My horror when I found out what you lived through, my relief that you were unharmed. It’s unthinkable to me that you were able to fight your way out of a building surrounded by separatists, all while carrying that wounded soldier. I can’t fathom what kind of courage it took for you to stay with your friend when the rest of your squad escaped. What kind of skill it took for you to fight off your attackers and eventually save yourself and him. But after reading and watching all the profile pieces on you, I shouldn’t have been surprised. You have a history of being a hero, don’t you? And I’m not trying to tease you or make you uncomfortable. I’ve been around every sitting president, vice president and first lady since I was a baby, and I have seen how tiring it can be to have people fixate on your accomplishments. But I can’t write this letter without telling you that I’m in awe of how many times you’ve risked your life for your fellow soldiers. ‘No greater love than this’ is what Jesus says about men like you, and I’m honored to say that I’ve met you in person, and that you’re even kinder and more humble than all the profile pieces and journalists say.

That being said, to me you are still Ash. Our acquaintance lasted only an hour, but the things that I remember about you—the cut on your jaw, the way your hands felt as they worked the glass splinter out of my finger—are more than your battles. You are a hero to me, but you are a man too. Maybe even more man than hero.

Yours,

Greer

Dear Ash,

It’s been six months since we met, and part of me is embarrassed to look at this chain of emails—a chain with only me in it. I tell myself it’s because you’re at war, because you’ve been saving lives—last week, that high school building where so many civilians were taking shelter!—but I guess I’m also not foolish enough to believe that a twenty-six-year-old war hero wants unsolicited emails from a boarding school student. So I should stop bothering you, I know I should, but it feels as if I have taken you up as a sort of hobby. Reading about you, thinking about what I should write to you. The girls at school are obsessed with the fact that Abilene and I were at the same party as you this summer, and even though it’s one of the only times anyone has been interested in actually talking to me, I hold what happened between us as my own private secret. I don’t want anyone else to know what it felt like to be in your arms. I don’t want anyone else to know about the little groan you made when we kissed for the first time. I’m greedy for you, or at least for those memories of you. I’m not stupid—I know that you must have a girlfriend or that you’ve had them—I know I’m not the only person who’s heard that little groan or felt the heat of your hands on their back. But I like to pretend. I like to feel possessive of these small parts of you, the parts that don’t belong to the public imagination, and maybe that’s the real reason I can’t stop writing.

Yours,

Greer

Dear Ash,

It’s my seventeenth birthday today. It’s been exactly one year since we met, and while you’ve fought in several crucial battles and saved countless lives, I’ve completed a year of high school. The two don’t really compare, do they? I told myself after my last email that I wouldn’t bother you again, both for your sake and for my pride, but tonight I feel strange. Restless, I guess. It’s hot for England, even for May, and muggy. I have the windows thrown open and a fan blowing, but I can’t seem to cool down. Every part of me feels flushed. And Abilene is gone from our dorm room and I found a bottle of Prosecco stashed in her mini fridge, and so I’m tipsy and alone, on top of being restless and hot.

It feels like the kind of night to make a bad decision. I think normally girls my age find boys my age to make their bad decisions with—at least that’s what Abilene is out doing right now—but I don’t want that. There’s something really pedestrian about the kind of fun Abilene seeks out, and this is not me trying to force morality onto her, because I don’t think there’s anything immoral about having sex, but it’s more of an…aesthetic…thing, I guess. I don’t want boring, common ways of being bad. I want ways that rattle me to my bones, that send me to my knees in repentance, I want to be the kind of bad that leaves me wrung out with bite marks blooming purple on my body. I want to go the brink of not knowing myself, I want someone to take me there and hold me by the neck and make me stare at an entire reckless realm of possibility. What’s the point of sex if you don’t feel like every dark crevice of your soul has been exposed to the light? If someone doesn’t take your lust and your shameful thoughts, and twist them into a spell that leaves you panting like a dog for more? I think I want that for myself. I want a normal life too—I want an education and career and my own house and to make all of my own decisions—but whenever I think about sex, about what sex would be like when I’m older, I don’t ever imagine the Titanic hand-hitting-the-car-window thing. I want to feel like my veins are being sliced open by the sheer desire of someone powerful, I want to be handled and cherished and used and worshipped. I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them. I can have that someday, right?

Right now, as I type, I’ve got one leg slung over the arm of my computer chair because it’s so hot, but also because it makes it easy to tease myself in between writing sentences to you. I do this a lot when I’m thinking about you. (I am guessing you probably don’t know that, and tonight, for some reason, it just feels like I should tell you.) I started by running a fingertip under the lace of my panties, imagining it was you. Imagining that we are back in the library and we were never interrupted by Merlin. I imagine you pulling up my skirt after I tell you that you were my first kiss, because you want to know if I’m a virgin. You want to feel if I’m still intact, if I’m wet for you, you want to know what I’d feel like wrapped around your dick.

God, I’m so wet right now. I wish it were your fingers inside me, your thumb on my clit. You’d be so good at that. I can’t stop thinking about your hands, how big and strong they are. I bet your eyes would burn green as you rubbed me, I bet you would lick your lips at the thought of tasting me, of being the first man to ever taste me. I think about what it would have been like if you’d fucked me that night, right there against the wall maybe, or on the large desk in the corner. Abilene says boys should always wear condoms, but I wouldn’t have wanted you to. I would have wanted to feel your skin, if it was hot and if it was smooth and silky. I would have wanted you to feel me. I would have wanted you to whisper in my ear how good I felt, what a gift I was giving you, how you could stay inside me forever and ever if only I’d let you.

What noises do you make when you come? Do you gasp? Groan? Whisper names? I think I’d like you to whisper my name. Sometimes I imagine you in your cot on base, your hand beneath the blankets trying to be quiet, and then when you come, you have to bite your lip so you don’t say my name aloud. I imagine you fucking your fist in the shower, wishing it was me instead of your hand. I imagine you imagining me in every different way a man can be with a woman, sweet and rough and slow and angry and loving. And right now, I’m going to stop typing and finger myself until I come, and when I come, it will be your name I say.

I don’t know if this will ever be read. If it will go straight to spam or into some folder marked ‘Crazy Girls with Vice Presidents for Grandfathers’. I almost hope you never see this, but it couldn’t go unwritten. Not tonight. But this will definitely be the last time I write to you. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up hung over and ashamed, although hopefully with that dark excitement that comes with making the best kinds of bad choices. You won’t hear from me again, and I’m sorry if any part of this made you uncomfortable or irritated. But you should know that even if I’m not writing you emails any longer, I’ll still be thinking of you every time I dig my fingers into my pussy.

Be safe.

Yours,

Greer