American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)

Even though I can find my own way back upstairs, I’m grateful for Belvedere’s presence as he wards off guests and journalists and steers me expertly through the crowd.

“So how was your first official event?” Belvedere asks as we finally make it to the stairs.

I think of Morgan Leffey and Ash’s story about the club. “It was illuminating.”

He seems to know exactly what I’m referring to. “I am sorry about Senator Leffey. If I’d known sooner, I would have had her moved. But the social secretary knows now, and it won’t happen again.”

I put my hand on his arm as we climb up. “There’s no need for that. I can handle her, especially now that I know who she is and how she’ll act.”

“Just be careful,” Belvedere says. His thick hipster glasses do nothing to hide his worried expression. “Senator Leffey is a dangerous enemy to have.”

“She’s not my enemy,” I object. “Just because we are two women with connections to the same man doesn’t mean we have to hate each other.”

“That’s very socially enlightened of you, but it’s not only up to you, you know. It’s up to Leffey too. And she has a history of cutting down anything or anyone in her path.”

“I’m not in her path,” I say with a certainty I don’t feel. “How could I be? I’m not a political rival, I pose no threat to her.”

We reach the top of the stairs, and Belvedere looks at me. “I think you pose more threats than you realize.” And it sounds so much like Merlin’s curse that I have to remind myself to relax. Why is everyone convinced that I’m dangerous?

“I don’t want to pose any threats,” I say. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt Senator Leffey. I just want to be with Ash.”

His worry softens into affection. “I know. And I’ll do everything I can to help.” He glances his watch. “But right now, I should get down there and wait for the President to finish his briefing. Do you have everything you need?”

I wave him away. “I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine on my own.”

He gives my elbow a squeeze, and then he’s trotting down the stairs, taking them two at a time, his floppy brown hair moving with each step. It’s then that my phone gives a buzz in my dress pocket. And then another. And then another.

I pull it out as I walk down the hallway. It’s Ash, and my stomach flips over when I see the first message.

Get undressed.

You’re allowed five minutes to freshen up and prepare yourself however you need

and then I want you wearing nothing but one of my button-down shirts.

I see the three little dots appear and then disappear, and I wonder where he is right now. In the Situation Room? Looking at satellite photographs of troop movements while he types out exactly how he wants to find me when he gets done?

you will kneel on the floor in the middle of the room, hands behind your back, eyes down, and wait for me

and when I get there, we are in scene. You are only allowed to refer to me as Sir or Mr. President. Understood?

I’m already kicking off my heels as I answer. Yes, Sir.

There’s another pause, then: good girl.

I have a little trouble unzipping my dress, but I finally manage to peel off the layers of silk and tulle and wriggle out of my thong and strapless bra, laying out the clothes in the dressing room so they’re out of sight. And then I brush my teeth and use the restroom, hunt down one of Ash’s shirts, and by the time my five minutes are up, I’m kneeling on the carpet, shirt buttoned and sleeves rolled up. I put my hands behind my back, grabbing each forearm with the opposite hand like I’ve seen submissives do on Tumblr, and tilt my face to the floor.

It’s almost immediately uncomfortable. The carpet presses into my knees with hundreds of fibrous little twists, and the muscles in my arms strain with the ache of holding them in such an unfamiliar position. A thousand million itches spring up on my skin, and every tiny sensation—thirst, the slightly-too-cool air of the room, the faint hunger left over from my half-eaten dinner—is magnified and made all consuming. I can’t use my phone to distract myself, I can’t even use my eyes to distract myself, there’s nothing between me and being inside my own body. No other person, no other thoughts. No work or family or friends or responsibilities—there’s only me and one directive: to wait.

And so I wait, trying not to twitch with the agony of it. I’m used to keeping my mind and body busy, used to filling any empty time with grading or preparing lectures or research for my book, and this is almost worse torture than anything else I can think of, to keep my body still and wait.

Without a clock or my phone, time seems to stretch and warp, and I have no idea how long I’ve been kneeling in this silent room—minutes or hours or years—and I have the creeping sense of loneliness that comes with silence and stillness. How long would I have to kneel here? Surely, Ash wouldn’t expect me to wait longer than a few minutes? Surely he wouldn’t want me to ache and itch and feel crazy with the pressure of my own thoughts?

Except I know that’s exactly what he does want.

Control. My submission flavored by discomfort, by my desire to please him.

And I do want to please him, so badly.

And with that realization, the position becomes easier to hold, the stillness easier to bear. There’s purpose in it now, a reason, and the reason is Ash, the only reason I ever want. I think of him as my knees whine at the press of the carpet, as my mouth gets drier, as goose bumps erupt over my skin at the chilly air of the room. I dismiss each sensation as it arises, my thoughts shrinking down to Ash and the low fire kindling deep in my core, and eventually everything else does fade away, leaving behind a distilled version of myself. A version that waits.

I’m floating in place like this when the door to Ash’s bedroom finally, finally opens, and I don’t look up, but I do eagerly watch those shiny dress shoes as he walks in. And then stop breathing when a second pair of shoes follows.

That second pair freezes in mid-stride, as if their owner is arrested by the sight of me kneeling on the floor with my arms behind my back and my nipples poking through the thin fabric of a man’s shirt.

The door shuts and then Ash is squatting down in front of me. “You may lift your head now, angel.”

I look up at him, at the man who has changed not at all over the minutes we’ve been apart even though I feel like an entirely different person. But then my eyes move past him to Embry, and I feel nothing but blind panic. Panic at being so exposed in front of him. Panic that mirrors the panic on his own face, the speed of his breathing as he looks at me and looks at me and looks at me.

“I hope you trusted me,” Ash says. “And I hope you knew that I’d keep you safe while you submitted to me. I made sure no one else came up here while you waited.”

I tear my stare away from Embry. “But you brought someone else with you. Sir,” I add at the last minute.

Ash nods. “We have a couple phone calls to make, but I can make them from here. I didn’t want to leave you alone a second longer, but I also wanted Embry close by while I talked to our people near Carpathia.”

“I can leave,” I say. I plead. “Or I can go wait somewhere else while you call.”

Don’t make me be like this in front of Embry. I’m too weak to hide how much I’ll like it.

“No,” Ash says. “I want you to stay.”

“Ash…” Embry says from behind him, his face pale. “We can call first thing tomorrow morning. There’s no need for me to intrude—” His voice breaks off as Ash runs a finger up my thigh to my pussy and carefully slides it inside of me. Despite the deep unease at Embry’s presence, my deprived body responds immediately, and I try to push myself down onto the finger, squirming for more contact and more friction.

“So wet,” Ash murmurs.

Embry makes a strangled noise from his place by the door.

Ash withdraws his finger and places it in my mouth for me to suck clean, which I do without question, lust overriding my better sense, the better sense that tells me there’s no way I can do any of this in front of Embry. It will hurt me and it will hurt him, and then Ash will see why it hurts us, and then he’ll be hurt.

Ash wipes his hand on his tuxedo jacket and stands up. “Embry, we’ll use the phone by the sofa,” he says, gesturing to the two small sofas next to the television. “If you want to have a seat.”

Embry looks at Ash and then looks to me. I feel the ghost of his hips between my thighs, the slickness of blood on my skin, his blindly passionate kisses that consumed us both with their single-minded want. My body keens for him, just as it’s keening for Ash, aching for one or both of them to the point that I can’t even identify how I actually feel any longer. There’s only the need. The want.

“Embry,” Ash says. “The sofa, please.”

Embry steps over to Ash, studiously keeping his gaze away from me on the floor. “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks Ash quietly.

Ash gets closer to him, angling his body so that I can’t see Embry any longer, and leans in to speak in his ear. I can’t hear what he says, but I see Embry’s posture tense up, see his hand flex and clench, as if he’s keeping himself from doing something violent. Except when Ash pulls back, the look on Embry’s face isn’t violence. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me shiver and makes the memory of his body against mine all the stronger.

Without another word, Embry goes to the sofa and sits, his face unreadable, his posture strangely easy. As if he’s done this before.

Has he?

Have they?

Ash watches him, facing away from me with his hands in his pockets. His shoulders are relaxed, and his stride is full of unconscious power as he walks to the opposite sofa and sits, crossing his legs. His long, skillful fingers set to work tugging his bow tie free, and as he’s pulling at the fabric, he gives me a dismissive glance. “Crawl to me,” he says.

His voice is offhand, his expression coolly indifferent, but all I feel is swelling desperation. This is something I’ve fantasized about for years, and he knows it, he has that letter memorized. So why dangle this in front of me when I obviously can’t do it? I can’t crawl in front of Embry; the overt submission and humiliation makes the act so undeniably sexual that it feels unfaithful to do it in front of anyone else.

But if Ash is asking me to do it…then does that make it right?

“Crawl, Greer,” Ash says, impatiently this time.

I find my voice. “But Sir, Embry is here—”

“He’s Mr. Vice President to you right now,” Ash interrupts.

“Sir, Mr. Vice President is here,” I correct myself. “He’ll see me.”

“And?”

I don’t know how to answer that. It is its own explanation, there is no and. Embry is here and he’ll see me, and I’ll see him seeing me, and everything we’ve tried to keep suppressed the last week will surface.

“Why are you doing this?” I whisper.

Ash locks gazes with me. “Because I want to,” he answers simply.

“But—”

“No buts, Greer. Do you have something you’d like to say to me?”

The safe word. He means the safe word.

I search his face and find no trace of irritation or anger, and I know that he’s giving me the option to end things right now, no questions asked, no wounded feelings or resentment. He’s trusting me, I think, trusting me to vocalize my needs. To advocate for my boundaries. And that’s the heart of this, isn’t it? I trust him with control and he trusts me with my voice. I trust him to stop when I ask him to stop, and he trusts me to say stop before I’m hurt. His control means nothing without my consent, and my consent is meaningless if I don’t trust the man I’m giving it to.

So do I trust him?

And do I feel safe?

Yes.

And yes.

I lower my face from Ash’s. “No, Sir, there’s nothing I’d like to say.”

From his couch, Embry exhales, a sound of relief or dread, I don’t know.

“Good,” Ash says. “Then crawl.”

I crawl. Keeping my head down, so I can’t see whether Embry is looking at me or not, and doing my best to keep my breathing even, I make my way over to Ash’s feet on my hands and knees. I should feel demeaned—it’s meant to demean, after all—but knowing that both men are affected by the sight of me slouching across the floor like a cat makes me feel strong. Sensuous. Female. There’s the air on my exposed cunt, the shirt riding up over my ass, the stray tendrils of hair hanging down around my face, and I can’t help it, it all makes me wetter. Hotter. Hungrier.

Ash’s hand comes to rest on my head as I reach him. “Well done,” he says warmly, and I feel a flush of pleasure at his praise. “Up here,” he commands, patting his thigh.

I manage not to look at Embry as I climb onto the couch, but I can hear him behind me, restless shifting and rustling fabric, as if he’s tugging at his bow tie as well.

Ash takes my hips in his hands and sits me down so that I’m straddling his leg, my bare pussy flat against the hard muscles of his thigh, and I let out a low moan the minute my full weight settles on him. The pressure there is like gasoline to an already burning fire, and I have to force myself not to grind down against him.

“I told you I’d take care of your orgasm tonight,” Ash says. “This is me taking care of it.”

“Sir?”

“Ride me, rub against me, whatever you need to do to come. But you have to be quiet, since I’ll be on the phone.”

I can’t help it; I look over my shoulder back to Embry. His eyes are on my ass, where it rests against Ash’s thigh, and when he realizes I’m staring at him, he lifts his eyes and flushes with shame. I flush with shame too; I wanted to catch him watching me. I look back to Ash, who’s watching me closely, those clear green eyes missing nothing. The shame goes deeper than my cheeks, sinking down to my stomach.

“Is this some kind of test?” I ask, my whispering voice trembling on the last word.

“It’s not a test,” Ash replies. But he says nothing else, merely keeps looking at me with those searing, perceptive eyes.

A ping of real alarm now. He’s watching me carefully, and Embry too, and does he suspect? That we have a history? Or only that we’re attracted to each other?

“Sir,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can do this in front of him. Come in front of him.”

Even though I’ve done it a few times before…

“I think you want to,” Ash replies. “Deep down, there’s a part of you that wants him to see you all flushed and tousled, that wants him to see how well you can obey me, how pretty that pussy is. Isn’t that right?”

The tear is formed and spilling out from underneath my eyelashes before I can stop it. “I don’t want to ruin what we have,” I mumble, looking down and away from his face. “I don’t want to displease you, I don’t want you to leave me. Over this.”

“Oh, angel,” he says, voice soft. “You’ll never displease me. If this is too much, tell me. But if it’s not too much…then I want you to trust me.”

I do trust you.

I hesitate still, but then the phone rings, and Ash holds up a finger indicating I should be silent. I press my lips together as he reaches over to the phone and presses a button so that it picks up the call on speaker. “Colchester here.”

Belvedere’s voice comes through. “Mr. President, I have our ambassador in Ukraine on the phone, and she’s on a non-secured line. May I put her through?”

“Yes.”

There’s a click, and then the voice of an older woman comes over the line. “Diana Cotter speaking.”

“Hello, Diana,” Ash greets her. “I’m sorry for the unexpected call, but I wanted to touch base with you before the next couple days play out. We have someone here without a Need to Know, so we need to keep it light.”

“Of course,” she says.

Embry, Ash, and the ambassador start talking, Ash quickly explaining the need to feel out the current political climate around Carpathia. True to his word, Ash doesn’t delve into anything requiring high-level security clearance, but it’s still fascinating and I’m listening in with my eyes glued to the phone, when I feel a thumb against my clit, hard and rough, rubbing small circles against the swollen bud. In an instant, all the banked desire from the last week is there. All-consuming, obliterating past and present, obliterating the future, destroying everything that isn’t the painful ache in my cunt as I push into Ash’s touch.

He pushes back, hard, giving my clit a light pinch that sends my eyes rolling back into my head. He does it again for good measure and I gasp, clapping my hand over my mouth once I realize my mistake, eyes darting back to the phone.

Ash arches an eyebrow at me—a can you keep quiet eyebrow—and I nod, a little frantically, desperate for him to keep doing what he’s doing. His thumb rubs steadily, the rhythm never breaking as he and Embry talk about border agreements and the UN and the Carpathian president, and I find myself rocking into his touch, squirming down onto his thigh to increase the pressure. His thumb stops as he leans over to end his phone call, but I keep rocking, tilting forward so that I’m rubbing my clit directly against his leg. It’s so shameful, so obscene and immodest, to be driven to the point that I don’t care that I’m rubbing against Ash’s leg like a dog in heat. That I don’t care that Embry is watching me debase myself so much, act so mindlessly carnal. There’s only the need, and if this is the only way I’m allowed to slake the need, then I’m fucking doing it.

Ash sits back, watching me with his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his head braced against his forefinger and his thumb. The erection tenting his slacks is massive, all the more erotic for the expensive tuxedo that frames it, but Ash’s face is perfectly controlled. Only the pulse beating at the side of his neck betrays his excitement. “Does that feel good?” he asks calmly as I grind against him.

“Yes,” I pant.

A sharp slap on my ass. I jolt and moan.

“Yes, Sir,” I try again.

“Good. My thigh is all you get right now. If you behave, you can earn more. My mouth maybe. Would you like that?”

My shudder is all the answer he needs. He looks past me to Embry. “She’s a good girl, isn’t she, Embry?”

His friend’s voice is hoarse when he answers. “Yes.”

Ash looks at his friend, his finger rubbing at his forehead. “Do you still want to go, Embry?”

Once again, Embry takes a long time to answer, but when he does, it’s definitive. “No. I want to stay.”

A smile curls Ash’s mouth. “I thought so. Would you like to see more of her? Maybe without the shirt?”

There’s a pause, a pause that seems to last forever, and in that pause I hear five years’ worth of agony.

“Yes,” Embry finally replies.

Ash looks back to me, and while there’s not satisfaction in his face necessarily, there is something else. Confirmation, maybe. Like it wasn’t what Embry said but how he said it that told Ash what he needed to know. “You heard the Vice President,” Ash says, running a finger down the placket of the shirt. “Take it off.”

Even in my need-to-come haze, I hesitate. “Can…can you take it off, please?”

“No.”

He’s going to make me do it. Just like the crawling. Each step of tonight is a crossroads—past what, I don’t know—but Ash is making sure that I’m the one taking each step. That I’m acutely aware of my own role in this.

I meet his eyes, every pleading, angry thought written on my face, and I feel his hand slide up my thigh and give it a reassuring squeeze. His eyes are so clear and so green, his pupils dilated into huge black pools of hunger. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push, but keeps his eyes on mine, his hand gentle and sweet on my thigh.

He’s giving me a chance to safe out. One word, and I could end this misery for all three of us.

But oh God, I can’t bear to. Sometimes misery is better. Sometimes the forbidden fruit is just too sweet not to bite.

I lift my hands and begin unbuttoning the shirt, and both men exhale simultaneously. I should hate the rush of power that gives me, the rush of lust, but I don’t. It feels right. As right as kneeling, as right as crawling. As right as standing before a class or thumbing through books older than the college I teach at. Like I was born for it.

I take my time, not to be intentionally seductive, but because my hands are shaking so much that each button is a struggle. It’s worth it though, when I finally tug the shirt free from my shoulders and I see Ash’s control almost break. He shifts underneath me, his hand squeezing my thigh so hard I know I’ll bruise, and he bites his lower lip.

“Touch your tits,” he orders after he regains his composure. “Slide your hands over them and then pull on your nipples. Yes, like that. Fuck.”

He shifts again, that erection looking so mouthwatering even inside his pants, and I want it. I want it in my mouth, I want it in my pussy. I want to ride it until my legs shake, I want it so deep inside me that I can’t feel anything else. When will we have sex? Surely tonight. Surely he can’t bear to wait any longer, because I know I can’t. I started birth control the moment we started seeing each other so we wouldn’t have to wait a moment longer than we had to.

“What is it, angel?” he asks, eyes lifting from where my hands are on my breasts to my face.

I don’t answer right away, and he gives me a light pinch on the ass. “You can always answer me honestly, Greer. I won’t ask if I don’t want to know.”

“I want your cock,” I blurt. “I want to be fucked by it. Please. Please fuck me. Please, Sir.”

His eyes glow with something like amusement, but his voice returns to the nonchalance of earlier. “My cock is a privilege, angel. Being fucked is a privilege. And all privileges have to be earned.”

I must visibly deflate at this, because he strokes my arm. “When I take your pussy, it’s going to be special. We only get one first time together, and I know exactly when I want that to be.”

“What’s wrong with right now?” I whine.

That earns me another swift smack on the ass. “Turn around and face Embry. He wants to see those gorgeous tits of yours. He wants to see your face when you come.”

I’m past protesting, past hesitating. I can blame it on the lust, blame it on Ash and my submission, but the real reason is both simpler and more complicated than either of those. The answer is I want to. I want Embry to see me. And whether it’s a test or a gift, Ash is giving it to us.

When I flip myself around so I’m facing Embry, a change comes over the room. It’s no longer Embry as the outsider. Now Embry and I are looking at each other, my breasts and my cunt on display for him, my pleasure a performance for his pleasure. And underneath me, I feel waves of power and desire rolling off Ash, as if controlling Embry as well as me arouses a different side of his dominance. As if watching me perform for Embry is more erotic than when I perform for him alone.

The phone rings again, and Ash tells me, “Get to work,” before he answers the phone. And then he picks up, and he’s talking and Embry is talking too—albeit in a choked, forced voice—and I start grinding against Ash’s leg, my eyes on Ash’s friend the entire time. As he watches and attempts to talk along with Ash, I slide my hands up my stomach to my breasts, squeezing them hard, the way he squeezed them that night in Chicago. The way he touched me like he’d never get to touch a woman again. His eyes follow my hands, his teeth digging deep into his lip, and when I start fucking Ash’s thigh again, his hand curls into a fist on his knee.

I imagine I’m fucking him, I imagine I’m fucking Ash, I imagine I’m fucking both of them. I imagine them fucking each other, I imagine all three of us in a tangle of sweat and thrusting, all barriers stripped away, every hot inch and sweet hole available without question.

And it’s this final image that sets the gears of my climax whirring, spinning tighter and tighter until I can feel it poised in front of my womb, a ticking thing ready to explode. My hands drop down to Ash’s knee for balance as I lean forward, drop my head, and chase the orgasm I’ve been waiting for all week. I hear the phone call end, and through the tendrils of hair hanging down around my face, I see Embry sitting on the edge of the sofa, that fist unclenching and clenching over and over again.

“Give it to me,” Ash says. “To us.”

And so I do. I press hard against Ash and ride the swell as I rub against him, crying out as I feel the wick light and the bomb detonate deep inside my womb. Shudders radiate out, pulsing quakes as I tremble on top of Ash’s thigh, as I pant and gasp and continue rubbing myself against him to milk every last ounce of pleasure out of this. It goes on and on, all the pent-up longing from this week, all the angst over Embry, just adding fuel to the fire. And when I do finally stop moving, my body wrung out, I become aware of Ash’s hands in my hair, tugging my head back.

“That was beautiful, angel, but we’re not done yet,” he informs me. With his hands moving to my waist, he lifts me and sets me on the ground, so that I’m kneeling in front of him. There’s a large wet stain on his tuxedo pants where I sat. A stain that I left.

“Look at what you did.”

I cast my eyes around for something to clean him with, but he stops me with a hand fisted in my hair. He guides my mouth to his leg. “Lick it clean.”

I close my eyes for a moment, overwhelmed by the deliberate humiliation, the dehumanization of it, overwhelmed by the way I respond to it like it’s a warm blanket on a cold night. I want to wrap myself in it, burrow into it and never leave. Nothing is more natural than this, nothing has ever been as close to what I dreamed about as a teenage girl. Whatever happens between Embry, Ash, and me after tonight will just have to happen, because I don’t want to stop.

I open my eyes and begin licking at his pants, feeling like a cat and even more like one when Ash puts a firm hand between my shoulder blades and presses me down so that I’m on all fours. The air is cool on my swollen cunt, revealing every single fold and curve where I’m wet, and with a tremor, I realize Ash has posed me like this so Embry can see my sex on display. I wish I could see his face or hear his voice. I wish I could tell if he liked what he saw, if he also remembers that night in Chicago when he crawled down the bed and ate me like a starving man at a feast.

As I’m licking up the traces of myself, Ash says to Embry, “You’re hard.”

Embry doesn’t speak, but he must nod, because then Ash says, “Pull it out. Show Greer what she’s done to you.”

Ash doesn’t have to tell me to look or force me to turn my head. My heart pounds a beat so strong I feel it in my cunt as I turn to see Embry with his shaking hands on his fly. I recognize the misery in his face immediately. The misery of wanting something so badly even though you know it’s wrong. Even though you think it might be a trap. Yet here we are, unwilling to stop, however dangerous it might be.

There’s a furrow in Embry’s elegant forehead, as if he’s concentrating as he slowly unfastens his pants and reaches inside. Then I see the tip of him—the dusky, flared cap with a bead of moisture at the slit—and I lick my lips, thinking of Chicago. Remembering the way that cock invaded me and claimed me. Tore me and fucked me.

Embry sees me lick my lips, and his head drops back against the sofa with a moan.

“All of it, Embry,” Ash admonishes. “You show us all of it.”

With a couple of quick, jerky movements, Embry shoves his pants farther down his hips so that all eight hard inches are exposed. His balls are high and tight, like he’s already close to losing it, and when he puts his thumb at his root and slowly pushes his cock towards us so that it points straight to the ceiling, I see the muscles tensing in his stomach and thighs.

He’s breathing fast, his eyes on Ash as he keeps himself displayed for us. “Like that?”

I’m surprised at the huskiness in Ash’s voice as he answers. “Yeah. Just like that.”

But by the time I’ve swiveled my head back to Ash to study his face, his control has returned and his attention is on me again. He looks at my face as he addresses Embry. “Wasn’t I so nice to let Greer come like that?”

“Yes,” Embry responds after a pained second.

“Shouldn’t she thank me?” Ash runs a finger along my jaw as he stares at me. I shiver under his caress. “Wouldn’t that be polite?”

A breath. “Yes.”

“How should she thank me, Embry? With her mouth? With her hands?”

“I—” A heavy breath. “With her mouth. She should thank you with her mouth.”

“I like that idea very much,” Ash agrees. “Put my dick inside your mouth, angel. Show me your gratitude.”

Oh, thank God. I attack his groin with so much enthusiasm that he chuckles, but the laughter dies in his throat the minute I get my hands on the erection I’ve been craving all night. I waste no time in sucking him; I pull him into my mouth right away, taking him as deep as I can go, swallowing against his crown as it brushes the back of my throat.

“Oh, fuck me,” Ash groans, his large hand sliding through my hair and resting on the back of my head. “Yes, angel, just like that. Holy shit.”

“What…what does it feel like?” Embry asks.

“Hot. Wet. Her lipstick is smearing around my base. Shit,” he swears as I start sucking up and down as fast as I can. “She so fucking eager. Look at this.”

“I am,” Embry answers softly.

I brace my hands on Ash’s thighs, loving the hard feel of the muscle under my hands, the tensing and straining that reveals what his stoic face doesn’t. I’m oblivious to everything—my tits bouncing and my hair coming undone—as I focus on my one goal: thanking Ash. I go back to the deep, long pulls, letting him fuck my throat, and that unravels him. Within only two or three minutes, he’s taken control from me, gripping my head with both his hands and fucking up into my mouth, letting me breathe on every other thrust. I’m gasping, tears smudging my cheeks, and there’s drool, but Ash doesn’t care.

“That’s right,” he hisses, his head falling back once more. “Drain me. Take it, take it all. Oh fuck, angel. Here it comes.”

Hot spurts hit the back of my throat, thick and long pulses of him, a deep animal grunt leaving his mouth at the apex of his climax. He holds my head over him as he thrusts through the rest of his orgasm, making sure I’ve had every last drop of his milk, before he finally loosens his grip and lets me go. Without being asked, I lick him from root to tip, cleaning his satisfied flesh, until I feel a finger under my chin. I lift my face to his, and his face is filled with so much warmth and pride that fresh tears prick at my eyelids.

“Well done, my little princess,” the President says. “I’m so proud of you.”

Only in this world, only in this context, only with this man, does this wreck me. I have my own life and my own goals and my own power, and yet here in this room, none of that applies. Tonight was hard, tonight did seem impossible, and so Ash’s praise and the emotional fallout of having a scene in front of my former lover triggers a wave of tears I can’t fight off. I bury my face in Ash’s lap so the men won’t see me cry.

I want Ash to be proud of me in these scenes. So much.

He strokes my hair but then abruptly stops, gently but quickly moving me aside so he can jump to his feet. I look up, confused and vision blurred, and I realize that Embry has stood up and is walking to the door, fumbling his fly closed as he does. Ash strides across the room and slams his hand against the door as Embry tries to open it, closing the door again and effectively pinning Embry between his body and the wood.

Embry turns to face Ash. “Please let me go,” he says wretchedly. “Please.”

“You’re still hard,” Ash tells him. “Aren’t you?”

“I can’t stay here.”

“I’ll let you leave if you can show me you’re not erect,” Ash says, and I’ve never heard anything so soft and menacing and filthy. “Pull your dick back out and show me. Prove to me you don’t want this and you can go.”

Embry’s handsome face is twisted with delicious torment, his stubbled jaw tense with suffering. “I know what game you’re playing, and I know that I’m going to lose.”

Does he know because he’s played a game like this with Ash before? What history do the two of them share?

Embry asks again, his suffering turning into anger. “Please, Ash.”

“You and I don’t have a safe word,” Ash says. “And if we did, it wouldn’t be please. Do I need to have Greer come over here and help?”

“No!” Embry bursts out. “No. I…okay.”

There’s complete silence in the room as Embry bends to Ash’s will and unfastens his pants and slowly withdraws his penis. It’s harder than ever, swollen and dark and angry, throbbing with every beat of his heart. Even though I’ve just came moments earlier, my pussy gives a whiny little throb of its own.

“Happy?” Embry demands.

Ash doesn’t answer him but turns to me. “Go get your dress. The one you wore tonight. Bring it to me.”

I scurry up from the floor to obey, hurrying into the dressing room and returning with the pile of blue silk. Embry and Ash haven’t moved, but there’s so much precum at the tip of Embry’s cock that it glistens in the ambient light of the bedroom, and Ash has kept his hand against the door, splayed against the wood right next to Embry’s head. The posture is intimate somehow, even though they aren’t touching, and the way they’re looking at each other is suffused with the kind violence that only comes from real anger.

I hand the dress to Ash and he hands it to Embry. “Relieve yourself.”

“What?” Embry’s voice is a study in breathless incredulity.

Ash nods towards the dress. “It’s soft, isn’t it? The dress? And Greer looked so beautiful in it, didn’t she? Like a fucking princess, you said when you saw her. Did you think about fucking her in it tonight?”

I freeze. Embry’s blue eyes flare with torment.

Ash goes on. “Did you think about what it would be like to rub your bare cock against all that silk before you finally shoved inside her little pussy? About how the silk would feel fisted in your hands while you pinned her to the ground and fucked her?”

“Ash,” I choke out.

He ignores me. “She would have liked it, I think. Watching you defile that expensive dress as you defiled her. And it would have felt so good, wouldn’t it? All that blue silk and that sweet pussy. The most beautiful woman in the room a slave to your cock.”

Embry stares at him. “I know why you’re doing this.”

“I know.”

And that’s all there is to it. There’s no explanations, no defenses, no logic. It’s what he wants, and therefore in this scene, it’s law.

“Now wrap that dress around your cock and relieve yourself.” Ash’s voice turns seductive. Dark and tempting. “I bet it would only take a couple of pulls, don’t you? And it will feel so good, fucking that dress you’ve been obsessed with all night. Marking it. It will feel so good to have Greer see how big your cock gets as you pretend to fuck her, how much cum you could fill her with if she’d only let you.”

“Jesus,” Embry pants, the muscle in his arm bunching as he slowly fists his erection with the skirt of my dress. The silk slides easily over his straining flesh, whispering softly on his cock. “Oh, Jesus.” The last word breaks into a moan. His head falls back against the door as he’s lost to himself, but he can’t resist seeing his cock on my dress, and he looks back down. All three of us watch as it moves in and out of the silk, rude and male against the pretty blue flutters of fabric.

Ash was right, it doesn’t take long, and with a shuddering exhale, Embry releases. Thick ropes of cum spray my dress, spurt after spurt after thick spurt, each pulse accompanied by a savage jerk of his hips and a ragged groan. My nipples are so tight it hurts, same with my cunt, and oh God, how I wish Embry’s cock were inside me now. That those savage jerks were plowing into me. That all that cum was mine.

After a few more thrusts into the silk, he slows, slumping back against the door, dropping the dress to the floor.

“Don’t you feel better now?” Ash asks. “Didn’t it feel good to get rid of that ache?”

Embry nods wordlessly, eyes still closed, pulse still hammering in his throat.

“Greer liked it too. Didn’t you, Greer?”

My cheeks flush red with shame but I answer honestly. “Yes, Sir.”

Embry tucks himself into his pants and fastens them up, running a hand over his jaw. He looks dazed, as if he’s just woken from a long sleep, his blue eyes unfocused and his voice uncertain when he says, “I’m going home now.”

“Good night, then.”

Embry looks at me and then looks at Ash, that dazed expression more pronounced than ever. “Good night.”

Ash moves his hand so Embry can open the door, and then Embry leaves, closing the door behind him. Ash stares at the door for a minute and then faces me, his face apologetic. “I’m sorry, angel. But I need your mouth again.” His hand is already on my head, forcing me to my knees, and his other hand digging out his cock, and he’s so hard already, viciously, violently hard.

Watching Embry made him hard, I realize. And the jolt of jealousy comes concurrent with the jolt of arousal.

Ash doesn’t go easy on my mouth, but before he comes, he pulls out and reaches down for me, picking me up easily in his arms and carrying me to the bed. He spreads my legs and drapes them over his shoulders, pressing his hot, skillful mouth against my pussy and devouring me. I come with his dark head and wide shoulders between my thighs, and then he’s straddling my chest, fucking my mouth to get his cock wet and then fucking my tits. When he finally comes, his hands savage and bruising as he pushes my breasts around his cock, it’s with something almost like a roar, like the orgasm is torn from him.

And later that night, I wake out of a deep sleep to find Ash wrapping my small hand around his throbbing erection. He closes his large hand over mine, guiding me to jack him off with short, hard pulls, the way men do it to themselves. The way men do it to other men. He comes with a quiet grunt, and after I clean him with a warm washcloth from the bathroom, he folds me into his arms and drifts off to sleep immediately, whatever monster he awoke within himself tonight finally, finally sated.