Page 24 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
“We are going to have a conversation now,” he says, “among other things. And we can stop at any time.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“It’s hard to want to stop,” he says, running his fingers along the edge of the box. “It’s even harder to say the word when you know you should. Have you ever used a safe word?”
For that one whole time I had sex? I laugh out loud. “No.”
He doesn’t seem offended by my laughter. “Perhaps we should find one for you.”
“I don’t think I need a safe word for a conversation. Even a conversation with unspecified other things. And especially not with you.”
“You especially need one when you’re with me.” He says it calmly, evenly.
And then suddenly I believe him.
Despite that open, handsome face, despite the historic building I’m standing in and the elegant antique furniture all around us, I believe him. I can’t tell if it’s something in the cool way he says it or something in the flare of light in his eyes, or if it’s the remembered shards of that night, of the way he said good girl to me when I obeyed his order, or the way he licked the blood from my fingertip…
“All those times you’ve asked me if I was scared of you, you were serious?”
“It was with good reason.” He leans forward. “I’m not trying to tease you or frighten you unnecessarily. But I’m hard on the people I love. It took me a long time to learn that, and you are too important to me for me to treat that lightly. You have to know that you can stop anything about me—my words or my body—at any time. You have to know that you can leave me at any time.”
I’ll never want to leave. The thought appears unbidden and I shove it aside. But it’s harder for me to shove aside the word love, as if I’m one of the people he loves, because to be loved by Ash…I’ve wanted that since I was sixteen.
“If you don’t have a word in mind, you can use my name—my first name.”
“Maxen?”
He nods. “You say that when we’re alone together and everything stops. For a break—if you need one—or completely, if that’s what you need instead.”
I think for a moment. The kind of pornography I watch and the kind of books I read—well, I’m definitely no stranger to this kind of thing. In fact, certain facets of this lifestyle have been the subject of my fantasies since I was old enough to have fantasies. But faced with the reality of a relationship like this, I find myself shy. Not out of fear necessarily—although there is a little fear and I’d be foolish not to be at least a little wary—but out of an acute awareness of how little I know. Of how meager my experience with any kind of romance or sexuality is. When I speak next, my voice is hesitant. “Does all this make you…the kind of person who dominates people?”
Another nod. “Yes.”
“Are you going to whip me or something?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
“Not all Dominants are sadists, Greer. I won’t always want pain or humiliation, but I will always want control.”
“But you will want pain and humiliation sometimes?”
He leans back again, his face thoughtful. “I’m approaching this wrong. You’ll have to forgive me…it’s been six years since I last initiated a relationship with someone, and I’m out of practice. And in any case,” he says, rubbing his forehead with his thumb, “I didn’t know enough about myself then to warn Jenny.”
It’s Jenny’s name that galvanizes me. It’s a sick urge, to want to show up a dead woman, to prove I’m as good as she was, but it’s an urge I can’t fight in time to control myself.
“Show me,” I say. “Show me what you need to warn me about.”
9
The Present
“Show me,” I repeat.
His eyes lift to mine.
“You said we were going to have a conversation among other things, right? Let’s do it. I know what to say to make you stop. I trust you.”
“You barely know me,” he points out.
“You’re a war hero and the President of the United States. If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust anybody.”
