Page 77 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
“I guessed,” Ash admits softly.
“How did you guess?”
He pulls his lower lip into his mouth and then releases it. “Let’s start at the beginning and work our way up to that. When?”
“Chicago,” I answer.
He nods, as if this is confirmation for something he already knows. Maybe it is. Maybe Embry did tell Ash about us, and I just didn’t know about it. He rotates the glass in his hands a few times and then sets it down on the table himself.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I start, but he holds up a hand.
“Don’t lie to me. Please.”
His tone is guarded, but there’s something starkly exposed in his words. As if he wants to beg me for something, but doesn’t know how or what or even why he needs it.
I take a deep breath and start over. “It meant something to me. How could it not? It was my first time, and it was so good—” I stop and pivot, realizing Ash probably doesn’t want to hear about how good that night was. “—But Ash, he never even called me after. I left my number and everything, and I heard nothing for years, not until you sent him to me. It must have been the worst lay of his life,” I try to joke.
The joke falls flat because Ash is already frowning. “It wasn’t.”
“Well, that’s kind of you to say—”
“I’m not being kind,” he snaps. “I know it for a fact.”
I stare at him. “How?”
He runs a hand through his raven hair. “Embry called me that morning, wanted to grab coffee. He wanted to tell me all about this…angel…he had in his bed. He thought he was in love, even though it’d only been one night. If I had known that his angel was my angel, that it was you, I would have thrown myself in front of a train.”
“But you didn’t know?”
A bitter smile. “Before he could tell me about his night, I told him about mine. About how this girl I’d met four years before had shown back up in my life. About how I’d been too much of a coward to tell her about Jenny right away, and then
she’d discovered it in the worst way possible. I told Embry that this was Email Girl, that those letters I’d kept in my breast pocket all those years in Carpathia had been from her, the letters he caught me reading time and time again. I told him this girl’s name.”
My mind spins. Embry had known my name too. Which meant…
“And after I finished, and tried to be a good friend and ask him about his angel, he changed the subject. And he never mentioned that night again.”
“That’s why he didn’t call, didn’t try to find me…” I trail off.
“How selfless of him.”
“Back to you guessing. How? We’ve never…we haven’t done anything other than what you wanted us to do that night of the State Dinner. We haven’t kissed, haven’t even hugged.”
“I know,” Ash says. He crawls forward on the bed and slowly pulls the sheet down, baring my breasts to him. My nipples harden the minute they touch the cool air. “It was that night that helped me see it. He was obviously attracted to you, but…well, there was something else there. Something deeper. And after that, you two were so careful around each other. Never getting too close, never talking too long. Never alone. People who aren’t in love with people they aren’t supposed to be in love with don’t do that, Greer.”
“I’m not in love with Embry.”
“I told you not to lie to me.” The sheet is all the way pulled down now, and then his hand slides up my sternum to circle my throat. He doesn’t squeeze or press, but he makes a collar of his fingers, a collar not of leather or metal, but flesh and blood. You’re mine, the hand says. You’re mine and not his.
I’m fiddling with my new engagement ring without realizing it, and then his other hand comes down on top of both of mine. “Stop,” he says. “You’re not giving that back to me. You’re not taking it off. As long as you still want it, I will be your husband.”
“Yes, Sir,” I say, relief pricking at my eyelids. He doesn’t hate me now, he doesn’t want to end our relationship. If nothing else, I can live with that.
His hand presses at my throat, forcing me to lie back.
“How did he do it?”
“Do what?”
