Page 90 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
“Do what?”
“You—you mix up my feelings for you and Ash. I get hard thinking about him, and then you touch me. Or I’m aching at Camp David listening to you scream for him, but then he’s the one who comes out and kisses me. I can’t keep track of what or whom I want any more. I just…want.”
I grip his tuxedo lapel, both excited and a little frightened that he’s just articulated something I haven’t been able to articulate for myself. “That’s what’s happened to me.”
Those aristocratic eyebrows rise in happy astonishment. “Really?”
“Really. From the beginning, even, I couldn’t separate wanting you from wanting him. When we had sex in Chicago…well, part of the reason I did it was because I was hurting so much about Ash.”
“Me too,” he confesses.
I look at him in confusion, and then I remember that night on the Ferris wheel, his broken voice.
They aren’t my someone. No matter how much I plead, no matter how much—how much I give of myself.
“Do you think he knows?” I ask. “That we both love him so much that we ended up falling in love with each other?”
Embry sighs. “Would it change anything if he did?”
We move again for the dance, my hip brushing past his penis again—accidentally this time—and he hisses.
“Sorry,” I say, knowing I don’t sound sorry at all.
He shakes his head. “I’m just as bad as Melwas. Hard for you at a fucking diplomatic event.”
“Yes, you’re both incurably prurient, but there’s a key difference.”
“What’s that?”
I lean up to his ear, using his lapel to pull myself onto the toes of my high heels. “I like it when you’re incurably prurient.”
He grins down at me, the guilt and torment vanishing for a moment and leaving behind the rich playboy who’d charmed me on a Chicago sidewalk.
But as we finish our dance, as we find new partners to dance with and the night grinds unbearably on, as my own betrayals and post-confessing-forbidden-love-shock wears off, something heartbreaking occurs to me.
Ash sent Embry to get me. Ash sent Embry to get me even though he and Embry had been fucking right up until then. How cruel must that have felt to Embry? Like he was good enough to secretly fuck, at least until the right fuckable woman came along, but then he wasn’t wanted anymore? I haven’t ever thought of Ash as homophobic, as brutal in a way that went past the bedroom, but now I feel a righteous sense of anger on Embry’s behalf. All those years together, and Ash just tossed him aside for Jenny. And then picked him back up and tossed him right back aside for me.
No wonder Embry is tormented. Ash has been savage to him. Unforgivably dismissive.
And as I perform all the duties I came to do—charming and chatting and almost absentmindedly gathering tidbits and gossip for Ash—I slowly decide to confront him. About all those carefully worded not-lies, about his cruelty to Embry, about the three of us.
About what the fuck happens next.
25
Ash hasn’t returned to the dinner by the time it comes to a close, so Embry and I are the ones to make the formal goodbyes and excuses for Ash’s absence, even though we have no idea where the hell he is. In my current mood, that makes me angrier than ever, so angry that I barely nod at Luc when he informs me that both Abilene and the President are back at the hotel and I’ll be riding there alone.
And when I get to the hotel, Luc says, “The President has requested that you grab your things from your room and join him in his.”
I stop right there in the lobby and glare up at the giant Quebecois man. “And what if I don’t want to sleep in his room tonight?”
Luc looks uncomfortable. “I understand that he and Merlin are concerned that you’ll be a target for Melwas. They both feel better with you in the President’s room.”
“And my cousin? If Melwas decides to attack my room—which won’t happen—he’d still find her. It’s okay to let her stay there but not me?”
The agent looks like he really, really doesn’t want to have this conversation, and I sigh, taking pity on him. It’s not his fault that Ash is a controlling asshole and I mean to confront him about it. “Fine, fine. Let’s get my things.”
When I get to my room and open the door, Abilene jolts off the bed, as if she’s been electrocuted. “Greer!” she says, her voice far too bright. “You’re back.”
