Page 26 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
one two three four.
“Some Dominants don’t like to sit with their head below the head of their partner,” Ash says conversationally below me, his fingertips beginning to trace circles and loops on the inside of my thighs. “Because it’s demeaning. But look at us right now. Who is the demeaned one?”
I look down from the ceiling and right into the mirror hanging behind the desk. I see a young woman with flushed cheeks and wide eyes, the tops of her naked thighs visible within the frame. And Ash’s silhouette in the chair, those powerful shoulders and that strong neck. And then I look down at him, with his sleeves rolled up and his tie still perfectly straight and clipped to his shirt with a slim silver bar.
“Me,” I say, swallowing. “I’m the demeaned one.”
“And how does that make you feel?” His tone is still casual, still distantly curious, as if he’s asking me about a book I’m reading.
“A little excited. A little ashamed.”
“Why ashamed?”
I close my eyes. “I like this more than I should.”
“There are no shoulds when you’re with me,” Ash says. “The only things you worry about are the things I tell you to worry about. Understood?”
“Yes.”
Fingers skate up to the place where my legs join my hips, and I bite my lip again. “Now,” Ash says, leaning down to press his lips to the inside of my thigh, “would be a good time to call me Sir.”
“Yes, Sir,” I breathe.
“And since I’m in charge of you while we are alone together, I also want you to know that you’re not allowed to worry about pleasing me. It might seem like there’s a lot to learn, a lot to know, but there’s not. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, and you will only have two responsibilities—surrendering to me and saying my name aloud when it would hurt you physically or emotionally to continue. Understood?”
“Yes, Sir,” I say again, and who am I right now? Agreeing to something so extreme with a man I’ve only been in the same room with a handful of times? But I don’t care. I want this, I want this, I want this. I don’t care how insane or how demeaning it might seem. Right now, it only feels quiveringly, perfectly right.
“Good,” he says, a smile in his voice. “You have no idea how much it pleases me to have you here. I’ve fantasized about this moment for so long.”
“You have?”
He sits up and reaches for the box balancing on his thigh. “Here. Open this.”
Curious, I wrap my fingers around the proffered box and pull it closer. Ash leans back as I examine it, smoothing his tie and looking faintly amused. “There’s nothing dangerous in there,” he tells me.
Still, I take my time opening it, wondering what could be so important that he had it in his bedroom, at the ready. I have no idea what to expect—bullets or military badges or mementos of his dead wife even—but it’s none of t
hose things. I swing the lid all the way open and pull out a stack of papers folded into quarters, papers that are dirty and soft from repeated handling.
I glance at Ash with a confused look, and he inclines his head toward the papers in a silent invitation. He wants me to read them.
With hesitant fingers, I unfold the paper. It’s computer-printer-sized, looks like it had once been bright white with fresh black printer ink. But the black of the words have faded and dulled, and the paper is smudged with what looks like oil and dirt and blood.
Dear Ash,
It’s my seventeenth birthday today. It’s been exactly one year since we met…
My eyes snap to his. “My emails,” I say, a little numbly. “I thought you never got them.”
“I got them,” he replies. “I got them and I read them a thousand times and then I printed them out so I could read them wherever I went.”
“But you never wrote back, never even once. Not even to tell me to stop writing to you.”
“You were seventeen, Greer. Was I supposed to write back and tell you that yes, I did fuck my fist every night thinking of you? That every time I read your emails I had to jack off, that even the mere sight of your name on my computer screen got me hard? I hated myself enough for having those feelings for a girl that age. I couldn’t make it worse by reaching out to you.” He gives me a rueful smile. “But I also couldn’t bring myself to tell you to stop. To block your emails. God, I wanted you so much and it was the only way I could have even this little piece of you. So I kept reading. Kept coming to fantasies of you fingering yourself at your desk as you wrote to me.”
“Ash,” I say, stunned.
“I have them memorized, you know. Word for word. I don’t want boring, common ways of being bad,” he recites, his hands once again warm and rough on my inner thighs. “I want to be the kind of bad that leaves me wrung out with bite marks blooming purple on my body. I want someone to hold me by the neck and make me stare at an entire reckless realm of possibility. I want to crawl to them.”
