Page 30 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
Vulnerability must have flashed in my eyes, because before I know it, I’m being raised to my feet and kissed deeply. Ash’s tongue slides against my own, his lips firm, and his hands are sliding up my back to find my zipper. He tugs it down, and soon I’m standing in a pool of blue cotton, wearing nothing but my panties and bra. Ash pulls back with a smile and takes my hand to press against the front of his still-unbuckled pants.
“See?” he asks as I wrap my fingers around the thick erection I find there. “Trust me, Greer, there’s hardly anything I want more than to throw you onto my bed and rut into you until I’m too tired to move. But I’ve waited so long to have you here…” He reaches out and twines a strand of gold hair around his finger. “I want to take my time. I know that sounds horribly old-fashioned, but we only get to have these first times together once. I want to savor them.”
That touches me, strangely. I want to savor these times too, although the idea of waiting for them is almost unbearable. “I guess when you put it like that, it’s hard to argue with.”
“I’m hard to argue with,” he informs me. “That’s why I’m the President.”
He scoops me up into his arms with a sudden movement, carrying me to his bedroom, and I let out a stream of giggles like bubbles underwater. Each one seems to light up his face more and more until he’s practically glowing as he sets me down on the bed. “You have the most incredible laugh,” he says, dropping a kiss onto my waiting lips. He walks over to his dresser and retrieves a plain white T-shirt for me to put on. “Has anybody ever told you that?”
“Only you.”
He sighs at that, the idea of being an only or a first for me seeming to please something deep inside of him, and when our fingers brush as he hands me the T-shirt, I resist the urge to grab his tie and pull him to me so we can get started on some other firsts.
He returns to the dresser and removes his tie bar and cuff links, dropping them slowly into a dish inside his top drawer. His handsome face turns uncertain. “Greer…if this—if us spending the night together, is too much, I want you to tell me. I know I can be controlling, and sometimes I forget to ask people how they feel before I demand to have my way. It’s probably a good quality for a soldier or president, but it’s not necessarily a good one for a lover. That’s one of the reasons your emails had such an impact on me—even before I knew who I was and what I wanted, you seemed to know exactly what you wanted. You wanted to have done to you the kinds of things I wanted to do to you, and it made me feel like…maybe…” He pauses, does the thing where he rubs at his forehead with his thumb. It’s sweet, somehow, seeing this famous orator, the President famed for his certainty and surety, at a loss for words. For me.
I stand up, still in my bra and panties, clutching the shirt in my hand. I go to him and hand him the shirt, and then turn back to face the bed. He understands immediately, his strong hands unfastening my bra hook by book.
“I still want those things,” I tell him. I look at him over my shoulder. “I want you to do them to me. Do you remember what I asked you in my last email?”
He lets out the kind of breath that tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them.”
The bra is loose, and I turn to face him again, letting it fall from my shoulders and onto the floor. His eyes darken into the deepest green at the sight of my naked breasts. “That hasn’t changed,” I whisper. “If anything, it’s truer today than it was then. I promise to tell you everything—even when I think you won’t like what I have to say—but I want you to know that it’s not too much. I know it’s fast right now, but we’ve also had ten years leading up to this. And even though I told myself I was over you, past that time in my life, I think without knowing it that I’ve been waiting for you all along.” I brush my fingers along his jaw, and he closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m ready to stop waiting.”
He opens his eyes and smiles. “Me too. Arms up.”
I don’t miss the way his gaze sweeps hungrily over my breasts as I raise my arms, and I hope that he’ll change his mind about having sex tonight, but despite the erection bulging the front of his slacks, his self-control is ironclad. He pulls the T-shirt over my arms and head, and then gives me a little smack on the bottom. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. Brush your teeth and then get in the bed.”
I obey, walking through his dressing room and into the bathroom. As I brush my teeth, I can’t help but gaze around, tr
ying to wrangle the surreal feeling of brushing my teeth in the President’s bathroom. The bathroom is as modern as the dressing room is traditional—clean lines of black marble and white tile, clearly recently renovated. But the dressing room still retains its antique feeling, with an ornate fireplace in the corner and richly red drapes hanging around the windows. An unused vanity sits against the wall next to a tall window, its mirror spotless and its surface clean, except for one picture frame. I remember seeing pictures of First Ladies sitting in here, at this very vanity, and my chest feels hot. I never wanted this, never pictured myself living here, either as a president or the First Lady, yet for a moment, I see it. I see it and I don’t hate it. Not for the fame or power or even the beautiful old house, but for Ash. For Ash, I think I might be able to live here.
I wander a little closer, looking at the picture. It’s Ash with two women, both black, one old and one young. I recognize the young one right away—Kay Colchester, Ash’s foster sister and current Chief of Staff. The older woman must be Ash’s foster mother. I scan the picture for every single detail, as if it contains a biography of Ash’s life, but it all it shows me is love and warmth. All three of them grin at the camera as the sun shines on a tidy little bungalow behind them, and even though the media always painted Ash’s orphan backstory as nobly tragic, there’s nothing sad or tragic about this picture at all. Ash had a happy childhood. That touches me in a very deep place, so deep that I almost want to cry, but I don’t.
Instead, I turn abruptly from the vanity and go back into the bathroom to finish up. Ash joins me, and while I want to stay and watch him brush his teeth, he waves me away with a look that tells me he hasn’t forgotten that he gave me particular instructions. With a stifled pout, I go to the large four-poster bed and crawl under the soft, gray blankets.
When Ash enters, he’s only wearing his slacks, the white shirt and tie abandoned somewhere along the way. My mouth gapes a little at the sight; those powerful muscles shifting under all that warm skin, the lines of his hips tapering in from his wide shoulders, the V that disappears into the low waist of his tailored slacks. Smiling at the way I’m gawking, he unzips his pants and steps out of them, draping them over a low sofa, and stalks toward the bed.
I can’t believe this is happening. That this is real life right now. The President—the Ash of my dreams for ten years—wearing tight boxer briefs and walking toward me with a hungry look in his eyes. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
But no. He clicks off the light and slides into the bed, his iron arm snaking around my waist and then pulling me tight into him, my back to his chest. I let out a happy sigh at the feeling of his long, big body curled protectively around mine, and then I wriggle my hips suggestively when I feel the thick rod of his erection nestle against my ass. He gives me a light pinch. “Don’t be naughty,” he breathes in my ear. “I’ve had ten years to dream up punishments for you, and I can’t wait to try them out.”
“Neither can I.”
“I think you really mean that. And it pleases me more than you can know.” He pulls me a little tighter and kisses the back of my neck. “Have you ever slept in a bed with a man before? Just slept?”
As much as he loves knowing he’s my first at things, I can’t lie. I nod my head against the pillow. “Yes. The night I lost my virginity.”
He stiffens a little, and I can practically feel his jealousy roiling through him.
“You’re not…mad…that I’m not a virgin, are you?”
“Oh, Greer, of course not. How could I be when I was married to someone else? I begrudge you nothing. But him—whoever he was—I begrudge him fucking everything.”
There’s a kind of dark bitterness to his words that thrills me, with my craving to be possessed. But they also scare me. Because for some reason, just now, it hits in a real and concrete way.
Ash doesn’t know I slept with Embry.
Ash doesn’t know that the man he wants to begrudge everything is also his best friend.
