Page 29 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
12
Greer
after
I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe, how to speak. Above me, Embry moves in the dark like a beast, and I have flashes of memory from our first—and only—night together, of his mindless rutting, his blind need, but I find my mind can’t drift far from the present. There’s only the here and the now, there’s only Embry’s merciless thrusts, the thundering of my heart, the delicious tightening deep in my core. I imagine I can feel him there, the tip of his cock buried so deep that he’s in the bottom of my belly, and every jagged, sawing thrust from the monster above me sends thrills of fearful pleasure through my body.
I’m sweating, that’s how hard he’s using me, and every nerve is alive, alive, alive, and singing.
His lean form folds down even lower over mine, and he bites my shoulder as he drives into me, like a lion with a lioness. The sheer wonderful savagery of it sends me spinning further out into—well, into I don’t know where. It’s like the place Ash sends me with ropes and belts, but Embry is not fucking me like Ash would, even if we’re both pretending that’s what’s happening. Ash is calculated with his cruelty, but Embry is not. Embry is a slave to his own cruel urges, lost to himself in a way Ash could never be.
And so I’m actually scared.
Which is what I want. What I need.
It seems counterintuitive—masochistic even, when I’ve only ever dabbled in masochism, preferring instead the more power-oriented dynamic of submission. But every bruising thrust, every cruel taunt that comes from a man I love instead of my would-be rapist neutralizes the awful reality of what happened. Affirms my consent and power, my ability to give my body to whom I choose. Every zing of pain followed by a thrill of pleasure—it’s all mine, all my choice, my design. And so this bed, the place I would’ve been raped, is now the place where I have my choices given back to me. The confirmation and assurance that I still have power in the kind of sex I crave, that I can still take pleasure in it.
The bite on my shoulder turns into a bite on my neck, a mouth hot against my ear. “Does your husband get to have you like this?” Embry sneers, and I shiver at the anger and jealousy in his voice. I told him to be Melwas, to pretend to be the man who’s deeply and awfully jealous of Ash, but this doesn’t sound like pretended anger. This sounds real. And my body stirs with trembling, fearful delight at it.
“Yes,” I answer. I’m goading him, I know I am, but his possession and jealousy are so addictive, I want more, I want him to crush me with it. “I let him have me any way he wants.”
Strong hands flip me onto my side, and he’s on his knees, sliding back into me with his bitter, brutal thrusts. One hand digs into the front of my thigh, the other into my hip.
“Look at me,” Embry says roughly. “Look at me while I’m fucking your cunt.”
Not fucking me. Fucking my cunt. It’s such a sadistic, spiteful turn of phrase, like I don’t matter, like I’m nothing to him. The idea makes my toes curl with lust.
“You’re sick,” I say, but my voice has no heat. Or rather it has the wrong kind of heat. His hand drops down and pinches my swollen clit, and every vein and cell of me lights up like the Fourth of July.
I moan.
He gives me a cold-blooded smile. “No, sweetheart. You’re sick.”
“I am,” I say, almost wonderingly. “I know I am.”
His hand is still on my clit, kneading it hard. “We both are.”
I don’t know why I say it, but I do. “That’s why he likes us.”
We both know which he I’m talking about. Embry’s hips go still, so do his skillful fingers, and for a moment, we just
stare at each other in the moonlight, the sweat and tangle of our mock-rape all around us and the thought of Ash there like a ghost in the room. And I know in that moment that Embry and I have something Ash can never have with either of us—which is, of course, the experience of being loved by him. Embry and I share a secret path, a secret knowledge, and the cause is Ash, but it exists outside of him too. It’s a living thing that binds Embry and I together, animated by whatever kinks and cul-de-sacs in our minds that make us the twisted, strange lovers we are.
Embry’s head drops, his teeth digging into his lower lip, and I wonder what labyrinths of memory I’ve sent him into, what images and murmured words he’s conjuring up for himself right now. And I remember that handsome princeling who charmed me in Chicago with his deck shoes and carelessly expensive blazer, who fucked me like his life depended on it.
But I don’t want the prince right now, I want the monster.
“Come back, Embry,” I beg. “I need it.”
He doesn’t have to ask me what I mean. He presses down on my thigh, tightening my legs and cunt to squeeze around his cock, and then his fingers find my clit again, not strumming lightly, but grinding, exactly the kind of pressure I need to come. The moonlight spills over the carved lines of his torso, the tensed muscles of his stomach and chest and shoulders, the straining muscles of his thighs. He is pale marble in the silver glow—the full lips, the high cheekbones, the straight nose, the elegant bevel of his collarbone. Darkness gathers in the hollow of his throat like so much wine.
I still think he looks beautiful in the moonlight, Ash said to me once, and I see it now. Perhaps everyone looks better in moonlight, but only Embry can look like this, like a decadent prince after the candles are snuffed, left alone with his regret and grief. Like an ancient statue, chipped and cracked and still the epitome of male beauty. Except with Embry, all the chips and cracks are on the inside, visible only in the icy flare of those blue eyes, the bitter twist of his lips when he thinks no one is looking.
The orgasm is sharp as it twines around the base of my spine, and I can tell Embry’s close too, his movements getting jerky, his breath ragged. “More,” I plead, and I don’t know what I mean because I mean everything: harder and deeper and faster and meaner.
And Embry knows. Somehow he just does, the pain and perversion we share like its own kind of language. He flips me back onto my stomach, and it’s all rough and careless—hard knees, digging fingers, thighs that clamp over my hips. He shoves back into me, my bound legs keeping the fit so tight that he has to use force to push inside, even though everything is so slick and wet down there that I can feel it on my thighs. I feel his abs tensing and his thighs bunching as he penetrates me again and again, and then he stretches out on top of me, his weight like the hand of God pushing me through the floor and into Hell. But if this is Hell, I never want to leave.
Embry’s hand finds my mouth, my neck, my hair, sometimes pulling, sometimes choking, sometimes gagging me with his fingers, like he loves it all so much that he can’t decide what he wants to do. His other hand finds my clit again, working it in ruthless, almost hostile rubs as he fucks me into the bed. “It’s only me here right now,” he growls, his lips damp and moving against my ear. “Not him. Me.”
