Page 71 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“Greer, stop. Come here.”
I don’t. I won’t. If he’s going to look at me like that, then I can’t even bear to look at him. If he’s going to judge me as harshly as I’m judging myself right now, then we should just get divorced, because—
He snaps his fingers.
My back stiffens at the sound, kinetic memory forcing me into better posture even before I turn around to look at him.
His face is still miserable, but the command and the control are back in those summer lake eyes, and suddenly I realize divorce was never on the table for him. He came upstairs to remind us both that he would never stop loving me and I would never stop belonging to him. He snapped his fingers to show me he still wants me at his feet.
He watches me attentively as I walk over and sink down onto my knees in front of him. I hear him let out a long breath as I settle back onto my heels and bow my head.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and I know he’s not apologizing for the scene or even his anger, but for not talking to me beforehand about it. For not communicating.
My hair is still wet fr
om our shower, but he plays with it anyway, stroking it and twining small pieces of it around his fingers. I can’t help the instinct to buck and nuzzle against his hand like a cat, and he makes a pleased sound when I do.
A couple minutes pass like this, my hot feelings beginning to cool in this familiar posture, his hands familiar and comforting in my hair.
“If I could have shielded you from this, I would have,” he says softly. “The things I promised you on our wedding day, I meant with all my heart. I take protecting you seriously.”
“I’m humiliated,” I admit in a barely there voice. “That people will know—”
“People will think they know. We will tell them otherwise. Videos like this are manifestly easy to fake, and that’s what we will tell the world.”
“But it’s a lie and you hate lying and oh my God—” my stomach flips over as I remember, and I feel violently ill. “—the re-election campaign. What if this ruins everything? What if I ruined everything for you? I couldn’t live with myself!”
“Shh.” Ash’s fingers are deep in my hair now, rubbing my scalp and massaging me. “I’ll do anything to protect you, angel, including lie. Yes, it may impact the campaign—I’m afraid no matter how convincingly we lie, the stain of suspicion will never be scrubbed out, not all the way at least. People will be watching you and Embry very closely from here on out, waiting for any sign that it’s all true. They’re wolves that way.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself to take deep breaths to quash back the panic. Of course that’s what Ash meant when he said that it wasn’t just about us any longer. It was about the campaign.
“I won’t allow you to blame yourself for this. You were kidnapped, toyed with by Melwas, and he’s continuing to toy with you. You, Embry and I have already sorted out how we feel about what happened in that bed.”
I look up at him, thinking about the welts on my ass, his bitter words. “Have we?”
His hand tightens in my hair. “As much as possible, little princess. It hurt to watch. Not only was I jealous watching the two of you fuck without me, but it hurt to remember how much I failed you. How I couldn’t be the one to save you or comfort you. But that wasn’t what made me angry, in the end.”
“What was it, then? The re-election?”
“Not even that. It was that once again, I couldn’t protect you. We should have guessed Melwas had something like this, we should have been ready. But now you’re going to be exposed to slander and vilification because of my failure. You don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve you.”
“It’s not your fault, Ash. You can’t think that. Embry and I are the ones who—well, and Melwas. It’s everybody’s fault but yours.”
He leans down and kisses the top of my head but doesn’t answer. And after several moments, he easily scoops me off the floor and carries me to bed, where he fucks me well into the night.
22
Embry
before
I didn’t wake up that morning thinking my life would change. In fact, I woke up hung over and alone, feeling horse-kicked right in the ribs because my heart hurt so much.
Ash had proposed to Jenny the night before. Had proposed to her in a beautiful Chicago restaurant with Merlin and me and her parents there. Got down to one knee and said all the usual words about love and promise and fidelity. Jenny cried. Her mother cried. Her father shook Ash’s hand. There were pictures.
I left right after, walking to my hotel alone.
I felt acutely aware that I’d never seen the ring he proposed to me with two years before. He’d never opened the box. That was strange, wasn’t it? Didn’t you normally open the box to show the ring to your lover? He did with Jenny, the pretty diamonds flashing in the light from the chandelier overhead. She was charmingly captivated by it, and then charmingly even more captivated with Ash when he started talking.
