Page 101 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Yes, please.
And when I turned to Embry and saw that he was just as rapt as I was, gazing just as intently at her, his body just as tense and hungry, I should have known, I should have. But at the time, I thought it was only because she was beautiful and singular and so regal in her lonely, quiet prettiness. Who wouldn’t stare? Who wouldn’t be thinking about her throat under their lips or her hunched shoulders between their knees?
The air was heavy with that fateful God-feeling as I leaned over to Embry. “That’s Greer Galloway,” I whispered. “I…that’s her. That’s the email girl.”
And Embry’s eyes flared with something that looked like pain—and then they went still and dark. “If you’d like,” he said slowly, in a low voice that wouldn’t carry far under the priest’s prayers, “I could find her. See if she’d like to meet with you?”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes on her. “Yes.”
“It’s done.”
“She bled for me,” I said, for no reason in particular, other than I just wanted to say the words out loud. “I mean, it wasn’t really for me, it was for her cousin, but I was the one to pull the splinter of glass from her finger.” I run my thumb over my own pointer finger, remembering the feeling of the glass tugging free from her skin, the black pools of her pupils, the welling crimson salt that pooled on her fingertip. “I pulled it free and I tasted the blood there. And she let me. God.”
I ducked my head to catch my breath. I’d forgotten, of course I had, after a year with Embry, after years of marriage, I’d kept the memory of her like a cherished pearl, a priceless heirloom, but I’d forgotten her power over me in real, vivid life—
“I’ll bring her to you,” Embry said in a strange voice. “The girl who bled for you. Say the word and I’ll do it.”
I HAD to wait for three days after he met with her. Pure agony. But the moment I heard her slide into the pew behind me, heard the quiet rise and fall of her breathing as she watched me pray, I knew it had been worth it—the wait, and everything else that came before. All that I had wanted to do to her after the first time we met—chain her to my bed and carry her every place she ever wanted to go—I still wanted.
And miracle of miracles, she wanted it too.
Even now I don’t presume to know God’s plans or thoughts, but it was impossible not to see the shape of his hand in my life as I slept a full night’s sleep for the first time in too many years to count with her in my arms. It was impossible not to see that Greer fit me, or I fit her, and the ways I was around her shaped me into a better person. P
erhaps love is a mystery in this way, because the love strung between Embry and me had been mysterious too, only different in the parts of me that it fed. Which almost felt like a betrayal to both Embry and Greer.
I still wanted them both, I still loved them both.
My heart still beat and my bones still ached for them both.
Perhaps it was that first night that truly drove it home, what I’d always suspected but hadn’t been able to prove until then—that Greer wanted me in the same ways I wanted her, that our keening urges met and mated at the same place deep inside our souls. She wanted to be dragged to the edge and I wanted to take her there, she wanted to be bruised and I wanted to bruise her, she wanted to crawl and I wanted to watch every slope and dip of her body as she did.
It was different with Embry.
My prince had knelt to me and had felt the uncontrolled sear of my burning needs, but I knew that whatever mechanism drove my prince’s submission was a complicated one. Greer knew herself, she saw herself with a clarity and self-knowledge that made me trust her implicitly—she said she wanted all that I was, and because I trusted that she knew herself, I could believe her. I could give it to her.
But to say that Embry didn’t know himself like Greer knew herself would be an understatement. Yes, I relished the fight with him, I relished the relief shimmering in his snowdrop eyes when he finally gave in to me and himself and surrendered to what he really needed—and perhaps a part of me even loved him because of the fight. But with Greer, our exchange was so deliriously mutual, so deeply consensual and offered freely from each of us…it was a fairy tale. And who among us doesn’t want to love like that at least once in our lives? Where nothing is held in reserve, and every moment of pain and pleasure and obedience and power feeds on itself to create a brimming cup of generous spirit?
Is it so strange that I would want to marry both of them? Exchange hearts with both of them?
No, of course not. Maybe not every man would, but I am not every man. I require the whole world, and one person alone never could have given it to me.
It wasn’t until the night of the State Dinner that I began to see that one person wouldn’t have to.
EMBRY PACED RESTLESSLY around the room as I sat on the sofa enjoying a glass of Macallan 12. After the third or fourth time he checked his watch, I set down my glass.
“Everything okay?”
He looked up a little guiltily, as if I’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t. “Um, yes. Yes, everything’s okay. Just keeping an eye on the time. Maybe I should go down without you and Greer, just to start talking and shaking hands.”
I rested my head against my fingers as I looked at him. He was strangely chatty tonight, jittery almost. It was unlike him, and only one thing about tonight was unlike any other night.
“Is this about Greer?” I asked softly. “I know it’s only been a month since the lake. If it’s too much, too soon, I can find another way.”
Embry made a strangled sigh. “Are you asking me if it’s hurting my feelings that you have a girlfriend after I dumped you? Dammit, Ash.”
“What?”
He ran a hand through his hair and picked up my glass where I’d set it down. He took a fast, messy drink and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and I wanted to crowd him against the wall and do things to him that would send the glass tumbling across the floor. “You have to stop worrying about me,” he said. “It makes me feel even shittier about what happened between us.”
