Page 16 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Fuck, please.
Can I rub you where you’re hard?
Hurry, please, hurry.
And every encounter ended with kisses and a glass of water and help cleaning up if necessary. For the baby Dom in me, the after part was my favorite, because that’s when my lovers were as I liked them best: grateful and pliant and so very, very sweet.
But because I took consent seriously, it meant I rarely allowed my darker side out to play. Never, actually.
Never until Prague.
The final piece grew inside of me at the same time as all of this, something just as insistent and hardy and impervious to outside damage as was my bisexuality, and it was this old-fashioned idea of honor. A sense that there was an objective standard of goodness and honesty and morality; that justice was necessary, that fairness was important, that safety shouldn’t be a privilege assigned by skin color or gender. I say old-fashioned not because I believe justice and safety have ever been unpopular, but because I believed in it with such a naïve, almost Victorian, zeal. I believed that honor was available for the earning so long as you did the right things, said the right things, believed the right things. That was how you became honorable. That was when you could feel noble.
It was an idea that died in the valleys of Carpathia.
But that’s not important now. What’s important is that I couldn’t escape this idea that it wouldn’t be honorable to share a bed with someone if I couldn’t do it honestly. If I had to pretend to be something else, to want different things, if I had to close my eyes and imagine more in order to come. I recognize now how heteronormative this belief was—even with bisexual desire—centering meaning on penetration, when really sex is a spectrum of activities that far exceeds the narrow boundaries of intercourse. But back then, I believed there was a difference between the grinding, sweaty encounters I’d had and taking someone to bed to intentionally join my body to theirs. And however mistaken that belief was, it braided itself into me until I didn’t think about it any longer, I didn’t question it. I wanted my first time to be with all the things I’d dreamed of, and if I couldn’t have it the way I wanted, then I would rather not have it at all.
Which is how I ended up a virgin in a war zone.
Anyway, I’m telling you all of this, about Labyrinth and Catholicism and boys and honor, so that you understand what a precise constellation of unmet desire I had become. So that you can see how I’d grown around this empty space, keeping something clear and untouched without even really knowing why. I was holding a door open to a room I didn’t know I had, keeping a hidden garden free of weeds, sheltering a hollow meant for someone or something I couldn’t yet see.
And then came Embry Moore.
And then came Greer Galloway.
How does a man end up loving two people, you ask? This is how.
SIX
ASH
now
I’m waiting for Greer when she walks into the Residence.
I shouldn’t be, honestly. I should be back in the West Wing, I should be with Merlin and Kay and Trieste, I should be meeting and working and planning, but I’m not. Surely I’m allowed a day? A couple of hours? To come to grips with this?
But even as I think it, I feel irritated at myself. No, I’m not allowed those things, I’ve never allowed myself those things. I didn’t allow myself sick days or rest days during the war, and I certainly didn’t give myself breaks during the campaign—the only exception being the two weeks before Jenny died and the day of her funeral.
There’s something about denying myself that’s satisfying in a deep, purging sort of way. I’m not masochistic: I don’t enjoy the pain for the pain’s sake, and furthermore, I don’t need pain to help me access vulnerability or emotion or connection. But the pain is proof of my discipline, and the flare of misery is evidence of my self-control. When I marched through Carpathia burning with fever, when I shook hands on the campaign trail while my wife’s grave was still a pile of fresh dirt…every moment that I persevered, every second that I chose strength over weakness, was testimony to a truth I couldn’t live without: that I was worthy of the life I’d built. Worthy of the trust of others. I had earned it, and I was strong enough to keep it.
Until last night, I thought being strong was enough. I thought caging all my weaknesses—anger and fear and vulnerability—meant I was a better person for it, but I see that now for what it really is, which is the pride of a man addicted to control. Perhaps I’m not boastful, perhaps I’m humble in every other respect, but when it comes to discipline and sacrifice, I’ve taken great pride indeed.
Fix this, goes the thrumming headache creeping behind my eyes. Fix this, goes my heartbeat, beating wildly still for Embry and his blue eyes. Fix this, goes my pulse, a staccato rhythm, reminding me that I’m alive and strong and that it’s my job to keep my kingdom together.
But it’s not as simple as laying down my pride, you see. If it were, Embry would be back in my arms right now. The problem is that I still know I’m right. War isn’t a game, it’s not a declaration of love or proof of devotion. When it is unnecessary, it is the worst sin a man can commit because it’s not just death, it’s the grossest and most careless kind of waste. It’s rubble and fire and rape and lives forever upturned, and that’s if the people are lucky—and they are so very rarely lucky.
My little prince thrilled at battle, even craved it sometimes, and so he’ll never understand my reluctance. He’ll never understand the ghosts that follow me to this day, the women and children and young men who deserved better. I hated the way I felt after a fight—like a live wire, exposed and sparking into the empty air, and I hated the animal I became after, undisciplin
ed and savage with lust. The opposite of death is desire, I’d read once in a play, and it was as if I needed to make up for every death at my hands with untrammeled excesses of depravity. If Embry remembers nothing else from the war, surely he remembers that. All the times I fucked him like I wanted to tear him limb from limb with my teeth and fingers, like I wanted to conquer his body like it was the next outpost. Those weren’t fucks of victory and exhilaration. They were fucks of pure, mindless despair.
All this to say that I’m here in the Residence, somewhere between surrendering my pride and protecting what needs to be done, and when Greer opens the door to our bedroom, I do the only thing I can.
I go and I kneel at her feet.
“Ash?” she asks softly, running her fingers through my hair. I hear and feel her surprise, her gentle pleasure. Never have I done this, never have I wanted or needed to, but right now, it is undeniably right. With my arms wrapping tight around her legs and my face pressed against the sweet curve of her hip and her hand on my head like a priestess conferring a blessing.
I lift my face to hers, and I think for one crystalline, perfect moment that I could live like this forever. Drinking in her silver eyes and long, dark lashes with gold at the very tips, as if her eyelashes remembered too late that they were supposed to be blond. No one is beautiful like Greer, no one else has that same combination of regal poise and secret knowledge and fragility and joy. My young bride, with her pretty pink mouth and her yielding strength, the kind of bride I’ve craved since I was old enough to crave. And her hair tumbling over her shoulders in a tousled mess of light and dark gold…I revise my earlier wish. I could live forever like this if only I had her near and her hair unbound.
