Page 20 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Greer stiffens slightly as she realizes what I’m saying. “The public?”
“Abilene’s threat was to go public about Lyr. For now, with Embry thoroughly trapped and you thoroughly miserable, she might be content. Especially if she has a chance of taking your spot in the White House. However, that same chance might be too much of a temptation; she could just as easily disclose the information about Lyr in order to destroy my chances at re-election. We’ll have to hope she’s wise enough to see how it would tarnish Embry’s ticket, since Morgan is his running mate.” I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know her well, not like you and Embry know her, but she strikes me as fundamentally unpredictable. And so you see why I want to give you a choice. It’s one thing to forgive me such a sin in private, but it’s quite another to stand by my side when the entire world knows. You’ll be tainted by association.”
“I’m already tainted,” she says tiredly. “The video of me and Embry, remember? It doesn’t matter how loudly we said it was fake, I’ll always be suspect now.”
“But we have to make our choices where we have them. And I hope I’ve done a thorough job laying out your choices, as much as God knows I secretly wish for you to have none. To stay with me. Moments like this, I feel like I’ll dissolve without you.”
She holds me tighter, snugging her body closer to mine and pressing down harder on my dormant erection. “I’ve made my choice,” she whispers. “I told you before, I’ll always choose the pain.”
My body responds to her words and her loyalty, surging with heat and desperate need.
“You mean that?” I murmur, ducking my head so I can peer into her face. “With Lyr? With Embry gone? After all that Melwas did and with all the terrible things that might happen?”
She brushes her lips against mine, and my entire world is the smell of her skin and the glint of her moon-sea eyes. “Yes. I choose it all.”
I want to weep. And I nearly do, holding her close. I don’t deserve her pain, I don’t deserve her trust, but somehow she’s choosing to give them to me anyway. I’m humbled and grateful with the kind of gratitude that can flay a man alive, and my entire body is trembling with the urge to reward her devotion the way I know best.
She must be thinking along the same lines because she kisses my jaw and then whispers in my ear, “Use me today, make yourself feel better inside of me. Master me. Break me.”
Always and forever, my queen.
SEVEN
ASH
now
“Sir, the Beast is ready.”
The Beast is my car—the presidential car, though there are multiple vehicles that fill the role—and it’s time for the Luther Center Gala. I nod to Belvedere, indicating that I heard and that we’ll be outside shortly, and he vanishes back out of the living room to wait for us.
I’m fastening my cuff links as I walk into my bedroom to find my wife panting and squirming on a chair, trying to stay quiet so Belvedere can’t hear her out in the hallway. Her ball gown is rucked up around her hips, her chest flushed, her knuckles white as she grips the edge of the seat. And the wand vibrator buzzing between her legs makes an ominous whirr against the wood as she tries to shift away from it.
“Sir, please,” she gasps.
I glance at my wristwatch; she’s been on the chair for twenty minutes, forced to sit with her cunt snug against the vibrator duct-taped to the seat and not allowed to come. This is after I spent an hour teasing her with my mouth before my meet and greet, and after I spent another thirty minutes in the shower with her afterwards, slowly fucking her ass until she could barely stand up. She was not given permission to come then either. In short, she is currently a wet, writhing mess, and I plan to take her to the gala that way.
“You may get up,” I allow.
She’s up in an instant, a little whimper of both relief and bereavement coming out of her pretty mouth. Red lipstick tonight, immaculate and classic, just like her, and I can’t wait to smear it all over her face. But for now…
“Knot my bow tie, please,” I order her, and she walks to me on shaking legs, the tulle and silk of her ball gown falling back to the floor and covering up her swollen pussy. God, that cunt will feel so good to fuck later, so puffy and so wet. And when she finally comes, I’ll get to see the way she unravels down to her very soul. It is one thing to break someone open with pain—some might even say an obvious thing, if not an easy one—but it is another thing entirely to break someone open with pleasure. It takes a different kind of skill and care, a different brand of attention to keep someone so torturously aroused for so long.
“You did ask to be mastered,” I remind my wife with amusement as she has to steady herself with a hand on my shoulder.
“I thought you’d belt me,” she admits with a breathless laugh. “Or choke me with your cock. I wasn’t ready for this. It’s almost harder than being worked over.”
“It is harder, and you’ve pleased me very much,” I tell her, lifting her chin with a finger so she looks up into my face. “You are still pleasing me. I’m so very proud of you for taking my cock up your ass and for rubbing your pussy on that toy. I’m even prouder that you could do it all without restraints.”
She flushes happily, and I enjoy lighting her up with my praise. It’s well earned too; it’s hard to endure twenty minutes of that even when you’re bound to the chair, unable to move. But because of the gala and her sleeveless gown, I decided not to tie or tape her—nothing that would leave visible marks. Which meant she had to keep herself on that chair with sheer willpower; every moment she sat on the chair, she was suffering and enduring that vibrator for my sake. For me.
Her smooth, pale arms, free of any mark or stripe from my ropes, display the difference between force and choice, and while both things are delicious to me, right now the choice carries so much more weight. Perhaps it’s because it’s all a choice at its heart—even when I pretend to force her, she has her safe word, she still has a way to escape, and we both know it. But an exercise like the chair strips away all the pretenses and leaves our exchange for the naked, gleaming thing it is.
&n
bsp; A decision. A willing surrender. A display of love.
And it’s as she’s slowly knotting my bow tie, her normally practiced movements made slightly fumbling by her hyper-aroused state, that I finally feel like myself for the first time today.
