Page 24 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Beside me, Greer makes a small, unintentional sigh.
“What is it, pet?”
She looks up at me. “I’m missing him right now.”
“Me too, angel.”
“How are you so calm about it?” she asks. “How do you hold it all inside yourself?”
Hold what? I want to ask. My own fucking heart, torn into bloody tatters? My every foolish hope for a future with both my queen and my prince? My kingdom, which was built with Embry at my side?
Can’t she see the broken bones pushing through my skin? The garish, crimson wounds all over my body? What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven; can’t she see me crawl? Can’t she see me weep? If I could press my fingers into my veins and claw out any acceptable and worthy sacrifice, my soul, my blood, my past and my future, then by fucking God I would have done it.
Anything, anything, anything.
I get to my own knees in front of my wife. I see the shock on her face when I turn my palms up towards the ceiling, the backs of my hands resting on my thighs as I sit back on my heels in an unmistakable submissive’s pose. This isn’t the spontaneous gesture of need and adoration from the Residence this morning, this is a deliberate posture of submission and humility and I’ve never assumed it in front of Greer.
Psalm Fifty-One. The adulterer’s psalm. The psalm of a father mourning a son that should not have been conceived. That’s what I quote. “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it.”
Greer stares at me with silver eyes in the dark.
“You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings,” I continue. “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart which You will not despise.”
A single tear tracks down my queen’s cheek, and I don’t wipe it away. I let it fall as I keep my hands open and empty. “Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices.”
Another tear spills over onto my favorite face in the world, and my chest squeezes in shared pain. All the ways I’ve failed her and Embry, I won’t fail them any more. I won’t fail her. I will love her until the stars burn themselves out and hang like cold rocks in the lightless sky.
Right sacrifices, I remind myself. The Lord only delights in right sacrifices. What a bleeding, sluggish world this would be if we all indulged in martyrdom; what a luscious fucking lure to bite—to brood and wallow and feel. But the world was not made to be bleeding and sluggish, and those lures are just baited traps for the moody and the vain. The world must spin, the battles must be fought, the grails and the quests won’t chase themselves. However tempting a sacrifice for its own sake might be, however tempting self-flagellation and melancholy and grasping, needy gloom—it is not a right sacrifice. It would only serve me, and I’m pledged to serve so many others.
The world must spin.
And yet…
And yet for just a moment, I wonder what it’s like on the other side. I wonder what it’s like not to have to serve everyone else, what it would be like to chase my weakest impulses to their selfish ends. What it would feel like to give in. To yield. To—just for a moment—drop the crown and the sword to the floor and carry my heart in my hands.
“I hold it inside of me as best I can,” I finally answer her. “And I’m afraid I’m not holding it very well right now. But I must, Greer, I must, even if it dissolves my bones and eats me alive. Even if I sometimes fantasize about not holding it at all.”
“Let me,” she begs. “Let me hold it for you. Beat me or fuck me or anything you need.”
Anything I need. Does she realize that’s everything right now? I need everything. I’m a gaping, sucking void of need.
“Can we try something?” I ask. My heart thumps uncomfortably in my chest; my mouth feels dry. Clumsy. I feel like a boy asking someone on a date for the first time. “Can you…can we, I mean…I want—”
I clear my throat, looking down at my hands resting on my thighs.
“Tonight I want to be your submissive,” I say. “I know I prepared you to be mastered today, and I will keep my word to do so if you like. I just thought…” I falter, my words slipping away from me. I tilt my head all the way back and stare up at the ceiling. “I just want to know what it feels like. Not to be the one to carry it all.”
Greer’s dress rustles, I hear her breathing. “I can try,” she offers. “But it won’t be—I’m not you, Ash. I’m worried it will feel awkward. Like a child pretending.”
I drop my head to look at her. “You’re perfect,” I say softly. “Anything you do will be perfect.”
She bites her lip and I read every uncertain flicker in her moon-sea eyes. She’s worried she’ll be clumsy, that I’ll inwardly be judging her performance, that she’ll fail to please me. And I understand—mastering is far more complicated than being mastered. A Dominant not only has to plan, but to assess, to read what a submissive needs in that scene, and they must adapt and adjust and continually monitor a submissive’s progress through pain and pleasure. It’s a heavy weight—a joyful and pleasurable one, often—but a weight nonetheless. And here I’m asking her to trade places in the middle of a day-long scene with no warning and no chance to prepare.
But I’m ready to break and crumble, and if there’s any person on this planet I feel safe doing it in front of, it’s Greer Galloway Colchester.
“Please,” I whisper. I bow, moving so that my palms are flat on the floor in front of her knees and then I press my forehead to floor. “I want to feel free of it. Only for a few minutes.”
“I’m nervous,” she admits. “I’ve…I mean, with Embry I sometimes can, but you aren’t him. With you, it’s like all of me responds with the urge to obey. It’s beyond my control.”
