Page 29 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
The hint of a frown mars her perfect lips, and I see a spot where her red lipstick has smudged near the corner of her mouth. I carefully wipe it away and bend down to kiss it; when I lift my head, she’s still frowning, a troubled line between her brows.
“Tell me, princess.”
“I feel like you didn’t get what you needed,” she says, a little sadly. “You acted like the perfect submissive, and I couldn’t even act like a passable Domme.”
“You were marvelous,” I assure her, kissing her again and then helping her sit up. “The only reason I enjoyed it was because of you, and I learned under the best Dominant you can imagine, so that’s high praise.”
“You’re the best Dominant I can imagine,” she says, her frown relaxing a little.
I laugh, standing up and gat
hering my clothes. I hand her a monogrammed handkerchief so she can clean herself, and then I do the same. “I’m flattered, but even I’m a little scared of Mark. He’s the kind of person who would chase you if you ran, if that gives you an idea.”
“Did he chase you?” she asks.
“I never ran.”
“Of course not.”
I start getting dressed again, both amused and warmed by the way Greer’s eyes drink in the lines of my body as I do, the way they darken slightly in disappointment as more and more of me disappears beneath the tuxedo. Even so, it could only be a tithe of the ache I feel when she pulls her dress down over her well-used pussy. My desire for her is bottomless; I could spend the rest of my life in this room with her. “Also, there was no reason to run. He was a teacher, my mentor for six months. Anything he did to me was part of a lesson and never a true scene. But I often watched him perform scenes with true submissives, and I've never seen someone so compassionate and so cruel at the same time."
The last time I saw Mark was last autumn, and he was in a scene with a slender young thing named Isolde, kissing her shoulder blades after welting them up with a weighty-looking flogger. I'd just gotten word that he would be collaring her next weekend. I won't attend, but I did arrange for flowers and a hand-tooled leather leash with their names on it to be sent.
"I haven't forgotten my original point though," Greer says, her hair and dress put back to rights. She walks over to me and helps me button up my shirt. "Did you get what you needed?"
I think about the false sense of happiness I felt, about waking up from that happiness and realizing Greer was still unsatisfied. I think about right sacrifices. I think about the man I am, the man I will always be.
I won't lay down this crown until I know the world will be a better place for it.
I run my hands up Greer's arms and then catch her hands in my own. "I saw what I needed to see."
"Which is?"
"The right thing to do."
WE EMERGE BACK into the gala, perhaps a little rumpled and flushed, but it's all too easy to blame that on the champagne and the crowded ballroom. Luckily, I'm required to step out of events frequently enough that no one seems suspicious that I disappeared for any reason other than a matter of state, and we were only in that gallery for an hour anyway.
It was worth the risk. Everything inside of me feels cleaner, better, less bruised. As if I've finally stopped bleeding. As if I can breathe again. And when Belvedere comes to my side and discreetly indicates that the long-awaited call from Berlin has come, I take the phone and think, for the first time in twenty-four hours, that I might do more than survive this.
I might be able to make the world a safer place for it. I might be able to win my prince back to my side.
I might once again be a king worth kneeling to.
NINE
ASH
then
When I was twenty-two, I met a prince. He seemed to be the exact opposite of everything I was—loud where I was quiet, smiling where I frowned, careless where I was careful, careful, careful. Embry joined the Army because Vivienne Moore wanted her son to craft the perfect politician's resume. I joined because it seemed like the place to continue my never-ending quest for honor; because becoming an officer in the Army had a certain cachet in my neighborhood; because I wanted to somehow cosmically return the favor for my college scholarship; because the structure and rigid hierarchy of military life appealed to me.
Most importantly, I joined because I knew Carpathia was the most dangerous place in the world at the time, and I felt needed there in a way I can't describe. It was like a barometric pressure that made my bones and teeth ache when I tried to resist it. I knew that I was supposed to be there in the same way I knew that God was real or that I was bisexual. It was a fact, even if it couldn't be seen.
And after all that, then I see this lieutenant refuse to break up a fight? When we were there on the brink of war and responsible for safekeeping innocents nearby? No. I wasn't an angry person, but I was a disciplined one, and the one thing I couldn't tolerate in other people was a lack of it.
I only meant to shake some sense into him, to tell him clearly and unmistakably that he wouldn't get away with that shit while I was around, but then he turned, and I saw his face for the first time.
And it was over.
