Page 51 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
His face is that raw mix of tender violence, and in the ambient lamplight scattering in from the corners of the room, I remember why it took me so long to figure out his eyes. They’re both dark and light, pale jade and vivid emerald and a thick lake-green, and they change, they deepen and lighten, they glint and go smoky, like leaves tossed green and thick on a fire.
His lips part as our eyes meet, and I’m haunted by the memory of his mouth on my body. Those lips that are so firm and pretty-shaped and full that whenever he looks serious or sad or even angry, they turn down into a beautiful, masculine pout—and he has no idea.
He glances down at where he holds me, and I get a glimpse of white, even teeth as he licks his lower lip in an unthinking, automatic response. And then he squeezes me, as if he’s testing for himself how hard I am for him, and he licks that lower lip again, and I make a noise in the back of my throat.
“What is it?” he asks, looking up and sending a lock of raven-colored hair tumbling over his forehead.
“You’re too handsome,” I accuse him. “It’s upsetting.”
“Mmm,” he hums, still fondling me and stepping closer as he does. His naked toes touch the side of my foot, his cock only bare inches away from my hip, and I can practically feel the heat coming off it. “I think you’ll find that I’m far more upset about you.”
“Upset means ‘hard,’ right?” I whisper as his hand dips low to cradle my testicles. In front of us, Greer is still spilled over the covers in endorphin-doped pleasure, a sinuous ribbon of satisfied woman. She continues running idle fingers around my nakedness, watching Ash and me with that lechery in her eyes I find so adorable (and also so fucking hot.)
“Upset means hard,” confirms Ash, his hand now cupping me with a possessive urgency. “Very, very hard.”
He shifts closer, his mouth close to my ear and his hand leaving my sac so he can put a firm palm against my dick. “Do you know what else?” he asks in a low voice, and it’s difficult to think right now with him pressing me so cruelly, pinning my cock between his hard hand and my hard stomach. I’ve oozed enough pre-cum that it smears across my stomach as my crown brushes against the skin, and feeling the wet evidence of my arousal is somehow just as overwhelming as having my cock pinioned like this.
“What?” I finally manage to breathe out.
Ash runs a finger around my navel, smearing it through the wet mess of pre-cum I’m leaving on my stomach. It’s humiliating, and Ash seems to think so too, saying in an amused voice, “I didn’t realize all you needed was an indifferent palm and your own stomach. I think I’ve wasted a lot of effort over the years.”
My hips are moving shamelessly against his touch now, and I don’t bother fighting off the indignity of it. I like the indignity, crave it, I’ll starve without it—even if I’ve always struggled to admit that to myself when I’m in my right mind. So instead I say gaspingly, “Your palm isn’t indifferent, you fucking liar.”
He laughs and grinds the heel of his hand harder against me for that as a punishment for my sass. Or maybe it’s a reward. Sometimes, Ash makes it hard to tell.
“What I was going to say, before you so charmingly made a mess of yourself,” murmurs Ash, “is that I think I know why you’re still not satisfied after two rounds with your queen.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” he says, his lips moving across my jaw and ear and neck as he talks, “I haven’t fucked you yet.”
He’s right.
“You’re wrong,” I say.
“Oh, I am definitely not wrong,” he croons, and I feel his other hand run down my spine. My cock jolts without his permission and I can feel his smile all the way through my toes. “Poor Embry. Poor, poor Embry with no one to fuck him. With no one to make him feel good.”
His hand slides over my ass, and habit makes me widen my legs. “Poor Embry not being able to make me feel good,” he says in that low croon still, a fingertip pressing against my ass. “Because you love making me feel good, don’t you? Letting me use that ass whenever I need?”
His finger breaches my hole, and the sharp flare of invasion goes straight to my dick, straight to that place low in my pelvis. Every single sensation feels like it’s spiraling out from the place where he fingers me, and I buck back against his hand, trying to drive him deeper inside.
“Look at you,” mocks Ash. “Grinding against me like a needy whore. Are you that hard up for it? Are you that desperate to be fucked?”
“You’re not playing fair,” I groan. Ash has his hands on both the front and the back of me, Greer’s fingers are flitting everywhere private and prurient, and I’m about to tumble face first onto this bed because I don’t know if I can support my own weight anymore.
“Why would I play fair?” Ash asks, his finger pushing in to the knuckle. It’s going in dry, so it burns, but I welcome the burn and the sting. The biting proof that the man I love is inside me.
“I don’t know,” I mumble, my head hanging down and my eyes nearly closed with lust. “I don’t like it when you play fair anyway.”
“Tell me you want it,” Ash demands, all the crooning and mockery gone. He’s all Sir now, all the soldier who once fucked me while I was bleeding and high on morphine just because he wanted to. Well, because I told him to.
Okay, begged him.
And when I walked in here tonight, I didn’t plan on ending up at this moment, even though I’d secretly hoped for it. Panged shamefully at the idea that I’d be wrestled into submission by my ex-lover.
It’s embarrassing and foolish, but I can’t shake this prickly belief that it’s unmanly somehow. Not unmanly because of the penetration, you see, but because I’m supposed to be resisting him and publicly challenging his authority…and then a few hours alone with him and all the challenge has left me, driven out by stark craving and this stupid, fateful love for him that I’ll never be able to shake.
“I want it,” I admit in a defeated voice. “I need it. Please, Ash, please—”
