Page 52 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“Want what, little prince? Need what?” His hands leave me and he walks over to an end table by the bed, and I know he’ll want me to be specific, to beg specifically. He always does.
“I want you to fuck me,” I mumble, watching the fascinating contradiction of his Bible tremble on the end table while he dug in the drawer for lube.
“I’m sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear.”
“I said I want you to fuck me,” I growl loudly. Then I mutter, “Asshole,” under my breath.
That earns me a dark look. “Don’t make trouble for yourself,” he warns, tossing the lube on the bed and closing the drawer.
Jesus. When have I ever done anything else?
Ash smooths Greer’s damp hair away from her forehead. “We need you one more time, my queen. Then you can rest.”
She nods, turning her head up to kiss his hand. “Do I have to come? I don’t know if I can.”
Only with Ash is being given permission not to come just as much a mercy as the opposite. He gives a small shake of his head. “You don’t have to come. Now spread your legs and welcome Embry home.”
With a happy smile and a catlike stretch, she unribbons herself, moving to the center of the bed and opening her legs in the world’s oldest invitation, and both Ash and I simply stare for a moment.
Glimmers of gold hair spilling over the pillow. A taut stomach with a little well of a belly button. Tits the perfect size for palming and cupping, the nipples furled tight and the undersides dotted with love bites. Even the most mundane parts of her—her knees and her toe
s and the hollows of her armpits—are perfect. This is the same woman who climbed onto a Chicago Ferris Wheel with a complete stranger, who fucked that same stranger in a heady fit of pain and rejection, who can speak three different dead languages and quote medieval poetry from memory, who has coolly stared down journalists accusing her of adultery and left the entire room rattled with her cold dignity. She is all things at once: hot and cold, closed and open. Polished elegance and raw carnality.
My Greer.
“I love her,” I tell him.
“I know,” is Ash’s response. “Go show her.”
So I crawl onto the bed to join her, relishing the way her eyes sweep down my body as I do, and also relishing just the act of it. Such a small thing to join someone on a bed, to dent the mattress with hands and knees as you crawl, to have them regarding you with anticipation and lust and familiarity. And yet it feels huge now because I don’t have this in my new life, there’s no prowling towards a waiting lover, no slide of skin on blankets as you move and they arch up to greet you. I commit every tiny, ordinary detail to memory as I gently lower my body over Greer’s. The practical little scoots we make on the blanket to line up our bodies. The moment our chests and stomachs touch. The brush of her thighs on the outside of mine. The pleasurable chore of parting the silky fall of her hair so I can brace a hand beside her head.
“I love you,” I tell her, searching her eyes. I want her to see, I want her to know, and I want her to know it now and forever. Every part of my soul burns for her and always will.
“I love you too,” she murmurs, looking so soft and pliant that I lean down and kiss her. Her lips part for me on a sigh, and she tastes like sex and the lingering sweet of champagne, and I lick at all of it, drink all of it in. Below the cradle of her hips, my cock leaks vulgar tears onto the bare skin of her pussy, and it’s she who reaches down and takes me in hand. She who guides my tip right to her center. She who wraps her legs around my waist and tries to bring me closer.
“Give it to me,” she pleads quietly. “Please. One more time.”
“One more time,” I say, and pierce her deep and full with my cock.
God, her pussy. Flushed and hot from her busy night, still wet inside from when I took my guest-right earlier and spent inside her. The best combination of slippery and tight, and it has my stomach clenching to feel my dick inside. Has my hand fisting in the pillow underneath her and my thighs trembling with restraint.
She arches and wiggles underneath me, her stomach once again pressing flat against mine and driving me mad. I unleash a wicked flurry of thrusts out of sheer reaction, my weight driving her into the bed, my hips moving hard and fast.
“Ohhh,” she breathes, staring up at me. “Oh God.”
I do it again. I hug her tight to my chest and burrow my face in her neck, and then I pump into her over and over and over, static crowding at the edges of my vision, my mouth open and kissing against her neck and shoulder. Her hand catches mine, and I slow my thrusts as I feel her fingers run across the new metal of my wedding band.
I freeze, lifting my head and staring down at her as she turns her head to see the glint of it in the dark.
“Greer…”
“It’s not real,” she whispers. And then she puts my hand with its traitorous ring flat against her chest, so I can feel the gentle slope of her breast and the hammer of her heart. “This,” she says, looking up at me and holding my hand against her heart, “this is what’s real. Us. What we have.”
I close my eyes a moment because it’s too much, her grace and her forgiveness and her understanding. Her generosity. I’m not worthy of it, and it eats me up inside that I can never be. Maybe…maybe if I win against Ash, and maybe if I can finally smother the Carpathian flames once and for all and guarantee that she’ll be safe from Melwas always—maybe then I’ll earn it. Maybe then I’ll deserve this gift she’s giving me.
I open my eyes after I can breathe normally and then I give her a long, ardent kiss. I claim her lips and tongue and teeth, tracing them with my tongue and stealing her breath and replacing it with mine. I fuck into her with slow, deep rolls that have her whimpering against my mouth. And all the while, my hateful wedding ring rests warm and solid between us, and after several minutes of kissing and unhurried coupling, it doesn’t feel so evil on my finger anymore. It’s nothing more than a hammered ring of inert metal, a thing, and it can never compare to the hammered ring our hearts make. To the fragile band that encircles the three of us and anchors us to one another.
This is real.
