Page 63 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“Okay,” he moaned.
And then with a finger inside him, bound by his own tie, he came in my mouth, panting and long. And when I pulled up, he was smiling dazedly at me. “There’s lube and condoms in the drawer. I, ah—” and his skin was too warmly brown for me to see a blush, but I imagined his cheeks would feel hot against my fingers if I touched them right now “—ah, I don’t mind staying tied up for the next part. So you know.”
I was hard. I was hard, and this was a willing man, all pretty and full-lipped, already tied up for me.
And yet.
He wasn’t Embry.
It had been three years, and still I could not do this. I couldn’t bring myself to do it—and yes, by that time, I was beginning to understand that my constructions around honor and penetrative sex were problematic—but the understanding wasn’t enough in that moment. In that moment, all I could think of was how much I’d wanted my first time fucking a man to be with Embry, and it didn’t matter how submissive or handsome or available this stranger was…he was no Embry. And I couldn’t give that first to a stranger. The idea of firsts at all is flawed, I know, but it was too late for me. They were important and they are important to me still, and so I untied the pretty stranger’s hands without moving to the drawer.
“I think I’m good, but thanks,” I told him. “And thank you for letting me…you know. Take charge.”
He gave me a sad smile. “All right?”
“Yeah.”
And I went back to Merlin’s with an aching cock and a miserable heart.
What was wrong with me? I’d found a hot, respectable guy, and—more than being handsome and normal and willing—he’d wanted that part of me. So why had it felt so wrong? I had done everything the way I thought an emotionally healthy gay man would do it, but then when I’d gotten to the most crucial moment, I’d still felt something missing.
Which meant it had to be more than the kinky and the queer that I was searching for. But then what?
I didn’t know.
And I still didn’t know the next morning when I woke up from a fractured, nightmare-filled sleep, cock rigid and annoyed that I’d wasted last night. I stroked off thinking of Embry as I always did, showered and dressed, and then found Merlin reading a paper on his own glassed-in balcony, so like the stranger’s from last night. Merlin gave me a look I didn’t understand, a look that seemed full of reluctant worry, a look I dismissed, because Merlin had zero reason to worry over me.
He folded his paper down. Somewhere along the nearby Thames there was the crash and boom of a construction site.
“There’s a party I want you to go to tonight,” he said. “Wear your uniform.”
ALL THAT NIGHT, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Or maybe wrong isn’t the word I mean, but that something was different. Something was heavy in the air, and it wasn’t the silver moon or that strange brand of wet summer coolness that crowded against the windows of the cab. I chalked it up to the night before and my aborted attempt at meeting someone new. I chalked it up to frustration over politics and heartache over a boy I kissed once.
It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized it was the same feeling I’d had when I’d fucked Morgan and when I’d put my boot on Embry’s wrist. The same feeling I’d had when I pulled the sword from the stone. A feeling like something deep inside of me was alchemically changing, a feeling like this moment marked some sort of fresh stroke on my canvas that could never be painted over.
No, at the time I just assumed it was smothered libido and impatience with Merlin’s scene. An assumption that was reinforced inside the party itself, which was full of the requisite political types, all being as obtuse and oblivious to the real effects of their actions as ever, and even though I knew Merlin had brought me here to make introductions and schmooze, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear another second with these people, I was stifled by their ignorance and pointlessness and callous disregard for actual human life, and it was so easy to find an empty room that led to an empty patio and just breathe for a moment. Just stare at the fresh, silver moon and wonder what Embry was doing at this very moment.
Staring at the same moon, thinking of me?
Ha, went a bitter voice in my mind. Right.
Feminine laughter stirred me from my thoughts, and then a male voice that was sing-songy with persuasion and—ah yes, an Italian accent—and I heard the two of them crowd into the room I’d just walked through, the unmistakable sounds of kissing and fondling echoing out onto the small patio where I was now trapped, hedged in by a stone railing and a pretty garden.
Ah, fuck.
I edged my head around the corner, just to verify that I couldn’t sneak past them, and alas, yes. The library was too cluttered with furniture to make any path other than the main one, which was currently occupied by on
e of the diplomats I’d been attempting to escape and a girl who looked young enough to be his daughter. She was very pretty though—sleek red hair and long limbs set off by a bright blue dress—and she certainly didn’t seem to mind the diplomat’s attention, so I suppose I couldn’t fault him for anything other than inconvenience.
With a sigh, I turned back to the patio and resigned myself to staring at the moon some more. Maybe when these two finished, Merlin would be ready to go—or at least, be neutral to my leaving early. There was no point in me being here. There was hardly any point to anything, except the war, which seemed to be the last place in my life where I could matter to anyone or anything. Too bad the war was also the reason I couldn’t sleep.
I’d finally managed to lose my thoughts in the moonlight once more when I heard the library door open and hesitant footsteps. Someone else had come into the library, walking in on the kissing couple. But I only had a minute to feel relieved that I wasn’t the one in the awkward position of intruding on the couple before I heard a high-pitched yell.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
And then I realized I was in the significantly more awkward position of eavesdropping on what sounded like an incredibly vicious and passionate argument between two young women. The man, it seemed to my ears, had fled the scene, and God, I couldn’t blame him. I stared at the well-groomed garden outside the patio railing, trying to will a Narnia-like door into existence.
It didn’t work. And the fight went on and on, and I couldn’t stopper my ears to it, as much as I wished I could.
