Page 112 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
It’s close to four in the morning when I get to the White House, and Greer is tucked into our bed, softly dreaming with her hair webbed gleaming and gold over the pillows. I sit on the edge of the mattress, and I watch her for a long time. The rise and fall of her chest, the little twitches behind her eyelids, the rosy part of her lips.
And then I’m crying.
I thought it would make it easier to say goodbye separately, I thought I could minimize the pain to myself, but I’d indulged in a lie, because this is no fucking easier. I’ve had so much practice saying goodbye to Embry, but to my Greer—
No, I’m as weak as
a child right now, as lost as a lamb in the dark fields. How can I say goodbye to her? The keeper of my soul and my heart? The queen of broken glass?
My crying wakes her, and she stirs slowly, beautifully, a sleeping beauty straight out of a fairy tale. When her eyes flutter open and she sees me, she reaches for me, just like a kitten should reach for her Sir, and I let her, I pull her into my arms and hold her as tight as I can and as I let my tears fall into her hair.
“What is it?” she whispers against my throat. “Do you need me?”
“Yes. God. Please.”
“Then take me, Sir,” she says. Her words tickle the skin of my throat, and I tilt her head back, searching her eyes.
I wonder about telling her. Greer knows the myths and legends better than anyone, and unlike Embry, her self-worth and self-image aren’t wrapped up in resisting me. She of anyone might be the most likely to believe all of it, as staggeringly impossible as it is. But then what would it change? If she did believe me? There’s nothing I will do differently—I will still stand next to Embry tomorrow and I will still lay down my life if necessary. The only purpose it would serve would be to make her as miserable and as fearful as I am, and if I can spare her that at least, then I am delivering a mercy. Perhaps it’s better to be her Sir in this too, and protect her from as much as I can.
Her eyes are searching mine right back. “What is it?” she asks softly. “What is it?”
I think I’ve finally found my right sacrifice, I want to tell her. I think I’ve learned the day I’ll be asked to set down my sword and my crown.
It wasn’t enough for me to live, and now I have to die.
I don’t tell her that. Instead I kiss her lips, as gently as I’ve ever kissed her, just enjoying the silky brush of her mouth against my own, and I turn her over on my lap so that she’s draped across me and her ass is presented for my hand.
I spank her without warning, without warm-up. After each smack, I plump and soothe her stinging flesh, but I don’t take it easy on her, I don’t let up. I spank until I feel the sweat beading along my hairline, until she’s crying into the sheets, until her bottom is the color of cherries in the summer. And I play with her pussy in between the abuses, since it’s so available to me, swollen and wet and flushed and almost insolently peeking up through her ass cheeks. When I slide my fingers inside for the first time, I’m reminded that I am not the first man to use her body tonight, and oh, how that gets me hard. Especially as I feel the tender place in my own body where I was used by the same man.
I stroke her inner walls with demanding, cruel strokes. “It gets me off to feel you so slippery and messy from Embry.” I give her ass a hard slap. “Do you like that? Having your husband feel how wet you are from another man? To be your sloppy seconds?”
She moans against the sheets, wiggling her ass higher, and I give her cheek a final slap before I toss her roughly across the bed and crawl over her. I pin her hips in place with my thighs, rising up to yank off my shirt.
“All I’ve ever wanted,” I breathe, “from the first moment I saw you, was to cuff you to my bed and keep you forever. To trade my heart for yours, so that wherever we went, we were inside each other.”
She offers me her wrists, and she’s such a fucking picture right now with her nipples furled tight and her chest flushed and her delicious hair tangled everywhere. Offering herself. “Keep me forever, Mr. President,” she begs. “Please, please, please.”
God, how will I bear this? How will I disobey her tomorrow and let her go?
I unbuckle my belt and slide it free from its loops with a leathery hiss, cinching her wrists tight and threading the tail through the clasp. “Flex your fingers,” I tell her, and she does. I pinch one of her fingertips, then I put my palm against hers. “Squeeze my hand.” She does, her eyes glassy and her body trembling underneath me.
It was one of the sweetest discoveries of our relationship when it started—I’d already known she wanted the darkness—but her delight in the minutiae of kink gratified the careful Dom in me. More than gratified—it fed me, nourished me in ways I never even knew I needed. She thrived on the smallest of cares and attentions, and I delighted in giving them to her, watching my lonely little princess bloom into a formidable queen as I tended to her the way she needed. Every safety check, every negotiation, every pre-scene discussion was foreplay to her, and every shower and snuggle and morning when I chose what I wanted her to wear was the most tender aftercare. There are as many ways of being a submissive as there are of being a human, and while Embry’s brand of pugilistic submission was ambrosial in its own way, it was nothing compared to the intoxicatingly complete surrender of Greer’s.
Greer wants to submit.
She needs to.
That young man dreaming of the Goblin King had never even come close to dreaming of this.
Satisfied that her circulation is good and we’re not risking nerve damage, I give her hand a squeeze back. “Hands above your head, sweetheart.”
She raises her bound wrists above her head, which serves the purpose of making her mouthwatering breasts jut closer to me with their tempting peaks. “What’s your safe word?”
“Maxen.”
I give one of her breasts a vicious slap, loving the arch of her underneath me as the pain sizzles through her body. Her eyes are still wet with tears from her spanking, and I know the blanket underneath her sensitive ass must feel sandpaper-rough. I lean down, one hand on her throat and the other running through her hair, and I have a moment when I’m frozen, hovering above her lips, the tips of our noses dancing together.
I’m frozen because it’s too much, she’s too much, she’s too interesting, too intelligent, too slyly funny, too honest, too brave, too fucking beautiful for me to say goodbye to her. My hand at her head could spend weeks stroking her hair, my other hand at her throat could feel the thread and thrum of her pulse for years. I was born to sit with her body between my thighs, and my lips could spend eternity slipping and breathing against hers.
