now

I might be dead.

There’s a moment when my vision dims and my hearing muffles and all I’m aware of is the sweet weight of a person I love slumped against me and there’s nothing, not even a heartbeat, between us. For a handful of breathless, mindless moments, there is only her.

And then I breathe and come back to life. There is me. There is Ash next to us, wearing a look that I’ve learned from long experience means the best kind of danger.

“How does that shower sound now?” he asks.

It sounds like heaven. I tell him so. And together we help shift a boneless, happy Greer off my lap and into the shamelessly lavish presidential shower (part of a renovation done by Ash’s predecessor; the ascetic Maxen Ashley Colchester would shower in a plastic box and never think to complain.)

Once we have an orgasm-drunk Greer settled under a warm spray of water, we step out and start undressing, me leaving my tuxedo in careless piles and him neatly flattening and folding each article of his clothing, even his socks. His boxer briefs are the last to go, and when he catches me staring at the firm curves of his ass and the heavy pole of his erection, he laughs. It’s a rare laugh from him, one that’s all happy memories and teasing eyes, and it hooks and yanks at my heart.

“How many times, Embry?” he asks, his hidden dimple peeking out. “Surely you’re bored of me by now.”

“If you’re asking how many times I would have to watch you undress to get bored,” I say softly, “you already know there’s no number high enough.”

His laughter fades, his dimple disappearing but his lips still curling into a bewitching smile. “All these years…I think I know every crook and edge of you. And then you go and say things like that, and it’s like I’m falling in love for the first time all over again.”

I close my eyes. I have to; I can’t look at him and hear him say words like that at the same time or I’ll dissolve. “Ash…”

“Tonight’s just pretend, little prince. Remember?”

I open my eyes. “I know better than that,” I say in a tight voice. “Everything with you has been real from the start. From the moment you pinned me against that wall, everything was real.”

His eyes flame a bright, brilliant green, and it’s a miracle that I’m not on my knees right now, it’s a miracle that I’m not running my tongue along every curve of his throat and chest. “If it’s real,” he says, taking a step toward me. “What then?”

“If it’s real,” I say, and I can’t believe I’m saying it even as I utter the words, “then it’s just for tonight.”

Stupid. I’m so fucking stupid. Just for tonight is as much of a lie as pretend.

The way I love Ash and Greer is not the kind of love that fades into a dusty memory, it’s not the kind of love that can be fenced in and patrolled. And tonight will feed it, nurse it, make a strong thing even stronger, and how we aren’t all going to be crushed to death by this, I don’t know.

“If it’s just for tonight,” says Ash quietly, “then I want you to say it to me.”

I pass a hand over my face. How, after he watched me fuck his wife, while I’m literally naked, can he make me feel more vulnerable than I already am? How? But he has and he is, and it’s the fucking truth and I want to say it to him and if we lived a different life, a life when two soldier boys could fall in love and get married and buy a horse farm, then I would tell him so often he’d beg me to stop.

“I love you,” I say.

He lets out a breath like he’s been struck. “And I love you.”

“Achilles.”

“Patroclus.”

And then he kisses me, hot and fervent, slamming me up against the outside wall of the shower.

“Have I earned your mouth then?” I mumble against his lips, my fingers running greedy arcs over the notched ridges of his stomach and the planes of his chest, and I’m surprised I get away with it for so long before he captures my hands and pins them above my head. His hips press hard into mine—his erection rubbing raw against my own—and then he releases me.

“In the shower,” he says sternly. “You have a princess to take care of.”

My cock gives an extra throb as I turn and see Greer watching us with unabashed lust in her eyes. One hand is pressed against the glass and her other hand is pressed between her legs. Behind me, I hear Ash make a pleased noise.

“And I,” he adds, “have a princess to punish for touching herself without permission.”

* * *

Ash makes good on his promise to punish Greer, and for a several steamy minutes, he and I take turns with her mouth, using her just forcefully enough to make her feel Ash's discipline, still careful enough to keep her safe, since the steam makes it harder for her to catch her breath. Afterward, Ash uses the tiled bench in the shower to pull her over his lap and spank her ass for good measure, and then he gently fingers her to a screaming orgasm as a reward. I watch and kiss her and pet her, hard as a fucking rock through it all, just like he is.

And then there's the actual washing, with the kinds of awkward jostle and mundane clicks of bottles and reaching around for washcloths and shivering waiting for the spray that manages to feel just as intimate as any other part of it. We wash each other, we soap and we rub and we rinse, and I try to burn every second of it into my brain. The way Greer's hands feel running down the corrugations of my torso, the suds dripping off the point of Ash's elbow as he reaches up to wipe the water off his face, the glisten of water in Greer's navel as she arches back to rinse her hair. The way it feels for the three of us to press slippery and sudsy together, every slide and press a new revelation of skin. Every brush a brush against something I love: Ash's biceps, the dimples above Greer's ass, the edible curve of her neck into her shoulder, the dark trail of hair leading from Ash's stomach to his cock.

At the end of it, Greer raises up on her tiptoes to whisper something to Ash, her eyes on me glinting with mischief as she talks into his ear.

Ash nods as he listens, his eyes down and his lips twitching in a small smile. “Of course,” he tells her when she finishes talking. “You have my permission.”

With that, Greer turns to me with a face that can only be described as naughty. “Embry,” she starts. “You left before—we never had a chance to do something together. And I want to do it tonight.”

“And what’s that?” I ask hoarsely, pretty sure I already know.

She slides her arms around my neck, the slippery press of her tits against my chest unbelievably distracting. “I want you to fuck my ass,” she says, looking up at me. My cock gives a hot surge against her belly the moment she says the words, and she laughs. “I guess I won’t have to beg you.”

“Never that,” I tell her, dipping my face low to capture her mouth in a long kiss while my hands slide down to her pert little ass and start exploring. There’s the crease where her ass curves into her thighs, there’s the yummy place where both thigh and ass meet pussy, and then there’s the dark seam between her cheeks. Hot, thin skin and the indecently enticing circlet of her asshole, tight and waiting.

“She’s gotten very good at it,” Ash says from next to us. Between his lean hips, his cock throbs heavy and dark, and I’m very aware that neither of us have come since we’ve entered the shower. He hasn’t come at all tonight, and it shows in the veined, rigid jolts of his organ. He can control his voice and his face, but his needy erection speaks volumes.

It also tells me that he’s waiting for something, saving himself for the right moment, and as much as that should fill me with caution, it fills me with joy. I hope whatever he’s waiting for is filthy beyond all bounds; I hope it breaks me.

“Have you?” I ask against Greer’s mouth. “Gotten good at it?”

In response, she turns in my arms so that my erection is cradled at the cleft of her ass. “Why don’t you see for yourself?” she asks, and I will, I am, I am definitely going to do that, at least I am once I can take my eyes off the way my cock looks like this, framed by the heart shape of her bottom, bracketed by the dimples above her ass.

Ash hands me a bottle of conditioner, and when our hands meet around the bottle, I have a bolt of dizzying deja vu.

“Just like old times,” my old lover comments, and it is, it really is. That almost-year between Jenny’s death and Greer was a whirlwind of fucking and making out and furtive orgasms in dark corners and even more fucking. Days in the Oval Office bathroom, nights in this same shower. Even more nights at Lyonesse, Mark’s club, with Morgan and Ash, as Ash learned how to whip and tie and clamp and torture.

He learned on me.

On my body.

But those choreographed scenes were nothing like the frantic, fumbling embraces in private, seven years of pent-up lust burning through us like a forest fire, and there were times when I came undone and found that calm mercy under his brutal hands and knew for sure that I would never come back together. He spent that year splitting me wide open, the final blow coming when he proposed a second time and cleaved me right in two. Split like firewood, tossed onto an altar of guilt and lust and politics.

I died saying no to him a second time.

I push the memory of his second proposal and my refusal out of my mind. His flinch at my answer, the raw hurt in his eyes. And instead, I focus on the memories that came before all that. Those nights in the shower, the clean fragrance of conditioner because we were always too impatient to go get the real stuff, the quiet peace that always came when he mastered me. The awe in his voice when I came for him.

I nudge open the cap to the conditioner and drizzle a liberal amount onto my cock and hands, and then I toss the bottle back to Ash.

“Hands on the glass,” I tell Greer, “and feet apart.”

She obeys immediately, presenting Ash and me with a view of that scrumptious ass and blushing pussy and the tiny little hole I’m about to fuck. Ash and I both groan at the sight, and Ash’s hands are flexing by his thighs again, as if he’s restraining himself from grabbing his cock—or grabbing us. The latter is more likely, and the instant fantasy of him wrestling to fuck both of us at the same time sends a dart of heat into the deepest parts of me, parts that only Ash and Greer have ever been able to reach. Pure filth and pure spiritual connection, fused into singularity right at the base of my spine.

I don’t waste another minute—I can’t, actually, my dick is so hard that the skin is shiny and tight—and I give myself a couple measured strokes to spread the makeshift lube from base to tip. And then I step close to her, close enough for our feet to touch, and I slide a slick finger between her cheeks until I find the firm rim of her anus.

“Ash,” I say.

“Yes?”

I look over at him as I continue to circle Greer’s hole with my fingertip, trying to find the right words. So much of what happens between the three of us is unspoken, navigated spontaneously and in the moment, but there are always certain roles we magnetize to. Greer, the compliant. Ash, the master. Me, the mood-ring of a lover, shifting and changing depending on the day, the hour, the minute. Out in the living room, we all fell into those roles quite nicely, but in here I’m not sure. Am I allowed to direct the scene? Is he still in charge?

I don’t need to find the words though, because Ash senses what I’m trying to say. “This is your show, little prince,” he says. Then his gaze falls onto the place where I’m knuckle-deep into his wife and his eyes darken. “Although I might not be able to stop myself from playing too.”

“God, I hope you don’t stop yourself,” I say. “And in that case, will you unbraid her hair? I want it free.”

Ash rumbles his approval at my request—he has such a terminal thing for her hair—and leans down to kiss her temple before he starts unplaiting her wet braid. She smiles up at him.

“I’m happy right now,” she murmurs to her husband, and he looks like he could float away with knowledge that she’s content, taking such a deep and genuine satisfaction in her happiness that I almost feel embarrassed to witness it. The purity of his love for her.

Except then I realize I feel it for the both of them as well, this kind of lift in my chest at their smiles, this answering contentment to their own. This feeling like any bruise, gash or fracture is worth just a moment of their joy.

“I’m happy that you’re happy,” he says, kissing her hairline again. “And our little prince is going to make you feel very good. Are you ready for that?”

“I am.” Another dreamy murmur.

I hope I’m ready for it. With Ash and Greer, sometimes it feels like I’ve been ready my entire life, and other times it feels like I’m facing down a tidal wave I didn’t know was coming. And I never know which it will be.

As Ash carefully tugs the hair band from her hair and slides it over her wrist, I begin expanding my invasion of her hole, pressing against the inner wall closest to her pussy, finger-fucking her ass until I hear a luxurious mmmm come out of her mouth. Then I add a second finger, watching her every ripple and seize, watching her blurry reflection in the glass. Assplay isn’t for everyone, but Ash is right—Greer’s good at it. A far cry from the anal virgin whom I had to cajole into relaxing and opening, this woman is pushing back onto my fingers and making more of her siren-like moans of pleasure…and clearly enjoying every second of my assault.

So I add a third finger, stilling my movements and letting her leisurely fuck my hand with hypnotic rolls of her ass. All while Ash is gently unbraiding her hair, taking care not to pull on the tangled strands, smoothing them between his fingertips until they glimmer wet-gold and wavy down her back.

He’s so tender with her, so scrupulously avoiding causing her pain, even in something as trivial as untangling hair, and I understand it on a cellular level. It’s because he loves her. It’s because the only pain she should ever have to feel is the pain he chooses to give her. The play of his large hands on the silky tresses is sexy and elemental, and everything physical and spiritual about Ash and Greer that I love.

I can watch him play with her hair forever, I think. Until the sun swallows the earth and the wind itself turns into fire.

“Up on the balls of your feet,” I tell her, sliding my fingers out of her ass and fisting my cock. I’m so fucking turned on by watching Ash untangle her hair that even my own hand is about to make me go off. I don’t even know how I’ll last in the tight squeeze of her dirtiest place for longer than two strokes. Shit, even one stroke.

Greer pushes up onto her tip-toes, her calves bunching into sleek little rounds, her thighs tensing. Her hole at the perfect height for me to push into. Ash gives her hair one final adoring stroke, and then he cups the back of her head and angles her face so he can kiss her. His mouth devours hers, strong and sure, and with his nakedness, I can see the effect the kiss has on him. The tight belly, the tense muscles everywhere. The dark, bobbing cock pointing up at the ceiling like a thick weapon. Again plays my fantasy of him wrestling us both to the wet floor or against the clear, cold glass, using his angry cock on both of us.

I give a shudder of unabashed want. Surely he will want to master me tonight? Surely that’s what’s burning such a hot, filthy fire behind those pretty green eyes of his? Surely that’s who he’s saving all that cum for? For me?

And will I let him master me? Despite all that’s between us and all that’s happened and all that will happen in a November two years from now?

Of course I will.

Ash breaks off the kiss, looking satisfied at Greer’s hazy expression, and steps back, and I realize it’s so he can see me better. So he can see how I’m rubbing the head of my cock where my fingers were just a moment ago.

“Reach back,” Ash says to Greer. “Spread your cheeks for him. He wants to see the hole he’s going to fuck.”

Greer complies, struggling a little for balance but finding her equilibrium after a second, and then Ash and I are rewarded with the obscene exposure of her most private parts. Already visible before, now they are on display, stretched and revealed so that nothing is hidden. Nothing.

Ash and I both stare down at where my fat crown nudges into her—teasing little presses that have her whimpering and that show what a big thing I’m about to put into a very small place—and with her spread like this, I can easily breach the first ring of her, in and out, in and out in short, almost-nothing shoves. Just enough to start swallowing my crown, just enough to make her gasp. I might come from this, from fucking her with only the tip of me. Hell, I could come just from staring down at my head teasing at her pretty pleated asshole.

I can’t wait another instant, I decide. I widen my stance, put a steadying hand around her hip, and I start wedging my cock into her. She makes a noise, signaling that pleasure-pain I’ve been on the receiving end of so many times, and I run a calming hand over her flank, chafe her ass in reassuring circles.

“It’s okay, baby,” I soothe. “I’m here. I’m here.”

Goose bumps cover her skin as I slide deeper inside, and fuck, it feels so fucking good. It’s tight and slick and hot, like a fist, and the sight of it, the thick rod disappearing into her ass as she keeps herself spread open for me—it’s almost punishing how hot it is. I have to breathe through my nose as I keep pushing in, feeding inch after thick inch into her greedy body.

And then it’s there, I’m all the way there, and I am still breathing through my nose, because I’m going to come any minute, I just know I am, and I’m not ready to give this up yet. The sight of Greer shivering and her sides moving in short, exhilarated breaths and her wet hair like molten gold down her back. The feeling of her channel so slick and so smooth, clenching so very hard on my dick, like it wants to milk the orgasm right out of my body. The stroke and squeeze of her, singing heat and pressure up every nerve ending in my cock.

“You can put your hands back on the glass,” I tell her in a ragged voice. “You’ll want your balance for this.”

“Okay,” she whispers, doing as I say and putting her hands on the shower wall. I lean forward and drop a kiss onto a bare shoulder, and then I start fucking her ass for real. Slow strokes at first, until I regain my control. In and then a breath. Out and then a breath. Every thrust measured and cautious until I can adjust to the hot friction of her. Until I can be sure she’s ready for more.

Soon, she’s bucking back against my hips, seeking out more of me, and I answer in kind, kicking her feet together to make her tighter and then sawing into her with heavy, regular strokes. Ash is practically glowing with lust now, a hot sun of need pacing restlessly around us as I fuck his wife, radiating heat and power and edgy desire.

“Go at her hard,” he says one minute, and then the next, “Now give her the deep ones. Slow ones. Spank her when you do it.”

He’s taking charge again, and I don’t even think he realizes it—but I do realize it and I still accede because I love it when he’s like this. His power is his love, his command is his affection. And as much as I enjoy wrestling for freedom, as much as I savor the looser dynamic between Greer and me, this is what we all need. This is what we all want. Our king, making his little prince and his little princess kneel at his feet.

I become his proxy, his words directing me. Fast, slow, deep. Hands on her tits, hands on her weeping, needy cunt. Spank to the ass, yank to the hair. His words like a burned melody floating through it all, and Greer comes again, clenching hard around my dick and her cries reverberating off the glass.

And it’s when she comes down from her climax and looks up at him with wide, liquid eyes, blond hair streaked across her face and tits, that Ash growls wordlessly and surges towards us, all brawn and feral need. And it’s actually scary, actually thrilling, to have such a tall, broad-shouldered man move at you like that, and my heart is pounding, and the next minute I’m slammed against the wall, still inside Greer, and both Greer and I are caged in by his arms. I realize he’s shoved us here because it’s close to the bench, and at the same moment I register this, Greer’s leg is raised and opened and propped up on the edge of it, and Ash’s hard cock is pushing and nosing up against the base of mine. And with a cry from Greer that I’ll be thinking of every night for the rest of my life, he pushes roughly into her wet, empty cunt.

It’s insane. It’s actually insane, the feeling of his giant cock through the thin wall that separates us. I can feel him moving, and it’s so tight like this, so much tighter than I thought anything could ever be—and his balls rub shamelessly against mine as he fucks up into her, and holy shit, how do I even describe the sensation of his balls against mine under the furnace of Greer’s body? It’s hot and coarse and such a good feeling I could die from it, and we angle our hips to seek out more, to feel more of the press of each other as we alternate hard pumps into our queen.

Greer is coming apart between us, her hands scrabbling against Ash’s chest as she unleashes an orgasm that has us both groaning from the flutters around our cocks, and she is nothing but gold hair and soft, wet skin, and floating, helpless cries, and we end up supporting her between the two of us as her orgasm shreds away her ability to stand and she slumps, her head lolling back against my shoulder. We still work into her, two throbbing cocks, fucking in tandem.

“I’m going to come again,” she whimpers, with something almost like grief. “I can’t do it, I can’t—”

I capture her mouth in a searing kiss, sweeping my tongue across hers, and it’s her mouth so sweet and hungry against mine and her latest orgasm—a rolling thing that has her sobbing brokenly against my lips and bucking weakly in our arms—that delivers the killing blow. With Ash’s penis stroking against mine through the thin membrane of Greer’s walls and with her tight, slick ass—I come.

I rumble a low moan of agonized pleasure as I crest the point of no return and the muffled stroke of Ash’s cock sends me over the edge. And then the first contraction jerks delicious muscles deep in my groin. Another jerk rips a groan from my lips as I start pouring and spilling deep into Greer, hot spurts that fill her with wet heat, and I can feel the jetting throbs all the way in my thighs, all the way up in my stomach. On and on I pulse, the weight of a satisfied woman heavy against my chest, both of us caged in by her husband’s arms. I look at him as I’m still coming, and if I hadn’t already come, I would now. His face is a mask of raw, undisguised need—dark eyes, parted lips, jaw set.

And yet, somehow, as I finish my orgasm and slide with a sensitized groan from her ass, he manages to pull out of her pussy at the same time. Without coming. And if I thought he was hard before, it’s nothing like now. Every part of him sings of violent, filthy, frightening need—his cock, his posture, his face—and I can’t even imagine the tightness in his belly right now, the ache of his full balls.

But his eyes soften when he looks at Greer. I know it’s not that he’s got some complex about going easy on her—I’ve seen him fuck her mercilessly, beat her until she’s sobbing—but it’s that he’s got a plan for tonight, and part of that plan was getting Greer like this. His eyes are softening because he’s made her boneless with pleasure and joy, and that gentles the beast somewhat.

“Let’s rinse one more time,” he says, “and then we’ll dry off.”

“You haven’t come yet,” Greer murmurs, eyes all pupil-wide and cheeks flushed. She’s deep in subspace or endorphin-space or some kind of space, and maybe it’s the power of knowing I got her that way or maybe it’s the simple joy of seeing a lover fucked into sheer bliss, but it’s fucking seductive as hell. I can see why Ash is so addicted to being a Sir if this is what he gets out of it.

“Don’t worry,” he says to our queen. “The night isn’t over yet.”