now

I almost expect him not to come. In fact, I’m certain he won’t come; I don’t know that I would, in his shoes, and given what’s on the news at this very moment…

Complicated, shameful fury overwhelms me once again, just like it did after the debate when I sent Dinah after him. No, he has to come, he has to, because that’s the deal between us, it’s always been the deal. We don’t run away from each other and we come when called. No matter the hate, no matter the pain, we come when called.

I’m pacing and tugging at my tie when I hear the electronic clunk of the hotel door, and turn to see Ash walking in.

He looks like shit.

No, he looks good enough to eat.

No, it’s both.

He wears his insomnia like fucking Heathcliff and his torment like Edward Rochester. The smudges under his eyes only set off how green and brilliant they are, the tired press of his mouth just begs the person looking at it to make him smile, make him laugh.

His hair is in the kind of Stygian tousle that would make Charlotte Bronte cream her Victorian panties, and his sweater clings to the hard planes and curves of his chest and stomach and arms. His tailored slacks hang off his hips like they worship his body.

Same, pants. Same.

And that desperate exhaustion surrounding him—it’s heady, it’s intoxicating. He looks wrecked and reckless, beaten and dangerous. Everywhere on me I feel goose bumps, a wisp of fear ghosting over my skin, telling me, showing me, warning me.

I ignore the warning.

“I won,” I say after the door closes and he faces me. “So I get to do what I want with you.”

“Is that right?” he says. It’s the first non-debate thing he’s said to me all night.

“Yes,” I respond. “That’s right.”

“And what do you want to do with me?”

As if I hadn’t had the last two weeks to think about it. As if I haven’t had the last sixteen years. “You’re going to kneel in front of me and suck my cock,” I say.

A faint smile tilts his lips, the first smile I’ve seen from him all night. “If you want it, you’re going to have to take it.”

“Is that a dare?”

He lifts his chin, already roughening up with delicious stubble, and I take a step forward. And another. And another, until I have him caged in against the wall. “It’s the truth,” he says.

I use my extra half inch on him now, forcing him to look ever so slightly upwards as I put my hands on either side of him and lean in. “Do you think I won’t take it?”

His eyebrow arches the tiniest bit, that small smile still on his perfect lips. “Here’s what I think, little prince. Here’s what I know—and you know it too. You don’t need to call me Sir to submit to me, and I don’t need you to kneel to know that you’re my possession. You may not wear a collar, but we both know the minute I snap my fingers, you’re mine. And you can fight me all you want, because it doesn’t change shit between us.”

His words are scalding the air between us, and I’m so fucking hard right now, hard and furious. Furious that I won, but that I only won by caveat. Furious that he’s right about me and about him.

“Tonight’s not about that,” I growl, and it’s too late, a touch of defensiveness enters my voice and he hears it.

His smile deepens but his eyes grow harder. My awareness of danger grows and grows. “You think tonight is about you getting to dominate me at long last,” he says, leaning forward so he can breathe into my ear. “But you’re wrong. You think what we have is about titles or words? About sex positions? You think I can’t dominate you while you’re fucking me? Then you don’t know the first thing about it. I’m telling you I could have your cock in my ass and a gag in my mouth and I could still own you.”

He pulls back, satisfied. “So by all means, Embry, vent your anger on me. Wrestle me, hit me, kick me, tie me up and fuck me raw. And when you come, you tell me who belongs to whom.”

I can’t answer him, I won’t, because I hate him so much for being right, for being weak enough tonight for me to win, for being strong enough always that winning is as unbearable as losing. I collar his throat with my hand and crash my mouth into his in a bruising kiss that steals our breath and closes the distance between our hips. As our tongues and lips and teeth fight, our hips do the same, pressing and grinding and sliding, all male, all rough, muscles and thighs and trapped cocks.

“I wish she were here,” he says against my lips. “She’d love to see you like this. And see me like this, maybe.”

I kiss him even harder in response, imagining Greer with her curious little hands and her wet little cunt, and I know he’s thinking the same, and we’re both all the more desperate for it, for her. We want her and she’s not here, and we need her—any combination of twos has always been unstable, volatile, we always need to be a three, and somehow I know that the reason tonight won’t end well is because Greer isn’t here. Without her we are nothing but flames and pyroclastic debris, ready to level cities.

I tighten my grip on his throat, and oh, it feels so good: that big, strong neck under my fingers, the hard lift of his Adam’s apple knobbing against the heel of my palm.

“The sides of my neck,” he murmurs.

“What?”

He reaches up and uses both hands to center mine, so that my thumb is on one side of his neck and my fingers are on the other. There’s something so erotic about him showing me how to choke him, so intimate, that I feel almost close to tears looking at his two hands cradling mine around his throat, showing me where to push in.

I do push in at his guidance, biting at his lips and jaw as I do, and within a handful of seconds, I see his eyes begin to flutter, his lips begin to part. I ease up on his neck, watch his eyes brighten and focus once more, watch his tongue dart onto his lower lip, as if waiting for mine to join his. Then I press in again as I kiss him, feeling his mouth go soft against mine. His hands drop to fist my shirt and loosen and tighten and loosen and tighten in tandem to my playing with his consciousness.

I watch him grow flushed, dizzy, drunk-looking, swaying on his feet, and it’s so fucking beautiful to have a king like this. Compliant and warm and trusting—and the amount of vulnerability he’s showing me is shocking and terrifying and wonderful.

Is this how it feels to him? Like a gift? Like a secret?

I could watch my hand on his throat forever, watch his handsome face go soft and urgent at turns, but I want more, I need more. One final time I squeeze, until his eyes almost close for real, and then I let go and kick his feet out from under him.

He falls to his knees with a surprised grunt, and before he can recover, my hands are at my zipper and I’m fishing out my dick, shoving it past his full, bowed lips. His lips are the only part of him that’s soft and yielding, the only part of him that looks more ready to love than to rule.

The moment my head touches his lips, I exhale with a ragged grunt, and then when my cock slides past his teeth, I’m undone, I’m beyond being able to draw in another breath. The sight of it—oh God, how many nights have I come in my hand just imagining it—and now here it is, my big strong bull on his knees, lake-green eyes staring up at me through eyelashes like dark fans.

I pull out for a moment, just so I don’t come right away.

“You’d like it better if you held me,” he offers, raising his hands, and I get the picture right away. I cross his wrists together and pin them above his head, a position that makes me lean forward and makes it all the easier to push into his mouth.

And suddenly I’m so angry again, I’m so ashamed and furious. How dare he help me, how dare he peer up at me with that pretend docility that his heated gaze declares a sham? How dare he lose? How dare he be him when all I can be is me?

I thrust into his mouth with a coarse movement that sends me to the back of his throat, and I’m rewarded with the sound of his choking a little. “So even the great Maxen Colchester has a gag reflex,” I mutter, which earns me a reproachful glare from below.

“Well, now you know how the rest of us feel,” I counter in a surly tone, shoving into him again to make him gag, but to my shock, he opens his mouth like a pro, and suddenly my tip is being squeezed by the tight heat of his throat. He swallows around me, a constriction unlike anything I ever could have dreamed of, and I cry out, rocking against him, seeking out more and more and more.

I try to soak in every moment of my angrily face-fucking the President—the feel of his crossed wrists straining the grip of my hand and the occasional scratch of stubble along my rod or against my balls when I’m all the way down his throat. His watering eyes and tousled, highwayman hair. The noises he makes—crude, wet, mechanical even—the glisten of his lips around my erection.

I let him have every angry thought, every angry flare and flash that has haunted me over the years, every time I’ve wanted to hurt him or hurt myself or hurt both of us just so that I wouldn’t have to feel so fucking much any more. And I give him every feeling now, even awe in the midst of all this anger, awe that I have a king on his knees and my cock down his throat, and every part of it feels magical somehow, even the accidental catch of his teeth on my skin or his convulsive shudder when I hit his throat at the wrong angle.

“I’m going to come,” I rasp, looking down at him. “I’m going to pour it all down your throat.”

He merely nods, as if I’ve said something mildly interesting. Nods with his eyes streaming the tears of the deep-throated and his lips stretched wide around me. And then I do something I’ve wanted to do for sixteen years, and I fuck him as hard as he’s ever fucked me, I fuck him, wanting him to feel as I feel—torn apart with him, shredded by him.

Nothing without him.

It comes all in a rush, and I grunt, “Fuck, fuck, yes, all the way down, fuck, fuck—” and I can feel the contractions and clenches in my belly, in my thighs, I can feel tingles sparking up to my fingers and down through my toes, and I can feel Ash struggling to swallow everything I’m jetting into him, and I look down and he’s looking up and me and then I realize somehow our hands had shifted in my fury or maybe it was as I came, but I’m no longer holding his wrists.

He’s holding mine.

I stare at our hands as I drain into his mouth, and then I pull away and stagger backwards, bracing myself on a nearby table.

He stands up slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture that has me getting hard all over again.

“See?” he says.

“Fuck you.”

“Such a mouth.” Coming from him like this, it’s both a quip and a compliment. Such a mouth. I know he’s thinking of fucking it right now.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“If you say so.”

He reaches down to tug his hard cock into a better position, and I have an idea—a wicked idea. “I’ll let you between my thighs,” I say, with a sharp smile.

I expect him to say no, I expect him to flare with anger at my insulting offer, but instead he tugs his sweater off his body right away, kicks off his shoes.

I’m speechless as always at the sight of his bare chest, his furrowed abs arrowing down to his groin, and then when his slacks are off and there’s those boxer briefs clinging to the muscles of his thighs and the curve of his ass—

And then the briefs are off and I’m swallowing hard. His cock is brutal looking, a dark near-red, with pre-cum beaded at the tip, and he’s so hard from sucking me off, and that thought is so fucking arousing. That I had this effect on such a powerful man simply by taking my pleasure in his mouth.

I peel off my own clothes, trying not to revel so much in the hungry way his eyes trace over my naked body, and then I move to the bed and he follows. I take the position that he’s used when I’ve fucked his thighs and lay flat on my back. It had always felt so patronizing on his part, the way he’d lay after he got off, supine and pretending to be bored. It had always made me feel like the needy youth, the eager boy climbing onto his experienced lover and spilling after only a couple thrusts.

But now, as I’m laying back and watching Ash prowl over my body, I realize that somehow the roles have flipped again. I should be the patronizing one, I should be the one delivering bored generosity—but as he lays his massive body over mine, skin to skin, the power thrumming between us is thrumming the way it always does.

He doesn’t stay against me for long though. He moves down my body, licking at the flat discs of my nipples until they pucker tight, and licking down my stomach until my cock starts jolting back to life. And then he moves past my cock altogether and to my thighs, where he spends a long time kissing and nibbling there.

To get them wet.

He lies back over my body again, reaching between us to slide his cock between my wet thighs, and then he braces himself up on his hands so that he can look down at the sight. I look too and then groan.

It’s so fucking dirty to watch that needy cock moving between my legs, my own cock now hard and leaking and whining for the party. Then Ash lowers himself so that we are pressed together everywhere, his face in my neck and our chests against each other’s—oh God, and his hard abs against my cock, and I can feel the hair of his stomach rough against my erection and I don’t care, I love it all the more for the bit of roughness.

Ash pumps his hips like a man fucking in truth, his breath loud in my ear and as my eyes rove over the tantalizing stretch of his back and ass and legs. My skin goes haywire over the feel of his cock pressing and sliding against me, and then he catches my earlobe between his teeth.

“I’m going to come,” he whispers.

“Yes,” I whisper back, and as embarrassing as it is, I won’t be far behind him. “On my stomach,” I say on impulse, remembering the first time I did this with him. “On my stomach.”

With an animal groan, he’s up and straddling my hips, big hand tugging rough and fast on his cock and then without warning, he reaches for mine too. I gasp and arch, and then fuck fuck fuck—

I spurt all over my own chest and face as he does the same, and he gives a muttered curse as he shoots all over me—my stomach and chest and face and even in my hair, and our eyes are meeting, and I understand. I do. I just commanded everything about this moment, and yet somehow he’s looming over me while I’m covered in his pleasure.

Except it’s not even that. It’s not the postures or the visible traces of orgasm that tell me he was right—it’s how I feel, how he looks at me now and how I know I’m looking at him. I will always belong to him, and it was silly to think that conquering his body changed that for even a second. He let me conquer him because it was his pleasure to do so, but if at any moment he had gripped my jaw in his hands and told me he was going to master me right then and there, I would have let him. I would have fought, as I always fight, because I like the struggle—but I would have wanted him to win.

Ash leans down, kisses my lips. Semen smears between our mouths and I don’t know whose it is, and somehow that makes it better. And then he goes to get a washcloth for us, and we clean up in silence, passing the rag back and forth like old times. Once I’m finished, I wrap a sheet around my hips and sit against the headboard.

Ash starts to dress by the window, hiding the cock I worship and the ass I covet. And the more dressed he gets, the more tired and inscrutable he looks again.

“Are you angry with me for winning?” I ask him from the bed.

“No. Are you angry with me for losing?”

“Yes.”

That does seem to surprise him. He pulls his sweater on slowly, looking puzzled. “Why?”

“Why? Because you’re supposed to be strong. Because I’m not supposed to be able to hurt you. If I fight you and I win, it makes me feel…” I stop because I don’t know how to say it. I don’t even know if it can be said. “I want to win, I do, it’s just that it always seemed abstract, something I could want but which would be terrifying to have. And if you can be defeated, then maybe everything else I believe is wrong.”

“There are some flaws in your philosophy,” he says dryly, sitting down to pull on his shoes.

“And,” I say heavily, “I’m angry because I know why you lost.”

“Oh, you do?”

“I saw the Melwas thing on the news today.”

He stiffens for a moment, his motions slowing, and I know I’ve hit the mark.

“I knew it was you. That was the person you were talking to from Berlin, that was the trip you had planned. And so you sacrificed your energy, your sleep, your debate performance, all for something that you can’t tell anybody you did. Goddammit, Ash. It would have been one thing to have beaten you fair and square, but to know that you lost because you were off saving the fucking world beforehand sucks. It’s a cruel feeling.”

“I didn’t do it to be cruel to you,” he says, still in that dry tone, as he laces up his second shoe. “I did it to fix things.”

“It was stupid,” I say. “Ridiculous.”

“What do you want from me, Embry?” he asks as he stands up. “To apologize for losing? To apologize for solving the Melwas problem without violence?”

My cheeks heat, and I’m defensive. “You never told me that you had this secret plan—and it took years anyway—and I’m not ashamed of what I’ve built my campaign on—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, pulling my hotel keycard from his pocket and flicking it onto the bed. “It’s dealt with now. And check your email. I’ve had Agent Gareth compile a folder on all of your Carpathian threats, and she will send you a new briefing every morning until further notice. If Melwas is deposed, those threats directed at you might become real faster than you think.”

I sigh. “I’m not worried about it, Ash.”

“Well, I am,” he snaps. “You may not care about what happens to you, but I fucking do. You’re mine, no matter how far you run, and I’ll do everything under heaven to keep you safe.”

I stare at him, furious all over again, and he stares back, equally angry. Neither of us says a word, and then he’s walking to the door. He leaves with the quiet close of the hotel door and its lock—no door slams for Maxen Colchester. He has too much control for that. And despite the fight, despite the sex beforehand, I fall asleep fixated on one thing.

He didn’t kiss me goodbye before he left.