now

The staff meeting is hard. I knew it would be, and yet sitting in that chair and looking at the faces of my friends and allies—Kay, Trieste, Uri, with Belvedere just outside the door, and Luc and Lamar outside the windows standing guard, and Merlin looking on—it all serves to underscore exactly who isn’t here.

My prince.

It was always something I’d shared with him, this pipe dream of running for President. Most candidates pick a VP to satisfy the base or win over the moderates or some combination of the two. But not me. From the very beginning, I made it clear that I wasn’t taking a single step forward without Embry by my side. I was with Jenny then, so there wasn’t…there couldn’t be what we used to have. But I needed him all the same. He was my brother in arms, my former lover, my best friend. He’d grown up in politics, his mother was a powerful governor, he understood the strategies of schmoozing and courting better than I did.

And I needed him. I just—I just needed him.

And now he’s not here.

Kay accepts the position I offer, so does Trieste. Uri declines, more comfortable with screens and paper than being grilled by reporters, and we talk over our approach for finding a new press secretary. Kay and Trieste immediately plan to interface with Embry’s office to see if they can get a copy of his statement before it’s released, we hammer out a media strategy for his departure, and we agree to keep the gala speech free of any mention of it, although Embry’s resignation will dominate the news cycle. Probably for the next month. We won’t try to sidestep the narratives and we also won’t assign blame. I can see this approach chafes at Trieste, who’d rather try to control the story from the beginning, but it’s not how I run my administration. Embry and the press can say whatever they want—we’ll stick to honesty, restraint, and dignity.

“We need to think about the next election,” Kay says crisply, making a few notes on her tablet. The sunlight pouring through the windows from the Rose Garden strikes deep bronze notes in her black skin and outlines every natural curl corkscrewing from her head. Her suit is tailored to perfection, every sharp line echoing her high cheekbones and delicate jaw. For a moment, I think of the girl I grew up with, the one with the blue yarn braids and the baggy jeans. The older sister who defended me from every bully, every raised eyebrow at the adopted white boy, every busybody mother at Mass who wanted to make sure Althea was teaching me my rosaries and chaplets. And I’m overcome with profound gratitude and debt. For her undeserved affection and loyalty. For her drive and intellect and untiring work.

I stand up and give her a hug, interrupting the flow of the meeting. I don’t care. Everything is falling apart, but Kay has been here for me since I was four years old and I need to hug her. Everyone stops what they’re doing to stare.

“Thank you,” I tell Kay. “You’re my favorite sister.”

“I’m your only sister,” she says dryly as I pull away from the hug.

I’m about to tell her that’s not technically the truth when there’s a knock at the door. I straighten up as Belvedere pokes his head inside, looking abashed.

“I’m sorry sir, but it’s the Vice President on the line. He’s asked to speak with you.”

Something twists inside my chest. Excitement or pain, I don’t know.

“To formally tender his resignation, I imagine,” Merlin says, standing up. “Let’s give the President the room.”

My staff bustles up to leave, Kay giving my hand a quick squeeze and Merlin sending me an inscrutable look. Then I’m alone in the Oval Office with a ringing phone.

My hand shakes as I pick it up.

“Colchester.”

“You know it’s me,” comes Embry’s irritated voice. I soak up every sharp consonant, every drawling vowel. It’s only been twelve hours and yet I miss him with the whining pangs of a starving dog.

Embry goes on. “Answer the phone like an actual human.”

“Come over here and I’ll talk to you like a man.”

Embry laughs and as always, the sound unlocks every door to my heart. He and Greer, they laugh so much, and the sound of it is like joy itself. “Ash, we both know what would happen if I was in that office alone with you.”

“And what would that be?”

“We’d fight. You’d ask me not to leave. I’d tell you I had no choice. We’d find new ways to hurt each other. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

“But finding new ways to hurt you is always so pretty to me, little prince.”

A short inhale is my only answer. I picture those ice blue eyes going hooded with desire, those firm lips pouting ever so slightly with need.

I sit down behind my desk, running a palm along the smooth wood as if it were my lover’s back. “Let me tell you exactly what would happen if you were here. You’d walk in here and try to stay standing, because you would think it put us on equal footing. Because you wouldn’t allow yourself to relax around me. And I’d let you stand, because it wouldn’t matter.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“Do I have any less power when I’m sitting than when I’m standing? Am I a different man?”

“It wouldn’t be about you,” Embry says impatiently. “The standing would be for me. To demonstrate that we are different now, that I am different.”

“But you’re not, my Patroclus. How many times have you been ready to fight me, ready to struggle and bruise to prove to yourself that you don’t want me, only to end up begging for my cock?”

“And you think that’s what would happen this time?”

“I know it’s what would happen,” I say in a low voice. My cock lengthens down the leg of my pants as I imagine it. “I’d let you stand long enough to prove my point, that I still own you, sitting or standing, and then I’d make you get on your knees and apologize to me for breaking my heart.”

Embry’s voice is silky when he responds. “Apologize how?”

“By taking my cum down your throat.”

“It wouldn’t be enough. Not to earn your forgiveness.”

“You’re right,” I say, rubbing a palm over my erection. I’m hard enough that I can feel the heavy flare of my crown through the fabric. “After I fucked your mouth, I’d haul you up by the back of your neck and bend you over the desk. I’d take off my belt and stripe your ass red for every time you’ve left me.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Embry says, and the breathlessness in his voice gives him away. He’d like to see me try as much as I’d like to see me try—which is quite a lot.

“I’d have to hold you down. Maybe you’d be able to twist away, but I’d catch you and then we’d both fall to the floor in a tangled heap. And then I’d fuck you until you sprayed the carpet with your cum. Until you were spent and loose for me.”

“And then?” Embry asks with a hitch in his voice.

“I’d use you until you begged me to stop.”

He sounds like he can’t breathe. “You know I’d never ask you to stop.”

“Then I’d fuck your hole until I was done. I’d make you walk out of the Oval Office with a torn suit and my semen still hot inside you.”

“Holy shit, Ash,” he groans.

“Are you jerking off right now?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Almost,” I say, unbuckling my belt. My cock is hot when I pull it out, hot and stone fucking hard. I angle my chair away from the windows behind me, even though I know the Secret Service agents outside the windows won’t break protocol and look in without a reason. “Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn to what?”

“Tell me what you would do to me if you could. Tell me what would have happened last night if you hadn’t stopped it.”

“God,” Embry breathes. I can hear the sound of skin on skin, that pale aristocratic hand wrapped around his beautiful dick. “You would have…you were going to…”

I grunt as I close my hand around my own dick, giving it a few rough tugs. “Yes.”

“I would have bent you over your desk too, only…” He trails off, as if catching his breath. “I wouldn’t beat you. I’d spread your cheeks apart and kiss you where I wanted you. I would use my tongue where I want to use my cock. I’d tease you with my tongue, pull each testicle into my mouth, I’d cover each cheek with sucks and kisses. And then I’d turn you over onto your back and do the same to your belly and your thighs. You’d have your hand in my hair—because even though it’s supposed to be for me, you would still remind me that you’re in control. That you’re the one giving it to me.”

His words hook into the deepest pit in my belly, the pit that defines me. The idea of him worshipping the most hidden crevices of my body, cleaning them with his tongue, of making him do all that with my hand on his head as I deign to give him something I’ve cruelly denied him for years…

Fuck. I stop stroking for a moment, just so I don’t go off like a teenage boy.

“Then what would you want, Embry? To fuck me from behind? Hard and mean, to punish me for wanting to keep you? Or would you want to see my face and go slow, so you can mark every moan I make as you push inside of me?”

“Jesus Christ,” Embry says in a choked voice. “All of it. Both ways. Every way.”

“I’d want to see your face,” I tell him quietly. “I’d want to remember it for the rest of my life.”

“Ash, tell me you’re going to come too. I want to hear it.”

I hesitate. I’m desperate to come, so desperate that my cock is swollen and leaking, but I know how I’ll feel after I release into my hand. Empty. Hurt. Unsatisfied. The dark pit deep inside me still hungry and growling for something more elemental, something more powerful.

Scarier. Dirtier.

I can climax just fine without my lover’s surrender, without exerting my control, and I can even enjoy it in a fleeting way. But I can’t really finish without it; I won’t be sated and replete until I get what I need.

But this isn’t about what you need; or it’s not only about that. I promised to take care of him. Which means I need to put his needs above my own.

“Please,” Embry says, and I can tell he’s so very close himself. “Give me this one thing.”

“What haven’t I ever given you?” I sigh as I slide my cock back into my closed fist. I’ve given this man everything I could. My heart. My Greer. My entire life.

“Then this shouldn’t be hard to give,” he replies jaggedly. “Oh fuck, Ash. I’m gonna come. I wish I was inside you, filling you up—shit.”

He gives me a broken moan as he ejaculates, and I moan as well, imagining his fantasy. His face creased in pained pleasure as he thrusts into me, the feeling of owning him completely by giving him the very last slice of myself. Coming all over my own belly as I let him use my hole and then making him lick me clean.

“Ash, let me hear you,” he whispers. “It’s my last day in this office and I’ve got cum all over me and just—please. I want to hear you.”

I let him hear me, wedging the phone between my shoulder and my head so I can pull my pants down farther. I speed up my fist, tightening around my organ, beating off hard enough to make noise. The pressure behind my cock builds and builds, and it’s not what I want or what I need, but I won’t refuse Embry this. Not when I don’t know what the future will bring.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks. “What are you going to imagine as you unload?” His words are curious, his voice hungry, and I’m hungry for his hunger, jealous for his attention. I want all of him, always, mine and mine and mine forever.

“I’m going to imagine fucking you again. Greer is there, and she’s out of her mind watching us, her fingers buried deep in her cunt. You beg me to let you inside her, and you promise to be a good boy for me. The best boy.”

Embry groans. “God, Ash. You’re making me hard again.”

“And that’s how we finish, all three of us. You inside Greer’s tight pussy and me inside your ass.”

A wet sound tells me Embry is jacking off again, using his own ejaculate like lube. That image on top of everything else makes my stomach clench, my dick flare with sudden, heavy heat. It all flashes fast and dirty through my mind: Embry’s thick organ, smeared and wet with himself; the feeling of his hole so fucking tight around me; the firm rounds of his ass against my hips every time I push into him; Greer’s pussy so wet I can see her thighs glistening; her nipples rosy and needy and erect; Embry’s back rumbling against my bare chest as he groans out his release; the three of us in one sweaty, needy, forceful tangle, stealing pleasure and rubbing friction.

My boy and my girl, my prince and my princess. Mine and mine and mine forever.

“Yeah,” Embry says. “I’m gonna come again, I’m gonna—” he bites off his own words and gasps, and it’s the image of cum spurting all over his hand and pants and tie that does me in. Yanking my pocket square from my suit just in time, I hold it in front of my cock, and I release with a grunt, ejaculating into the silk with heavy, unending spurts.

“Embry,” I manage. “Fuck. Embry.”

“Yeah?” he breathes. “Yeah?”

“God, it feels—wish you were here to see—fuck.” It’s like I can’t stop coming, and I feel each contraction at the base of my spine with unabashed pleasure, watching my thick length judder and jerk as I spill my seed. So much, so much, and I want it to keep going forever, to share this sticky, dirty moment with Embry forever, just the two of us with our needy cocks and even needier hearts.

But all too soon it’s over, my cock slowly going still, my pocket square ruined, Embry still breathing hard on the other end of the line. It comes faster than I thought it would—the unsatisfied restlessness, the emptiness, the heat pooling deep in my groin letting me know that I’ll be hard up for it until I can slake my thirst. I close my eyes and lean back in my chair, trying to breathe through it. It’s okay that it’s not enough, I tell myself. It was about what Embry needed, not me, and God knows few things are enough for me.

“I’m still hard,” Embry says, bringing me back into the present. “It’s like you’re some kind of cock-magician.”

“I’m not a magician,” I say softly. “I’m the king of your body, and your body knows it. It won’t rest until it’s mine again.”

And mine won’t rest either.

A long-suffering sigh. “The reason I didn’t meet you face to face is because I didn’t want to end up ashamed and covered in my own semen,” Embry replies. “And yet.”

“And yet.”

“I know I’m doing the right thing, Ash, and I’m doing it for the right reasons. I can want you and fight you at the same time.”

“I know that,” I say heavily. “You’ve been doing it since the day we met.”

“Are you furious with me?” he asks.

I finish cleaning myself off and drop the pocket square into the trashcan. I tuck my still-hard cock into my pants and zip up, and I buckle my belt, and I check my tie for stains. And then I finally answer. “I’m lots of things right now.”

“But furious is one of them.”

“Yes. But I’m also guilty and worried and hurt, and hurt is the biggest one by far. I love you, and you’re leaving me. You’re leaving me because you think I’m a coward, and that I don’t love my wife enough to keep her safe. And by extension, you think you must love her more because you’re willing to put innocents at risk to protect her.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he says. His voice is surly when he answers, and it almost makes me smile. Still the same petulant, pretty lieutenant I pinned against a wall all those years ago. “You think you’re so noble and so fucking stoic, but it just means that you choose honor over emotion every time you start to feel something.”

“I just confessed to an entire list of things I do feel, Embry.”

He sighs. “That’s not what I mean. I mean that you’re never vulnerable; I mean that you never bend, you never break, sometimes you’re as inaccessible as the sun, and I used to worship you for it. I still want to.”

“Then don’t leave,” I say. Beg. I’m not above begging, if that’s what he wants. If he wants to see his king on his knees, weeping and tearing his clothes, I’ll do it, I’ll do anything. “Stay. I can’t do this without you.” I take a deep breath. “I never could, you know. You are my strength. My courage. And I need you.”

“I can’t,” Embry says joylessly. “It’s what I have to do in order to live with myself. It’s what I believe in.”

“You used to believe in me,” I say, and just saying those words out loud rips open something new underneath my ribs. I didn’t know how much I relied on that belief until it was gone. How much I craved his trust and his faith. It makes me want to do anything to be worthy of it again, anything, but then I remember that I can’t. Remember that I can’t say fuck everything and make winning Embry back my sole aim. I’m in charge of keeping an entire nation safe, the people who believe in me and the people who don’t, and I can’t risk war and death for just one.

As much as that seems like a good idea right now.

“Will you say goodbye to Greer for me?” he asks, breaking the silence. “I…I don’t think she’ll want to talk to me after she finds out I’m going to run against you.”

“And that you’re marrying the woman who arranged for her abduction.”

He exhales, as if he’d forgotten. “And that.”

“No.”

“Ash—”

“I won’t talk to her for you, Embry, and here’s why: we made vows on my wedding night. The three of us. Together. We promised each other that we would try, that we wouldn’t run away.”

“I also said we had to be honest the minute it stopped working.”

“We said we would love each other as long as we could, in all the ways that we could, as best as we could. Maybe you’ve stopped loving me, but have you stopped loving Greer?”

“I haven’t—” My heart jolts hopefully, but then he interrupts himself, and I feel the meaning of his next words like a halberd through the chest. “I still love Greer.”

I rub my thumb across my forehead, counting one breath, then two. Yes, I’m still alive. Yes, I heard him make sure not to say that he loved me. And yes, I can do the right thing even though all I want is to storm over to his office right now and refuse to leave until we’re both covered in sweat and cum.

“If you still love Greer, then I don’t consider you released from your vows to her. You still owe it to her to try.”

“You’re not the keeper of my vows,” he mumbles.

“Fine. Then I’m reminding you of them. You want to be free of any promise to love me? You can be free. But I’m not freeing myself from my vow of loving you, and I doubt Greer will either, once she comes to terms with it all.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe we aren’t a three right now, and maybe we’ll never be again. But you and Greer still have my blessing to love each other as fully as you used to.”

“Are you…condoning our infidelity?” He sounds so suspicious, and that almost makes me smile too, despite everything, because it’s so very Embry Moore to be suspicious. I can easily picture those blue eyes narrowed in wariness, that mouth pulling into a doubtful frown.

“I’m a jealous lover, Embry, and an even more jealous husband. I will be jealous and it will hurt, but at the end of the day I don’t consider it cheating, not really. I was there in that room too; I knew what it meant to promise what we did. And to me it means that we all still try as hard as we can to love each other.”

“So if Greer and me…?”

“Yes.”

“And you and Greer…”

“Will continue to live as man and wife.”

There’s a pause before he asks it, and I feel that pause with every cell in my body. “And us?”

I try to keep my voice steady as I ask, “What about us?”

“God, you know what I’m asking.”

“Not loving you isn’t on the table for me, Patroclus.”

Embry doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to. I didn’t say it expecting an answer, I only said it so that he would know. My cell phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to check it.

Mrs. Colchester’s plane just landed, says Belvedere’s text. She’ll be at the White House in forty minutes.

Greer.

Something deep inside me unlocks for the first time since last night, clicking open walls and doors that I didn’t even know I’d slammed shut. Letting out mercies and honesties and tendernesses that I would have kept hidden out of hurt or guardedness just moments before.

But that hurt and guardedness has to stop. I’m here in this chair listening to Embry resign because I’ve taken too much for granted, his love and his faith and his loyalty, and today is the day when that changes. I'm going to do better, love him harder, prove over and over again that I deserve his devotion and trust, and I'm going to do it even if it still means he won't ever come back.

I'm going to do it even if it's the last thing I do.

"Embry, I am sorry," I say softly. "For whatever it's worth. I wish I'd known what you'd given up for me. I would have spared you that."

"I know you would have. But there's more at stake now; you understand that, right? This is about Melwas and Carpathia, about our country, about Greer—not just you and me."

I stare at my hands, scarred and big on the gleaming desk in front of me. Those are things I can't apologize for, and he knows I won't. Two good men on either side of a moral swamp, and there's no bridge. Not even my love, sure and strong and bedrock, can bridge it for us. All I can do now is try to fight for both—to be a king and to be his king—and to hope I get it right.

"I'll see you around, Embry."

"Yeah. You too."

And with the hollow click of the line going dead, I accept that this fight is coming whether I want it or not.