now

I’m waiting for Greer when she walks into the Residence.

I shouldn’t be, honestly. I should be back in the West Wing, I should be with Merlin and Kay and Trieste, I should be meeting and working and planning, but I’m not. Surely I’m allowed a day? A couple of hours? To come to grips with this?

But even as I think it, I feel irritated at myself. No, I’m not allowed those things, I’ve never allowed myself those things. I didn’t allow myself sick days or rest days during the war, and I certainly didn’t give myself breaks during the campaign—the only exception being the two weeks before Jenny died and the day of her funeral.

There’s something about denying myself that’s satisfying in a deep, purging sort of way. I’m not masochistic: I don’t enjoy the pain for the pain’s sake, and furthermore, I don’t need pain to help me access vulnerability or emotion or connection. But the pain is proof of my discipline, and the flare of misery is evidence of my self-control. When I marched through Carpathia burning with fever, when I shook hands on the campaign trail while my wife’s grave was still a pile of fresh dirt…every moment that I persevered, every second that I chose strength over weakness, was testimony to a truth I couldn’t live without: that I was worthy of the life I’d built. Worthy of the trust of others. I had earned it, and I was strong enough to keep it.

Until last night, I thought being strong was enough. I thought caging all my weaknesses—anger and fear and vulnerability—meant I was a better person for it, but I see that now for what it really is, which is the pride of a man addicted to control. Perhaps I’m not boastful, perhaps I’m humble in every other respect, but when it comes to discipline and sacrifice, I’ve taken great pride indeed.

Fix this, goes the thrumming headache creeping behind my eyes. Fix this, goes my heartbeat, beating wildly still for Embry and his blue eyes. Fix this, goes my pulse, a staccato rhythm, reminding me that I’m alive and strong and that it’s my job to keep my kingdom together.

But it’s not as simple as laying down my pride, you see. If it were, Embry would be back in my arms right now. The problem is that I still know I’m right. War isn’t a game, it’s not a declaration of love or proof of devotion. When it is unnecessary, it is the worst sin a man can commit because it’s not just death, it’s the grossest and most careless kind of waste. It’s rubble and fire and rape and lives forever upturned, and that’s if the people are lucky—and they are so very rarely lucky.

My little prince thrilled at battle, even craved it sometimes, and so he’ll never understand my reluctance. He’ll never understand the ghosts that follow me to this day, the women and children and young men who deserved better. I hated the way I felt after a fight—like a live wire, exposed and sparking into the empty air, and I hated the animal I became after, undisciplined and savage with lust. The opposite of death is desire, I’d read once in a play, and it was as if I needed to make up for every death at my hands with untrammeled excesses of depravity. If Embry remembers nothing else from the war, surely he remembers that. All the times I fucked him like I wanted to tear him limb from limb with my teeth and fingers, like I wanted to conquer his body like it was the next outpost. Those weren’t fucks of victory and exhilaration. They were fucks of pure, mindless despair.

All this to say that I’m here in the Residence, somewhere between surrendering my pride and protecting what needs to be done, and when Greer opens the door to our bedroom, I do the only thing I can.

I go and I kneel at her feet.

“Ash?” she asks softly, running her fingers through my hair. I hear and feel her surprise, her gentle pleasure. Never have I done this, never have I wanted or needed to, but right now, it is undeniably right. With my arms wrapping tight around her legs and my face pressed against the sweet curve of her hip and her hand on my head like a priestess conferring a blessing.

I lift my face to hers, and I think for one crystalline, perfect moment that I could live like this forever. Drinking in her silver eyes and long, dark lashes with gold at the very tips, as if her eyelashes remembered too late that they were supposed to be blond. No one is beautiful like Greer, no one else has that same combination of regal poise and secret knowledge and fragility and joy. My young bride, with her pretty pink mouth and her yielding strength, the kind of bride I’ve craved since I was old enough to crave. And her hair tumbling over her shoulders in a tousled mess of light and dark gold…I revise my earlier wish. I could live forever like this if only I had her near and her hair unbound.

I close my eyes and remind myself not to be selfish. What I want is comfort, her strength and vulnerability laid bare to me, but it would be cruel to demand it after she’s come straight from her dead grandfather’s house. Instead of biting her thigh through her dress like I want to, I hug her tighter, still gazing up at her face.

“How are you?” I ask. “How can I help?”

Her fingers twirl idly through my hair as she gives me a sad smile. It cracks my heart open to see, that mouth curling in such a melancholy way. When I saw her last October after all those years apart, what struck me most was how sad she seemed. How lonely. Her delicate face arranged in an expression of pained reserve, as if she’d kill herself before she sought comfort, and I got the sense then that she hadn’t smiled or laughed in years, that pretty mouth going long untouched by kisses or possessive fingertips. Nothing gave me greater delight than surprising her, than petting and pleasing her and spoiling her with every display of tender affection that I could dream up. Whenever she laughed, I felt at that moment that I could die satisfied, having made her safe and happy and loved enough to feel joy.

“I’m okay,” she answers after a moment of thought. “I’m sad and it hurts knowing he’s gone, but…there’s something clarifying about death. It’s like all the extra stuff gets swept away—anger and hurt and sharp words—and all that’s left behind is what matters. And what matters is you and Embry.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been so hard on him, when I know better than anyone how cruel Abilene can be.”

My chest tightens at the mention of Embry, but I don’t speak yet. I let her finish.

She gives me another smile, less sad this time, more rueful. “I’m sorry for keeping us apart these last few weeks. I’ve been selfish and angry and I don’t even know what point it served now. Punishing Embry only punished us, and God knows you least of all deserve to be punished. What was it you said to me on our wedding day? Living without the pain means living without each other? I choose the pain, Ash, and I always will. I choose the three of us, no matter what.”

“Greer,” I say, muffling my voice with her body as I hold her even tighter. I finally give into that dark urge and I bite her thigh, just a little nip, just enough to make her whimper and tighten her fingers in my hair. I love her so fucking much, and I want to give her everything—every single thing she wants and needs and wishes for, and all the things she doesn’t know to wish for yet—but she wants the one thing it’s no longer in my power to give. The three of us.

Once again, the weight of my missteps and my pride and what I know to be right and honorable hangs on me. It feels like a sword too heavy to wield, like a crown too heavy to wear. I can’t carry all of this. I can’t lose my heart to save my soul. But I must. I have to. Even though, for once, I take no pride in the pain it will cause me.

I stand up and kiss my wife. “Are you really okay?” I ask her, cradling her face in my hands. “Tell me if you aren’t.”

My tone is authoritative, and her body responds like a flower to the sun, tilting and opening to me. Despite everything, I don’t bother to suppress the tendril of satisfaction that curls through me at her response. She’s always been like this. Responsive. Open. Frost on a window that you can melt and mar with a single fingertip.

She peers up at me, sliding her hands up my chest. Out of habit I take her wrists in my hands and fold her arms so that they are behind her back, and she gives a small shiver of delight. Suddenly my barely dulled need from earlier comes roaring back, and I’m hard; when I’ve got her like this, trapped and panting and wary, I feel ten fucking feet tall.

“What’s your safe word?” I ask, wrapping one hand around her forearms so that I can use the other to take her chin between my fingers.

“Maxen,” she breathes with fear and with trust and with the whole fucking world in her eyes. She’s too good to be true. Too perfect to be real.

I’m hers. Forever.

But then I feel Embry’s absence like a living thing, a cold sucking of air and wind where his body should be right now; he should be shaking with need right next to us, his eyes as wild and skittish as an unbroken stallion’s, just waiting for the right hand to coax him into obedience.

I was that hand once.

And that thought brings me away from the edge of my need, just enough to remember who I am. A snarled tangle of kink and honor, and honorable kink means consent. Unconditional respect. I owe it to Greer to tell her everything now, because it affects her as much as it affects me, and she deserves to know. She deserves everything I can give, in fact, and this simple courtesy is the least of what I owe her.

“I want to play,” I say, loosening my grip on her arms and releasing her chin. “But perhaps we shouldn’t right now.”

She rises up on the balls of her feet and nuzzles her face against my neck, rubbing and making noises like a needy little cat. “Please, Mr. President,” she begs, and oh, she begs so beautifully like this.

“Greedy thing,” I scold her with a reluctant smile. I can’t resist her, and yet I love her too much not to. “We need to talk, angel.”

“Can’t we talk after? Sir?” She’s practically purring now, her fingers seeking out my chest and my belt and my shirt buttons without my express permission, and all I want on this earth right now is to yank her over my lap, flip up her skirt, and spank her for her sauciness.

But I can’t yet.

With a quick move, I scoop her up and over my shoulder, her ass up in the air and her legs kicking fruitlessly as I carry her over to the chair by the window and set her on the floor. I snap my fingers, and she drops to her knees so gracefully and gratefully, a relieved smile on her downturned face.

I sit in the chair in front of her kneeling form. “You may look at me,” I inform her, and she does immediately with spots of color beginning to bloom on her cheeks. She’s excited, and she wants this, and if the world were normal, I’d already be guiding her head onto my waiting cock.

The world’s not normal though, and she doesn’t even know it yet, which is why I can’t. But there’s more to this way of life than fucking and spanking, and if we both crave the comfort of the exchange, then there is another way.

“It pleases me to have you like this,” I tell her. “It comforts me.”

In response, she leans forward and rests her head against my knee with a contented little noise, and I allow her the informality. I enjoy it, this contact, her contentment and trust, the way she acts like there’s no place she’d rather be than kneeling at my feet and resting against me. I run a hand through her magic hair, watching the sunlight glint through the strands. She could be anywhere right now—giving lectures at an academic conference or meeting with members of her grandfather’s party or doing the endless publicity and charity expected of a First Lady—but for right now, she’s chosen to lay all that power and acclaim aside and kneel. It’s heady, what that can do to a man.

“I would prefer to talk like this,” I say, still playing with her hair. “And I think you would too—” I feel her nod against my thigh, but I keep going “—But I want you to know that you can stand up at any time and talk to me as an equal. You are also permitted to speak freely and ask questions.”

This sends the first arrow of suspicion through her, and she lifts her head. “Sir?”

I trace the line of her lower lip with my thumb. “Embry left me today.”

I see the moment the words register, the second they transform into terrible, terrible meaning. “What?” she whispers.

Her lips are so soft, and the place where they blush from skin into plump rosiness is unbearably silky. “He visited last night actually, to tell me in person. But he called with his official resignation this morning. He’s leaving so he can join the Republican Party and run against me in the next election.”

She blinks once, her mouth parting, and I know that she’s already grasping all the political and administrative ramifications of this news. The PR, the strategy, the math of states and votes and polls. She’s better at that than I am. Better at seeing and understanding, when it feels like all I’m good for right now is standing still.

“Kay and Merlin know?” she asks. Then talking mostly to herself, she says, “Of course Kay would know. You’ve asked her to fill Embry’s role, I’m sure. Which means you would ask Trieste to be Chief of Staff. And what does Merlin say about the election? We’ll have to—”

“We don’t have to do anything,” I say in a gentle voice. “Embry left me, Greer, not you. He doesn’t have to be your enemy, and I would never ask you to help me campaign against him.”

She stares at me. “You must be joking.”

“I’m not,” I say firmly. “I mean every word of it. Embry loves you and you love him and I love you both. It’s my intention to honor that as much as possible.”

“But you’ll still run, right? You’re not stepping aside out of some misguided nobility?”

I smile weakly at that. “It may still be misguided nobility, but no, I’m not stepping aside. I’m afraid that my disagreement with Embry is too fundamental.”

She bites her lip for a moment. “Is it about me?”

“Yes.”

She waits expectantly for me to elaborate, but I won’t. I shouldn’t. “It’s Embry’s story to tell,” I explain. “He should be the one to give you his reasons. It would be wrong for me to speak on his behalf.”

“Oh Ash,” she murmurs, pressing her face back into my leg. “Stop being so good for just a second and talk to me.”

“I’m not being good,” I promise her. “If I were really being good, I would have accepted his resignation without provoking him. But I couldn’t do that, and we—”

I take a breath. “It got messy.”

“Messy how?”

My curious little cat. Even with everything that’s happened, I’m still charmed by her fascination with Embry and me. “We fought and then we came, so business as usual,” I say. “It wasn’t good of me to do. He wanted dignity in that moment and I made sure he didn’t have it.”

“He wanted whatever you wanted,” she says, glancing up at me. “And you wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t know that he wanted it too.”

“That’s pleasant to think, but I’m not sure how true it is.” I smooth her hair away from her face. “The most important thing for you to know is that I gave Embry my blessing to be with you. And I’m giving you the same blessing. I don’t expect or want this shift in loyalty to break the two of you apart. I certainly won’t curtail my relationship with you, and should the moment arise between Embry and me again, I can’t imagine I would stop myself from doing what I want.”

She has no answer to this, and I can see the tiny pulls and parts of her mouth as she struggles for words. “Ash, I don’t think I can…cheat on you,” she finally manages. “There were times when it was just me and him, but that was when we were a three. If we aren’t a three anymore, then I don’t know how I feel about being with Embry.”

“You won’t ‘be’ with him, you’ll fuck him. And at the end of the day, you’ll come home to me. My bed. My body. I will always be your husband and your king and your master, and it doesn’t matter who I let you fuck, you’ll always belong to me, understood?”

“Yes,” she breathes, her eyes wide and open. Her body has gone hot and pliable in front of mine, practically begging to be handled.

I ignore it for the moment, ignore the angry throb of my cock against the wool of my suit pants. “This isn’t cheating, Greer. We promised each other on our wedding night, and we keep our promises. That means you and Embry have my full consent and permission to be together, and that means I don’t expect you to help me campaign against him or to do anything else that would divide your loyalty. I care too much for you to do that.”

“But I don’t want to hurt you,” she insists. “And this will hurt you, I know it will.”

“I choose the pain too, angel. I always have.”

“And I’ll campaign by your side,” she says. “No matter what.”

I’m touched by her loyalty—more than touched, I’m fed by it in all the wrong ways—but I don’t tell her that. Instead I say, “You should wait until you talk to Embry to decide that. You might agree with him that I should no longer be President.”

“Never,” she vows. “There’s nothing he can say that will convince me you shouldn’t be in this office.”

“I didn’t keep you safe from Melwas.”

Her mouth drops. “Is that what this is about?”

I don’t answer.

“Ash—”

I shake my head. “It’s Embry’s story to tell. I’m not going to interfere between the two of you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Fuck fair,” she protests, her voice rising. “What about what’s fair to you? What about what’s fair to me? Do I really lose the right to talk about Embry with you because you want to be fair? We promised, even back before the wedding, that we would talk about him with each other, that we wouldn’t hold back or hide, that everything had to be completely honest.”

“Princess,” I say, looping her hair around my finger and tugging gently. “That was about missing him, not about anger. Not about pain. It’s a world of difference.”

“But you still miss him,” she points out. “Even if you resent him at the same time. And I know he’s going to miss you. I know he still loves you.”

I sigh, releasing her hair. “That’s what Morgan said last night.”

“You talked to Morgan last night? She knew about this before I did?” There’s a hint of insecurity in her voice, and with some shame, I realize I’d forgotten about her disastrous interaction with Morgan last year…and with even more shame, I realize I still need to tell Greer the worst part of it all.

“She knew even before I did, Greer. She’ll be Embry’s running mate.” I pull my wife up into my lap, gathering her to me until she’s nestled against my chest and enclosed by my arms, her legs tucked up in the chair and her head resting on my shoulder. I stroke her hair as I say as kindly as I can, “There is one more thing, though.”

“About Morgan?” I can hear the wariness in her voice, and I wish I could spare her this part, so soon after finding out about Abilene and Embry’s baby, so soon after finding out that she isn’t carrying a child of our own. But Greer is strong; she doesn’t need to be protected from the truth.

“It is about Morgan,” I agree, holding her a little tighter. “There was a baby—a son. Her aunt raised him, and no one knew the boy was hers, not even Embry. Not even me."

Greer's gone completely still, her body braced for it, and I wish to God I could say anything other than what I say next. "He was mine, Greer. He is mine."

I expect her to stay frozen or maybe even to rage at me, to call me all the words I've already called myself—sinner, pervert, a twisted, incestuous bastard—but she doesn’t. She looks up at me with eyes the color of the sea under moonlight, and then she presses a cool hand against my face. I turn and kiss her palm and taste salt—she’s caught tears I didn’t even know I was crying on her skin.

“Oh Ash,” she murmurs. “Is this why you knelt when I came in?”

I close my eyes. “I knelt because nothing feels real anymore. Only you.”

“You didn’t know, Ash. You can’t be angry with yourself for something you didn’t know about.”

“I should have known,” I say, my eyes still closed. “Before Glein, she wanted to speak to me so badly, she wouldn’t leave until we’d talked, and I mistook it for…I don’t even know. An infatuation I didn’t have time for, maybe. Something I couldn’t even entertain because I’d fallen so hard for her brother by then and the war was really starting and…” I open my eyes. “All along, she was trying to tell me that we had a child. And I couldn’t be bothered to give her five fucking minutes of my time.”

“You were fighting a war,” Greer reminds me. “And she could have written, she could have called, she could have served you with a paternity test—anything other than melting into silence after Glein.”

“I think there was no hope of anything else after Glein. I failed her and our baby too badly for her to trust me again.”

“God!” Greer practically explodes. “Of all the things to hold against you! That wasn’t even your fault!”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say heavily. “At the end of the day, a person is held to account for their choices, by history or by God or by something else, and what happened at Glein amounted to the results of my choices. I was green, I was young, I was doing my best, but I still chose what I chose. I can’t blame Morgan for hating me.”

I can tell by her huff that Greer disagrees, and it makes me smile. “My loyal young bride,” I say, pressing my forehead against hers. But then I pull away and search her face. “I will understand if this changes how you feel about me. It is one thing to have fucked a sister in ignorance, but now that there’s a son…it’s a much heavier sin. You would be well within reason to divorce me over this.”

She sits up in my arms, her cheeks going red with anger. “I can’t believe you’d even say something like that.”

I run a hand along the curve of her thigh, soothing my restless filly. “There’s more to contend with than just Lyr’s existence, Greer. Aren’t you curious how Embry found out when Morgan hid it from him for so long?”

There’s a stubborn set to her jaw. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, unfortunately. Your cousin was the one who told Embry. In fact, she was using Lyr as blackmail to manipulate Embry into dating her. He was hurting you in order to protect me and my image from the truth. You are allowed to resent me for that at least.”

“Dammit Ash, I can’t resent you. Not now, not ever.” She flings her arms around my neck, twists until she’s straddling my lap with her forehead touching mine. “I hate her and I’m furious with him, but this is not your fault. None of it is.”

“You’ll find that Embry disagrees. And Morgan. And certainly the public will have a different opinion.”

Greer stiffens slightly as she realizes what I’m saying. “The public?”

“Abilene’s threat was to go public about Lyr. For now, with Embry thoroughly trapped and you thoroughly miserable, she might be content. Especially if she has a chance of taking your spot in the White House. However, that same chance might be too much of a temptation; she could just as easily disclose the information about Lyr in order to destroy my chances at re-election. We’ll have to hope she’s wise enough to see how it would tarnish Embry’s ticket, since Morgan is his running mate.” I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know her well, not like you and Embry know her, but she strikes me as fundamentally unpredictable. And so you see why I want to give you a choice. It’s one thing to forgive me such a sin in private, but it’s quite another to stand by my side when the entire world knows. You’ll be tainted by association.”

“I’m already tainted,” she says tiredly. “The video of me and Embry, remember? It doesn’t matter how loudly we said it was fake, I’ll always be suspect now.”

“But we have to make our choices where we have them. And I hope I’ve done a thorough job laying out your choices, as much as God knows I secretly wish for you to have none. To stay with me. Moments like this, I feel like I’ll dissolve without you.”

She holds me tighter, snugging her body closer to mine and pressing down harder on my dormant erection. “I’ve made my choice,” she whispers. “I told you before, I’ll always choose the pain.”

My body responds to her words and her loyalty, surging with heat and desperate need.

“You mean that?” I murmur, ducking my head so I can peer into her face. “With Lyr? With Embry gone? After all that Melwas did and with all the terrible things that might happen?”

She brushes her lips against mine, and my entire world is the smell of her skin and the glint of her moon-sea eyes. “Yes. I choose it all.”

I want to weep. And I nearly do, holding her close. I don’t deserve her pain, I don’t deserve her trust, but somehow she’s choosing to give them to me anyway. I’m humbled and grateful with the kind of gratitude that can flay a man alive, and my entire body is trembling with the urge to reward her devotion the way I know best.

She must be thinking along the same lines because she kisses my jaw and then whispers in my ear, “Use me today, make yourself feel better inside of me. Master me. Break me.”

Always and forever, my queen.