now

Her safe word.

Her escape.

Everything stops. My mouth, my hands. My heart. I lower her leg carefully and make sure she can stand, and then I drop back onto my heels, hands up and open. My stomach knotting in guilt. We have the safe word so it can be used, but the idea of having done something to force her to use it…it tears at my conscience. I’d rather eat my own liver than harm her, and normally I’m so careful about reading her body and her face when we scene, and I must have missed something, some sign—

“Ash, look at me.”

When I look up into her face, I don’t see the face of a woman who’s hurt. Instead, she looks concerned, like I’m the one hurting, and she drops her fingers to play with the hair near my right temple.

“You asked to submit,” she says softly. “But you weren’t submitting just then.”

I’m on my knees and my chin and lips are wet with her, and she’s right.

I wasn’t submitting.

“It only works if you want it to work,” she says, twining her fingers into my hair and pulling. On instinct, I turn my head and nip at the inside of her wrist. She laughs, but her face goes serious.

“Do you want it to work?”

Did I want this to work? I thought so, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s impossible for me to yield, even as some sort of twisted emotional rehearsal for yielding on a larger scale. Maybe it’s impossible to be any other man than I am.

Except even the thought of it being impossible stiffens my spine. I don’t believe anything is impossible. Not for someone who is brave or disciplined or honorable or blessed, and I want desperately to be all of those things.

“I want it to work,” I whisper. I catch her hand again, not to bite this time, but to kiss each and every fingertip, lingering long with scrapes of my teeth and brushes of my lips until she’s shivering and pressing her legs together under her dress. “But you have to help me. It is hard to be anything other than what I am.”

Which is why I need to feel it, I think, peering up at her and hoping she can see the reckless anguish in my face. I have to know what it feels like, at least once. How can I rule if I don’t know what it feels like to be ruled?

Greer examines my face a moment more, her red lower lip caught between her teeth. I see the thoughts and decisions flit through her eyes like determined birds. “Okay,” she says. “Stand up and undress for me.”

I do.

It is a foreign feeling, to undress in front of her like this—at her command, at her pleasure. As I shuck off my jacket and toe off my shoes, I have to remind myself that this was what I wanted. This mirror of our normal lives, this reflection of our marriage, the one where she undresses and I watch. Now it is her standing, swathed in silk like armor, and it is me slowly laying my own armor aside. I tug my cufflinks off with practiced care, I slide the bow tie off with deliberate focus. Like a good submissive, I take enough time to put everything away neatly, but I move fast enough for my mistress’s pleasure.

And it’s her pleasure indeed that I hear as I pull off my shirt and expose my bare torso. It’s pleasure coming from her mouth as I unzip my pants and my cock pushes through the placket, still hard and dark and thick. It’s pleasure panting through her body as I straighten up to my considerable height and permit her to see almost every inch of my naked flesh.

“We’ve been married for three months, and I still feel like I’ve hardly ever seen you naked,” she says with a smile, biting that lip again. “I’ll never get bored of it.”

She steps forward and presses her hands to the tight flats of my stomach; she lets her fingertips trace the feathered lines of my oblique and serratus muscles. She drops kisses along the swoop of my collarbone and on my nipples, which tighten at her touch. She runs a teasing palm against the underside of my penis, causing it to thicken and swell and bob, which delights her. She does it again and again and again, until the tip is flared dark and dripping, and I’ve never been teased, not like this. I’m the one who does the teasing, and all I want to do is grab her arm and spin her around and kick her legs apart. Fuck the adorable impertinence right out of her.

But I don’t do those things. I hold myself perfectly still. I force myself to feel it, to surrender to the sensation of being touched without touching back. To having no say, no jurisdiction over my own body. It’s shocking how difficult that is. How worrying it feels.

“You are so handsome,” Greer tells me, her eyes and hands all over me. My hips and ass and thighs and shoulders. “You make me so proud. I’m proud that you’re mine. So strong and so—” she circles my dick and gives me a stroke that has me breathless “—virile.”

Her words help, they smooth over the awkward self-consciousness I feel at my own lack of movement, my passivity. It’s hard not to feel useless, oafish even, standing tall and mute and hulking over her as I do, but the way she handles me and speaks to me reminds me that I’m only to worry about pleasing her right now, and I’ve already done that, simply by being myself. It is a weighty blessing to feel, knowing that your very existence is enough to make someone happy, and it shouldn’t be, because I feel that way about Greer and Embry. They don’t have to do anything to earn my love and affection because my love and affection simply bubbles up for them. They’ve already earned it, just by being themselves.

I’ve never considered that anyone might feel that way about me.

“On the bench,” Greer says, after she’s done petting and purring over me. “Flat on your back.”

I move as she asks, the air strange on my skin. I’m rarely unclothed like this—in bed or in the shower—but even during a scene, I’m usually still covered, and I feel vulnerable and exposed as I walk to the low, wide bench. I feel young. I feel small. And I’m neither young nor small.

This is what you wanted. Savor it.

And somehow as I lie on that bench, the wood cool against my bare back, ass, and legs, my cock leaking onto my belly, I manage to. Find it and savor it—the freedom past the self-consciousness. I knew it was there, of course, even as a teenager I knew that was how it had to work, and as a man, I’ve seen the dazed rapture of my lovers more times than I can count. I’ve known exactly what kinds of pain and pleasure, or mixture of the two, to inflict on someone in order to peel them open and leave them shivering, and I’ve even visited this place once or twice before under Mark’s tutelage at the club, although only briefly and with the distance of a scholar.

It’s different now. The air weighs more against my skin, my blood moves differently in my body. Is it because I’m with my wife and not a near stranger? Is it because I want it, because I’m trying to feel it? Is it because Embry has already laid me so low that it takes next to nothing to blow me into pieces, like a pillar of ash in the wind?

I sink into it, let myself be blown apart, and when Greer crawls over me and slowly moves my arms above my head, pinning my wrists there and tying them with her stocking, I’m completely there. Floating, drifting. A leaf on a lake, skating across the surface with joy and fear.

“Don’t move,” she commands in a whisper after she finishes binding my wrists, and then my abdomen and thighs are tickled by silk as she moves down to straddle my hips. When she lowers herself, it should be impossible to keep from trying to thrust up into her, it should be impossible to endure the teasing wet rubs of her pussy along my cock, but I do, I endure it. I stay still and obedient even as my ribs jerk with jagged breaths, even as my erect cock aches with the need to release and my balls are drawn up tight to my body. I stay still and obedient as she finally puts me out of my misery and reaches under her dress to position me at her entrance. And I stay completely still as she guides me inside of her, even though it feels like the best kind of hot, wet dream.

“God,” she whispers. She’s so swollen that she has to work herself down on my penis, and there’s a moment when I think she might not be able to take all of me like this, but she spreads her thighs wide and throws her head back and sinks to the hilt. She seats herself fully with a gasp and a shudder, goose bumps everywhere across her chest and her arms, and even I have to bite back a moan at the wet, kissing heat along my length. Her pussy is the best thing I’ve ever felt, the sweetest and tightest thing, and having her on top of me like this is a revelation.

I can see her face and neck perfectly, the flush creeping up past the bodice of her dress and the tendrils of hair coming loose from her updo. I can feel the needy roaming of her hands and the hungry clench of her thighs around my hips. I can see and feel exactly what she would do to my body if given unfettered access, and it’s insanely erotic to see her using me with such unabashed ferocity. It’s maddening to think that this must be how she wants me all the time, to be able to bite my nipples and scratch down my abs and fuck me with savage, grinding rolls that send the tip of me deep into her stomach and leave her quivering with unrelieved pressure.

“You’re so big,” she tells me, all purr and sweetness as she rides me. “My big, strong Ash.”

And she makes me feel big and strong in an entirely new way, in a way where I don’t have to use my bigness and my strength for anything. I don’t have to justify possessing those attributes, I don’t have to carefully counterbalance them with gentleness and finesse. I am the leaf skating across the pond again, simply blowing where her words take me, and I can just watch with exhilarating clarity how much she enjoys my size, my strength, my body. I don’t have to worry about pleasing her with those things because she will please herself; I don’t have to worry about right and wrong, strong and weak, protective and reckless, because she will worry about it for me. I can sink like a stone into my body, into my own mind, and vanish into a breathless, static fog of electric need and chemical want.

It’s magic.

It’s mindless, sweaty magic.

There’s no country to lead, no Embry, no war to avoid and no broken heart. There’s no sword and there’s no crown. There’s nothing but Greer holding me as closely as a woman can hold a man, carrying me far above it all and deep below, and when she twists her body down harder onto mine and orders me to let go and climax, I do it.

I obey.

I yield.

I submit.

I am nothing and she is everything, and somehow it makes me everything again just to be under her; I am alchemically transformed from a leaden man into a golden being of pure, incandescent surrender. When the orgasm comes, it comes like the swift cut of the sun across the globe, it comes bright and hard and fast, and the ecstatic surges deep in my pelvis are echoed by the clenches of my abs, the tight jerks of my hips and thighs, until my entire body is caught up in the feeling.

“Give it to me,” she murmurs, riding my restlessly orgasming body like a queen would ride a steed. Her hands dig into my sides, her heels into my thighs, and for a moment, I really do feel like a stallion, proud and powerful, but completely tamed at the same time. Her eyes are gentle on mine as I empty myself into her, and not only am I emptying, but I am empty. For just a few sweet moments, I don’t exist, I’m not real, I know exactly how it would be to give up everything moral and ethical and practical and just give in. There’s no Ash, no President Colchester…only a man who wants his lovers close and nothing else.

So this is what it would feel like.

The words come like drops of water in zero gravity, floating through the animal dark of my mind. Clear and sparkling.

This is how it would feel to truly yield.

Wild. Primal. Selfish.

Short.

And then I’m back again.

I blink up at her, my body still giving the occasional pulse, but the rest of me sated and heavy. My eyelids are hooded, my muscles relaxed. I could fall asleep right now if it weren’t for this twist deep in my gut, this faint flicker of unhappiness or dissatisfaction. I try to push it away, to soak up every part of this moment.

Greer smiles down at me, laughing a little as she brushes a quick kiss along my jaw.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice sleepy.

“I’ve just never seen you like this. All stretched out and satisfied and drowsy.” Another kiss, on my cheek this time. “Now is usually the time you’re cleaning me and giving me water and asking me how I feel. It’s nice to see you so thoroughly fucked that you can’t even move. Maybe nice is the wrong word…it’s more gratifying, I guess.”

I catch her lips with mine the next time she tries to kiss my jaw. “Gratifying how?” I ask against her mouth.

“Mmm,” she hums, kissing me back. “I suppose it’s flattering to think that I made you that way. It feels good to look at you like this and know that I’m the reason. That I turned this tall, strong beast into a loose-limbed man ready for a nap.”

“It’s the power,” I say. “It’s the power that feels good. Can you untie my wrists, please?”

She does, leaning forward as I bring my wrists to my chest, and once I’m free, I reach up to touch her face. She’s stunning like this, with shadows casting down from her pretty cheekbones and her delicate jaw and her long eyelashes. There is even the tiniest curl of shadow in the cupid’s bow of her upper lip. She was formed for sunshine and pleasure, but fuck if darkness and pain don’t look beautiful on her—and there is pain cast onto her features right now, even if she doesn’t know it.

“You didn’t come,” I say, brushing her lower lip with her thumb.

“I—”

“Don’t lie, angel. There’s no point.”

She sits up and sighs, and the movement reminds us both that I’m still inside her, semi-erect but slowly stiffening again.

“I loved being able to ride you like that,” she says. “And I was so fucking close, but I just couldn’t get there. I wanted to, but I…it kept slipping out of reach.”

I give my hips an experimental thrust, and her pussy—still wet and wound tight—flutters in response. I do it a couple more times until I’m all the way hard, and then I wrap my arms around her waist and sit up. I move her on my lap, angling her so that her clit rubs against me every time she moves and so that my cock kisses that sweet, rough spot on her inner wall with every thrust.

“Like this,” I say, using a finger to lift her chin so she has to look in my face. “Move as I am moving you.”

“Are you my Sir again?”

“I am.”

The flush is back on her neck as she obeys and begins grinding on my cock, and I keep my finger under her jaw so she can’t look away. I watch her face as I tell her to move faster, to lean back a little, to grind down in twists that leave her gasping. I watch the pleasure flit across her face like cloud shadows over the prairie, fast and ever-changing, and then I watch the relief there as I band an arm across her back and start matching her thrust for thrust, pushing up into her until I can feel her womb. I know she can come like this, but there’s still something holding her back, something keeping her chained to the ground. And with heart-breaking clarity, I see what it is.

“Hold on,” I breathe, flipping us both over so that she’s flat on her back and I’m moving cruelly in between her legs. She twists and whines and arches.

“Is this what you need to come?” I ask a little meanly. “To be fucked like this?”

She nods frantically, her fingers fisting in the overflowing fabric of her dress. Her cunt is so wet that I can feel it on her inner thighs, on my own thighs, and it gets even wetter as I lean down and slide an arm under her back, crushing my weight on top of hers. My other hand comes up to collar her throat, my male organ below it all continuing to do its work, claiming her just as my hands do, just as my eyes do.

“Why couldn’t you come earlier?” I ask gently, the kindness in my voice completely at odds with the merciless movements of my body. But I want her to see the tender patience in my face, to see all of my eternal love and concern, so that she knows I’m not asking to shame her or induce some kind of misplaced guilt. I genuinely want to know, even though I can already guess her answer.

It takes her a moment to find the words.

“I didn’t feel free,” she finally says on a gasp, her body wild under mine. I can tell by the shine in her eyes that she’s close to tears, the admission prying open something she’s avoided looking at for a long time. “I thought I would love it, and I did, but it wasn’t enough.”

Enough. It was what I had felt under her touch: that I was enough to please her, that I was enough to deserve her affection and love, that I was enough as I was without all the things I do. The pull in my gut right after I’d ejaculated had betrayed the truth, but if I had any doubts, they are burned away now.

My submission only showed me a lie. I’m not enough.

It’s not enough for me to yield. It’s not enough for me to surrender and give in. Perhaps it was never in my nature to feel satisfied with passivity, but now I see it doesn’t matter. It’s my actions that earn the love in my life, and I can never stop working.

The world must spin.

And maybe one day, I’ll find that right sacrifice, that one act of martyrdom that will please God and save my soul, but until then, I will stand and work and earn that elusive sense of honor and probity. Even as my chest twists with jealousy when I realize that Greer has never had these problems when she fucks Embry, that she’s never needed anything other than him, that he is enough as he is. But from me, she will always need more. She will always need a king. I take a moment to let the unfairness and the envy sting, and then I let them dissolve into the ocean of my love for her. I’m a better man than to resent this, and I love her too much to deny her anything.

And perhaps most importantly, I am meant to be the man she needs. I crave it. I’m unhappy without it. It would be churlish of me to begrudge her needing the exact same thing that I need, even if she doesn’t need it from our other lover.

I carefully press with my thumb and fingers, squeezing the pulse points on the sides of her neck—the illusion of choking with none of the damage to the windpipe that inexperienced Dominants often cause.

“Yes,” she whispers, her eyes fluttering. “God, yes.”

I measure every flicker of her pulse, every dilation of her eyes, every ripple through her taut body, keeping her safe as I tease her along the edge of consciousness, keeping her orgasm right on the brink. Then we are there, the two of us, my hand around her throat and her body speared on mine.

“You are free now,” I tell her. “Fly.”

And when I let go and all that oxygen-rich blood floods to her brain, she comes so hard that her back bows off the bench and her mouth O’s into a silent gasp and I can feel every minute I spent teasing her and toying with her today as she unspools in wild, writhing loops. I let go along with her, letting her slippery rapture and the intoxicating feeling of my body over hers—broad shoulders shadowing her slender ones, my hand so large and rough on the elegant arch of her neck—tug me into orgasming inside her once again. And this time, as I fill her with my climax, there’s no shadow of dissatisfaction or emptiness. I feel whole and complete, and even more so looking down at the woman below me, who’s now smiling and spent.

Yes, this is the way it should be.

“Thank you,” she says dreamily up at me. “That was perfect. You master me so well.”

I smooth some of her hair away from her temple. “Thank you, princess. I’m grateful for what you gave me tonight.”

The hint of a frown mars her perfect lips, and I see a spot where her red lipstick has smudged near the corner of her mouth. I carefully wipe it away and bend down to kiss it; when I lift my head, she’s still frowning, a troubled line between her brows.

“Tell me, princess.”

“I feel like you didn’t get what you needed,” she says, a little sadly. “You acted like the perfect submissive, and I couldn’t even act like a passable Domme.”

“You were marvelous,” I assure her, kissing her again and then helping her sit up. “The only reason I enjoyed it was because of you, and I learned under the best Dominant you can imagine, so that’s high praise.”

“You’re the best Dominant I can imagine,” she says, her frown relaxing a little.

I laugh, standing up and gathering my clothes. I hand her a monogrammed handkerchief so she can clean herself, and then I do the same. “I’m flattered, but even I’m a little scared of Mark. He’s the kind of person who would chase you if you ran, if that gives you an idea.”

“Did he chase you?” she asks.

“I never ran.”

“Of course not.”

I start getting dressed again, both amused and warmed by the way Greer’s eyes drink in the lines of my body as I do, the way they darken slightly in disappointment as more and more of me disappears beneath the tuxedo. Even so, it could only be a tithe of the ache I feel when she pulls her dress down over her well-used pussy. My desire for her is bottomless; I could spend the rest of my life in this room with her. “Also, there was no reason to run. He was a teacher, my mentor for six months. Anything he did to me was part of a lesson and never a true scene. But I often watched him perform scenes with true submissives, and I've never seen someone so compassionate and so cruel at the same time."

The last time I saw Mark was last autumn, and he was in a scene with a slender young thing named Isolde, kissing her shoulder blades after welting them up with a weighty-looking flogger. I'd just gotten word that he would be collaring her next weekend. I won't attend, but I did arrange for flowers and a hand-tooled leather leash with their names on it to be sent.

"I haven't forgotten my original point though," Greer says, her hair and dress put back to rights. She walks over to me and helps me button up my shirt. "Did you get what you needed?"

I think about the false sense of happiness I felt, about waking up from that happiness and realizing Greer was still unsatisfied. I think about right sacrifices. I think about the man I am, the man I will always be.

I won't lay down this crown until I know the world will be a better place for it.

I run my hands up Greer's arms and then catch her hands in my own. "I saw what I needed to see."

"Which is?"

"The right thing to do."

* * *

We emerge back into the gala, perhaps a little rumpled and flushed, but it's all too easy to blame that on the champagne and the crowded ballroom. Luckily, I'm required to step out of events frequently enough that no one seems suspicious that I disappeared for any reason other than a matter of state, and we were only in that gallery for an hour anyway.

It was worth the risk. Everything inside of me feels cleaner, better, less bruised. As if I've finally stopped bleeding. As if I can breathe again. And when Belvedere comes to my side and discreetly indicates that the long-awaited call from Berlin has come, I take the phone and think, for the first time in twenty-four hours, that I might do more than survive this.

I might be able to make the world a safer place for it. I might be able to win my prince back to my side.

I might once again be a king worth kneeling to.