American Prince

I was fascinated by this glimpse into his history, this legacy of pain. “And you’ve never tried to find your birth parents?”

Bitterness clung to his mouth. “Why would I? They didn’t want me.”

I want you. “So I should call you Ash?”

He smiled at me, the dancing smile, the bruising smile, wide and dimpled with white teeth and lips that looked firm and soft all at once. “I’d like that,” he told me.

Hypnotized by that smile, I echoed, “I’d like that too.”

“Embry, have you been avoiding me?”

I tore my gaze away from his warm, handsome face. I sensed he’d know if I was lying, but I didn’t want to admit to it, couldn’t admit to it because then he’d ask why and I wouldn’t be able to refuse him the truth.

“Is it because I slept with your sister?” he pressed. “Or is it because I didn’t keep sleeping with her?”

“No, Colchester—”

“Ash,” he corrected.

“—Ash. That’s not why…or I don’t know, that’s not all of the why.”

“Because I missed you,” he said quietly. “I wanted to see you more.”

“I really did think you hated me.”

“You’re spoiled and self-destructive and relentlessly careless. The only thing I hate about you is that you’re not one of mine, so I can’t discipline you.”

And despite what Morgan told me, despite what I thought about myself, the moment he said the word discipline, the hairs rose up on my arms and the muscles tensed in my thighs. An unfamiliar part of me wanted to beg him to discipline me now. “And you wish I was one of your men.”

“Yes. I wish you belonged to me.”

Belong. It was never a word I considered sexy, never a word I considered emotionally weighted; it was a word for things, cars and guns and possessions. But God, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be his possession, his thing. To belong to him.

I couldn’t believe I was asking this, but the words left me anyway. “What do you think about when you think about disciplining me?”

He shivered.

He actually shivered.

Much to my disappointment, he didn’t answer my question, asking instead, “Do you know the story of Achilles and Patroclus?”

“I went to an all-boys boarding school,” I reminded him. “So yes.”

“I feel a little bit like…like I’m not going to be able to fight once you’re gone,” Colchester—Ash, now—admitted. “Like Achilles after Patroclus died.”

“You?” I laughed. “You’re the best soldier here!”

“Something about you makes it easier. Knowing that if I do my part right, you might be safer when you’re out on your own missions.”

His words were pinching at my heart—too kind, too meaningful—and they couldn’t possibly mean what I wanted them to mean, but then all of a sudden I was on my back, rocks and pine needles poking through my shirt, and he was on top of me, straddling me, leaning over me with my shirt in his fist.

I couldn’t help it; I whimpered, a soft little moan from the back of my throat. His body had looked tightly muscular from afar, but actually on top of me, he was heavy and firm and so fucking powerful, all that soldier and intensity pressing my body into the rocks.

“In Aeschylus, Achilles laments Patroclus when he’s dead,” Ash whispered, leaning close enough that I could smell him—leather and fire. “He accuses Patroclus of being ungrateful for Achilles’ frequent kisses. How could he not be ungrateful if he died instead of staying with Achilles? And night after night I’ve been thinking of you leaving here, leaving me, but I wouldn’t be able to accuse you of being ungrateful for anything, unless…”

I could barely breathe; his long eyelashes swept up and down, his thighs shifted against my hips, my dick was growing hard underneath all that moving muscle. “Unless what?” I asked, desperate to break the tension.

Ash didn’t answer with words. Instead, he leaned down and kissed me.

The kiss was hard—harder than I would have expected for someone as publicly polite and orderly as Ash, but just as hard as I would expect from the man who liked standing with his boot on my wrist. I arched underneath him, needing the pressure on my cock, wanting to offer my throat, and he gave and took in return, shifting his hips so that I felt his erection against mine, moved his hand from my shirt to my neck, where he gripped me tightly. His other hand slid under my head, and I realized it was to cushion me from the rocks.

“You will be grateful for my kisses, won’t you?” he demanded, nipping at my jaw. “You won’t leave me and never come back?”

In twenty-two years, no one, no one, had ever made me feel like this. Not just claimed, but like that claim was literally staked into my flesh, anchored to my bone. We were both so young then—him only a year older than me—but he dominated and overwhelmed me so naturally, as if he’d spent years doing it.

And yet when I searched his face, I didn’t find the perfect control of someone experienced, but the desperate, possessive anger of a twenty-three-year-old about to lose someone he wanted. Those dark eyebrows were drawn together, those deep jade eyes frantic on my face.

“Embry,” he begged. “Promise me you won’t just disappear.”

I was still trying to catch up with the last thirty seconds. “I didn’t know you wanted this,” I said. “I thought…I guess I thought you wouldn’t want me.”