American Prince

“I…” I felt fuzzy but not terrible. A little weak, maybe, and my mouth tasted like metal, but I wasn’t dead or dying or writhing in agony. So definitely a welcome surprise.

The boots resumed their pacing, and I noticed Ash’s hands now, balling and flexing restlessly by his thighs as he paced. “The Carpathians carry morphine in their first aid packs. You were moaning as I taped you up, so I gave you some. It’ll be our little secret.”

Morphine. That explained the fuzziness, the way the pain felt like it was shouting at me from a distant room. I struggled to sit up, fuzziness quickly turning to dizziness and the pain’s shouts getting closer. But I managed, propping myself against a tree and taking several, slow breaths as Ash continued to stalk around our makeshift camp like a caged tiger.

With cautious fingers, I lifted my jacket—the sleeve had been unceremoniously cut open, probably for Ash to get to my bullet wound more easily—and I probed the bandage underneath. I could smell antiseptic, see where he’d sponged away the blood as best he could, and admired the neat lines of tape and gauze. My calf was done with the same careful precision.

“You’re not so bad at this,” I said weakly. “You should have been a doctor.”

“If I were a doctor, I wouldn’t have been there to save your life,” he growled, and then raw, real pain edged his voice. “What the fuck were you thinking, Embry?”

“I don’t know.” My fury at the Carpathians was spent. Even the high I normally had after an engagement with hostiles was gone—bled out, dulled by the morphine. “I should have stayed back.”

“Fuck yes, you should have,” Ash snapped. “You almost died today and for what? Separatist assholes in a town nobody knows the name of?”

I peered up at him in the dark. My battle high had spilled out of me, but I recognized all the signs of it in him. He wasn’t stoned with it like some guys were and he wasn’t giddy with it, like I sometimes got. He was vibrating with it, as if he were gripping a live wire with both hands. His eyes flashed in the dark, tension rolled off his body. He was a man who needed to drink or fuck or fight, or all three—the kind of man I was often, but with Ash, it felt different. That kind of hot, desperate agitation was different when it burned through a man as powerful as Ash, that kind of restlessness was perilous when it infected a man who wasn’t used to feeling out of control.

Ash was dangerous right now. Unsafe to be around.

And me? Was I frightened? Uneasy around a man who looked like he wanted to tear me and the whole world apart with his bare hands?

I wasn’t.

More—I felt a heart-stopping kind of awe, a delightful kind of terror, the kind knights in legends have when they realize the woman they met by the river is a great and terrible fairy queen now intent on eating them alive.

I stared at Ash as he stopped his pacing and stood in front of me, asking me something. I struggled out of the morphine haze to focus on the present moment.

“—death wish,” Ash was saying. “Do you want to die? Is that it? Do you hate me so much that you’d make me watch you do it? You’d make me be responsible?”

“You weren’t responsible,” I answered. The morphine and pain made my voice sound weary. Beleaguered.

“Like fuck, I wasn’t responsible,” Ash hissed, my weak voice doing nothing to stay his anger. “You honestly believe that I’d be able to hand your mother a folded flag and just walk away, like I had nothing to do with it? I protect all my men, but you—” His voice broke and he turned away, kicking savagely at a fallen branch. “Fuck you and your death wish, Embry. Fuck you.”

Remembering the first day we met, I tried for a joke and failed. “I’d rather it was the other way around.”

In an instant, he was on me, straddling my thighs, one hand yanking my head back so I had to look up into his face. “Don’t play games with me,” Ash warned in a low voice. “Not tonight. Not after what you did. You don’t even want to know the things I’m thinking about right now.”

I could barely breathe. Pain sang out from my shoulder and hunger sang out from my thickening cock. I was at the mercy of a monster—in the hands of an angry god, as they say—and I’d never felt more alive. It was like kissing his boot, like that first moment I’d been shot at in the trees—the whole world came to life, the forest thrumming and the leaves rustling and my blood and heart all part of this incredible symphony of magic and music that was playing all the time, if only I had the ears to listen. Being with Ash was like my battle high, the fragility of life so apparent, the thrill of surviving it so exhilarating. Surviving him.

“Take it,” I said, my fantasies from all those years ago coming back and making me stir underneath him.

“What?” he asked quietly.

“Take what you’re owed. Take what you deserve for saving my life.”

His lips parted, his eyes hooded, and he pulled my head back even more, exposing my throat. “And what exactly do you owe me?” he asked. “What exactly do I deserve?”

I met his eyes, which were almost black in the dark. “Whatever you want.”

“What I want will have you flat on the ground with tears in your eyes. You think you want to give that to me?”

“No.” I swallowed. “I want you to take it from me.”

He went still.

“Let me thank you,” I begged. “Let me make you feel better. Use me. Use me how you need.”