Although the way he tilts his head and studies me is very civilized. Very calm. “Stand by the bed.”

“I don’t want to play games right now,” I say sullenly.

“This isn’t a fucking game. Stand by the bed.”

I narrow my eyes at him, my complicated feelings shifting into one primary one: anger.

“Fuck off.”

“Fuck off isn’t your safe word, angel. You can be furious with me, you can say whatever you want, but unless you say Maxen, nothing changes.” He points to the side of the bed. His cock is fully hard now. “Do as you’re told.”

I chew on the inside of my mouth. I glare at him. How the fuck dare he, after what I’ve been through? After what was done to me? The anger snaps me out of my hollow confusion, peels away the dissociative sadness, and I get off the bed and stand next to it, making as big of a mess of the blankets as possible, making my body as unavailable as possible by facing away from him and crossing my arms over my chest.

I hear a small chuckle, as if my tantrum is cute, and not a real expression of a grown woman’s feelings. I spin around to glare at him, but I’m stopped short by his face, which is folded in a smile of pure, adoring love. “You’re a spoiled princess,” he tells me as he winds his fists in the blankets. “I can’t wait to punish you for it.”

I open my mouth to—well, I don’t even know. To tell him what a bastard he is, what an insensitive fucking asshole. To tell him how strange the abduction feels in my mind, like wearing a cloak of nettles. Move one way and your whole body is stung. Move another and you’re saved from the sharp ends, but knowing it’s only a matter of time before you’re stung again. It’s both feeling and the absence of feeling all in the space of microseconds.

Except when I’m about to say it all, I realize it’s not quite true, at least not right now. My fury at Ash has pushed the memory Melwas back—not far—but enough that I can live and breathe in this moment without the last few days constantly pulling on my thoughts.

Ash ignores me, or at least pretends to, winding the blankets around his hand one more time and yanking them easily off the bed. Next comes the sheet, which is harder, since it’s wrapped around Embry’s hips. But he’s strong, the muscles in his chest and arm flexing as he pulls, and I keep my arms crossed over my breasts to hide how tight my nipples have grown at the sight of that body at work.

Embry’s eyes flutter open and he groans as he rolls over onto his stomach. “I don’t want to go to school, Ma,” he says into the pillow, his voice muffled.

“I can’t decide how I feel about being called your mother,” Ash says dryly.

“You should feel bad about it,” Embry says into the pillow. “She’s mean. Just like you.”

It’s enough to make me smile, the tiniest bit. Enough to make me relax my shoulders.

Ash smacks Embry’s bare ass, playfully, but it leaves a bright red handprint. “It’s time to wake up, Patroclus.”

“Patroclus?” I ask.

Embry rolls over onto his back with a sigh. “Ash thinks we belong in an ancient Greek epic about wife-robbing.”

“To be fair,” Ash says, climbing off the bed, “I didn’t realize how prophetic that would be.”

Embry sits up. “Scoff.”

Ash pauses, arching an eyebrow, saying nothing.

“That’s right, I scoffed at you,” Embry says with dignity. “You chose it because you liked the idea of being the mighty Achilles and me your fucktoy.”

“You know that Plato’s Symposium says that Achilles is the fucktoy, right?”

“Scoff again,” Embry scoffs again. “You quoted Aeschylus to me the first time you kissed me. Not Plato.”

I’m truly smiling now, despite everything, and I have to remember I’m angry. Trying to display that anger. With some difficulty, I muster up a frown again.

Ash delivers a dramatic sigh. “Does it matter?”

“You were the one who brought it up.”

Embry glances over at me, and his fake-scoffing disappears. “Greer,” he says, in a voice that lets me know he can see all sorts of things I don’t want him to see.

“Right,” Ash says, all business once again. “Embry, I need your help.”

Embry looks at me once more, eyes a stirring wildflower blue, and then he looks back at Ash. “Anything.”

Ash walks over to the chair in the corner—not the stuffed one, but the wooden desk chair with no arms. It’s an old chair, one of those things that somehow survived the Eisenhower administration, but the moment Ash sits in it, it becomes a throne. Solomon waiting to dispense wisdom. Even his nakedness makes him more regal somehow, more honestly powerful.

He snaps his fingers. The six months leading up to our wedding, the scenes we performed, the grooming, the delicious, loving preparation—it overrides everything. I’m over to him within the space of a second, on my knees with my arms boxed behind my back and my head down in the next. There’s no time for anger—in a way, not even room for it. He snaps, I obey. And the moment my knees touch the floor, the nettle cloak is lifted somewhat. No one can hurt me here at Ash’s feet. More importantly, I can’t hurt myself. Not with thoughts or feelings or memories. At his feet, I am His.

I serve at the pleasure of the President.

“Safe word?” he asks, a signal that things are about to get uncomfortable.