“You might regret those words, loverboy,” she croons in a singsong voice, and then she steps out onto the veranda, and I slam the door shut behind her.

I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes, barely able to stand I’m so drunk and tired. How the fuck do I get into these messes? Why is it always me who’s asked to give give give until I have nothing left?

Never one to turn back on a bad decision, I go into the living room and polish off the last glass of scotch, and then wander upstairs to tumble into bed. I don’t even take off my shoes. My last thought before I slip under the dark, drunk waves is of Greer and the way the light glinted off her white-gold hair as I broke her heart in the Oval Office.

I dream then. I dream dark, sweaty dreams of Greer and Ash, Ash holding Greer open for me, the wet welcome of her as she hugs me tight to her body. In my dream, she murmurs that she loves me, that she forgives me, that she’ll let me inside her whenever I need it. Please, I beg dream-Greer, please make it feel better. Let me come inside you.

The dream grinds on, flesh and fucking and the kinds of things one doesn’t admit to in their right mind, and in my dream, I come over and over and over again as Greer cries out my name, Embry, Embry, Embry…

“Embry,” a female voice coaxes. “Embry, wake up. Your alarm.”

I open my eyes to powerful morning sunlight slanting through the room and sheets tangled around my body. I’m clammy and dehydrated and naked and—

Quills of panic pierce my awakening brain.

Abilene is next to me. Also naked.

I reach over and turn off my alarm and then look at her. Really look at her.

“We didn’t.” But my voice is as uncertain as my mind right now. Those dreams were so vivid and I was so fucked up from the scotch, although three glasses isn’t actually that much for me…

I look at her some more. The tousled red hair, her pale, freckled skin.

“What do you think we did?” she asks coyly.

“I told you to leave. I watched you leave.”

“And maybe I was worried about you after you drank that much. Maybe I wanted to come back in and make sure you got to bed safely. And then you were so needy, Embry, so desperate. ‘Please make it feel better,’ you said. ‘Let me come inside you.’”

The clamminess has turned into real chills. My dream—my drunken dream—could I have really fucked Abilene and not known it? I’m frozen with disgust at the idea, it crawls all over me like bugs on a coffin lid. I want to scratch my skin off, I want to burn every thought out of my brain, I want—

“You spiked my scotch bottle,” I realize, another part of my mind shoving the shame and guilt aside to tell me what I should have seen. “My door was unlocked when I got home. I never get that messed up after only a few glasses. Christ, Abilene. What the fuck?”

She’s already sliding out of bed, not bothering to cover herself up. “Well, it would be impossible to prove now that the bottle is gone. A blood test might show the presence of GHB, along with a few other choice drugs—just the kind of thing to make a man semi-conscious but still able to achieve a—” she gives me a grin that makes me want to tear down the walls with my bare hands “—very impressive erection. But would you look at this?” She wanders over to the mantel of the small fireplace in my bedroom. A few orange bottles are lined up neatly along the edge. “It looks like you have prescriptions for all of them.”

She tosses a bottle to me. GHB, for night terrors related to PTSD, the label says. I’ve never been prescribed this drug and yet it has my name on it, my doctor’s name on it, and I bet if I pushed even deeper, there would be records of that prescription everywhere.

“You got to the White House doctor?”

“Let’s just say that event planning allows me to meet a broad range of people.”

“Just—” I look down at the bottle, at my hands, at my bare thighs. “Tell me the truth. Did we fuck last night?”

“I’ve been dying to fuck you since I started this. Use your head, loverboy. Why would I go to all this trouble if I wasn’t going to fuck you?”

I suppose she had a point. This required a level of forethought and blackmailing above and beyond a simple lie.

“I hate you,” I say, and my voice is calmer now, settled. “For blackmailing all of us, for tricking me, for hurting Greer. It’s unforgivable.”

“Forgiveness is overrated. Satisfaction is where it’s at.” Abilene pulls her dress over her head and slips into her heels, looking fresh and pert and not at all like the clicking metal beast she is. She pauses at the door on her way out. “And Embry, one thing I forgot to mention. I’m not on birth control.”

I let out a long breath. Of course she isn’t. Of course.

She blows me a kiss. “I’ll be in touch.”

24

Greer

after

six weeks later

When I found out I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t tell Ash for three days.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of his reaction or that I didn’t want his support—more that I needed to process how I felt first before I shared with anyone else. It’s such a private thing, babies and the absence of them—a lonely, personal thing. My feelings were a layer cake of grief and relief and hopes dead before they could really bloom.

I had to face it: despite the questionable wisdom of it, despite the newness of our marriage, despite Embry’s treachery with Abilene, I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted the baby to belong to my men. I wanted it not because Merlin suggested it for Ash’s campaign branding, but because I loved Ash and Embry so fiercely that sometimes it seemed like that love had a life and vitality outside of myself. And that love called to pregnancy like a moon called to tides, in dark, watery ways that were slow and fast all at once.