American Queen

What girl wouldn’t have fallen in love with those two?

I touch my fingertips to the glass, as if I could touch both of those men at the same time, and even just the thought of that, of touching Embry and Ash at the same time, makes me light-headed.

Be careful, I caution myself. If you do this thing with Ash, there will be no escaping Embry either. You’ll be playing with fire.

“That was after the village of Caledonia,” Ash says from behind me. “The one where Embry was injured and I had to carry him out.”

Trying not to act startled, I drop my hand, still feeling the cool glass against my fingertips. “Were you friends before then?”

“Yes. But after that, we became much more than friends. Like brothers.”

I turn just as Ash’s hands slide up my bare arms, warm and large and slightly rough.

“I’m glad you got in that car,” he says, ducking his head to meet my eyes. “I was a little worried you’d change your mind.”

“I was worried you’d change your mind,” I tell him. “This is still so surreal to me.”

“That I want to spend time with you?”

“That you remember me at all.”

He gives me one of his smiles, the kind where his eyes crinkle up and his face opens into an expression of unimaginable warmth and joy. I’m reminded forcefully of Embry. Maybe the pair are only brothers in the emotional sense and not the biological, but they share the same weather-beaten, mischievous smile, and that smile is enough to get me to agree to anything.

“Don’t move,” Ash says, and he disappears into his bedroom. He returns with a small wooden box. “Have a seat.” He gestures towards the end of the room.

Thinking he means the sofa by the window, I move towards it, but he corrects me, and when he does, there’s a change in his voice. It gets sterner somehow, and the effect on my body is immediate. “Sit on the desk, facing the chair.”

It’s a strange request, and there’s a moment when I want to ask why. But then I see the fire in his green eyes, the same fire I saw when I told him once upon a time that I liked the way he told me what to do with my body.

It’s a test, I realize. And what’s more, it’s a test I want to pass, a test I want to do. Listening to Ash feels as natural as breathing, and after only a breath of hesitation, I walk over to the desk and slide myself onto it, careful to keep my skirt from riding too far up my thighs.

I’m not sure what exactly I expect him to do, but when he comes and sits in the chair in front of me, it feels right. The way it’s supposed to be.

“Thank you for listening to me,” he says. He keeps his gaze on my face.

“I like listening,” I whisper.

“Do you?” he asks, setting the box in his lap and leaning back. “How much?”

“A lot,” I admit quietly. “It feels…natural…with you.”

A small smile. “I’ll tell you a secret: I like it when you listen. That feels natural to me too.”

I glance down at the box, wondering what could be inside. It’s about the right size for cigars, but Ash doesn’t strike me as much of a smoker. What else then? Something sexual? Condoms, maybe, or lube? Nipple clamps?

Ash notices my wary look. “Nothing in there will bite, I promise.”

So no nipple clamps then.

“Do you remember at the church?” he asks, changing the subject. “When I told you that I ask a lot from the people I care for?”

“I do.”

“I meant that in more ways than one. I’m busy, for one thing, often traveling and always stressed, and I—” he stops himself, searching for the right words.

I nudge his knee with my foot. “You won’t scare me away by being too direct. I promise.”

“To answer before listening is folly,” Ash quotes, shaking his head, and then sighs. “It took a long time for us to be alone in a room together. Part of me thinks I should enjoy it before I ruin it.”

“And the other part?”

His eyes darken. “The other part of me thinks you should be more nervous.”

I shiver. A good shiver, but a shiver nonetheless, and he doesn’t miss it, his eyes trailing from the pulse pounding in my throat to the goose bumps on my thighs. He looks at the wooden box a moment and then seems to make up his mind.

“We are going to have a conversation now,” he says, “among other things. And we can stop at any time.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“It’s hard to want to stop,” he says, running his fingers along the edge of the box. “It’s even harder to say the word when you know you should. Have you ever used a safe word?”

For that one whole time I had sex? I laugh out loud. “No.”

He doesn’t seem offended by my laughter. “Perhaps we should find one for you.”

“I don’t think I need a safe word for a conversation. Even a conversation with unspecified other things. And especially not with you.”

“You especially need one when you’re with me.” He says it calmly, evenly.

And then suddenly I believe him.

Despite that open, handsome face, despite the historic building I’m standing in and the elegant antique furniture all around us, I believe him. I can’t tell if it’s something in the cool way he says it or something in the flare of light in his eyes, or if it’s the remembered shards of that night, of the way he said good girl to me when I obeyed his order, or the way he licked the blood from my fingertip…