American Queen

“I don’t feel that way at all,” I murmur, and the brush starts back through my hair again.

The brush is replaced by his fingers, running through the tresses over and over again, smoothing and separating and smoothing them again, like a hand moving through running water. It’s impossible to describe being touched like this when no man or woman has ever touched me this way before. When I was a child, I was touched with a parent’s or grandparent’s love, and when I was a teenager, there had been the inevitable tickles and snuggles with my best friend and cousin. But I’ve never been touched as a woman by another adult this way—with reverence and care. With sex still hovering in the air. It thrills me and unnerves me at the same time, because what if it ends? I’m not a woman of low self-esteem, but how can I possibly be worthy of the love of a man like Ash? What will happen if he realizes this?

“I know I probably haven’t earned this privilege,” Ash says after several long moments of stroking my hair, “and that it will mean that things will change, but I would love it if you spent the night with me. If you slept—and I mean that literally—in my bed with me.”

“How will things change?” I ask.

“There’s a chance the press will see you leave. There’s a chance a staffer will recognize you as you exit the Residence. There’s a chance I’ll be doodling your name on every bill I sign tomorrow.”

I can’t stifle my girlish grin at that, and I’m glad he can’t see my face. I take a minute to think. After what we shared, after learning about the emails—it hasn’t shrunk my fears about delving back into this life, but the fears are put in perspective. Ash is worth it. The Greer I used to be is worth it.

As my answer, I turn to face him. “We could do more than literally sleep, you know.”

A reproachful tap of the brush on my upper arm. “Don’t tempt me. I think we’ve committed enough sins for one night.”

Vulnerability must have flashed in my eyes, because before I know it, I’m being raised to my feet and kissed deeply. Ash’s tongue slides against my own, his lips firm, and his hands are sliding up my back to find my zipper. He tugs it down, and soon I’m standing in a pool of blue cotton, wearing nothing but my panties and bra. Ash pulls back with a smile and takes my hand to press against the front of his still-unbuckled pants.

“See?” he asks as I wrap my fingers around the thick erection I find there. “Trust me, Greer, there’s hardly anything I want more than to throw you onto my bed and rut into you until I’m too tired to move. But I’ve waited so long to have you here…” He reaches out and twines a strand of gold hair around his finger. “I want to take my time. I know that sounds horribly old-fashioned, but we only get to have these first times together once. I want to savor them.”

That touches me, strangely. I want to savor these times too, although the idea of waiting for them is almost unbearable. “I guess when you put it like that, it’s hard to argue with.”

“I’m hard to argue with,” he informs me. “That’s why I’m the President.”

He scoops me up into his arms with a sudden movement, carrying me to his bedroom, and I let out a stream of giggles like bubbles underwater. Each one seems to light up his face more and more until he’s practically glowing as he sets me down on the bed. “You have the most incredible laugh,” he says, dropping a kiss onto my waiting lips. He walks over to his dresser and retrieves a plain white T-shirt for me to put on. “Has anybody ever told you that?”

“Only you.”

He sighs at that, the idea of being an only or a first for me seeming to please something deep inside of him, and when our fingers brush as he hands me the T-shirt, I resist the urge to grab his tie and pull him to me so we can get started on some other firsts.

He returns to the dresser and removes his tie bar and cuff links, dropping them slowly into a dish inside his top drawer. His handsome face turns uncertain. “Greer…if this—if us spending the night together, is too much, I want you to tell me. I know I can be controlling, and sometimes I forget to ask people how they feel before I demand to have my way. It’s probably a good quality for a soldier or president, but it’s not necessarily a good one for a lover. That’s one of the reasons your emails had such an impact on me—even before I knew who I was and what I wanted, you seemed to know exactly what you wanted. You wanted to have done to you the kinds of things I wanted to do to you, and it made me feel like…maybe…” He pauses, does the thing where he rubs at his forehead with his thumb. It’s sweet, somehow, seeing this famous orator, the President famed for his certainty and surety, at a loss for words. For me.

I stand up, still in my bra and panties, clutching the shirt in my hand. I go to him and hand him the shirt, and then turn back to face the bed. He understands immediately, his strong hands unfastening my bra hook by book.

“I still want those things,” I tell him. I look at him over my shoulder. “I want you to do them to me. Do you remember what I asked you in my last email?”

He lets out the kind of breath that tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them.”

The bra is loose, and I turn to face him again, letting it fall from my shoulders and onto the floor. His eyes darken into the deepest green at the sight of my naked breasts. “That hasn’t changed,” I whisper. “If anything, it’s truer today than it was then. I promise to tell you everything—even when I think you won’t like what I have to say—but I want you to know that it’s not too much. I know it’s fast right now, but we’ve also had ten years leading up to this. And even though I told myself I was over you, past that time in my life, I think without knowing it that I’ve been waiting for you all along.” I brush my fingers along his jaw, and he closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m ready to stop waiting.”