American Queen

“Girls,” Grandpa Leo greeted fondly as we walked into the penthouse suite after a sweltering drive from the airport to the hotel.

We ran to him and hugged him like we were seven years old instead of twenty, exclaiming over his bald head and bushy beard and thin face.

“You need to eat more, Grandpa!”

“You need to shave!”

He waved us off like we were fussy saleswomen. “I’m fine. And I hear that the beard thing is in for women right now. Is that not true?”

Abilene and I wrinkled our noses and he laughed. “Well, never mind then. Consider it shaved. I have to head out for lunch with some old friends—do you girls want to tag along?”

“I’m going to take a nap,” Abilene declared. She flopped dramatically onto the hotel suite’s couch, as if she’d been traveling all day instead of riding on a plane for an hour.

Grandpa looked over at me. “Well, Greer? You know I always like to have you and your eyes with me at these kinds of things.”

I was tempted to stay at the hotel too, but I knew Abilene would make good on her threat to nap, and I had no desire to knock around more empty rooms alone. It’s why I came to America for the summer, after all, for conversation and connection, and as much as I wanted to spend time with my cousin, I wanted to escape my thoughts more.

“Of course I’ll come,” I said.

Grandpa beamed at me. “I’ll grab my briefcase and then we can go.”

Abilene pretended to snore, and when I went over to give her a hug goodbye, she kept her eyes closed in fake-sleep. “Don’t get into any trouble without me,” she said. Her long dark eyelashes rested prettily on her freckled cheeks, a ginger Sleeping Beauty.

I poked at her side. “You are pretty much the only reason I’ve ever been in trouble.”

She smiled then, a cat’s smile, eyes still closed. “That’s what I’m saying—I want to be there for any trouble you find.”

“At a lunch with Grandpa? Hardly likely.”

She yawned for real, settling on her side. “Still, though. Share any cute boys you meet.”

Lunch was at a well-lit, modern cafe inside the Chicago Art Institute, and it was the usual handful of politicians and businesspeople discussing election cycles and policy. Grandpa Leo, sober for thirty years, automatically slid me the wine the waiter poured for him without asking.

I listened politely, white wine bright and crisp on my tongue, watching everyone’s faces and gauging their tones, dutifully recording mental notes to report to Grandpa later. Half my mind had already drifted back to Cambridge, back to the classes I’d enrolled in for the next session, back to the beaten, dog-eared books stacked next to my air mattress in my grimy little flat.

Until I heard Merlin’s name from someone at the table.

My head snapped up in alarm, and sure enough, Merlin Rhys himself was strolling up to the table, tall and dark-eyed and clean-shaven, his expression open and more amiable than I’d ever seen it. Until his gaze slid over to me, that is, and then the openness faded, leaving something tiredly resigned in the lines of his face. I could see it clear as day: he hadn’t known I’d be here and he didn’t want me here, for whatever reason.

I ducked my head with embarrassment, even though I’d done nothing wrong.

Why didn’t I stay at the hotel? I berated myself. If I’d known for one second that Merlin would show up…

“Sorry we’re late,” came an easy, deep voice from behind Merlin. My heart stopped.

The world bled away.

And there was only Maxen Colchester.

Four years older and painfully more good-looking, post-tour-of-duty scruff highlighting the strong lines of his cheeks and jaw, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of low-waisted slacks that emphasized how ridiculously trim and lean his body was. He folded his soldier’s frame into a chair next to Merlin, the elegant table setting in front of him doing nothing to diminish the sense of raw power and strength radiating from his body. I’d forgotten, somehow, what that power and strength felt like in person.

It felt like drowning.

Tell me, Greer, do you like my lips on your skin?

Yes.

I believe you. That’s why you’re so dangerous.

My fingers curled around the stem of my wineglass, and I forced myself to focus on it, on the way the glass felt on my skin. Smooth and whole, not at all like the jagged shards and splinters I’d cradled in my hands the night I met Ash. All these years, I’d told myself I didn’t care about Ash, wasn’t haunted by our kiss. I’d wanted to be sophisticated, the kind of aloof girl who kissed men like Ash and then forgot all about it. I wanted to be different than Abilene with her fan forums and obsessive fantasizing, I wanted to be wise and worldly and apart from such schoolgirl crushes.

But I couldn’t pretend that any longer. Not when faced with warm-blooded, green-eyed reality of him.

Right now, I was the Greer who’d written those embarrassingly honest emails, the Greer who’d melted into his touch, who’d shivered as he licked her blood from her skin. Right now, I was a vessel of pooling want, I was ready to be whatever he wanted me to be, ready to crawl into his veins and make him mine. I was eager and humiliated and yearning and mortified, and I knew the absolute truth in that moment—I was in love with Maxen Colchester. It was foolish and silly and absurd—nothing could be more unworldly and unsophisticated—but somehow, terribly and incredibly, it was true.