American Queen

I leaned my head back against headrest of the seat and concluded, “I’m disgusted with myself.”

Embry’s hand left mine, and for a painful second I wondered if I’d disgusted him too, if something about my story conveyed neediness or clinginess or delusion, but then he was on the floor of the car kneeling in between my legs and taking both my hands in his. The car had a glass floor, and beneath Embry’s blue-clad knees, I could see the dizzying spin of the carousel far below, the tiny toy-people moving and shopping and eating like miniature dolls in a miniature dollhouse.

Embry moved my hands to his face, and I needed no encouragement to slide my hands over the carved lines of his jaw and cheekbones, to run my fingers over the strong ridge of his straight nose and up the swell of his proud forehead. My hands roamed through his sandy-brown hair, thick and soft, almost curly, and then down to his neck, where I stroked the warm skin along his collar.

“Sweet Greer,” he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning his head against my knee. “I’m disgusted with myself too.”

My hands paused as I absorbed his words.

“I know exactly how you feel. There’s a someone for me—they’ve been a someone for me for years—but they aren’t my someone. No matter how much I plead, no matter how much—” his breath catches “—how much I give of myself. I’m wrecked with it, so much that I think it’s never possible I’ll find another someone and I’m doomed to be miserable forever.”

My fingers resumed their stroking, my heart breaking for him and for me and for both of us, and then he caught my wrists and gave the inside of each one a gentle kiss. On the second one, I felt the faintest flicker of his tongue, right over the blueish veins, and something deep inside my body clenched. I was the girl who’d written those emails once again, the girl who wanted bad, who wanted wrong, and wanted it in the most soul-thrumming, reckless ways possible.

“I don’t want to be miserable tonight,” I whispered, and Embry lifted his head, his blue eyes unreadable in the shadows. “I don’t want to feel doomed or disgusted. I don’t want to think about him.”

“I can do that for you,” he said, his voice low. “If you ask me.”

Everything smelled like him in that moment. Pepper and lemon and promise.

The brave Greer spoke for me. “Then do it.”

Ash would have hesitated, not out of disinterest, but out of caution, out of a need to establish consent and boundaries, because Ash was—is—a self-aware monster. Acutely aware of the marks he would leave on his lovers’ souls and bodies, of exactly how dangerous he was.

Embry didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ask for clarification, for hard limits, for a safe word. He didn’t ask what I needed in bed or what I wanted, how many people I’d been with, whether I wanted him with a condom or bare. He left all of those questions unanswered, unasked, and with a searing kiss, showed me the thrilling joy of abandoning safety and leaping feet-first into passion. I kissed him back, not forgetting Merlin’s chains, but intentionally throwing them off, intentionally abandoning them.

I wouldn’t keep my kisses to myself, I’d give them to Embry instead.

And damn the consequences.

When the Ferris wheel landed, we were already rumpled and breathless, and when we finally got a cab, there was no keeping our hands off each other. I had never made out with someone, and at any rate, my last kiss had been over four years ago, and so the experience was intoxicating. The way Embry breathed against my mouth, those tiny stitches of breath when my hands found someplace new, the tiny growls when I opened for him—my lips and arms and legs—heedless of the cabbie in the front seat.

We hurriedly paid the driver, and then Embry fairly yanked me out of the cab, pulling me through his hotel lobby so fast that my feet unexpectedly skipped into tiny jogs to keep up. And then the elevator doors closed and I was pinned against the wall, my legs around his waist and his erection right against my center, his mouth open and hot against my neck and collarbone. All the times I’d fingered myself, gotten myself off with vibrators, none of it could compare to the actual sensation of having a willing, eager male between my legs. The sensation of narrow hips shoving against me mindlessly seeking relief, hands cruelly yanking down my dress and bra cup, the sight of a man’s head ducked against my breast, nuzzling and biting and sucking.

And then the doors opened.

Once again, I was yanked along, and since the hallway was empty, I didn’t bother pulling down my dress, didn’t bother readjusting my bra. Instead, I stood behind him as he fumbled for his hotel keycard, skirt rucked up, hair tousled, breast exposed, begging him in a wild, impatient chant, “Hurry, hurry, hurry…” And when he looked back and saw me exposed and whining with need, he gave an almighty groan. The door snicked and unlocked, and he turned the handle and pulled me inside the dark room, lit only by the skyline outside the window.

He’d pulled so hard that I stumbled as I crossed the threshold, but it didn’t matter, because he caught me and swung me into his arms, carrying me straight to the bed. He stood over me, stripping off his shirt and vest and blazer, not even waiting to toe off his shoes before he lowered his body over mine. I heard the shoes clunk, one by one, onto the floor, heard the slow creak of my leather jacket as he bracketed my body with his forearms, heard the hitch in his breath as our bodies met, heard my answering moan as he roughly kneed my legs apart and ground his erection against me.