American Queen

I’m about to exhale with relief when he admits, “But we have been sexual together since then.”

There’s that jealousy knifing between my ribs again. “And when was the last time you were ‘sexual’ together?”

His eyes find mine in the dim light of the dining room, green and intensely apologetic. “A month ago.”

“A month ago?” I repeat. I want to rip myself out of his arms, I want to storm away, but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. There are too many eyes watching, too many reputations at stake, and besides, I don’t get to have any claim on Ash’s sexual history. Any claim on what he did before we kissed at St. Thomas Becket.

Ash holds me tighter, leaning his head in close. Goddamn him for being so fucking handsome right now, all chiseled planes and full lips. It makes it impossible for me to pull away, to ignore him.

“After Jenny died,” he says in a low voice, “I was in a bad place. The cancer came on so fast—she was diagnosed and then two weeks later she was dead—and there was no time to grieve or to process and there was still this campaign to run. This campaign I didn’t even want to run any longer. After the funeral, I felt like an imposter in my own life. Like I’d woken up in another man’s body. I didn’t see myself in the mirror. I couldn’t hear my own voice. I would be fastening my cufflinks and then realize I didn’t recognize my own hands. They felt like puppet hands. Like some sort of clever wooden machine and not flesh and blood.”

It’s the first time he’s really talked about Jenny to me, and my heart is rupturing for him, for that Ash of last year who felt so alien and adrift. I squeeze his neck and he sighs into it, as if the gesture comforts him.

“Morgan and I had encountered each other countless times since that week we were together. She’s my best friend’s stepsister and a powerful senator on the Armed Services Committee…our worlds collided a lot. And a week after Jenny died, our worlds collided again. Merlin had coaxed me back on the campaign trail, a stump speech in Virginia—it should have been easy. A message I’d been touting for a year in a state that loves the military. And I fucked it up. I stumbled and stuttered, and it was fine that time—everyone was so eager to give me the grieving husband pass—but it wouldn’t be fine for long. And I knew it, I knew if I couldn’t get my shit together, I would lose, so matter how many pictures were tweeted of me laying roses on Jenny’s grave.

“I went home that night planning to get drunk. And I decided the next day I’d call Merlin and tell him it was over. I would withdraw. It had been a pipe dream anyway, to run on a third party ticket, and there was no way I could win like this. Like…a shell. A ghost.”

“But you didn’t call him,” I murmur. “What changed your mind?”

His eyes are pinned to mine. “Morgan.”

Ugh. Knife. Ribs. Ugly, ugly pain.

“She showed up at my door that night. We hadn’t exchanged civil words in fourteen years, and yet there she was. ‘I know what you need,’ she said, ‘and you need to come with me.’ I was too hollow to fight her. She said she was taking me out for a drink, but we went somewhere else. I guess you could call it a dungeon or a sex club.”

He pauses his story to smile at my stunned expression. “For a self-admitted submissive, angel, you seem pretty shocked by the idea of a sex club.”

“No, no,” I rush to downplay my surprise. “That’s totally cool. I’m sure lots of people do that and go places like that and stuff…” I stop babbling, realizing how ridiculous I sound.

A small laugh. “It’s easy to forget,” he murmurs, “how young you are. How little experience you have. It’s okay to be shocked. It’s okay to be curious or afraid or even disturbed. I only ask that you listen with an open mind, and try to understand what I was going through then.”

He takes a deep breath to continue. “I’d known for a long time that my tastes in bed ran a little…extreme. It had always been there, I suppose, but the war—” he closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them again “—the war made it necessary. It grew and grew and became impossible to ignore, a need that felt like fire in my veins, and I couldn’t douse the flames of it. I couldn’t cut it out of me, no matter how hard I tried. And I tried. With Jenny, I tried for years. She wasn’t like you, Greer, not in the least. She loved me so much and wanted to please me, but I could see her wincing whenever I accidentally got too rough, could see how unresponsive her body was to anything other than tenderness. I loved her, Greer. I gave her tenderness, as best as I could, and then after she fell asleep at night, I’d lie awake and think of you.” A shadow crosses his face. “I’m not proud of that. But it was like the more I tried to fight it, the stronger the need became, the more elaborate the fantasies grew. I’d think about venting my frustration on you. All the things I couldn’t do to my wife—in my mind, I did a thousand times to you. Bit you, spanked you, ropes, whips, lube. And in my fantasies, you’d thank me. Covered in welts and my cum, with makeup smeared on your face, you’d thank me. And then I’d fuck you again.”

“Jesus Christ, Ash,” I say, my breath coming fast.

“Too much?” he asks, brow furrowed with concern.

“Can we leave the dinner? I want you to do all that to me right now.”

A little pinch at my waist. “Behave. I’m confessing to you what a terrible husband I was to Jenny, and if you’re smart, you’ll rethink attaching yourself to me.”