American Queen

After a few more thrusts into the silk, he slows, slumping back against the door, dropping the dress to the floor.

“Don’t you feel better now?” Ash asks. “Didn’t it feel good to get rid of that ache?”

Embry nods wordlessly, eyes still closed, pulse still hammering in his throat.

“Greer liked it too. Didn’t you, Greer?”

My cheeks flush red with shame but I answer honestly. “Yes, Sir.”

Embry tucks himself into his pants and fastens them up, running a hand over his jaw. He looks dazed, as if he’s just woken from a long sleep, his blue eyes unfocused and his voice uncertain when he says, “I’m going home now.”

“Good night, then.”

Embry looks at me and then looks at Ash, that dazed expression more pronounced than ever. “Good night.”

Ash moves his hand so Embry can open the door, and then Embry leaves, closing the door behind him. Ash stares at the door for a minute and then faces me, his face apologetic. “I’m sorry, angel. But I need your mouth again.” His hand is already on my head, forcing me to my knees, and his other hand digging out his cock, and he’s so hard already, viciously, violently hard.

Watching Embry made him hard, I realize. And the jolt of jealousy comes concurrent with the jolt of arousal.

Ash doesn’t go easy on my mouth, but before he comes, he pulls out and reaches down for me, picking me up easily in his arms and carrying me to the bed. He spreads my legs and drapes them over his shoulders, pressing his hot, skillful mouth against my pussy and devouring me. I come with his dark head and wide shoulders between my thighs, and then he’s straddling my chest, fucking my mouth to get his cock wet and then fucking my tits. When he finally comes, his hands savage and bruising as he pushes my breasts around his cock, it’s with something almost like a roar, like the orgasm is torn from him.

And later that night, I wake out of a deep sleep to find Ash wrapping my small hand around his throbbing erection. He closes his large hand over mine, guiding me to jack him off with short, hard pulls, the way men do it to themselves. The way men do it to other men. He comes with a quiet grunt, and after I clean him with a warm washcloth from the bathroom, he folds me into his arms and drifts off to sleep immediately, whatever monster he awoke within himself tonight finally, finally sated.

20

Six Weeks Later

The snow is falling thick and fast outside as Embry walks into the room with a bowl of fresh popcorn. “Can you explain this to me again?” he asks, setting the bowl down on the coffee table in front of Ash and me. “Is this like a Martha Stewart thing? Is this because cranberries are disgusting and serve no other purpose?”

Ash looks up from the cranberry and popcorn garland spilling out of his lap and around his feet, a needle poised in one hand. “Did your family really never do this?” he asks skeptically.

Embry arches an eyebrow at the mess of popcorn and cranberries and thread. “No.”

Ash goes back to his work, reaching into the bowl of warm popcorn to thread another piece onto his garland. “I suppose you and Morgan had servants to decorate your family Christmas tree.”

“Actually,” Embry says, “we did. The trees were too big for us to put up ourselves, and the one in the main hall had to be decorated using scaffolding.”

“Sounds like it would have taken a lot of popcorn,” I comment, not looking up from my own garland.

“The hidden costs of wealth,” Ash remarks drily.

“We did have the mistletoe, though,” Embry says. I glance up at the doorway where our own bunch of mistletoe hangs; Ash insisted on putting it up there the minute we got to the lodge, and then kissed me for several long, sweet minutes underneath it as Embry watched with a troubled expression and his hands in his pockets.

“We need someone to kiss you under the mistletoe, Embry,” I say.

“I agree,” he replies. “Maybe one of the Secret Service agents will be lonely later tonight.”

We all laugh, but a wave of sadness goes through me for Embry. The perennial third wheel.

I’d kiss you if I could, I wish I could say. Maybe he already knows.

Embry grabs a handful of popcorn for himself and throws his body onto a low sofa nearby, and for a few minutes, there’s only the sound of the fire in the fireplace and the snow against the windows and the rustle of popcorn in the bowl. Then I ask Ash, “Have you heard from Kay about the Carpathian treaty yet?”

He shakes his head. “I told her to give it a rest tonight. There’s no point in her spending her holiday chasing down senators who are ready to enjoy theirs.”

It’s Christmas Eve, and Ash, Embry and I are at Camp David. Kay and Ash’s mother are coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow night, but for now, it’s just us and the Secret Service. Even the nation is quiet right now—there have only been a handful of texts from Kay and Belvedere since we got here this morning. Ash and his staff have been working hard to get Senatorial advice and consent for the new Carpathian treaty, in the hopes of having it inked and signed before spring comes and a land offensive from the Carpathians becomes possible. Other than the work on the treaty, it’s been a quiet December. Quiet for the three of us as well—six weeks have passed without a repeat of what happened between us the night of the State Dinner. We haven’t even talked about it.

But even without talking about it, something seems to have shifted. Embry—widely famous for having a different date for every event—still has a new woman on his arm almost every night, and there are times he comes into the Oval Office or the Residence with swollen lips and tousled hair, smelling like sex. Knowing he’s fucking other women—and lots of them—hurts a secret corner of me that I refuse to let anyone see, but it’s a secret corner that’s used to it. During the campaign especially, Embry’s playboy status was a running joke among pundits, and unlike Ash, he’s never brought up his sexual history to me, never made me any promises, and he doesn’t have to, because we aren’t together. I have no claim to his sex life, and I’ve accepted that, even though it stings.