American Queen

“What happened?” I ask, as caught up as I would be if I didn’t know the end of the story.

“I got shot,” Embry says with an unhappy shrug. “Ash wanted to be the last one down the shaft, and I refused to let him wait alone, and then the Carpathians began shooting their way into the building. Ash called for the troops downstairs to take their chance and escape into the forest, and then told me to get down there. I wouldn’t, not without him, and then the Carpathians appeared. I got a bullet to the knee and another in the shoulder—which meant no climbing down the elevator shaft. Ash pushed me behind him and fought off the Carpathians until I could crawl to the stairwell. And then…well, I suppose you know the rest. While I was a useless pile on the floor, Ash managed to keep the Carpathians off of us long enough to discover an outside exit on the ground floor. He carried me out and we managed to get to the forest.”

I relax a little, and then remember my original question. “But what does this have to do with you and Ash being together?”

Embry glances away from me, not out of avoidance or embarrassment, but as if he’s searching for the right words to explain something. “There’s kind of a…high…from fighting like that. Cheating death. It’s the adrenaline, I think. For some people, it slows them down, makes them dazed. But not Ash. It makes him restless. It—it makes his blood hot.”

Dark spots of color appear high on Embry’s cheekbones, and I realize that he’s blushing. He’s also gone someplace deep inside himself, remembering something that makes him lick his lips. “Embry?”

His gaze snaps back to mine, his eyes going clear again but his cheeks still flushed. “He saved my life. I wanted to show him how grateful I was.”

“Oh,” I say softly, feeling my own cheeks warm as I imagine the scene. Blood and torn fabric and Ash’s hard body pressing Embry’s into the ground. “Did you fuck each other?”

“He fucked me. A few times. Once wasn’t enough to calm him down.” A harsh laugh, but the harshness isn’t only bitterness, it’s need and sarcasm and regret. “He screwed Morgan a few years before that and then he screwed me. Like Brideshead Revisited in reverse. Except we make the Marchmains look like the fucking Brady Bunch.”

“Did you like it?” I ask a little breathlessly. I don’t know why I need to ask, why I need to know, but I do, I do. “Did you come?”

“Would you believe I came as many times as he did? With a shattered knee and a bullet in my shoulder and morphine burning through my blood? The first time I came almost immediately, rubbing against the rucksack he’d bent me over. And when we got to base…it kept going for a while. A couple years. And then he met Jenny…” A long breath. “And then after Jenny died…”

My mouth goes dry. “You fucked after Jenny died?”

“Several times. Until this fall. That’s when we stopped again.”

“But he told me…” Tears burn at my eyelids “He lied to me. He said that he hadn’t been with anyone since Jenny died.”

“Did he say that, or—” Embry’s voice is careful “—did he say that he hadn’t been with any women?”

I try to find my breath again, but it’s somewhere down at my feet. “Yes. That. No women.”

Embry searches my eyes. “Are you upset?”

“That you slept together? Or that you guys have been on and off again for nearly a decade and I had no idea?”

“Either. Both.”

“I’m angry that you and Ash haven’t told me about your history. I’m torn apart with jealousy to think you two have been wanting each other while I’ve been here.” I lower my voice. “And I’m shaking with how hot it makes me to think about the two of you together. I wish I could have seen it. I wish I could have been there, taking you in my mouth while he fucked you. I wish I could have seen his face as he came.”

“Jesus, Greer.”

The stark arousal in Embry’s voice is ragged and hungry, and I’m trying to fight off my own hungry reaction. But I can’t—not entirely. I make sure to press against Embry as the dance brings us closer, confirming what I suspected: he’s rock hard.

He gives a soft, surprised grunt as my body grazes his erection, and his eyes are hazy once more. “You guys do that to me and it’s so confusing.”

“Do what?”

“You—you mix up my feelings for you and Ash. I get hard thinking about him, and then you touch me. Or I’m aching at Camp David listening to you scream for him, but then he’s the one who comes out and kisses me. I can’t keep track of what or whom I want any more. I just…want.”

I grip his tuxedo lapel, both excited and a little frightened that he’s just articulated something I haven’t been able to articulate for myself. “That’s what’s happened to me.”

Those aristocratic eyebrows rise in happy astonishment. “Really?”

“Really. From the beginning, even, I couldn’t separate wanting you from wanting him. When we had sex in Chicago…well, part of the reason I did it was because I was hurting so much about Ash.”

“Me too,” he confesses.

I look at him in confusion, and then I remember that night on the Ferris wheel, his broken voice.

They aren’t my someone. No matter how much I plead, no matter how much—how much I give of myself.