American Queen

My eyes flutter open to find him staring intently at me, those blue eyes glacial with pain. My gaze drops down to his mouth, where his lips are parted ever so slightly, as if he has to catch his breath.

I can’t stop staring at them, those firm, straight lips with their barely-there tilt at the corners, the tilt that can turn from a smirk to a sneer to a smile, depending on Embry’s mercurial moods. I want those lips. I want them against my mouth, I want them pressed to my throat, I want them between my legs. I want his lips and his hands and his cock, and I want him to rip off my wedding dress and do what his searing stare promises and fuck me. Ash be damned.

Except…

Except I love Ash. Except I promised him I wouldn’t touch Embry until the three of us had finally talked.

I suck in a breath and take a step back. It’s too dangerous, Embry here and my heart so twisted in knots. Embry notices my step back, and his eyebrows draw together the tiniest amount, confusion and hurt simmering under the surface of his expression. I hate hurting him, and I hate myself for doing it, but what’s the alternative? How can there be any other way?

“You have to go,” I choke out, turning away from him, unable to look at his wounded face any longer. “You can’t—and I can’t—just. Please.”

“I can’t go yet,” Embry says, and his voice has lost its earlier husky uncertainty. In its place is the dispassionately icy tone he usually uses with recalcitrant senators or the puerile hordes of reporters and paparazzi that follow his every move. It’s his Vice President voice, and it makes me shiver, partly because of its coldness…but partly because of its power. Embry is a refined blade, sharp and discerning and deadly, and when his edge is pressed to your throat, there’s the keen thrill of fear coupled with desire. “Ash asked me to deliver a present to you. I made sure Abilene would be occupied so I'd have enough time to give it to you personally.”

I let out a long breath, wondering if this is how it will always be. Alone together only when there’s a pretext, forever divided by the one man we love more than each other or ourselves.

“Greer.” The ice in Embry’s voice thaws the tiniest amount when he speaks my name. “Please let me give you your present. You know how Ash was about seeing you today, so he asked me to deliver it.”

I finally turn back to him and he holds out his phone, indicating that I should take it. Confused, I reach for it, and then the screen lights up with Ash’s name.

My heart soars at the same time that it sinks. I grab the phone and touch the accept button, pressing the phone eagerly to my ear as if it has been weeks since we last spoke instead of hours.

“Ash,” I say, my voice hiding nothing. I know he can discern every doubt, every guilty thought, every needy pang I've felt in the last six hours and he can do it all just from that one syllable. What’s more, I welcome it. With Ash, I never need to be shriven. He knows each sin the moment he hears my voice or looks at my face, and then all is immediately forgiven.

“Greer,” he says, his voice soothing and sure. “I wish I were with you right now. I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” I say, ignoring the way Embry’s eyes are pinned on me as I speak.

“I know you look beautiful right now,” Ash says, his voice going a shade deeper, a shade rougher. “I won’t be able to keep my hands off you after you walk down the aisle to me.”

“Can’t you come see me before then?”

A warm laugh. “You don’t care for this particular tradition?”

“What point does it serve, other than to keep our guests waiting longer while we take pictures?”

“It serves the point of marking the moment I first see you. When I first lay eyes on my bride, I will be surrounded by our family and friends and watched over by God. I want the first moment I see you to be special and apart from any other moment, just like today is special and apart from any other day. Greer, today is the most important day of my life.”

My throat tightens. “Oh, Ash.”

“And,” he adds in a voice heavy with promise, “patience is always rewarded, my little princess. Always.”

His voice—and the murmured little princess—makes my cunt ache and my pulse pound, and when I think about tonight after the wedding, when I think about Ash’s broad, muscled body pinning mine to the bed, I can barely breathe.

“I miss you so much,” I say. I’m repeating myself at this point, but I don't care. When I can hear Ash—or see him or touch him—my world makes sense. My fears thaw and melt into the floor. My body and my heart and my soul are his to command, and command them he does, with strength and confidence.

“Greer, I want to give you your present now.”

“The phone call isn’t my present?”

That warm laugh again. “I’m not that stingy. No, it’s not your present. I want you to hand the phone to Embry for a moment.”

I obey, as I always do with Ash, and Embry takes the phone. He paces away from me, back towards the suite’s sitting room, so that I can't hear what he's saying to Ash. They speak for a few minutes together and when Embry returns, his face reveals nothing, although I think I detect a hint of a frown on that perfectly shaped mouth.

He hands the phone back to me, and I hold it up to my ear. “Ash? What does this have to do—” I break off my words.

Embry is getting to his knees. In front of me.