after
The first day at home is long.
The second day is even longer. That’s the day I finally force myself to meet with my chief of staff—a fierce brunette named Linette—and attend to the rest of my things being moved from the townhouse to the White House. I walk through the townhouse one last time, my home for only a year, and then I call Grandpa Leo while the Secret Service agents wait outside.
“I’ll mail you the key,” I tell him after I inform him all my things are gone.
“You don’t sound like a girl who just got home from her honeymoon,” Grandpa says gently. “Are you that sad to leave the townhouse?”
No, Grandpa, I was kidnapped and nearly raped last week, and I think your other granddaughter might be responsible, I want to tell him, but it would only bring him unnecessary pain. There’s nothing he can say that will undo what Melwas has done and there’s no comfort he can give me that would be any more perfect than what Embry and Ash have given me. And I still haven’t found the courage to talk to Abilene since I got home, so I can’t say with certainty that it was her who betrayed me.
So instead I say to my grandfather, “Just adjusting is all. I’m not teaching any classes this summer and I’m still settling into the First Lady stuff. It’s a new life. I’m not sure how I fit into it yet.”
“I can’t turn on the news or pull up the Internet without seeing how much this country is obsessed with you, so I’d say you’re doing just fine, sweetheart.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“You know, I remember when Luther and I were first elected, I felt the same way. Like everyone was watching and I didn’t know what to do with myself. But then there was that nastiness with the Iranians and I had no choice but to step up. Before you know it, you’ll be pressed into real service and you won’t have the luxury of stage fright.”
I sigh quietly. He has no idea, but I love him and I know he’s just trying to make me feel better. “That’s encouraging to hear, Grandpa.”
“And I’ll be coming to visit next month. Maybe you’ll spruce up the Residence a bit, hmm? President Colchester’s taste is, well, a little spare for my liking.”
I do smile at that, thinking of Ash’s clean, minimalist bedroom.
A bedroom that’s mine now too.
We say goodbye, and I head back to the Residence, stopping by my office in the East Wing to say hello to the staff that now reports to me—the social secretary and my personal press secretary and my senior advisor. Tomorrow we will meet to talk more about my chosen initiative as First Lady (sexual assault prevention, something I chose months ago and I now get clammy even thinking about), and to work on the White House’s social agenda for the next year. And then I shoot Belvedere a text, asking him if Ash is busy.
Just looking over some things for tomorrow, Belvedere texts back.
And so I go to see my husband at his office.
It’s not the first time I’ve been in the Oval Office, not even since Ash and I started dating, but something about it feels different today. It’s the first time I’m walking into this room as his wife, as the First Lady, and even Ash seems to feel it, looking up from his desk as I walk in.
“Little princess,” he says huskily, his eyes following the lines of my sundress as it hugs my chest and waist. Belvedere makes a discreet exit back to his desk, closing the door as he goes, and we’re alone in the room. Ash spins in his chair and pats his thigh.
“Come here, angel,” he says.
I glance at the windows where I can Secret Service stationed outside, facing out toward the Rose Garden.
“They won’t look,” Ash assures me. “And if they do, all they’re going to see is the President holding his new wife. Taking a quick break to shower his new bride with kisses.”
I straddle his lap and sit, noticing how Ash spreads out my skirt as I sit. “And is that all that you’ll be doing? Showering me with kisses?”
“Not even close,” my husband says calmly, reaching down under my skirt to unbuckle his belt and pull out his cock. His other hand tugs my thong to the side, probes my hole to make sure I’m wet enough for what he wants, and then I’m nudged up to sink back down onto him. My nipples harden, goose bumps erupt everywhere, and I feel his thick cock pushing up, up, up. He coaxes me back down so that I’m sitting again, his cock pressing against my deepest parts. I shudder and feel my cheeks and chest flush with heat as he wraps his arms around my waist and grinds me down against him.
“I’ve had a long day,” Ash says, still calm, as if he’s not affected in the least by our covert fucking in front of these huge windows. “And I need to come inside of you. And what will you say when I do that?”
I struggle to find the words, all the air being driven out of my chest by the deep, subtle thrusts of his cock. “I’ll say…ah…I’ll say thank you.”
“Not good enough.” He punctuates this with a sharp thrust upward and I nearly cry out, stifling the urge just in time.
I know what he wants. “I’ll say thank you, Mr. President.”
“That’ll do nicely.” And then with infinite control, he shoves up and holds himself there, leaning in to kiss me as he fills me with his orgasm. He holds my hips down as he pumps into me, finishes, and then lifts me off of him. Like he was merely relieving a physical need, like he was taking a drink of water or stretching a sore neck, and once done, he’s back to business. Indeed, I’m still smoothing my skirt down as he turns back to his desk and picks up the paper he’d been reading.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” I say, feeling a little confused and not a little hot between the legs at the idea of being used like this. It’s unbearably arousing, even as it adds to the lonely sense of displacement I’ve felt all day. Is this what married life will be like?
“Thank you, Mrs. Colchester,” he replies. “I’ll see you at seven o’clock sharp.”
“Yes, Sir.” I turn to go, but then his words make me pause.
“You will be naked and on your knees, arms in the box position. Knees spread so I can see your pussy. I expect you to be wet.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And Mrs. Colchester?”
I look up and there’s the hint of a smile on his stern face. “Having you here was the best part of my day.”
I flush, happy, and leave him to his work.
There are already a handful of emails waiting from Linette when I get upstairs, and I have a moment of panic when I think about juggling my duties as First Lady and my duties to Georgetown this fall, but I push that to the side. Ash is coming soon and he will banish all the doubts and all the worry to a place where they can’t bother me any longer.
I’m as he requested when I hear him come into the sitting room outside our bedroom, kneeling with my arms folded elegantly behind me and my legs spread wide enough that my cunt is available for inspection. But even though I’m doing as I’m told, the minute his frame fills the doorway, I realize something is wrong.
I don’t dare to look up to his face, but I don’t have to. It rolls off of him—anger or turmoil or frustration—and I can feel the heat of it as he stalks past me to the dresser. I hear the fabric of his suit jacket rustling, the clink of cufflinks in the dresser drawer, the silk slide of a tie being unknotted. He doesn’t speak, and when he walks in front of me, I see he’s barefoot and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. For some reason those bare feet send alarm bells ringing in my mind.
My mind races back to the Oval Office. Did I upset him somehow? Did something happen related to work? What could have happened in the last hour to make him like this?
His hand fists my hair and my head snaps back. “Say it,” he bites out. “Say it so I know that you know how to stop me.”
Never have I seen him like this—angry and wild. It’s genuinely frightening. It’s also exhilarating. My pulse pounds everywhere, my cunt throbs, my skin aches for his touch.
“Maxen,” I whisper. “That’s how I stop you.”
And then I’m being dragged by the hair to the closet, my knees burning against the carpet as I scramble-crawl to escape the pain in my scalp. Ash lets go of my hair and crosses over to his shoe rack, which he presses open to reveal a hidden cabinet of ropes and toys and sundry other items designed to dominate, exploit, and please.
I’m no stranger to this cabinet, but I am a stranger to the cabinet in this mood.
I shiver. “Are you…displeased with me, Sir?”
He gives me a sharp look. “I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
“Sir, please?”
Impatient with my talk, he grabs a riding crop and gestures to a low bench in the middle of the floor, designed for a gentleman to lace up his shoes more easily.
“Over the bench, ass up, mouth closed. Got it?”
I search his face, looking for any trace of my Ash, the warm man I love. I find nothing but raw anger. And pain. Shaking, I drape myself over the bench the way he asked, and before I even get settled, the crop bites into my ass.
I yelp, unprepared, and the crop comes again. It’s not the leather keeper on the end striking me, but the corded shaft, and it’s welting me from the curve of my ass down to my exposed thighs. The blows are fast and merciless, and I’m crying out with each one now, kicking my feet pointlessly against the floor, tears spilling over to run hot tracks down my face.
Fuck, it hurts. It hurts so much I can’t breathe. It hurts so much that it drives out everything else, everything but the pain. It’s never been like this, even with the belt, I’ve never felt the full force of his emotions, the real tumult he keeps locked up inside himself at all times.
But never do I come close to saying my safe word. I know he’d stop if I said it, I know it the way I know the sky is blue and the sun will rise, and I don’t want him to stop. I want to be able to absorb this from him, take whatever it is off his shoulders for however short a time. And I want him to relieve my mind of these lonely, nervous thoughts that have been plaguing me since the honeymoon.
The crop stills and is tossed on the floor next to my face.
“I want you to run,” he says, and I realize he’s out of breath, that he’s beaten me so hard and fast that it’s actually exerted him.
I crane my head to look up at him, dazed from pain and endorphins. “Run?”
“I didn’t tell you to look at me.”
I drop my gaze, and he continues. “You’re going to run and I’m going to catch you. You’re going to fight me and I’m going to win. And then I’m going to mount you. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whisper, my heart thumping against my chest. This is so messed up. So why am I fighting back a smile?
“Go.”
I go. I bolt to my feet and dart out of the closet, and he gives me a moment’s head start, and then I hear him pounding after me. The bare feet make sense now—it’s hard to run in dress shoes.
I push out of the bedroom and through the sitting room, running into the Yellow Oval Room. He’s right behind me, his legs longer, his steps surer, and I skid into the hallway and fling myself into the next room, hoping against hope it leads somewhere else, but I realize too late it’s the Lincoln Bedroom and I’m trapped.
I spin to face him as he lunges for me, and then we’re both tumbling down to the floor, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. But I fight, pushing his hands away and trying to roll. He stops me with a knee and then a cruel hand in my hair, and then his other knee is wedged in between my thighs, driving them apart. The brutality of that knee and the weave of the antique carpet beneath my bare ass is enough to remind my body of the furious cropping I just endured. His hand leaves my hair to palm my cunt, and I can hear and smell it. Wet. Needy.
His eyes flare in the dark.
I’m flipped onto my stomach, and my wrists are gathered and pinned above my head. I can’t tell if I’m still squirming to keep up the pretense of fighting or if I’m squirming to feel the carpet rough against my nipples, to grind my glowing red ass against Ash’s erection.
Whatever the reason, it earns me a smack on the ass so hard I cry out, and then the blunt head of him is shoving into me. He feels huge like this, bigger than I’ve ever felt, and when I dare a peek behind me, his body is sleekly powerful in the moonlight, all muscles and sweat. A nocturnal predator.
I’m being devoured by him, his cock eating me up from the inside out, burning the fear right out of me and sowing pleasure amidst the flames, and have I ever been able to breathe? I’ve forgotten what breathing is, what existing is, what everything other than being fucked like a rebellious slut on the floor of the Lincoln Bedroom feels like.
I’m going to come, it’s like barbed wire in my pelvis, dragged up from the pain in my ass and the adrenaline from the fight, but Ash beats me to it. He pulls out and tosses me onto my back once again, and then he’s straddling me with his knees on either side of my shoulders and fucking his fist with short, angry breaths.
“Your body belongs to me,” he says fiercely, the muscles in his shoulder and arm thick and bunching as he works himself at a furious pace. “And your gold hair and your face and your heart. Say it. Say it.”
“It’s yours,” I say, mesmerized by his power, his anger, his cock. “All of me belongs to you.”
He lets out a hissing breath and then it comes, long white stripes across my face, spattering into my hair, lacing my eyelashes and dripping into my mouth. So much of it, so much pent-up lust, and when he’s drained himself of every last drop, he stands up.
For an eerie moment, him standing over me and me on my back covered in his orgasm, I have the strangest fear that he’s going to leave me here. Walk away, make me pick myself up off the ground and limp into the bedroom by myself.
But his anger isn’t spent, not completely. He leans down, and then I’m being hoisted over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, carried into our bedroom and unceremoniously dumped on the bed. He tosses a handkerchief at me.
“Wipe your face and spread your legs.”
“I—” But before I can get anything else out, he’s up on the bed and his mouth is on my pussy, hot and open.
My back bows off the comforter, the sensation after coming so close to climax and being denied almost too much. The orgasm rushes back at full force, and Ash shows no mercy or patience with his mouth, sucking and flicking and tonguing me with all the anger he used while fucking me.
“Come, goddammit,” he hisses. “And you know what to say when you do.”
I come, hard and twistingly long, my feet rubbing against the blanket and my hands fisting uselessly at the pillows above me, and my heart in my throat. I come so hard that everything fades away except the heat of my husband’s mouth.
“Thank you, Sir,” I pant, as the climax begins to recede and I can breathe again. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
He peers up at me from between my legs, his eyelashes long enough to cast shadows in the lamplight, and for a moment, his face is wide open, heartbreakingly open. And then he’s on top of me, kissing my mouth, claiming it like he claimed everything else tonight.
I taste my pussy in his kiss, and I kiss him back even harder, licking his tongue and his lips, which makes him groan. “You belong to me,” he says into my mouth. “You’re mine. My wife. My own.”
“Yes,” I breathe back. “Yes.”
He squeezes one of my breasts hard. “I need you again.”
I can feel his need against my thigh and I obediently spread my legs. This time he kicks his pants off all the way, but the bed and the kissing don’t make it any less urgent, any less brutal. He fucks me until I come again, he fucks me until sweat rolls down his chest and his lungs heave for air and finally, at last, something seems to let go of him. He comes with the force of a man returning back to himself, with the force of an exorcism. This time he empties himself inside me with a jagged breath that seems drawn from his very soul.
I’m almost sad when his green eyes light on mine and I see them filled with concern and love. He flicks on a brighter light and stands up, inspecting my cunt, examining the welts on my ass. Then he asks, “How do you feel right now?”
It’s standard check-in talk, the kind of question he’s asked me countless times before, but we both know this time is different, that we edged close to a cliff we’d always kept well in the distance.
“Delirious,” I say. “And a little shaken.”
“I pushed you hard tonight,” he says. “I count on you being honest with me. I count on you stopping me if it’s too much.”
I shake my head before he even stops talking. “It wasn’t. I’m not ashamed to safe out or ask you to pull back. But Ash, I—” I stare up into his strong face, noticing the way the stubble shadows his cheeks this late into the day, the tousled waves of his hair. The glint of his wedding ring on his hand. “—your anger is more frightening than a riding crop.”
He sits next to me on the bed and I sit up too, drawing my knees up to my chest. His eyebrows pull together. “Because you’re worried I’ll go too far in my anger?”
My chin quivers and I have to look away. “Because it hurts my heart.”
He makes a noise, and then I’m being drawn into his arms. “I’m so sorry, little princess. I should have told you what—I—I needed you. I needed what you do for me.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “So you weren’t angry with me.”
It’s his stillness that tells me. His silence. I pull back and find him watching me carefully. “Ash?” I say, my voice trembling.
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Let’s take a shower. And then there’s something I need to show you.”
The thing that drove Ash upstairs to punish my body is a three-minute video. It’s night vision, all greenish-hued and glow-eyed, but it’s clear enough. My blond hair is like white fire in the video, the silver duct tape flashing in the barely there light.
I had guessed there were cameras—why hadn’t I thought of that when I begged Embry to fuck me? Why hadn’t I guessed that Melwas would keep trying to destroy my life?
“You know I never held this against you or Embry,” Ash says apologetically, as if this video is all his fault. He closes the laptop on the coffee table in the living room and pulls me close to his body on the sofa. “But when I saw it, when Merlin told me, I was furious. At Melwas mostly. But also at you and Embry for being so careless. And Greer, if I’m being honest, there was a difference between simply knowing about it and then having to watch it.”
Suddenly, I need space from him. I stand up and cross my arms, walking over to the window. Panic is a fist clenched in my chest, but my voice comes out calm. “I’m sure there is a difference.”
“Greer, this isn’t just about us now.”
I press my fingers into my eyes, wishing I could drive out the shame with the pressure, squeeze it out of my head. “I know. Merlin has seen.”
“Not just Merlin. Not even close. It’s on the Internet. All the major outlets have seen it. Merlin, Kay, Trieste, Linette and Embry will be here tomorrow at seven for us to figure out a media defense.”
“So everyone will know I let Embry fuck me, but they don’t know about the kidnapping and nothing about that video suggests that it took place in Carpathia. And the video is date-stamped, so it looks like I fucked him while I was on my honeymoon with you.”
“You did fuck him, Greer. Be honest about that at least.”
That stings. His bitterness stings like acid. “Screw you,” I whisper.
He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says. “God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just…”
The distance between us suddenly feels vast, and the things I feel about myself I’ve never felt before, not like this. With Ash, I always felt safe in loving two men, whole and healthy and happy. And for the first time, I wonder if he thinks I’m a slut. I wonder if he thinks I’m a whore, and not in the playful bedroom talk way, in the way men think it about women they don’t respect.
I wonder if I think it about myself.
After all, I did fuck his best friend. I did it after my wedding. I enjoyed it. I’d do it again. And now the whole world knows.
Ash looks up at me, his face miserable. “Greer.”
“It’s my fault, my mess. I’ll deal with it.” My voice is as cold as my stomach is hot with pain, and I turn to wheel into the bedroom. I can’t be around him right now.
“Greer, stop. Come here.”
I don’t. I won’t. If he’s going to look at me like that, then I can’t even bear to look at him. If he’s going to judge me as harshly as I’m judging myself right now, then we should just get divorced, because—
He snaps his fingers.
My back stiffens at the sound, kinetic memory forcing me into better posture even before I turn around to look at him.
His face is still miserable, but the command and the control are back in those summer lake eyes, and suddenly I realize divorce was never on the table for him. He came upstairs to remind us both that he would never stop loving me and I would never stop belonging to him. He snapped his fingers to show me he still wants me at his feet.
He watches me attentively as I walk over and sink down onto my knees in front of him. I hear him let out a long breath as I settle back onto my heels and bow my head.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and I know he’s not apologizing for the scene or even his anger, but for not talking to me beforehand about it. For not communicating.
My hair is still wet from our shower, but he plays with it anyway, stroking it and twining small pieces of it around his fingers. I can’t help the instinct to buck and nuzzle against his hand like a cat, and he makes a pleased sound when I do.
A couple minutes pass like this, my hot feelings beginning to cool in this familiar posture, his hands familiar and comforting in my hair.
“If I could have shielded you from this, I would have,” he says softly. “The things I promised you on our wedding day, I meant with all my heart. I take protecting you seriously.”
“I’m humiliated,” I admit in a barely there voice. “That people will know—”
“People will think they know. We will tell them otherwise. Videos like this are manifestly easy to fake, and that’s what we will tell the world.”
“But it’s a lie and you hate lying and oh my God—” my stomach flips over as I remember, and I feel violently ill. “—the re-election campaign. What if this ruins everything? What if I ruined everything for you? I couldn’t live with myself!”
“Shh.” Ash’s fingers are deep in my hair now, rubbing my scalp and massaging me. “I’ll do anything to protect you, angel, including lie. Yes, it may impact the campaign—I’m afraid no matter how convincingly we lie, the stain of suspicion will never be scrubbed out, not all the way at least. People will be watching you and Embry very closely from here on out, waiting for any sign that it’s all true. They’re wolves that way.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself to take deep breaths to quash back the panic. Of course that’s what Ash meant when he said that it wasn’t just about us any longer. It was about the campaign.
“I won’t allow you to blame yourself for this. You were kidnapped, toyed with by Melwas, and he’s continuing to toy with you. You, Embry and I have already sorted out how we feel about what happened in that bed.”
I look up at him, thinking about the welts on my ass, his bitter words. “Have we?”
His hand tightens in my hair. “As much as possible, little princess. It hurt to watch. Not only was I jealous watching the two of you fuck without me, but it hurt to remember how much I failed you. How I couldn’t be the one to save you or comfort you. But that wasn’t what made me angry, in the end.”
“What was it, then? The re-election?”
“Not even that. It was that once again, I couldn’t protect you. We should have guessed Melwas had something like this, we should have been ready. But now you’re going to be exposed to slander and vilification because of my failure. You don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve you.”
“It’s not your fault, Ash. You can’t think that. Embry and I are the ones who—well, and Melwas. It’s everybody’s fault but yours.”
He leans down and kisses the top of my head but doesn’t answer. And after several moments, he easily scoops me off the floor and carries me to bed, where he fucks me well into the night.
