after
“Thanks for seeing me.”
Ash looks up from the folder he’s flipping through, sighs, and tosses it on the desk. “You’re my Vice President, Embry. I could hardly avoid seeing you if I wanted to.”
“Do you? Want to avoid me?”
Another sigh. “No. Of course not. I fucking miss you.”
I’m still hovering by the door, but this gives me the unaccountable urge to walk over to Ash and sink down to my knees. To lay my head in his lap. To have him stroke my hair and tell me it will be okay, that he loves me no matter what. And I don’t even want to be wrestled into it. I just want to fold myself into his surety, his constant strength.
But I can’t. Even without the stoic figures of the Secret Service outside the office’s windows, the truth is that I’ve lost that privilege. I lost it the moment I woke up in a bed with Abilene—maybe even the moment I walked into my mother’s library to find Morgan and Abilene waiting for me. I struck a deal with the devil, knowing full well what the consequences could be, knowing that I would appear faithless when I was being the most faithful of all.
The injustice of it all claws at me, and I walk over to a sofa by the fireplace and sit so Ash can’t see my face.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Devastated. Gutted. How do you think she is? He was a parent to her.”
I look down at my hands. My own father died when I was just a baby, replaced by Morgan’s father before I turned two. I have no experience with real grief.
“The funeral is Thursday, in case you were wondering,” Ash says. I hear the soft creak of his chair and the whisper of his dress shoes on the carpet. He comes to sit in front of me, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he does. I take a moment to admire the way his shirt hugs his flat stomach and pulls nicely around the hard lines of his chest.
Despite everything, his eyes blaze momentarily as he catches me watching him, but then we both remember the past six weeks and look away.
“I know when the funeral is,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
“You will? Oh. Abilene.”
Yes, Abilene is Leo Galloway’s granddaughter too, and despite her mechanical bird heart, I could tell his death upset her. And his death is what I came to talk about it.
“Have they found out anything more?” I ask Ash.
“Since we talked last night? Not really.” He rubs at his forehead with his thumb, a gesture so sweetly familiar that for a moment I’m hit with a loneliness so barbed and needy that I can hardly breathe. “I mean, they didn’t even try to make it look natural. Forced entry into his penthouse, injection point in the neck, digoxin—a heart medication that he’s never taken.”
“It was Melwas.”
Ash looks at me carefully, slowly dropping his hand to adjust the silver watch on his wrist. “Preliminary investigation suggests the Iranian rebels he and Penley Luther tussled with thirty years ago.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Ash. Political enemies from thirty years ago—who never had any money or power to begin with—don’t hunt you down when you’re no longer a threat. It’s Melwas trying hurt Greer again. It wasn’t enough to shred her reputation; now he has to kill her family. She’ll be next if we don’t do something.”
His fingers are still playing with his watch, but he keeps his eyes on me as he speaks. “You might be right, Embry. In fact, I have a feeling that you are. I wouldn’t put it past Melwas to have hired these men, and believe me, if we turn up the slightest hint of actual evidence that he did it, I will do everything in my power to make sure he pays. But at the end of the day, I can’t use this office to act on hunches and suspicions.”
“There’s never certainty in war,” I insist, leaning forward. “Your hunches are what saved lives in Carpathia. How many times did we have no intelligence or wrong intelligence or half-assed intelligence and we went in anyway?”
“Because we were ordered to,” Ash points out. “And now I’m the one giving the orders. And this isn’t just war, Embry, there’s more to worry about than how fast we can build the next outpost.”
“I know there’s more—”
“Do you? I don’t think you do. And you gave up the right to protect Greer when you got Abilene pregnant.”
There it is.
There it fucking is.
“You just couldn’t wait to say that, could you?” I ask coolly.
Ash replies, just as coolly, “I waited longer than you did before you fucked Abilene.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and I break the gaze first, my eyes dropping to his shoes. “It wasn’t like that.”
“You said it was going to be just a public thing. You said you weren’t going to sleep with her.”
“I didn’t plan on fucking her! It just—”
Ash rolls his eyes. “It just happened? God, Embry, everything else aside, can you at least not be such a cliché?”
I glare at him. “Everything else aside? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think? Greer and I love you, we trusted you, even though you’ve spurned me twice, even though you left her in Chicago all those years ago, even though you’ve spent the last five years ago fucking everything that moves—”
“Including you, remember?”
“—And how long was it before you found greener pastures? A whole week and a half after the wedding night?”
Those long, black eyelashes are working fast, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and I see it: he’s not angry, he’s hurt. Jealous. That he would be angry on Greer’s behalf was obvious to me when I walked in here, but that he’s hurt for himself, that he feels betrayed himself, tears something new inside me. No matter how dangerous it might be with Abilene, I can’t force myself to give him anything other than the ugly truth.
“Abilene drugged me, Ash.”
Ash pauses, recalibrates. “What?”
“I got my blood tested that day, just to be sure, but she essentially confessed to it. GHB, Cialis, a couple other things. But it turns out I have prescriptions for all of those medicines.”
“You’ve never taken GHB or Cialis.”
“Exactly. She had the scripts forged and filled. When I checked with the White House doctor’s office, there are even records of the visits when these drugs were recommended.”
Ash frowns. “Dr. Ninian wouldn’t do that.”
I shrug. “I’m going to find out. But even if she did it, it doesn’t change the fact that Abilene is pregnant.” I have to force the next words out. “Probably with my child.”
“You’re right,” Ash says, and the heat has finally left his voice. He only looks sad now. “It doesn’t change that.”
I think of Greer in her office at Georgetown, practically glowing with righteous fury, her blond hair damp and tousled in the sun-warmed room as I devoured her cunt. I think of the wedding night, the things we said and shared. “I miss you. I miss Greer. I miss us.”
“Me too, little prince.”
“Is it ruined? Did I ruin it?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks at me, and then I’m being pulled to my feet and dragged into the bathroom just off the office, pinned fiercely against the wall. His lips are warm on mine, warm and firm, and the feeling is unbearably good. It’s electric and soft, it’s skin and stubble, it’s fourteen years of two men too proud to bend, too in love with being broken.
I can’t stop myself, the hunger, the yearning, the body that’s starved for fucking and love. I press back against him, my hands pulling on his tie and yanking impatiently at his jacket. He presses back against me with a groan, his erection hard against my hip, and he tilts his head to allow me access to his neck so that I can kiss and suck him there. His hands are strong and demanding, grabbing the narrow brackets of my hips, the swells of my biceps, cradling my face so he can kiss me with the kind of claiming ferocity he loves.
I want to be owned. I want to be destroyed. I want him to carve his quiet and his calm into me. I want there to be nothing but his breath and my breath, his pulse and mine.
“Do it,” I beg against his mouth. “Just do it.”
But he doesn’t do it. With a shuddering breath and pained reluctance written in every line of his body, he steps back, bracing his hands against my chest to put some distance between us. My stomach drops, my chest tightens.
“I ruined it,” I say, to myself more than him. I somehow managed to fuck up the best thing in my life, only days after getting it. And I should have known, should have known, because isn’t that what I do best? Fuck things up? Fuck people over?
“I want to,” Ash says, pupils still massive, pulse still thrumming under his loosened collar. “God, I want to. But it would hurt her.”
It’s there in my mouth, pressing against my lips, the awful, insidiously logical suggestion. She doesn’t have to know. We don’t have to tell her. I hate myself for even thinking it, because it’s so below Ash, it’s so below Greer. It’s so beneath the three of us and what we promised each other on that night—clarity and love and hard work and honesty. Secret fucks with her husband after I’ve broken her heart…Christ. Can I sink any lower?
I suck in a deep breath. “I don’t want to hurt her any more than I have.”
Ash’s voice is thick when he says, “I know you don’t.”
I run a hand through my hair, readjust my jacket and tie and insistent cock. Ash does the same, and there’s a moment where the bitterness and pain fade as we perform this familiar ritual. How many times have we emerged from a random corner disheveled and smiling, heat high in our cheeks? How many times in this very bathroom have I struggled back into my trousers? Searched for every stray cum splatter only to find one on my tie in the middle of a meeting with the Director of the National Economic Council?
There’s still pain, there’s still Greer and Abilene and Melwas between us, but I catch Ash’s eye and grin. “Just like the good old days, right?”
He grins back, the hidden dimple in his left cheek flashing. “It’s a wonder we got any work done those first few months.”
“It’s a wonder we didn’t get caught. At least, mostly.”
A touch on my shoulder. I look at the hand there and remember that once upon a time, I would have given anything to have that hand touching me. I still would.
“I have a plan for Melwas, Embry. I’m figuring it out, but until I do, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
In the barely-there light seeping in from underneath the door, I study his face. It’s a face of strong angles, striking eyebrows, full lips. It’s the face of a king.
Can I trust my king?
I sigh. “I’ll try.”
He nods. It’s enough for now.
We step out of the bathroom into the empty office one at a time, a habit of timing perfected after an awkward moment when Kay witnessed us coming out of the bathroom together smelling like KY and sweat. And then Ash settles himself back at his desk, and I leave without saying goodbye. I’ll see him later today, and the day after that, and the day after that. So much seeing doesn’t need a goodbye.
So much seeing is cheap when I’m shut out from the love I want.
It’s when I get to my office that I realize Ash never answered my question, my is it ruined? Did I ruin it? And he didn’t because we both knew the answer already. It hums a jarred, pained hum deep in my bones, reaches into my marrow.
Yes. I did ruin it.
Greer won’t look at me even though we’re only separated by a narrow church aisle. Instead, she keeps her eyes on the priest at the front, singing and praying along, kneeling when it’s time, standing when it’s time, looking like a Grace Kelly fever-dream in her knee-length black dress with its tailored bodice. Her hair is pulled up a ballet bun, exposing the long, graceful lines of her neck, and despite her calm self-possession, she looks young, so much younger than Ash next to her.
She’s as composed and pale today as she was flushed and furious in her office when I told her about Abilene, and it pains me for reasons I can’t describe. Seeing her so unbent and calm at her grandfather’s funeral—it’s just so very Greer, that regal reservation, that indefatigable poise. It invites breaking and disruption, it makes me recall all the times I had her red-faced and squirming underneath me or on top of me, all the times she’s privileged me by allowing me to see her tears. I’m jealous of those tears now, the idea that Ash is the man who gets to wipe them from her face and hold her as she surrenders to her pain.
It’s the kind of jealousy that brings me close to tears myself.
Next to me, Abilene is also the picture of old money equilibrium, slender and cool in a tight black dress and tall heels, her red hair pulled back into a long, smooth ponytail. There was a moment this morning when I picked her up when it seemed like Abilene might cry; for a change, she had nothing cutting or flirtatious to say, and she spent the ride staring out of the window and running her fingers along the edges of her clutch. It was basic human courtesy that made me ask how she was holding up.
It was not courtesy at all that made me add, “You know Melwas killed him, don’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“The same Melwas you helped kidnap Greer. How does that feel?”
She shot me a dangerous look then, her blue eyes the kinds of ocean depths that carnivorous fish live in. “I loved my grandfather. And if even for one second you are implying that I had anything to do with this or that I’m happy—”
“I’m not,” I said mildly. “Just pointing out how all your carefully laid plans for revenge are coming back to destroy you.”
I expected a retort, a vicious reminder that I—and by extension my sister and Ash and other people I loved—were still very much under her thumb, but it never came. She simply went back to staring out of the window and didn’t speak again until we were at the church.
The moment we stepped onto the sidewalk outside of the church, her demeanor changed. Her chin lifted and dropped at all the right moments, her smile was the right amounts of grieving and tremulous, her perfect ponytail swung prettily as she moved around the narthex shaking hands and greeting mourners. It was the perfect performance, and it still is during the actual service.
She even manages a few sniffles during the service, enough so that she is obliged to dab at her large, wet eyes. She clings to my arm, rests her head on my shoulder, laces her gloved fingers through mine, as if it’s only my strong and sturdy presence helping her get through this difficult time.
I let her. I don’t have a choice, really, and I can’t exactly shove her off me in the middle of a funeral service. Instead, I let it happen and pretend it’s Greer holding onto me, pretend it’s her I’m comforting. I imagine Morgan’s face, I watch the strong lines of Ash’s shoulders, I remind myself of all the people I’m protecting by acquiescing to Abilene’s demands.
Greer still won’t look at me.
The Mass finishes, and the family moves to the front of the church to prepare for the procession to the cemetery. And that’s when it happens. In the press of black-clad mourners, Secret Service agents are surrounding Ash and Greer to hustle them out a side door, and then there’s a stir, a collective shock.
And then a scream.
Abilene and I are just close enough to see the knife, the woman holding it, Greer staggering back as the Secret Service agents lunge forward. I’m there before I know it, jumping up and over a pew and into the crepe-and-wool tumult of panicking mourners. I reach Greer and Ash, Ash holding Greer tightly and Greer saying, “I’m fine, really, I’m fine.”
“What happened?” I ask Ash.
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know yet.” But his eyes flick meaningfully around the still-swarming room, the chaos of the agents wrestling the attacker out of the room, and I realize the answer is that he does know but here isn’t the place to talk about it.
Greer turns and looks at me for the first time today, her gray eyes soft and curious. I can see that not only is she unhurt, she’s barely ruffled by it, which is maybe understandable. A woman with a knife in a crowded church isn’t the same as being kidnapped and alone at the mercy of a man like Melwas. Even through this, her composure remains.
I am shocked to find, however, that my own composure is non-existent. My hands are shaking and my heart is in my throat and now that I know she’s safe, it’s like the reality of all that danger crashes down even harder. What if the agents had been just a little bit slower? What if that woman had been just a little bit faster? What if instead of standing in Ash’s arms, she were limp and bloody on a stretcher?
I wonder if she sees all this in my face, because her delicate eyebrows furrow and she shakes her head ever so slightly.
Because she doesn’t want me to worry? Because I no longer have the right to worry?
“We should go home,” Ash says to Greer. “We don’t know that the cemetery is safe.”
“I’m going to the burial,” she says firmly, tearing her gaze from mine. “It was a lone woman, a lone crazy woman. There’s no reason to suspect a grand conspiracy of murder is waiting at the cemetery.”
I step in. “Greer, you can’t. You’ve been consistently targeted since you’ve returned from Carpathia, and—”
Her eyes blaze, all softness gone. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Either of you. I’m going to my grandfather’s burial, and it’s going to be fucking fine.”
And with that, she pulls free of Ash’s arms and strides away, her steps confident and strong. I see her stop at Gavin and Luc and tell them something; they both nod and escort her out of the sanctuary, Luc glancing back at Ash as they do. Ash nods after them and then our own Secret Service agents hustle us out of the church. I take a moment to make sure Abilene found a ride to the cemetery, then follow Ash into his car. We sit across from each other in the back seat.
“The woman hissed something to Greer when she lunged at her,” Ash says now that we’re alone. “Something in Ukrainian.”
It’s like my fear is a living thing, jumping from my throat to my stomach to my shaking hands. “Ukrainian.”
“It was ‘Strength in the Mountains, Strength until Death.’”
“The Carpathian motto.”
“Yes.”
The fear is acid in my mouth, my blood. “Ash.”
His voice is charred gravel when he speaks. “Don’t.”
We look at each other, and something shifts. I can’t explain it, can’t even really grab hold of it with my mind as it’s happening, but I feel it like a rope sliding through my hands, like a crack in the floor opening up between our feet.
“You said you trusted me,” says my king.
“I said I’d try.”
We stare again, the crack between our feet widening and widening. “Melwas won’t stop,” I say, “not until you stop him.”
“There are ways to stop him other than war, Embry. Other than sending in black ops for assassination.”
“I just don’t understand,” I say with real heat now, running my hand through my hair. “Don’t you care? Don’t you love her? Didn’t you swear to protect her? And yet over and over again—”
“I will do what I think is right,” he interrupts. “And you are my Vice President, and therefore you will do as I say.”
I stare at him like I’m seeing him for the first time. The strong nose and sharp cheeks, the square jaw and green eyes. The stubbornness, the resolute set of his shoulders. He won’t be moved. Despite the abduction, the video, Leo’s death, this attack—he won’t be moved.
“For fuck’s sake, Ash, if this isn’t going to convince you to act, what will?”
“Do you think so little of me that you think I’m choosing to be passive out of cowardice? Or complacency? You can’t trust that I’m trying to work for a safer solution?”
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have even thought before I answered. And now…
“I don’t fucking know anymore. Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of your term? Your next term? We just sit back and wait for Carpathia to come for us? What if it’s not just Greer next time? What if it’s a real terror attack? What if it’s an invasion of one of our allies? What then?”
His eyes narrow. “What are you implying, Embry?”
I say it. I say it because I’m scared for Greer, because I’m angry for Greer, because Ash is too fucking stubborn to listen for even just a second to what I’m trying to say. To the growing sense I have that Melwas won’t be satisfied by only coming after Greer, that he will be coming after all of us soon.
“I think you’re weak.”
It feels good and awful to say it, a weight off my chest but crushed glass in my mouth.
His jaw goes tight, his eyes flare, and the crack between us widens and deepens, on and on and on. And then we’re at the cemetery, the door being opened for us, cutting the moment short.
“I should find Greer,” he says finally, and if I thought his voice was burned gravel before, it’s nothing like now. “Goodbye, Embry.”
“Goodbye, Ash.”
And when I watch him go, something raw and determined chews its way through my thoughts, an idea so hurtful and vindictive that I would never allow it to nest in my right mind. But nevertheless, it sinks its teeth into my thoughts, bites deep into the part of me that loves Greer so fiercely I can’t breathe, bites into the part of me that once thought war was a grand adventure.
When I find Abilene and stand by her side during the service, I know I appear serene on the outside, a politician playing nice at a funeral for the sake of his friend’s wife. But on the inside, I am bullets and teeth and harm. I am scorched earth. I am a knight who will do anything on his quest to save his queen.
I text my sister in the car on the way home from the cemetery.
Call me. It’s important.
