Ash’s fingers probe me once or twice more, pressing against my g-spot and testing my responsiveness, and then he slides them out, using my dress to dry his hand. The gesture is at once degrading and unbelievably sexy, and before I can again plunge into a who am I mental soliloquy, he says, “Snap your fingers instead of saying my name if you need to.”
I blink at him, confused, and then all of a sudden his large hand is fisted in the hair at the back of my neck, literally dragging me off the desk and to my knees. I tumble past his legs, his hand in my hair preventing me from using my hands to balance myself, and I land hard on the carpet, my dress catching between my body and Ash’s legs and baring my ass.
Ash’s hand is already on his belt buckle, deft and sure, and then his pants are open and I catch a glimpse of him. Male and hard and thick, and so much more beautiful than I ever could have imagined—all smooth ridges and a wide flared tip, every part of him flushed a dusky red. It’s hard for me, throbbing for me, and like a greedy girl, I reach for it with both hands.
A sharp tug of my hair. “Just your mouth,” Ash says.
I have next to no practice doing this, but I remember Ash’s comforting words from earlier and put that out of my mind. He wants me to try, I want to try, that’s all that matters. And so I lean forward and run the flat of my tongue up the underside of his cock, feeling every curve and swell of his shaft, relishing the shaky breath I hear him take above me. I repeat the action, faster this time, and start flickering my tongue experimentally around his tip, finding all the spots that make him pull my hair harder, the places that make his stomach tighten and his breath catch. Without my hands, it’s hard to apply the right kind of pressure, and so I lean forward even more, pinning his cock against his muscled stomach, which is still mostly covered by his expensive white button-down. There’s the scratch of Italian cotton on my cheek and the glide of his silk tie, a contrast to the heat of his skin, and then his hand is at his root and his other hand yanking at my hair, and my mouth is forced down onto his dick.
His crown is so wide, and I choke as he holds my head down onto him. The minute he hits the back of my throat—still far from all the way in—he yanks my head up and I gasp for breath, the stinging in my eyes manifesting into tears that smudge my mascara. My heart is racing, my blood flooded with adrenaline, and I realize I’m squirming the tiniest bit, my pussy already demanding more. I’m aroused and exhilarated and ashamed all at once.
Ash doesn’t speak, doesn’t loosen his hold on my hair or move the hand currently controlling his erection, and I realize he’s waiting. He gave me a small taste of what this would be like, and he’s waiting to see if I’ll snap my fingers or say his name to stop it. But I do neither.
I lick my lips instead.
He smiles then, a quick smile that doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily for me. Like he’s smiling at himself, smiling in satisfaction. Like he knows he made the right choice.
His cock is forced past my lips again, but this time I’m ready for it, opening my lips and taking a deep breath through my nose.
“Relax your tongue,” he murmurs from above me, and then lets out an, “Ahhhh, yes, like that,” when I comply. He moves a little slower than the first time, pulling me off and back onto his erection with a steady but not unkind pace, going a little deeper each time, until there’s finally the moment he pushes deep into my throat. My body rebels, my throat convulsing and threatening to gag, but then I realize the hand in my hair is caressing my scalp and that he’s crooning something to me. I can’t hear what he’s actually saying over the panic in my mind and the blood in my ears, but just hearing his voice grounds me. I breathe through my nose, more tears leaking over the edge of my lower lids, and reflexively swallow against the urge to gag.
“Holy shit,” Ash swears as I swallow around him, his hips bucking up into me. “Fuck.”
I do it again, with much the same response, the swearing and the jerky thrust into the tight vise of my throat, and at the same time I feel a rush of triumph, I also see my mascara-stained tears begin to drip onto his white shirt. He must see them too, because he gives a groan—half regret, half sheer cruel desire. I can feel his reluctance as he lifts my head and his dick leaves my mouth, but all I feel is a rush of overwhelming gratitude and also a kind of indescribable pride that I made him react that way.
I suck in several desperate breaths while he stares down at my face and gently wipes at the black tears on my cheeks with his thumb. “More,” he says, “I need more,” and then he’s shoving up inside me again, this time without mercy. I don’t snap my fingers, I don’t struggle—because God help me, I love this too much—but I can’t help the way my fingers claw at his thighs and my bare feet kick at the carpet as I let him fuck my throat. It’s invasive and brutal and fucking intoxicating. I’m the one being used, but in the dirty, airless heat of it all, he’s the one weakened and at the mercy of my mouth. He’s the one unraveling, thrusting and swearing and sweating, the one who’s more beast than human, and all because of something I’m doing. And doing well.
“Need to come,” he mutters raggedly. “I’m going to come.”
I get a quick break for air and then I’m back down, and I feel both of his hands on my head, pushing me down as far as I’ll go, to the point where my nose is buried against the clean, shortly trimmed hair at the base of his cock. Now that I know the swallowing trick, I do it repeatedly, driving him into a frenzy, and soon his forearms are clamped on my head and his body curled over mine, holding me fast as he pumps several hard, short thrusts into my throat. The silk tie rasps against my cheek, and my hands are desperate and everywhere, pulling at his pants, his belt, the expensive leather upholstery of his chair.
He finally erupts with a breathy grunt that makes my toes curl. I’ll be hearing that grunt in my dreams, in my fantasies, how helpless and yet strong it was, how very, very male. The sound of it lodges in my gut, and when the hot warmth of his climax finally hits my throat, I know I’m a lost cause. Nothing—not literature, not teaching, not traveling, or looking out over Manhattan at night—nothing compares to this. Having the powerful body of a powerful man pressed against me, owning me and taking pleasure from me. Having his most intimate, unguarded self unveiled, and only to me.
Because this night, this moment? I could be the only woman in the world, the only mouth and the only body, and that isn’t love, exactly, but it feels like it, and maybe that’s what counts in the end.
He lifts my head off his cock and says simply, “Lick me clean,” which I do. Thoroughly. So thoroughly that he starts to get hard again and pushes me off.
“Enough,” he says sternly, but when I look up, his eyes are sparkling with amusement. “You’re too good.”
Despite my raw throat, despite the wet tears on my cheeks, his words make me want to purr and stretch like a kitten. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so close to another person, so admired and, yes, despite the brutal face-fucking, respected. I’ve never been this happy and content, save for that handful of moments under Embry’s body all those years ago. I rub my face against Ash’s knee, like a cat indeed, and he indulges me, stroking my hair and praising me for how good I made him feel.
After a few minutes of this, he straightens up, tucking himself back into his pants. “Stay like that, on your knees, and put your hands behind your back.”
I do as he says, watching him stand up and walk into his bedroom again, thinking there will be more to the night. My cunt rejoices, because I am so incredibly worked up after making Ash come, but when he comes out of the bedroom, he’s not holding any kinky sexy toys or condoms. He holds only a soft-looking washcloth and a hairbrush.
He sits back down in his chair and tilts my chin up, cleaning my face slowly and gently, wiping away every last black mascara trail and cooling what I know must be flushed cheeks. Then he tells me to turn around, still kneeling, and I feel him begin to pluck the hairpins out of my ruined chignon, one by one.
“Your hair,” he says in a low voice. I hear the pins hitting the desk one at a time, clink clink clink, as if he kept them all in his fist and then dropped them onto the desk in a steady rain. “There’s no end to the things I’ve thought about doing with your hair. It was the first thing I noticed about you that night, you kneeling among all that glittering glass, your hair like sunshine. Like white gold.” I can practically hear him shake his head. “I suppose I’ll never know if it was your hair or seeing you on your knees that captivated me at first. I’ll also never know if it was you noticing my sleeplessness or watching you bleed for someone you loved that made you unforgettable to me.”
His words are rolling through my veins, a spell of fire and heat.
“But that hair. I used to think about it incessantly, what it would look like wrapped around my fist as I fucked you from behind. How it would feel wrapped around my cock, like so much loose silk. There were times when it was all I could think about, what your hair would smell like and what it would feel like against my lips…” I feel his lips against my hair now, dropping kisses onto the crown of my head.
We’ve just been so intimate, his fingers in my cunt and his cock in my mouth, but for some reason the kiss on my hair reverberates through me like a church bell. It’s gentleness and desire all at once, and after what we just did together, that kind of warm affection seems more precious for all the abuse that came before it. Tears smart at my eyes again, this time for a very different reason than physical pain.
He picks up the brush, and it starts to pull it through my hair with even, soothing strokes. I only have a few tangles, and Ash works through them with care, so that I barely feel any tugging or stinging. “But of all the things I thought about,” he continues, “it was brushing your hair that I thought about the most. Just watching it glint in the light, hearing the brush move through it. There would be nights in Carpathia where we’d be out on patrol in the mountains, freezing in the darkest hours of the night when it was too dangerous to light a fire, and to pass the time, I’d imagine brushing your hair. Sometimes you were the age you would have been at the time—seventeen or eighteen—and other times I’d imagine you older. Pregnant and at my feet, with my ring on your finger.”
The image gives me a moment’s pause. In my loneliest hours, I have imagined something very close to his little fantasy, and hearing him admit it sends another church-bell-style shiver through me.
The brush pauses in my hair. “Does that make you uncomfortable?” Ash asks. “I know that I’m basically confessing to a history of obsession. And I don’t want that combined with my position as President to make you feel coerced or threatened.”
“I don’t feel that way at all,” I murmur, and the brush starts back through my hair again.
The brush is replaced by his fingers, running through the tresses over and over again, smoothing and separating and smoothing them again, like a hand moving through running water. It’s impossible to describe being touched like this when no man or woman has ever touched me this way before. When I was a child, I was touched with a parent’s or grandparent’s love, and when I was a teenager, there had been the inevitable tickles and snuggles with my best friend and cousin. But I’ve never been touched as a woman by another adult this way—with reverence and care. With sex still hovering in the air. It thrills me and unnerves me at the same time, because what if it ends? I’m not a woman of low self-esteem, but how can I possibly be worthy of the love of a man like Ash? What will happen if he realizes this?
“I know I probably haven’t earned this privilege,” Ash says after several long moments of stroking my hair, “and that it will mean that things will change, but I would love it if you spent the night with me. If you slept—and I mean that literally—in my bed with me.”
“How will things change?” I ask.
“There’s a chance the press will see you leave. There’s a chance a staffer will recognize you as you exit the Residence. There’s a chance I’ll be doodling your name on every bill I sign tomorrow.”
I can’t stifle my girlish grin at that, and I’m glad he can’t see my face. I take a minute to think. After what we shared, after learning about the emails—it hasn’t shrunk my fears about delving back into this life, but the fears are put in perspective. Ash is worth it. The Greer I used to be is worth it.
As my answer, I turn to face him. “We could do more than literally sleep, you know.”
A reproachful tap of the brush on my upper arm. “Don’t tempt me. I think we’ve committed enough sins for one night.”
Vulnerability must have flashed in my eyes, because before I know it, I’m being raised to my feet and kissed deeply. Ash’s tongue slides against my own, his lips firm, and his hands are sliding up my back to find my zipper. He tugs it down, and soon I’m standing in a pool of blue cotton, wearing nothing but my panties and bra. Ash pulls back with a smile and takes my hand to press against the front of his still-unbuckled pants.
“See?” he asks as I wrap my fingers around the thick erection I find there. “Trust me, Greer, there’s hardly anything I want more than to throw you onto my bed and rut into you until I’m too tired to move. But I’ve waited so long to have you here…” He reaches out and twines a strand of gold hair around his finger. “I want to take my time. I know that sounds horribly old-fashioned, but we only get to have these first times together once. I want to savor them.”
That touches me, strangely. I want to savor these times too, although the idea of waiting for them is almost unbearable. “I guess when you put it like that, it’s hard to argue with.”
“I’m hard to argue with,” he informs me. “That’s why I’m the President.”
He scoops me up into his arms with a sudden movement, carrying me to his bedroom, and I let out a stream of giggles like bubbles underwater. Each one seems to light up his face more and more until he’s practically glowing as he sets me down on the bed. “You have the most incredible laugh,” he says, dropping a kiss onto my waiting lips. He walks over to his dresser and retrieves a plain white T-shirt for me to put on. “Has anybody ever told you that?”
“Only you.”
He sighs at that, the idea of being an only or a first for me seeming to please something deep inside of him, and when our fingers brush as he hands me the T-shirt, I resist the urge to grab his tie and pull him to me so we can get started on some other firsts.
He returns to the dresser and removes his tie bar and cuff links, dropping them slowly into a dish inside his top drawer. His handsome face turns uncertain. “Greer…if this—if us spending the night together, is too much, I want you to tell me. I know I can be controlling, and sometimes I forget to ask people how they feel before I demand to have my way. It’s probably a good quality for a soldier or president, but it’s not necessarily a good one for a lover. That’s one of the reasons your emails had such an impact on me—even before I knew who I was and what I wanted, you seemed to know exactly what you wanted. You wanted to have done to you the kinds of things I wanted to do to you, and it made me feel like…maybe…” He pauses, does the thing where he rubs at his forehead with his thumb. It’s sweet, somehow, seeing this famous orator, the President famed for his certainty and surety, at a loss for words. For me.
I stand up, still in my bra and panties, clutching the shirt in my hand. I go to him and hand him the shirt, and then turn back to face the bed. He understands immediately, his strong hands unfastening my bra hook by book.
“I still want those things,” I tell him. I look at him over my shoulder. “I want you to do them to me. Do you remember what I asked you in my last email?”
He lets out the kind of breath that tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them.”
The bra is loose, and I turn to face him again, letting it fall from my shoulders and onto the floor. His eyes darken into the deepest green at the sight of my naked breasts. “That hasn’t changed,” I whisper. “If anything, it’s truer today than it was then. I promise to tell you everything—even when I think you won’t like what I have to say—but I want you to know that it’s not too much. I know it’s fast right now, but we’ve also had ten years leading up to this. And even though I told myself I was over you, past that time in my life, I think without knowing it that I’ve been waiting for you all along.” I brush my fingers along his jaw, and he closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m ready to stop waiting.”
He opens his eyes and smiles. “Me too. Arms up.”
I don’t miss the way his gaze sweeps hungrily over my breasts as I raise my arms, and I hope that he’ll change his mind about having sex tonight, but despite the erection bulging the front of his slacks, his self-control is ironclad. He pulls the T-shirt over my arms and head, and then gives me a little smack on the bottom. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. Brush your teeth and then get in the bed.”
I obey, walking through his dressing room and into the bathroom. As I brush my teeth, I can’t help but gaze around, trying to wrangle the surreal feeling of brushing my teeth in the President’s bathroom. The bathroom is as modern as the dressing room is traditional—clean lines of black marble and white tile, clearly recently renovated. But the dressing room still retains its antique feeling, with an ornate fireplace in the corner and richly red drapes hanging around the windows. An unused vanity sits against the wall next to a tall window, its mirror spotless and its surface clean, except for one picture frame. I remember seeing pictures of First Ladies sitting in here, at this very vanity, and my chest feels hot. I never wanted this, never pictured myself living here, either as a president or the First Lady, yet for a moment, I see it. I see it and I don’t hate it. Not for the fame or power or even the beautiful old house, but for Ash. For Ash, I think I might be able to live here.
I wander a little closer, looking at the picture. It’s Ash with two women, both black, one old and one young. I recognize the young one right away—Kay Colchester, Ash’s foster sister and current Chief of Staff. The older woman must be Ash’s foster mother. I scan the picture for every single detail, as if it contains a biography of Ash’s life, but it all it shows me is love and warmth. All three of them grin at the camera as the sun shines on a tidy little bungalow behind them, and even though the media always painted Ash’s orphan backstory as nobly tragic, there’s nothing sad or tragic about this picture at all. Ash had a happy childhood. That touches me in a very deep place, so deep that I almost want to cry, but I don’t.
Instead, I turn abruptly from the vanity and go back into the bathroom to finish up. Ash joins me, and while I want to stay and watch him brush his teeth, he waves me away with a look that tells me he hasn’t forgotten that he gave me particular instructions. With a stifled pout, I go to the large four-poster bed and crawl under the soft, gray blankets.
When Ash enters, he’s only wearing his slacks, the white shirt and tie abandoned somewhere along the way. My mouth gapes a little at the sight; those powerful muscles shifting under all that warm skin, the lines of his hips tapering in from his wide shoulders, the V that disappears into the low waist of his tailored slacks. Smiling at the way I’m gawking, he unzips his pants and steps out of them, draping them over a low sofa, and stalks toward the bed.
I can’t believe this is happening. That this is real life right now. The President—the Ash of my dreams for ten years—wearing tight boxer briefs and walking toward me with a hungry look in his eyes. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
But no. He clicks off the light and slides into the bed, his iron arm snaking around my waist and then pulling me tight into him, my back to his chest. I let out a happy sigh at the feeling of his long, big body curled protectively around mine, and then I wriggle my hips suggestively when I feel the thick rod of his erection nestle against my ass. He gives me a light pinch. “Don’t be naughty,” he breathes in my ear. “I’ve had ten years to dream up punishments for you, and I can’t wait to try them out.”
“Neither can I.”
“I think you really mean that. And it pleases me more than you can know.” He pulls me a little tighter and kisses the back of my neck. “Have you ever slept in a bed with a man before? Just slept?”
As much as he loves knowing he’s my first at things, I can’t lie. I nod my head against the pillow. “Yes. The night I lost my virginity.”
He stiffens a little, and I can practically feel his jealousy roiling through him.
“You’re not…mad…that I’m not a virgin, are you?”
“Oh, Greer, of course not. How could I be when I was married to someone else? I begrudge you nothing. But him—whoever he was—I begrudge him fucking everything.”
There’s a kind of dark bitterness to his words that thrills me, with my craving to be possessed. But they also scare me. Because for some reason, just now, it hits in a real and concrete way.
Ash doesn’t know I slept with Embry.
Ash doesn’t know that the man he wants to begrudge everything is also his best friend.
The quiet worry I pushed aside this afternoon comes back, no longer quiet but shrill and keening. I no longer feel as if Ash is holding me by the neck, forcing me to face some reckless, unknowable fate, but that I am holding him. That we are both on the precipice of some terrible and beautiful and inevitable destiny, and that if I don’t stop us, we’ll both go tumbling headlong into its welcoming teeth.
I shift, suddenly restless, at odds with my own thoughts, and Ash is there with a kiss to my shoulder. “Keep still for me, angel,” he murmurs. “Let me hold you for a few minutes longer.”
How can I deny him—or myself—that? I still my limbs and relax back into him, deciding to muffle my thoughts about Embry until tomorrow. My body folds into Ash’s as if it was made for it.
“I have to tell you that I’m still not a great sleeper,” he says after a couple of quiet minutes, and I remember noticing the smudges under his eyes this afternoon.
“I’ve heard meditation helps,” I say, a little dryly.
“You know, I’ve heard that too,” he says, just as dryly.
“I shared a bed with my cousin for years, and she kicks and grunts in her sleep. I can handle you.”
He laughs a little laugh. “I wish I could get to the point where I can sleep long enough to talk in my sleep. But probably I’ll end up going over to the office to work at some point in the night. I just don’t want you to feel abandoned or worried if you wake up and don’t find me next to you.”
I rub my ass against his cock again. “I’ve heard of something other than meditation that puts men to sleep.”
That earns me a real pinch, and I let out a little yelp.
“Go to sleep, Greer,” comes his voice in the dark.
“Yes, Sir.”
And I do.
