American Prince

“Yes.”

His sweatpants do nothing to hide his growing erection. “Did she fight you?”

Shame and arousal come in equal measure. “Yes.”

“And you fought back and won.” He closes his eyes.

I can barely breathe. “Yes.”

“Did you want that too?”

My words are ghosts. “I pretended to be you.”

His eyes snap open, and the green of them goes more vibrant than the forest outside. His breathing is ragged and so is mine. “I’m so jealous, little prince,” he whispers. “I’m angry with myself that I couldn’t be there to give my wife what she needed and I’m grateful to you, that you could give it to her. The thought of the two of you together like that…” His mouth twists up in a rueful smile and he lets me go to gesture at the outline of his cock pressing against his sweatpants. “Well, you know.”

I miss his touch. “Do you forgive me?”

The forest eyes soften the tiniest bit. “You saved her life, Embry. I’ll forgive you anything.”

I nearly perish with relief.

“Even if you’d mocked me and hated me the whole time you cuckolded me, I’d forgive you. Even if you reenacted every kink I’d ever done with her to erase the memory of me from her body, I’d forgive you. If you two had fucked and then both decided to leave me, I’d forgive you. But especially this. You took care of her in the way she needed.”

“I feel like shit about it,” I mutter, although the truth is more complicated that, and his lingering smile tells me that he knows it.

“I forgive you, so you need to forgive yourself. She asked and you said yes, because you knew she needed it. Because you needed something similar once. And because you wanted it. And because you knew I would have given her the same were I there.” He stands and offers me a hand, and I let him help me to my feet.

“Sit,” he says, pointing to the couch and walking behind his desk as I do. I’m feeling shaken, flayed open after my confession and submission and his forgiveness, and so I search for anything to talk about that isn’t what I’ve done with my lover’s wife.

“Did our deception work? Keeping her abduction quiet?”

Ash nods as he looks through one of the deep drawers of the old desk. “As far as anyone knows—save for a trusted few—Greer and I have been here on our honeymoon and you have been taking a much-needed vacation at your mother’s lake house. Although I don’t know how much longer I could have kept it up. The press is ravenous for pictures of Greer and me.” As always, he sounds puzzled with the media’s fascination with him.

“It must be Greer,” he concludes, opening another drawer. “They all adore her—rightfully so—and seem to be obsessed with her. The wedding coverage and the post-wedding magazine covers and Internet articles…I couldn’t turn on the television without seeing clips from my own wedding. Couldn’t do anything without seeing her face.” He takes a deep breath, looking up at me. “Thank you, Embry. If you hadn’t brought her back, if you hadn’t come back…”

The sun moves out from behind a cloud, filling the windowed room with green-gold light, highlighting the silver near his temples and the faint lines around his eyes. He’s only thirty-six, just now entering the prime of his life, but for a moment, I can see the toll it’s all taken on him—the war, the presidency, Greer and me. It all rests on his shoulders and it always has, and normally he wears it so easily, but I can see now how much he’s come to rely on Greer for strength. And maybe even me too.

But then he straightens up, clutching something colorful in his large hand, and he’s back to power. Back to easy strength and calm. He walks back over to me, running the colorful thing through his hand, the thick shape of his cock so deliciously visible through his sweatpants. I can’t stop staring at it, staring at the black line of hair running down from his navel and into the waistband, the barest peek of more black hair beneath that.

He stops in front of me. “See something you like, Patroclus?”

I snap my eyes up to his face and see a smile dimpling his cheek. I’m about to say some smart remark, but then I see what’s actually in his hand. “Is that…is that a novelty tie with Mount Rushmore on it?”

“A present from Belvedere. I promised him it would never see the light of day…but I’m bending that promise a little now.” He leans down and wraps the tie around my eyes, knotting it securely at the back of my head. “Can you see anything?”

The ugly tie blocks out all the light, the silk of it actually quite smooth and cool against my tired eyes. “What are you doing?”

Two rough fingertips press against my mouth. “You’ll see. Head back and arms along the back of the couch. You aren’t permitted to move unless I say so.”

I do as I’m told, my erection already pressing painfully against the seam of my pants, my heart racing. So much of our brief, torrid affair between Jenny’s passing and dating Greer had been spontaneous, violently so, just a collection of stolen interludes in abandoned corners of the White House. But this—the prolonged and planned dominance—I hadn’t had this in years, since before Jenny. Since before the first time I refused to marry him.

I missed it.

I missed it the way you miss the sun after a long stretch of cloudy days, where you begin to forget the cloudiness, forget to miss the sun, and then one day it comes back so hot and clear and bright that you wonder how you ever lived without it. I missed the uncertainty of it, the way I can’t see a damn thing through my blindfold. I missed the awareness of it, the way my skin prickles with every brush of air, straining for hints of him.