American Prince

Her. It was a her. For some reason that rankled all the more.

“Why aren’t you?” I asked.

Ash leaned back in his chair. “It would be wrong.”

“Because of me?”

“Not entirely.”

That answer stung, I had to admit. “Then why?”

He regarded me carefully. “Because she’s sixteen.”

I had no response to this. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, and still—nothing. Except one thing. “You’re twenty-six.”

“I’m flattered you remember.”

“That’s a decade older than her.”

“Well spotted,” said Ash.

“That’s actually illegal. And morally dubious.”

Ash spread his hands wide, palms up. “I fucked you while you were bleeding from two different bullet holes, Embry. I’m not a moral man.”

I stared at him, shaking my head. “You’re the most moral man I know. Which is why it doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” he said, looking down at his hands. “It doesn’t make sense. But nevertheless…”

My jealousy, my irritation that he could be fooling around with a teenager for God’s sake, fed my curiosity. I had to know. “How? When?”

“Last summer, in London. Before Caledonia. Merlin had taken me to a cocktail party.” He smiled to himself, lost in memory. “She was on her knees when I walked in, trying to clean shards of glass from the floor where her cousin had thrown it in a tantrum. Her hair was like—” he searched for the right words “—water, if water were gold and white.”

I could almost see it then, the scene. This young woman kneeling in a pool of broken glass, Ash in his uniform, an English moon silvering the wet sky outside.

“She noticed I couldn’t sleep—I think she notices a lot of things, actually—and I helped her clean up the glass. And then…” his thumb came up to touch his lower lip.

“You kissed her.”

“It was her first kiss,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve been anyone’s first kiss before. But kissing her was like—” he looked me straight in the eye “—it was like kissing you. Different in most ways, but the same in the most important way: how it feels right to me.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I swallow, my eyelids burning for some reason I can’t identify.

“But I left without doing anything more than kiss her. She’s been writing me emails ever since, although tonight is the first one I’ve had in six months.” A labored smile. “I suppose her infatuation is burning itself out.”

“But yours isn’t.”

“But mine isn’t,” confirmed Ash.

I felt so helplessly frustrated. So jealous. “Why not? Why can’t you just be happy with—” I froze, but it was too late. Ash knew what I was going to say.

“With you?” he asked softly, and I couldn’t tell if his voice was soft with malice or with love. They often ran parallel tracks with Ash.

He stood up and came around his desk, checking that the office door was locked, and then he was squatting in front of me, searching my face. “I am happy with just you, little prince. You have to understand, when I met her, I hadn’t seen you in over three years and for all I knew I’d never see you again. And I met someone who made me feel—just for an hour—the way you always make me feel. I treasure that hour because it’s only the second time in my life I’ve felt it, and I don’t know that men like me are allowed much more than that.”

“Ash…”

“It might be premature to call that feeling love, but I can’t help the way I’m wired, Embry.” He took a breath, standing up and then looking down at me. “I know you don’t want promises from me, but I’m going to give you one anyway. So long as I’m fucking you, you’ll be the only one I’m fucking.”

His blunt promise of monogamy made my cheeks flush with flattered satisfaction, which cooled somewhat when he followed up with, “But there’s always going to be a tiny corner of my heart for this, Embry. A memory of an hour in London. If you and I were—” he closed his eyes as his breathing hitched and a muscle jumped in his cheek. I watched him regain control of himself “—if things were different between us, then I’d give it all to you, that London hour and all. But since you were honest from the beginning about what you would and wouldn’t give me, then I’ll be honest and tell you that I want to hold onto this for myself.”

I could object, I knew I could. I could tell Ash that I didn’t care what I’d been honest about, I wanted him to burn those emails, I wanted his heart and thoughts only on me. And he would’ve listened. But I was acutely aware of how unjust it was to ask him to surrender a single memory when I refused to surrender any part of my life—or so my lie had led him to believe.

“Okay,” I said.

“Do you want to know her name?” he asked.

“No.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

His hands went to his belt and slowly began to work it open. “Show me how fine it is then,” he said, and I did.

Two and a half years passed after I discovered Ash’s obsession with the girl with the water-hair, and things began to slip out of our control. Ash—once so good at keeping our arrangement a clean mix of soldierly fraternity and covert fucking—began to slip. He stroked my hair as I fell asleep. He saved the Skittles from his MREs for me. He talked about bringing me home to Kansas City to meet his mother and sister.