Page 29 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
“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.”
