American Queen (New Camelot Book 1)
American Queen: Part 2 – Chapter 20

The snow is falling thick and fast outside as Embry walks into the room with a bowl of fresh popcorn. “Can you explain this to me again?” he asks, setting the bowl down on the coffee table in front of Ash and me. “Is this like a Martha Stewart thing? Is this because cranberries are disgusting and serve no other purpose?”

Ash looks up from the cranberry and popcorn garland spilling out of his lap and around his feet, a needle poised in one hand. “Did your family really never do this?” he asks skeptically.

Embry arches an eyebrow at the mess of popcorn and cranberries and thread. “No.”

Ash goes back to his work, reaching into the bowl of warm popcorn to thread another piece onto his garland. “I suppose you and Morgan had servants to decorate your family Christmas tree.”

“Actually,” Embry says, “we did. The trees were too big for us to put up ourselves, and the one in the main hall had to be decorated using scaffolding.”

“Sounds like it would have taken a lot of popcorn,” I comment, not looking up from my own garland.

“The hidden costs of wealth,” Ash remarks drily.

“We did have the mistletoe, though,” Embry says. I glance up at the doorway where our own bunch of mistletoe hangs; Ash insisted on putting it up there the minute we got to the lodge, and then kissed me for several long, sweet minutes underneath it as Embry watched with a troubled expression and his hands in his pockets.

“We need someone to kiss you under the mistletoe, Embry,” I say.

“I agree,” he replies. “Maybe one of the Secret Service agents will be lonely later tonight.”

We all laugh, but a wave of sadness goes through me for Embry. The perennial third wheel.

I’d kiss you if I could, I wish I could say. Maybe he already knows.

Embry grabs a handful of popcorn for himself and throws his body onto a low sofa nearby, and for a few minutes, there’s only the sound of the fire in the fireplace and the snow against the windows and the rustle of popcorn in the bowl. Then I ask Ash, “Have you heard from Kay about the Carpathian treaty yet?”

He shakes his head. “I told her to give it a rest tonight. There’s no point in her spending her holiday chasing down senators who are ready to enjoy theirs.”

It’s Christmas Eve, and Ash, Embry and I are at Camp David. Kay and Ash’s mother are coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow night, but for now, it’s just us and the Secret Service. Even the nation is quiet right now—there have only been a handful of texts from Kay and Belvedere since we got here this morning. Ash and his staff have been working hard to get Senatorial advice and consent for the new Carpathian treaty, in the hopes of having it inked and signed before spring comes and a land offensive from the Carpathians becomes possible. Other than the work on the treaty, it’s been a quiet December. Quiet for the three of us as well—six weeks have passed without a repeat of what happened between us the night of the State Dinner. We haven’t even talked about it.

But even without talking about it, something seems to have shifted. Embry—widely famous for having a different date for every event—still has a new woman on his arm almost every night, and there are times he comes into the Oval Office or the Residence with swollen lips and tousled hair, smelling like sex. Knowing he’s fucking other women—and lots of them—hurts a secret corner of me that I refuse to let anyone see, but it’s a secret corner that’s used to it. During the campaign especially, Embry’s playboy status was a running joke among pundits, and unlike Ash, he’s never brought up his sexual history to me, never made me any promises, and he doesn’t have to, because we aren’t together. I have no claim to his sex life, and I’ve accepted that, even though it stings.

Embry’s fucking his way through the Beltway elite aside, he’s seemed more attached to Ash and me than ever since the State Dinner. At night, he’ll leave whatever party or gala he’s at and join us at the Residence, freshly fucked and still wearing a rumpled suit or tuxedo, and watch television with us or help me sort through medieval research. On Sunday mornings, he’s there next to us in church, and on Sunday afternoons he’s stretched out on the sofa in the Residence living room, yelling about football with Ash, and teasing me about Nathaniel Hawthorne or whichever American writer we’ve decided to hate that day. In the mornings, when I’m getting ready to sneak out of the Residence without being seen, Embry is there with coffee and a newspaper, and the three of us share a quiet breakfast before the sun breaks over the horizon, sipping coffee and waking up for the day. Embry’s sewn himself into the rhythms of our days, so much so that whenever he’s gone, it feels like something’s unraveled.

And through all that, Ash and I still haven’t slept together. Something that bothers me more and more every day.

No man can take things that slow, trust me. Not unless he’s getting it from somewhere else.

Ugh.

I push Morgan’s words out of my head and try to focus on my popcorn and cranberry garland. Try to focus on how happy I am to be here, snowbound and as alone with Ash and Embry as I’ve ever been. I get to have them both to myself for an entire day and night, and I mean to enjoy every minute of it.

“Anyway,” Ash says after a minute, going back to our conversation about the treaty, “I think I mostly convinced the senators we need.”

“Convinced is a kind word for it,” I tease. He’s spent the last five weeks meeting personally with every senator on his list, wooing, cajoling, threatening, leveraging—you name it, Ash has done it in the last five weeks in order to keep the United States from going back to war. “I hear some congressmen are actually physically frightened of you right now.”

Ash shrugs, but he smiles down at his garland. “Whatever works.”

“No work talk,” Embry complains, flinging an arm over his face. His voice is muffled when he speaks again. “I hate work.”

“Says the man who read the daily briefing out loud to us in the car.”

“I did it to stop you from playing more of that awful music,” Embry says from under his arm.

“Christmas music?”

A muffled groan. “Yesssss.”

“Bah humbug,” Ash says, leaning down to bite off the string with his teeth. He makes a knot at the end of the garland and then puts his needle on the table. “Are you going to help us hang these up or what?”

“What do you think?”

But then he heaves himself off the couch and helps us anyway, criticizing our garland placement before pushing us out of the way and doing it himself. Ash laughs and pulls me back, standing behind me and wrapping his arms around my stomach. He rests his chin on my shoulder. “This should be every Christmas.”

Embry scoffs, long fingers plucking at the garland to make it drape evenly along the boughs. “Shitty decorations and the three of us bickering?”

I feel Ash smile, feel the genuine longing in his voice when he answers. “Yes.”

That afternoon, as the snow lets up and the December sunlight begins to wane over the woods, Ash asks me to go on a walk. Embry is stretched out on the floor asleep after a lazy afternoon watching A Christmas Story and drinking scotch; there’s a white puff stuck in his hair from when I threw popcorn kernels at him to try and wake him up.

“He’ll be fine,” Ash says, handing me my coat. “He never gets to nap since I forced him to run for office with me. We should let him sleep.”

I pull the coat on and wind a scarf around my neck, which Ash uses to tug me close enough to kiss. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “Even all bundled up.”

I press my lips to his, letting him part my lips with his own. I taste him—all mint and scotch and a hint of popcorn—and sigh happily. But when we pull apart, there’s something resigned in his face.

“Ash?” I ask. “Is something wrong?”

He looks at me for a long moment, his brow creased and that gorgeous mouth turned down at the corners. He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Let’s go on that walk.”

After a brief word to Luc, the lead agent on duty, we head out to the woods, following a narrow trail into the trees. The snow is deep and thick, untouched, and walking through it soon has our breath coming out in huge puffs of smoke. Ash looks like a model in his scarf and wool coat, belted jeans and boots. For a moment, I stop walking and just look at him as he continues ahead, long legs making easy work of the snow.

How is this my life? Stringing garlands with the President, watching the Vice President fall asleep like a teenaged boy on the floor? It feels so surreal, dreamlike, like I fell asleep in my office at Georgetown and conjured this new life for myself.

Ash notices I’m not with him and turns to me. “What is it, little princess?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head and smile. “Just thinking about how blessed I am.”

This should make Ash smile in return, make him happy, but instead there’s a new shadow in his eyes. He walks back to me and takes my hand, the leather of our gloves creaking together in the cold. “This way,” he says, pointing to an opening through the trees. “There’s a spot I like right through there.”

We move in that direction and come upon a sweet little rill, lined with ice but still running, tracing a babbling silver path through the woods. There’s a massive stump next to it, which Ash brushes the snow off of, and then we sit together, pink noses and frosty breath, listening to the narrow stream trickle past.

Ash doesn’t speak for a long time, and I don’t push him, even though his uncharacteristic unhappiness has me worried.

Is he going to end things between us?

The thought slams into me like a meteor, sending buried fears and insecurities flying like debris. Is this about Embry? About the glances we can’t help but exchange in the hallways or those mostly accidental brushes of the shoulder in the elevator?

Or was Morgan right? Is he sleeping with someone else?

Oh God, what if it’s her?

I knew this was too good to be true. I knew it. And I chose to believe anyway, because I wanted it so badly.

I’m curling my fingers against my palms, trying to control the panic racing through me, when Ash finally speaks. “Do you believe we’re responsible for the sins of our fathers?”

I’m startled by the unexpected topic. “No, not at all.”

“Original sin?”

“As much as I like St. Augustine, no.”

He smiles at me, small lines crinkling around his eyes. “You’re a bad Catholic.”

“I love the Church, but it’s hard to convince me that two words can sum up human nature. Especially since Jesus himself never mentioned it.”

The crinkles go deeper. “Hippie.”

I put my hand on his leg, squeezing the firm muscle. “What’s wrong?”

The smile fades and he looks away from me, stretching out his legs, making it impossible for me to keep my hand there. As if he doesn’t want to be touched. By me. That meteor is still glowing hot and destructive in my chest, and my cheeks flush red with embarrassment and fear.

“I wanted this to be a happy getaway. Just the three of us, no work or stress. No papers for you to grade. Just us and popcorn garlands and the snow.”

“It is happy,” I say, trying to search his face for answers. “I’m happy. Are you not?”

He lets out a long breath. “No. I’m not.”

I’m being burned alive with fear now. There’s no way this conversation will end happily, no way he brought me out here to tell me something good. I reach for him. “Ash, if this is about—”

He holds up a hand. “I guarantee you that whatever you think this is about, it’s not.”

“I don’t know,” I reply slowly. “I’m thinking a lot of things right now.”

He pauses, and then speaks. “It’s about Morgan Leffey.”

My hand freezes in midair. “What?”

“I know. I know.”

I drop my hand, and my voice trembles when I ask, “Are you…are you sleeping with her?”

His head snaps to mine. “Excuse me?”

“Is that why we haven’t slept together? Because you’re sleeping with her? Because you go to the club with her, and maybe you secretly want someone less submissive in bed and—”

In an instant he’s straddling the stump so he can frame my face with his hands. “Angel,” he says. “I haven’t been to the club since I saw you that Sunday in church. And I certainly haven’t slept with Morgan again—and I can vow to you right now that I never will. You’ll understand why in a few minutes, but I just want you to know right now that you are perfect for me in every way. In bed and out of it.”

“Then why are we talking about this?” I whisper.

“We’re not. We’re talking about the sins of our fathers. Well, just my father, actually.”

His father. Penley Luther.

“Merlin told me he explained the whole story to you, except I think…well, I know he didn’t tell you the whole story.”

I wrinkle my forehead. “There’s more?”

He blows out a big breath. “Yeah. One thing more. The name of my birth mother. Do you know it?”

I shake my head. Presidents live on in history books and Vice Presidents live on in crossword clues, but senior advisors certainly don’t live on anywhere. Much less a senior advisor that died before I was born.

“Her name was Imogen.” He closes his eyes. “Imogen Leffey.”

“Leffey,” I repeat.

“Yes.” He opens his eyes. “Leffey. She was also Morgan Leffey’s mother.”

There it is. The rumors Abilene and Merlin alluded to. The crucial fact I had forgotten about Morgan at the State Dinner. The fact that her dead mother used to work in the Presidential Cabinet. And that indescribable something I saw in her that reminded me of someone else…it hadn’t been Embry at all. It was Ash I saw in her face, Ash’s green eyes and black hair and high cheekbones and sensual mouth.

Ash, Ash, Ash.

Her brother.

“You and Morgan had the same mother?” I ask slowly, numbly. “You’re…you’re brother and sister?”

“Half-brother and half-sister, yes.”

“And you…you…”

All the disgust I could ever feel, all the horror and revulsion and judgment, all that and more is in his voice when he answers. “Yes. I fucked her. I fucked my own sister.”

He looks up to my eyes, and in those green depths I see wells of self-hatred and guilt so deep they scare me. “I didn’t know the truth at the time. I still don’t know if she did. What is it that T.H. White says in The Once and Future King? ‘It seems in tragedy that innocence is not enough’? Well, it’s true. She came to visit Embry while we took an R and R in Prague, the first woman out of uniform I’d actually talked to in months, and I pursued her. Fucked her against an alley wall with the Prague castle looking down over us. Took her back to my hotel room and we barely left it the whole week. She was the first woman who ever let me dominate her. Who encouraged it. And I took that encouragement and spent the week using her every way she’d let me.”

He chews on his lip, the guilt practically slicing up from under his skin. “So you see, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t know. I still did it. I chose it. I enjoyed it. I even had fond memories of it until Jenny’s funeral.”

I remember Merlin’s story. “That’s when she told you.”

A bitter smile. “Yes. The perfect time for her, I suppose. A way to gut me and try to ruin my campaign. But then why take me to the club and try to help me the very next week? Sometimes I think she herself doesn’t know how she really feels about me.”

“Merlin said her father raised her to hate you.”

Ash shrugs, looking down to where the gold of my hair spills out from underneath my hat. He twines the ends around his leather-clad fingers. “That’s true. I don’t doubt that in the least, but…” a pause “…she hates me because of something else. Something I did in Carpathia.”

“To her? But I’m sure you didn’t mean to. You helped so many people there, saved so many lives.”

He swallows. “I’m not a hero, Greer. I hate it when people say that. I did the best I could, I tried to win battles and save my fellow soldiers and as many civilians as I could, but I did bad things there. All those men I killed…so many…and God, I wish I’d shot them all. I wish. But so many of the battles were in villages and towns, we were clearing out places building by building, room by room. I stabbed them. Strangled them. Beaten them to death. At the end of the war, they’d resorted to using teenagers, just barely tall enough to fit into their uniforms, and not just boys, but girls too. Do you know what it’s like to be attacked in the dark, to stab or punch or choke and then get out your flashlight and realize you’ve just killed a teenaged girl?”

“Ash,” I say softly. “I had no idea.”

A joyless laugh. “Now you know why I can’t sleep.”

“So what happened with Morgan?”

He keeps his gaze studiously on my hair. “She came to visit the base a few months after that week in Prague. It was a little outside official channels, but the Leffeys are a powerful family. The kind that can pull strings whenever and wherever they want. She said she was there to see Embry, but I suspect she was really there to see me. Not that it mattered, we were so busy that neither of us had time to see her, and one day…well, there was a town famous for its medieval church nearby, next to a little lake. Morgan went that morning to tour the church, and we didn’t think anything of it. Except that evening, we got word that the separatists were getting close, and we had to evacuate the civilians in the town. But we were too late. The separatists got there first. It ended up being the first real battle of what would become the war. My first real battle.

“They’d locked up all the men and women they could find in the church while they looted the homes. All the children they’d put on a boat. For security, I think. To keep the adults of the town compliant while they pillaged it, to force the men to join their army. But maybe there was a miscommunication. Or maybe it was never just for security. By the time we got to the village, the boat was on fire.”

My hand flies to my mouth. “With the children?”

Ash nods, grimly. “That’s all we knew at first. Hostiles present, civilians locked in the church, children on a burning boat.”

“What did you do?”

“I was only barely in command then. Just a second lieutenant. I was so young, and I…” He looks hopeless. “I chose the children. I sent four men to the church. But the rest of us went to the docks. We were dodging enemy fire the whole time, trying to find a couple boats to steal, going across the lake. But we made it. We got to the boat and found an older child fighting off the fire with an extinguisher. We got all seventeen children off safely.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“But the adults in the church…” his voice is tight, tormented. “I should have known better. I should have realized it was a trap. I should have sent more men. All four killed, and all of the civilians, the church lit on fire. We fought our way to the church, chased off the separatists, and opened the doors to complete carnage and flames. Almost forty men and women shot. Only one survived.”

“Morgan?” I guess.

“I knew she was there. I knew the odds of her being in the church were high. But the boat…” Ash spreads his hands out, palms up, as if pleading with me to understand.

“She survived, though. She lived.”

Ash slumps those powerful shoulders. “Barely. Shot in the shoulder. She played dead. When we found her, she was underneath two other bodies, unconscious from blood loss and surrounded by fire. When she woke up, the story she heard from the army doctors was that we’d chosen to rescue another group of civilians, even though we knew she was in the church. I don’t think any other circumstances mattered to her after that.”

“But that’s so unfair!” I explode. “Anyone would have chosen the children!”

“Greer, she almost died. It was mere luck that the bullet missed anything vital, and even more luck that we managed to pull her out before the church burned down around her. She would have died because I didn’t properly allocate my men, because I didn’t think about the situation critically enough. Yes, I had to choose those children, but there was a way I could have saved everyone, and I didn’t see it. I was too panicked and inexperienced, and it almost cost her life. Of course she hates me. I knew she was in danger and I chose not to come after her.”

“I still think it’s unfair,” I maintain. “You did the best you could.”

“You’ve been in politics long enough to know that sometimes our best isn’t good enough.”

I turn so that I’m straddling the stump as well, scooting forward so that I can slide my legs over Ash’s legs and wrap them around his waist. I put my arms around him and press my face against his neck. “It’s good enough for me,” I say against his skin. “You are good enough for me. Always, always, always.”

He pulls back to look at me, brow furrowed. “I’m telling you that I fucked my sister and almost killed her, and you’re comforting me? I thought you’d want to run away. I told you this so that you could…escape.”

I press my hand against his jaw, my thumb touching his lower lip. It’s so soft and firm all at once, just like Ash. Strength and beauty and determination combined into one heady mix. “Is this why you were so unhappy earlier? Because you thought telling me about Morgan would make me leave you?”

He nods miserably. “I’d deserve it, Greer. And I couldn’t let us move forward without you knowing the worst of me. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Even if it wasn’t fair, I’d still stay. I’d endure anything to stay. But I don’t see this as the worst of you. These sins are the sins of a good man, not the sins of a cursed one.”

“I feel cursed sometimes.” His lips move against my thumb, his breath tickling my skin. “Only when I’m with you and Embry do I feel some sort of sanity. Like there can be good things in life for me, even after all the evil I’ve done.”

“Oh, Ash.” I look up into his eyes. “War may be evil, but you’re not, and if it took killing all those people to bring you here to me, then I won’t allow you to torment yourself with these things any longer. I don’t care what you’ve done, I care what you do, and that you’re here with me now.”

He sucks in a breath and searches my face. I see the faint sheen of unshed tears in his eyes, hear the swallow of his throat. “Do you really mean that?” he whispers.

“Yes.” It comes out clear, honest.

The truth of my answer hits him like a bullet to a Kevlar vest. Blunt force, ragged exhale, fractured man. He collapses into me, his arms pulling me so close that I can feel him even through the heavy wool of our coats, and he buries his face into my hair. “What did I do to deserve you?” he mumbles.

I’ll always love the other versions of Ash—the cool-headed politician, the beloved hero-President, the fierce Dominant—but this version? This broken-down, vulnerable man? There isn’t a word strong enough. There’s this vibrating in my bones, in my blood, somewhere on the cellular level, a vibration like every single one of my atoms wants to fly away and fuse to his atoms. This is more than wanting to bleed or bruise or kneel, this is more than listening to the same speech over and over, sacrificing sleep and time to go over policies and strategies. This is wanting to come apart for him, literally. This is wanting to burrow so deeply inside of him that he has to carry me with him forever. This is being flayed open, bleeding, whipped, scourged, just wounds on top of wounds on top of wounds, each wound a whisper of promise.

you can own me

because now I know I own you

give me more

and I’ll give you everything

And that’s when I find the courage to finally say it. “I love you.”

“God, those words from your mouth,” he says with feeling, moving his mouth from my hair to my lips. “I don’t deserve it, but fuck, I’ll take it.”

He kisses me, that trembling honesty heating into a molten urgency. “I love you,” he breathes into my mouth. “Surely you already know that. You must know.”

“I do now,” I pant in between kisses, cursing all the leather and wool that keeps our bodies from pressing together the way I need. But the moment I start rocking my hips against his, he straightens up and smiles.

“I have something for you,” he says, biting his lip like a shy child.

“A Christmas present?”

“Yes. I wanted to wait until after I told you about Morgan to give it to you…I didn’t want you to think I was trying to manipulate your reaction.”

I roll my eyes at his incessant chivalry. “You are so circumspect for a man who spends his nights spanking me until I can’t breathe.”

“That’s precisely why I’m circumspect,” he says and slides off the stump, and I immediately miss his warmth. Then I realize what he’s doing, and my entire body flushes with hot, happy disbelief.

He’s kneeling.

In two feet of snow, he’s kneeling.

Behind him, the stream is a twisted silver wire, the trees are leafless sentinels, the snow is a never-ending cloak of glittering fleece. There’s color high in his cheeks—from the cold or emotion, I don’t know—and he’s still boyishly chewing on his lip, nervous and excited. Between his leather-clad fingers is a ring, platinum and diamond, glittering in the fading light.

“I wanted to do this later tonight, but I can’t wait,” he says. “Greer Galloway, will you marry me?”

My heart thuds painfully against my chest, like it’s trying to punch its way out, and I feel my molecules leaving my body, blowing away like leaves before a storm to seek out Ash. Our breath, our life, it’s already tangled, and finally, finally, finally I understand what people mean when they talk about destiny. What they mean when they talk about meant to be. Why the fairy tales didn’t waste time explaining how the prince and the princess fell in love, because all along it was as natural and inevitable as breathing.

I join him in the snow, ignoring the cold, wet bite of it through my jeans. I cup the hand holding the ring with both of my own, and then drop kisses along the exposed line of flesh between his sleeve and his glove. I lift my head, dizzy with happiness.

“Yes.”

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