My fingers are digging into the couch, and I perversely wish I were bound—it’s almost worse to be responsible for my own control, to know that there’s nothing between this moment and burying my fingers in his hair but my nonexistent self-discipline. All I want to do is touch his head as he moves over me, trace those lips where they wrap around my cock. Capture one of those wandering hands and slide it up to my chest where it can lay flat against my heart.
The point of no return comes agonizingly slowly, building deep and low in my groin. My blindfolded world has shrunk down to the satin heat of Ash’s tongue, the tight grip of his throat, the pressure building behind my cock. My legs keep moving around him, my shoes still sliding on the carpet, and my thighs and abs are so tense, so fucking tense—
“Would you like to come in my mouth, Embry?”
I nod, my body pulling as taut as a bowstring, ready to snap.
“Say please.” The tip of his tongue flutters across the head of my cock, taking extra time to lick inside my slit.
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.”
“You’re pronouncing please wrong.”
“Please, fucking please, please—”
I’m engulfed once more, and he works me so hard and deep that my toes are curling in my shoes and it feels like everything in my pelvis is about to snap and shatter, and then the first wave hits with the strength of a two-ton bomb. I cry out, arching my back and twisting to the side all at once, and he curls his fingers around my hips to hold me still, as if I’m interrupting something for him.
The second wave hits and then I’m releasing into his mouth, pumping my orgasm onto his wide, strong tongue. I’m pulled deeper again, my swollen head squeezed by the tight swallows of his throat as I continue to shudder and pulse and spurt. He swallows it all, fingers still clamped around my hips and firm lips still wrapped around me until I’m completely drained, and then he pulls back.
I expect him to stand up, I half expect cruel fingers yanking my chin forward so he can fuck my mouth next, but instead I hear a sigh and feel something I can’t remember feeling before—his head resting against my leg. And that, so much more than the blowjob, is what I’m desperate to see, because who knows if it will ever happen again? Ash kneeling in between my feet, resting his head against me.
I reach for the blindfold, and he says quickly, “Don’t. Leave it on for a moment.”
I curl my fingers against my palm, they’re so itchy to disobey, but I finally force my hand back to the couch. I feel and hear him sigh. “Just a moment longer. I know this is supposed to be for you, but I want this…just a moment longer.”
His hand reaches up to stroke my stomach, and then finally rests where I wanted it earlier, flat against my heart. A seedling of a thought works its way through the soil of my mind. Maybe not even a thought, more like a sense or an instinct, that somehow, despite the novelty of it, Ash kneeling and servicing me isn’t that much different than anything we’ve done in the past. Because maybe he’s the one on his knees, the one swallowing my cum, but he’s still the one in control. The one silently indicating that he still owns my heartbeat.
“I love you, little prince,” he whispers, palm warm against my chest. Underneath my blindfold, I squeeze my eyes closed in something like pained rapture. After all these years, those words still haven’t lost their power over me. Their power to thrill me, and their power to terrify me, because being loved by a man like him is no small burden.
“You don’t have to say it back. I don’t want to push you.”
“You know I love you,” I say, and it’s a little petulant, because Ash has every right to doubt the depth of my feelings and I know it. But how can I make him understand? That every time I pushed him away, it was for his own fucking good? And not for his own good in some vague, moralistic sense, but for his practical, concrete advancement? If he’d married me, we wouldn’t be in the private office at Camp David right now. There wouldn’t be a pile of reports waiting for him on that desk. He wouldn’t have left the Army as a Major. Nothing that made him the man he is today would have been possible if he’d been publicly bisexual, and I hate that as much as anyone, but it’s the fucking truth. I sacrificed myself, my own happiness, because anyone could see that people like Maxen Colchester weren’t born every day. Anyone could see he was meant for great things—and again, not in the vague, Eat, Pray, Love “we’re all the universe’s children” kind of way, but actual great things. Historic things. Affecting millions of lives for the better kind of things. It wasn’t fair to me or to him, but necessary things aren’t always fair.
Something I know now more than ever.
He lifts his head from my leg and moves his hand away from my heart, and my soul wilts. He stands and unties the blindfold, and his face is the first thing that comes into focus when I can finally open my eyes against the daylight. His brow is slightly furrowed, a tragic pull to his mouth, and he looks at me like he wants me to say something, anything more than I already have.
But what can I say? After all, it was my choice to martyr myself for his future. He would have martyred his own future to be with me, which is why the bitterness never stays for long. And it’s also why I can’t tell him the truth about the reasons I said no. He’s suffered enough without me adding guilt to the pile.
“We should go check on Greer,” I say, and something in his face closes, like a door. He nods.