“But you didn’t know?”

A bitter smile. “Before he could tell me about his night, I told him about mine. About how this girl I’d met four years before had shown back up in my life. About how I’d been too much of a coward to tell her about Jenny right away, and then she’d discovered it in the worst way possible. I told Embry that this was Email Girl, that those letters I’d kept in my breast pocket all those years in Carpathia had been from her, the letters he caught me reading time and time again. I told him this girl’s name.”

My mind spins. Embry had known my name too. Which meant…

“And after I finished, and tried to be a good friend and ask him about his angel, he changed the subject. And he never mentioned that night again.”

“That’s why he didn’t call, didn’t try to find me…” I trail off.

“How selfless of him.”

“Back to you guessing. How? We’ve never…we haven’t done anything other than what you wanted us to do that night of the State Dinner. We haven’t kissed, haven’t even hugged.”

“I know,” Ash says. He crawls forward on the bed and slowly pulls the sheet down, baring my breasts to him. My nipples harden the minute they touch the cool air. “It was that night that helped me see it. He was obviously attracted to you, but…well, there was something else there. Something deeper. And after that, you two were so careful around each other. Never getting too close, never talking too long. Never alone. People who aren’t in love with people they aren’t supposed to be in love with don’t do that, Greer.”

“I’m not in love with Embry.”

“I told you not to lie to me.” The sheet is all the way pulled down now, and then his hand slides up my sternum to circle my throat. He doesn’t squeeze or press, but he makes a collar of his fingers, a collar not of leather or metal, but flesh and blood. You’re mine, the hand says. You’re mine and not his.

I’m fiddling with my new engagement ring without realizing it, and then his other hand comes down on top of both of mine. “Stop,” he says. “You’re not giving that back to me. You’re not taking it off. As long as you still want it, I will be your husband.”

“Yes, Sir,” I say, relief pricking at my eyelids. He doesn’t hate me now, he doesn’t want to end our relationship. If nothing else, I can live with that.

His hand presses at my throat, forcing me to lie back.

“How did he do it?”

“Do what?”

“How did he fuck you that night?” Ash is kneeling over me right now, his cock rock-hard and angry looking. “Did he flip you over so he could see your ass? Take you up against the wall because he couldn’t wait?”

Maybe I shouldn’t answer that. But I do. “It was…like this. Him on top.”

Quick as lightning, Ash is stretching his body over mine, his cock pressed against my clit. I can’t stop the moan that I let out.

“What else?” Ash asks. His voice is rough. Rougher than I’ve ever heard it. And his eyes are so dark, no longer green but black.

“He, um, he sucked on my breasts. Bit them. Like he was nursing, but hard and kind of desperate.”

Ash lowers his head and nips at the tender curves of my breasts, sucking and teething and kissing, and within half a minute, I’m panting.

“What else?” Ash growls against my tits. “What else did he do?”

“I didn’t tell him I was a virgin until he was trying to get inside. And when I did tell him, he got…mean. Like it turned him on too much for him to control himself.”

In the here and now, there’s a wide cock pushing against my folds and then Ash stabs inside so hard I gasp. “Mean like this?” he asks, punctuating his question with several savage thrusts.

“Yes,” I cry out. “There was blood. He liked it. I liked it.”

Ash stills, his cock quivering. “There was blood?”

“A lot. It hurt, and Embry liked looking at it on his dick, seeing it smeared on his hips and my thighs. I came so hard.”

“I bet you did,” Ash says, jabbing in again. “It should have been me, my cock. That blood and pain should have been mine, but I was such a fucking idiot.”

“You have me now, Mr. President.”

“Yes, I do,” he growls, rolling his hips and grinding against my clit. I make a low keening noise. “How did he come—on you? Inside you?”

“Inside me,” I say, my voice breathless. “He wrapped his arms behind me and put his weight on me. Oh God, yes, just like that.”

Ash feels entirely different than Embry—wider, stronger, more deliberate—but in this position, I can so easily summon the memory of Embry’s body over mine. I can so easily pretend.

“I want to feel what he felt,” Ash tells me, his lips against the place where my jaw and my neck meet. “I want to pretend I’m him. Are you pretending, angel?”

“I…I don’t know.” And I don’t. One moment it’s Ash over me, the next moment it’s Embry, and the moment after that it’s both of them, and I’m the center of a hurricane of hands and mouths and eager flesh.

“I believe you,” he says, his hips rolling so perfectly in and out. This third orgasm is like a key turning in a lock; there’s a sudden shift and sudden everything in me is open and ready, and the climax rushes in, vicious and cruel, each pull so painful and bright that I can’t catch my breath. It’s my orgasm that sends Ash over the edge, and he gives a rough grunt and releases, this time fucking his way through the orgasm with those slow rolls, his entire body shaking.