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I wanted to hope that it would work. That we could work—the three of us, somehow. Because fifteen years of knowing Ash and five of knowing Greer had shown me that I was never getting past this…this itch, this needy pain for them. I was ruined for loving anyone else, and call it fate or bad luck or genetic compatibility or psychological trauma—whatever it was, I was bound to them like rust to metal, a collision of particles and forces that changed us all irrevocably. There was no going back.
Ash steps forward and slides his hand around the back of my neck, pulling our foreheads together. Like he doesn’t care what anyone else in the room thinks. “Do you think that you are any less important to me?” he asks roughly. “Do you think I can risk you as well as her? Do you think that if you were caught I wouldn’t come after you too?”
It has to be me, and who could you trust more than me to find her and bring her back? Does anyone in this room, anyone in the police or CIA or Presidential Protective Division or the military love that woman more than me? Would anyone else in here risk more than me to bring her back?”
“That sounds like a stale answer, but it’s true,” I insisted. “No matter how hard we worked or how elegantly we danced, we’d merely be spinning demented circles if we did it without a partner. But together, we create something worth watching.”
Furious at the thought of anyone laying hands on my Greer, Ash’s little princess, my queen.
“Yes. I wish you belonged to me.” Belong. It was never a word I considered sexy, never a word I considered emotionally weighted; it was a word for things, cars and guns and possessions. But God, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be his possession, his thing. To belong to him.
Protected and cherished, even though I was already extremely good at protecting and cherishing myself. But it was different when it came from someone else, I supposed, all the social wiring of the human brain designed to reward the feeling of another human’s attention.
And the moment I say it, my face crumples and there’s no more hiding, no more pushing it away. It’s right there, and I find I’m begging him to take it. “Please make it go away,” I beg, tears running down my cheeks. “Take it away from me.” “Always.”
It’s like my wedding night—our separate pairings have dissolved and there’s only the three of us, the three of us moving and kissing and breathing as one. There’s no division, no suspicion or jealousy in this moment—there’s only unity. Ecstasy. The primal need to fuck joined with the sacred soul-deep need to love another soul as fiercely as possible. Mating. That’s what it is. A word that means both: the fucking and the sharing of one’s life.
