“Better than being ashamed, Morgan le Fay.”
“Don’t call me that name,” I say.
I miss you calling me that name; I miss it every day.
“And I’m not ashamed.”
We’re still stepping and spinning, but at some point, Lorne maneuvered us to the periphery of the dancing. “I think you are,” he says. “I think you’re so ashamed that you can’t even speak your desires out loud. I think you’re so ashamed that you’d rather divorce a man than admit you want him.”
I stop dancing, glaring up at him. His hand is still on my ass. “Is that what this is about? The divorce?”
A smile under his mask. “Not the divorce, no.”
“Sure feels like it,” I mumble.
“Can’t a man dance with his ex-wife? Can’t he play under her skirt a little?” To emphasize his point, he pulls me close—close enough that my thighs have to part around his. And the pressure of that muscular, tuxedo-clad thigh against my pussy nearly undoes me. I slump against him and pant like an animal in heat.
This was why I divorced him. He makes me drunk, and he makes me senseless. He slides into my soul and whispers my secret desires back to me. He wants my control—my surrender—and I can’t give it to him. I can’t give it to anyone.
Except you want to, don’t you?
That’s what you couldn’t admit in the car.
After all these years, you want something different, and you’re afraid.
“Come here, sweet witch,” he says, releasing me from his arms, but taking my hand in his and guiding us to one of the mossy alcoves in the ballroom. Living branches arc above us, hung with lights and flowers, and a gauzy fabric hangs like curtains around us. We aren’t invisible, but we are mostly hidden, and it’s hard not to feel that we are in some kind of fairy glen, alone in a forest.
But I can’t be alone with Lorne, I think as he turns and faces me. I can’t, I can’t, because I will drink him all down, I will tumble right into those scotch-colored eyes and drown.
“I can’t do this,” I say, my voice shaking. “Like I said—I’m meeting someone, and I can’t—”
I can’t get lost in you again. It terrifies me.
“Why are you meeting someone here, at a party in Bishop’s Landing?” Lorne asks, folding his arms and leaning against the ballroom wall behind him. “Why, Morgan, when I know you could ensorcel any Lyonesse submissive you wanted into bending the rules for you?”
I don’t want a submissive.
“I don’t fuck club subs,” I say instead.
Lorne levels a look at me like he sees right through my deflections, which he probably does. He always has. “So instead of literally any other option, you asked a former assassin to set you up on a date.”
“Mark is the most discreet person any of us know, and anyway, it’s not like there’s a hookup app for vice presidents.”
Lorne’s posture doesn’t change. His voice stays the same. And yet there’s something different when he speaks. “You could have called me.”
I try to mirror his posture and lean against the wall too, except the damn wings—and fuck—my dress. With a hiss of pain as the burning and prickling renews itself on my backside, I straighten up again. “I didn’t call you for a very obvious reason.”
“That we’re divorced?” He gives me an expression like I’m being very boring and prudish right now.
“No, Lorne,” I huff. “Because I’m not a submissive.”
“I never said you were.”
“But you wanted me to be.”
His eyes darken then. “I only wanted you to be yourself.”
“But that’s the problem with you. When I was with you, I felt like I was being myself. I felt like I wanted it, but I couldn’t have. I can’t want that. I don’t want that.”
“How do you know?” my ex-husband asks calmly.
I sputter. “Because I’m Morgan Leffey. I love power. I’ve built my entire life around power, around getting more of it, around holding onto it. And before you, I’ve always craved power in bed. Always. And then you showed up, and I—I got confused. You made me think that I could give all that up, that I could give up everything I am—”
He comes off the wall in an instant, taking my elbows in his hands like he wants to shake me senseless. “I never wanted you to give up a single thing,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “Do you understand? Never. I knew what you wanted—I know what you still want. You want the White House for yourself, just as you always have, and there was never a moment I wouldn’t have been proud to be the man at your shoulder. The partner in your shadow. I have never, ever, wanted to steal your glory, Morgan, I have never wanted to dull your shine. It never bothered me that everyone else might think me your prop or your plaything, I would have given you everything of mine—including my own career—to help further your ambitions.”
Conviction burns in his voice, and his eyes are hot and honest on my face.
“Do you understand? Do you understand now? What you imagined—what you are still imagining—was never what I wanted. I never asked you to give up a single thing then, and I never would now.”
“But when we were alone…”
“I still only wanted what you did,” Lorne says, his hands tightening on my elbows. I shiver a little, remembering them rough on my ass, possessive between my legs. “I only wanted what you still want.”
“I’m not a submissive,” I say thinly. “I know I can’t be. I would have known before now, I would have felt differently before now—”
“I’m not asking for you to choose between words, Morgan, and that was never what our marriage was about anyway. I couldn’t have cared less what you called yourself, as long as you called yourself mine—as long as you stopped hating yourself for what you wanted from me when we were alone.”
My pride flares. “I never hated myself.”
Lorne’s eyebrow arches above the line of his mask. “Oh, is that so?”
“Well, I never hated myself for that,” I amend.
I have ten thousand other reasons for self-loathing, and I’ve committed sins that will bar me from the gates of heaven, which he now knows. He didn’t during our marriage, but when my sins caught up with me two years ago, they caught up with everyone around me—splashed on every magazine cover and dissected on every cable news show for months. Lorne and I were well and thoroughly divorced by then, but he still learned my greatest pride and my greatest shame along with the rest of the world.
His eyes soften, and so do his hands. He pulls me closer into him, and I can smell the clean bite of mint and soap that always lingers on his skin. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” he murmurs. “I wanted to be there for you so badly. I would have, if only you would’ve let me.”
I close my eyes and nod. I know he’s right; I believe him.
When the news broke, he called and called and called. He texted, he offered to sue every magazine and news corporation on my behalf. He showed up at my door and I hid in the kitchen until he finally went away.
“Why didn’t you let me help?” he whispers, his lips in my hair. “Why do you never let me help?”