by M. Q. Barber
“It’s okay, Jay. I was just…” Hurt. Angry. She refused to guilt him the way his sister had. “Surprised.”
Celebrating Jay’s birthday last weekend hadn’t been about the timing working out better for her or getting ahead of their sweetly impatient birthday boy. Henry had expected Jay’s family would take priority this weekend.
“Surprised, yes. Alice is correct. We’ll miss you, but your desire to visit family is understandable.” With years of experience cushioning the blow, Henry managed to sound unaffected. “I’ll be certain to assign homework to occupy you while you’re away, my dear boy. I’d hate for you to fall behind.”
“I’ll keep up, Henry.” Eager and smiling, Jay loosened his death-grip on his napkin and sat up straight. “I promise.”
She returned his smile to reassure him, but her twitchy nerves lingered. Territorial—clingy—had never described her in a relationship, and uncertainty pricked like a hedge of sticker bushes. If a right way to feel existed, what was it?
The bastard thorns insisted on staying the night. She slipped under the covers without even a mock squabble with Jay over who’d sleep in the middle. As he flopped beside her, her muscles tensed.
Playfully wrestling with him, Henry delivered a good-night kiss that ended in a smooth switch. Henry claimed the center, and Jay curled on his left.
She lay on her back, inches of distance a yawning chasm, eyes adjusting to the darkness. Henry’s silence weighed as if the ceiling cranked downward. Normally she’d welcome his keen insights and prods to share. But wanting to avoid hurting Jay left her with nothing to say.
Murmuring good night and nothing else, Henry blanketed her in relief. Right now, she needed to process. Alone.
She could leave. Take the bedroom they never treated as one. If being in this relationship hadn’t changed her beyond recognition, she’d sleep fine alone.
Long way to go to prove a point to herself.
Back to her lovers, she hugged the edge of the bed and lay awake as night passed into morning.
* * * *
Jay’s empty seat at the dinner table Friday drew Alice’s eyes more often than it should. By the time she’d finished work, he’d already gone. She should be enjoying her time with Henry. In the eleven months since she’d started seeing—fucking—her men, she’d spent only two nights alone with him.
On those nights, she hadn’t felt abandoned. Unwanted. What the hell was wrong with her? Jay was with his family, not cruising to meet other women. Knowing her attitude wronged him made her feel worse. Ashamed.
“Alice.” Watching her for the last hour, Henry hadn’t challenged her silence. “It’s after seven o’clock. Have you finished your supper?”
She’d choked down four bites. Five, maybe. Didn’t matter. “Yes, Henry.”
“Then tell me your safeword, please.”
“Pistachio.” The ritual lacked Jay’s infectious excitement, their doubled anticipation, the conspiratorial glee of sharing Henry’s attention.
“When will you use your safeword, my dear?”
“When I want to stop,” she whispered. She and Jay heightened and reinforced each other’s arousal. Being without him made her incomplete. “For any reason.”
Why didn’t they have a word that stopped important things? If they had, Jay wouldn’t have submitted to his sister’s demands and left them.
“Do you promise to use your safeword if that time comes, Alice? Lift your head and look at me when you answer, please.” Face unreadable, Henry stared at her with those perceptive green eyes.
Her breath caught in her chest. “I promise, Henry.”
“Thank you.” Surveying the table, Henry stopped on her plate.
He’d require her to eat more, have her clear, and—
“Go to the bedroom and undress.” His tenderness disappeared under pure command. “Lie on your stomach on the bed and wait for me.”
Fumbling, she pushed the chair back and stood. “You’re sure you don’t want—”
“I’m certain I’ve told you what I want from you, sweet girl.”
After a quick detour to the bathroom, she stripped off her clothes, lay on the bed, and steeped in her own nudity. Air wafted across her back. Cool silk sheets cradled her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. The linens retained the faint scent of Henry—and Jay. Breathing deep, she chased the tenuous connection.
Loneliness answered her, the bed empty and her with it.
Henry filled the door frame.
Her heart thudded for his broad shoulders and narrower hips, for his forbidding stare and his strong hands.
He entered in silence and passed behind her. His clothes rustled, faint clues to his movements. The shirt, button by button. The belt with its buckle. Pants. Socks. Underwear.
The mattress sank in slow waves rolling up from her toes. He added his weight to hers, their bodies electrical fields rubbing edges and generating heat. Settling astride her hips, he rested atop her ass. His hands landed on her shoulders.
She sparked hot as a live wire. Christ, how had she functioned all day with shoulders so tight? No wonder sore and empty formed the sum total of her emotional battery.
Henry balanced his palms inches from her head. “You’re upset with Jay, sweet girl.”
Not sweet. An utter bitch pissed at her lover because what, he couldn’t tell his sister no? Worried about them meeting his family? A selfish, immature bitch. “That obvious, huh?”
Warm and tender, Henry blanketed her back. “You’re making yourself tense. Tell me what you feel. Say the words aloud.”
“I’m—” The sheets offered a comforting hollow for her face.
“Alice. Don’t hide from me or yourself.”
“Rejected.” The word burned and scratched her throat. “Like he doesn’t love us.” Her eyes itched. “I know I’m stupid to think that, and he loves us, and I’m being a bitch.” A chill rattled deep in her chest, beyond his reach. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Henry.”
Lips pressed to the nape of her neck, he hummed a low, soothing melody while he warmed her with his breath. Minutes slipped by as she inhaled in deep gulps.
“This isn’t something you’ve allowed yourself to feel before, is it, dearest?” Henry rumbled, his voice as much vibrating against her back as in her ear. “You’ve avoided deep emotional ties with your sexual partners. You hoped, perhaps, you might avoid this moment—this pain when you feel one has wronged you.”
“I know Jay didn’t wrong me, Henry. I get it.” Christ, if he’d let her put the whole damn attitude behind her, she could focus on trying to enjoy the night without Jay.
“Nonsense. You know no such thing.”
“I kn—what?” Where was Henry’s vigorous defense of Jay? His chiding for her unkindness and distance?
Forearm flexing, Henry levered himself up. “What you know is that you are here, and he is not.” Seated across her thighs, he massaged her back and sides, his kneading heavy and deep. “And what you feel, perhaps, is that you are a shameful secret.”
His prodding drove a sob from her. In her only other long-term relationship, she’d actively avoided chances to meet her boyfriend’s parents. Hi, I’m Alice, and I’m using your son for mediocre sex. Is that what marriage is like? Today, her heart starved because Jay hadn’t taken her home for the weekend. So fucking juvenile.
“Your feeling is magnified now, both because you love him, and thus your soul finds perfection where it is not, and because you’ve never allowed yourself to feel such pain before.” As he dug into her shoulders, knotted muscles rolled and shifted at his command. “Every slight, intentional and unintentional, has pooled in a reservoir of pain.”
Wrong. Her brief flings hadn’t touched the real Alice. No exposure, no hurt. Lovers hadn’t been worth more of her time or attention. And I wasn’t worth theirs.
“You’ve kept a distance, believing it insulated you from the risk. The electrical current could not reach you,
could not shock you, could not burn you.”
In his splayed hands, Henry covered her shoulder blades. She couldn’t help but let his warmth touch her. He delivered more than a physical sensation. A comfort. A love.
“But when that painful current reaches you now, it electrifies the entire pool. It’s not the lack of insulation, sweet girl. And the answer is not to add layers. You cannot keep out what is already within.”
Was he right? Embracing maturity, she’d constructed her self-image as a fun, flirty, sex-positive woman who didn’t need a man—or another woman, for that matter. Independence was her emotional fulfillment.
But she liked her men’s touch. Not the physical touch alone but the emotional one. Losing the amazing flutter in her chest when Henry gazed at her or Jay curled himself around her like vacuum-formed plastic would break her. Strong, solid Henry wouldn’t let anything hurt her if he could prevent it. Not even herself.
“This is merely another kind of confrontation, my brave Alice.” Resuming his massage, Henry used force enough to carve her into the mattress. “Allow the tears to flow. Do not berate yourself for feeling as you do. Acknowledge and accept your pain as valid.” With every declaration, he smoothed a wave from the slope of her ass where his weight rested to her shoulders. Pushing up and out. “Whether Jay intended to cause pain is irrelevant. All that matters is that you feel. Only then can you dislodge the resentment that will form if you refuse.”
She’d never resent Jay. He was so open and trusting—and he’d left them. How could he claim to be Henry’s boy with blazing pride and act so damn ashamed? A scream built in her chest. A demand he explain himself to her, right now, goddamnit. Her breath blew hot in her face, clinging to the sheets and her cheeks.
Wide brown eyes wavered in the heat mirage. Jay, with downturned lips as he swallowed her scolding rage and believed he deserved no less. He’d take whatever punishment she dealt, fair or unfair, and apologize until long after her pleasure coated his tongue and his jaw ached.
“I can’t. I can’t.” She blinked until his sweet face faded. “He’d never defend himself.”
Tightening his hold on her, Henry growled. Not happy-sexy growl. “You must accept your feelings before you empathize with his. Jay is not here to be harmed. You’ve no need to minimize your pain in front of me.”
Of course he’d recognized the brave face she’d worn for Jay. But things too big for her to process could be shared during Henry’s time. Tell him everything. Tell him or use her safeword.
Someday she might need to safeword, but not as an excuse to run from her feelings again. She might make new mistakes. She wouldn’t make the same one.
“I thought we were a family.” Jay’d called the three of them a family so many times. “He said. Aren’t we good enough to meet his real family?” Sharp and raw, she scratched the stillness with her whispers. “Why would he go and leave us behind?”
Sheltering her beneath himself, Henry braced her with his firm chest and enclosed her in his steady arms. “That’s right, my sweet Alice. Let yourself feel without blame.”
He comforted her with weight and warmth as her tears came, bringing a few guttural sobs she stopped trying to hold back. His gentle humming told her he understood. That he’d help her fix her confusion and pain, find a stopper at the bottom and drain her supposed reservoir. Henry would bail out her pain a bucket at a time if he had to—and he’d never stop.
“You’re in new territory, dearest. The terrain of love is unfamiliar to you, and Jay has helped guide you here. It’s natural to feel abandoned when your steps carry you farther than he has gone, in a direction he is not yet able to travel.” With his nose buried in her hair, Henry released a soft sigh. Maybe he, too, still pinched in pain’s vise. He wanted Jay here with them, safe and happy, able to tell his sister “no.”
“You’ll each try to take that burden on yourselves. For Jay, the sense he has failed you and must take those steps to please us. For you, the sense your pain must be suppressed or ignored because it was unintended.” Henry dabbed her neck and shoulders with tiny kisses. “Alice. My sweet, sweet girl. That Jay did not intend to harm you does not make you less harmed, nor does it make your feelings worthless, stupid, or, heaven forbid, bitchy.”
Her sob hiccupped into a giggle. Henry cursed with such disdain for it. He swore rarely, and with purpose.
“Aha—progress. Music from your lips.” Taking his time, he traced the curving outline of her ear with his tongue. As he reached the sensitive lower lobe, he triggered shivers in her. “Tell me what you’ve learned. Tell me your feelings at this exact moment.”
“I made errors in my premises. I was angry at Jay because his behavior didn’t fit.” Ideas she’d chewed on all night and carried to work this morning. “But then I thought about what I would’ve done differently, and I—”
The reservoir might be deep. Henry encouraged her to think things through her own way, but he wanted her to have all of the information—as she and Jay had wanted for him in wrestling with returning to the club. His breath lapped like waves on her skin.
“I was being hypocritical. I feel guilty. Ashamed. People aren’t as easy as plastics and metals.” Materials behaved according to natural laws, no response unquantifiable. “I don’t know where their fracture points are. I don’t—” She plunged into chilly, deep waters. “I don’t want to break Jay.”
“And yourself? Will you break yourself, then, to avoid hurting him?” Driving his fingers between hers, Henry pressed his warmth into her. “You must know I can’t allow that. I will never make one of you whole at the other’s expense.”
Closing her fist, she squeezed back. “I know. I’m—I feel—safe knowing that. But sometimes I see Jay hurting, and I need—I feel like I need…” Remove sex from the equation, and the same need drove her to make life line up perfectly for her sister. “I need him to be happy.”
“He will be. This challenge isn’t one he can conquer overnight. But with our understanding—and the properly leveraged application of pressure?” Henry clenched his bent legs around her hips.
Arousal swamping her, she gasped for breath. Her body, waiting for her mind to catch up, held all she needed for the thrill she’d tried earlier to force into existence.
“He’ll learn better awareness of his emotional needs.” Forehead resting on her temple, Henry sharpened his tone. “Realize his first impulse may not be what’s best for him.”
She flushed. “Like I’m learning? Not to hide or minimize what hurts me, even if that’s my first instinct. To revise flawed premises.”
“My brilliant girl.” As he rolled his hips, he branded her with sudden heat.
The expression of emotion. Not their nudity or position, but her sharing and growing understanding—those things aroused Henry. Her willingness to be open and vulnerable to him, to let him guide her, triggered him. And those traits were ones she and Jay shared.
Nestling against the upper curve of her ass, he flexed his cock. “Tell me about these flawed premises of yours.”
Now? Her mind had jumped to a new track, one she hoped led to destination fucking-Henry-town. “A false dichotomy.” Drain unstoppered, her words spilled in a rush. “I thought love wasn’t real because it couldn’t be perfect. Everywhere I looked, people were fucking it up. That couldn’t be love. And then I felt it. And it was perfect.”
“Until Jay put someone else first,” Henry murmured.
She nodded, the prick of tears less acute, acceptance a heated towel after her cold swim. “Love doesn’t make every problem disappear.” She’d stumbled in equating love with perfection, assuming imperfection as evidence of nonexistence. “It’s not an either-or—either we’re in love and perfect or things aren’t perfect and love is an illusion. Imperfect love. I can’t quantify it, but I feel it.”
“And at this moment? What feelings accompany your love?” His questions came quick, in baritone approval thickening with arousal.
&nbs
p; Breathing deep, she took stock. Henry deserved the whole truth—and so did she. “Unhappiness. Hurt. Anger. At Jay for going, and you for letting him go, and myself for being so selfish. And—arousal.” Less shameful, because Henry had already revealed his own. “Need.”
“So much swirling within you, yearning to be released.” Embracing her like a second skin, he rocked them. “Will you trust me to do that for you tonight, Alice? To find the proper release?”
“Always.” Her voice didn’t wobble, though she waggled her hips. “The evidence stacks up solidly in your corner.”
Chuckling, he patted her ass. “I’m pleased to know you’ve been checking out my solid stack.” He sat up as she giggled. “Wait here.” He left the bed entirely. “Eyes closed, please.”
Anticipation, flowing into hollows where hurt and anger lingered, diluted the mixture. She shifted focus to his light footfalls, to smooth sheets and her lovers’ scent clinging to them—their fragrance no longer a stinging reminder of absence but a promise of return.
“We haven’t done this in a while.” Henry spoke over the rolling glide of a drawer. “But perhaps it will prove precisely what you need tonight, dearest.”
The drawer closed with a quiet but solid thunk. More sliding, closer, from the nightstand. No need for condoms, but lube, maybe, and her ass was rather accessible. He wouldn’t introduce a new toy tonight, would he? Unless he thought a distraction would help her.
He grasped her ankles and slid her feet apart. “Tell me your safeword, Alice.”
“Pistachio.” Uttering her safeword, she unlocked the woman who reveled in surrender. The woman shivering for his control as he knelt between her spread legs.
“I believe you’re ready for this. I believe you need it. But if you disagree, you need only say your safeword and I’ll stop. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Henry.”
With softness, he brushed her left shoulder and descended to her ass. Teasing flickers—her suede flogger.
“Jay’s absence tonight is fortuitous.” Henry caressed her with his voice as much as with flowing suede. He hadn’t spanked her since the night at the club. He hadn’t flogged her for longer than that. “He may not yet be ready to watch pain, however fleeting, displace your pleasure. You, too, must be granted the chance to recall your enjoyment without undue pressure to perform.”