Finding Their Balance

by M. Q. Barber

  Her heart ticked and the world spun as if she were a clock rewound. Her gears given purpose, she reached a rhythm no longer stuttered into by accident but arrived at by precise calibration and choice.

  This place, this time, this bond belonged to her. And the bond she shared with Jay, of accepting his submission, was one shared with Henry, too. A fulfilling, meaningful puzzle, a responsibility and trust, staggering and awesome but so beautiful.

  Framing Jay’s face, she finger-combed his hair. The humidity-curled tips clung to her skin.

  He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch.

  “You’re a good boy, Jay.” Nuzzling his cheek tickled her nose and carried his woodsy musk into her lungs. “You have the kindest heart of any man I know.”

  Their quiet communion infused her with calm.

  When he opened his eyes, their placid depths mirrored her feeling. He wore the sweet look he gave Henry when their lover’s dominance led him into the untethered joy of subspace.

  “Here, sweetheart.” Whispering, she gripped his hand and headed up the stairs. “It’s time to say goodnight.”

  * * * *

  “—submit to anyone else, not as I could to him. We were one person. I’ll never have that again.”

  The super should’ve been less diligent in keeping the old building in tip-top condition. Creaking floorboards and squeaking door hinges prevented all kinds of awkwardness.

  “You don’t know that, sverchok.” Back to the door, Henry sat in his curving chair. “If you imagine it every time a would-be suitor tries to coax a smile from you, you aren’t allowing him the chance.”

  Huddled on the couch, Emma shook her head at each word. The tea tray gleamed silver on the low table between them.

  Jay at her heels, Alice dropped her keys on the hall table.

  Emma stiffened as if the clatter delivered an electric current to her spine.

  Henry rose, unhurried, and brushed her shoulder before he came to greet them. “Welcome home, my dears. How was your evening?”

  Their puffy-cheeked guest swiped at her eyes. Her dark hair, hanging down, hid her pearl choker. Acknowledging Emma seemed ruder than ignoring her presence. A proud, poised woman wouldn’t want them gawking at her pain.

  “You picked a great restaurant.” Replying on autopilot, Alice divested herself of phone, wallet, and shoes while Jay did the same. “For the food and the music both.” But dinner paled beside all Jay’d shown her. His unshakeable declaration. Mistress Alice. “It’s good to be home, though.”

  “I’m pleased you enjoyed yourselves.” Henry pulled her into a light hug.

  She inhaled his scent, familiar, fragrant, and unchanged despite their evening apart. “Jay and I thought it was time to say goodnight.”

  On the couch, Emma shook. Her eyes widened. A thin gap appeared between her lips.

  Fuck. Last time they’d invited Emma to dinner, Henry had ushered her out when his submissives’ needs took precedence. Home field advantage. The power she wielded over Emma pinched her lungs and stole her breath.

  “Of course.” Henry released her and hugged Jay.

  Pressing a trembling hand against the arm of the couch, Emma uncurled her legs and dropped her feet to the floor.

  In less than a minute, Alice would lose her window. Her actions now would determine the woman she’d be. Petty and jealous, causing pain for the men she loved, or gracious and compassionate. “We’ll ready the guest bed for Emma.”

  All movement on the couch ceased.

  Pulling back from Jay, Henry raised an eyebrow.

  “And we won’t wait up.” Her confidence flowed strong as the mighty Mississippi. “You two still have a lot to talk about, I’m sure.”

  Eyes screwed shut, Emma covered her mouth in both hands and bent almost double, her head at her knees.

  Jay quivered. She’d do her loyal, empathetic submissive a disservice if she limited his outpouring of love.

  “Go on.” She patted between his shoulder blades. Approval would unravel those knots where massage had failed. “Give Emma a hug and say goodnight.”

  Jay bounded forward and sank to the rug at Emma’s feet. His urgent whispers elicited soft sobs. Feminine arms emerging from the tangle, Emma hugged him with a ferocity that flexed her forearms in stark relief.

  “Alice.” Murmuring her name, Henry sent a shiver all the way to her toes. “They haven’t yet invented a word for your magnificence.”

  * * * *

  Waking in darkness, Alice fumbled toward rustling to her left.

  Henry, warm and naked, rolled against her and breathed out a laugh. “Jay’s possessive tonight.”

  Their sleeping lover had pinned her. His head rested on the upper slope of her breast. Curving his arm across her stomach, he clutched her ribs.

  “He missed you, I think.” She stretched, pointing her fingers and toes. She didn’t normally sleep on her back between the men, and Jay usually went from clinging to sprawling. “But we did fine on our own for the night.”

  They’d left him home with the harder task. All the tricky emotional stuff she shied from.

  “More than fine.” Plucking her arm from between them, he draped it around her head on the pillow. “You’ve grown since you left for dinner.”

  Jay’s doing. He never craved her dominance so much as when he lacked Henry’s. Not a stand-in, but a lieutenant. He didn’t imagine her as she saw herself, crawling through the mysteries of relationships and submission and love. To him, she danced.

  “You wear your power with greater comfort.” Humming, Henry teased the underside of her arm with gentle fingers. “Your confidence and strength are closer to the surface. Your belief and trust in yourself and your lovers has never been more apparent.”

  Henry had recognized her potential. He’d attuned the three of them physically—sexually—first because she wouldn’t have accepted greater commitment. Now he demanded more of her. Emotional calibration.

  “I feel stronger.” Smarter. Better equipped. Every step she mastered added to Henry’s pride in her. She’d always been a dancer. She’d just needed Henry to show her the moves and Jay to make her believe. “Did you get Emma settled in the guest room?” The phrase floated like helium, heady and light, the best name yet for the room she and Jay treated as a closet and a sometime playroom.

  “Yes. The pajamas you left out were a thoughtful touch.” In a slow sweep, he grazed her neck. “Thank you, Alice, for your generosity and perception tonight.”

  The sheet slipped off Jay’s arm and tickled her stomach.

  “Sending her home to an empty house would’ve been wrong.” Rubbing her cheek against Henry’s hair bathed her in his scent better than the pillow she’d borrowed. “And you’re too much of a gentleman to leave her on the couch.” A great quality, gentlemanliness. Attractive. Sweet. Sexy. “It’s a good trial run for when Ollie visits, anyway.”

  Hosting guests taught patience and restraint. Loud, demanding sex would be a slap in the face when Emma lay alone on the other side of the wall.

  “Mmm.” Mouthing her neck, Henry massaged her breast. “I’m not of a mind to discuss our guest or your sister just now, my sweet.”

  As Henry jostled his arm, Jay snuffled and tightened his grip on her ribs. The sheet swept south to her thighs, carried on a wave of finger currents.

  “Lie back and let me love you.” Cock hardening against her hip, Henry palmed her sex.

  “Are you—”

  “Shhh.” Kissing her, he took the lead with firm strokes. “Silence but for one word,” he whispered. “If you intend to use it, speak now.”

  Or forever hold your peace.

  She shook her head. Pistachio wouldn’t pass her lips. Whatever he needed, she’d give gladly. And learn about her lover in the process.

  Growling low, he nipped her jaw and throat. Bee-sting kisses raised tingles and tremors.

  Jay lifted his chin and gave them a groggy-eyed bl
ink. “Wha—”

  Henry kissed him. Jay’s cheek worked against her breast as he welcomed Henry’s invasion with the same white flag she’d raised.

  “One word,” Henry murmured. “Nothing else.”

  Jay held his tongue.

  Henry turned to her breasts, lapping at her nipple between Jay’s chin and his bicep.

  Easing back, Jay created room for Henry to work. Or a better view for himself. God knew the man harbored a breast fixation guaranteed to leave her swollen and needy.

  Grabbing Jay by the back of his neck, Henry dragged him to his original spot.

  Jay shot her a glance. He held her with an arm thrown across her chest and a leg atop hers, and his sleepy cock bounced against her thigh.

  She shrugged. Henry hadn’t shared his agenda with her, either, but he pursued his desires with single-minded focus. His kisses burned, deep and intense. Her breasts would bruise for sure. Parting her lips with more delicacy, he swung his finger like a pendulum. On each pass, the farthest point grazed her clit.

  Jay’s arm and her stomach earned softer kisses, but Henry wreathed Jay’s hips with his fiery touch. Jay squirmed and panted, his breath hot on her breasts. His cock stiffened for all the attention bypassing it.

  Teases turned to slow, steady finger fucking. Henry pinned her clit with his thumb while he worked his fingers inside. Her pulse pounded against him, begging for movement, but he delivered constant, aching pressure.

  Her head grew heavy. The headboard spindles blurred and doubled.

  Jay crushed her breast in his grip and dug into her ribs.

  She jolted off the pillow. What the fuck— Christ, no wonder. Henry’d taken Jay’s cock between his lips.

  He captured the head, sucking a thick straw with an even thicker milkshake waiting at the bottom of the glass. His cheeks hollowed into dark caverns. Hypnotic movement, the deep, greedy pull with an extra tongue flick beneath.

  As Jay buried his face in her breast, muffled groans vibrated along her skin. He closed his mouth over her until even sound disappeared and he puffed out nothing but quick, heated breaths through his nose.

  His stiffening body told her when he came, unaccompanied by his usual whimpering chorus. He jerked against her in silence, three hard thrusts and boneless shudders after.

  She’d have an imprint of his teeth in her breast tomorrow, but he’d have an imprint of her nails in his back, and neither mattered when Henry hadn’t stopped finger-fucking her.

  He surrounded her clit with his tongue and tugged her hips off the bed. But his kiss was hello and goodbye in one. He pulled clear, knelt above her, and pumped his cock in his fist twice.

  She bent her leg in unmistakable invitation.

  Squeezing the base, he aligned their bodies and lowered himself over her. He refused to let Jay move away, and he hadn’t entered her more than the slightest push. Enough to keep them on target. Enough to focus her tingling anticipation, the urge to grip him, the wait for spreading pleasure. Shivers rattled her, the burning chill of overheating need.

  Pressing his forehead to hers, he sank inside. And didn’t move.

  Balanced on one forearm beside her head and his opposite arm around Jay, his grip tight at Jay’s neck, he rocked his hips, slow and experimental.

  With her leg wrapped around his thighs, she clutched him close.

  He fucked her deep, never drawing back, heavy and solid and moving as if he meant to wedge himself far enough to stay forever. He kissed her with Jay’s salty musk on his tongue. Even in her submission, they shared the flavor of ownership.

  The grinding pressure of hips and pelvis carried her to the peak. Her orgasm erupted long before his. A dreamy haze descended. The world itself rocked, and stopping would mean its end.

  Nothing but silence, and rocking, and the occasional heat of Henry’s tongue in her mouth, probing above as skillfully as he did below. She lay half-asleep and coated in sweat when the rocking ceased, though echoes throbbed and Henry hadn’t left her.

  With wordless care and gentle kisses, he shuffled her and Jay. Rolling them all sideways, he tucked her between them with her leg slung over his hip and his cock reburied inside her.

  Jay, curled at her back, yawned against her neck. After a nice orgasm and proof of Henry’s appreciation, that man could sleep anywhere. Even in mid-July heat, sticky and sweaty and covered with sex-scent.

  Not her. Too hot. Too sticky. Two male bodies surrounding her and adding to both conditions.

  But Henry didn’t seem inclined to let them go. He lay with his lips against her forehead and his cock filling her as if release eluded him, for all that he’d given them theirs.

  She held her silence. He’d asked only that one thing of her since he’d come to bed. He’d brought her to orgasm, relaxed her body, and if she lay unsleeping all night, she’d take no lasting harm from the shortfall. Closing her eyes, she drifted.

  What might have been minutes or hours passed. Time failed to penetrate her warm cocoon. But Henry sighed, rustling her hair. His loving hum, tempered by some unfamiliar note, prodded her to awareness.

  “Don’t ever leave me, my loves.” He buried his whisper, fierce and all but inaudible, in her hair. “I couldn’t bear the loss.”

  Chapter 11

  Her back had become a ladder. Traffic traveled up either side of her spine in shuffling steps. She followed the climbers to faint light and steady thumping.

  Chest hair tickled her cheek. Rubbing Henry with catlike affection, she forced her eyes open in stages.

  Seven forty-seven. The bedside clock glowed with cheerful blue abandon. The clock hadn’t gone to bed at one or woken up in the middle of the night for delicious, erotic, confounding sex.

  When the ladder-climbing fingers halted their trek, Henry clasped the upper curve of her ass.

  Fumbling with tangled limbs, she folded her arms on his chest and raised her head.

  Jay slept beside them in a stomach sprawl. With the sheet kicked down and twisted around his calves, his toned ass begged for nibbling.

  Henry followed her glance and chuckled, but at least part of him agreed, if his interest stirred beyond male morning mechanics. “You won’t wish me a good morning? Has our beautiful boy stolen your breath?”

  Shaking her head, she delivered teasing Eskimo kisses between his flat nipples. “You did. ‘Silence but for one word.’” Her imitation carried more rasp than baritone depth. “Still not using it, but I kinda fell asleep along the way. Rule might have remained in effect.”

  Putting pressure on her ass, he prompted her forward for a proper kiss, growly and lingering. “That particular provision has elapsed.” With tenderness, he dropped smaller kisses across her cheeks. “Though your obedient adherence is noted and appreciated.”

  His approval lodged in the lizard part of her brain. She’d starved the whole region for years, feeding herself a diet of work-related performance evaluations. Good ones, but they came so infrequently as to be anorexic. Henry stuffed her full of praise and then some. Praise: A new name for his toolkit. She’d have to save that one to share with Jay.

  “I’m delighted to see you smiling.” Nudging her curtain of hair aside, he peeked at Jay. “The two of you are a heavenly vision to wake to each day.” A sliver of a smile curved his lips. “My favorite vision.”

  I couldn’t bear the loss.

  His whispered confession belonged to darkness, to post-midnight melancholy and memory. After hours of supporting a friend in need, he’d come to bed with needs of his own. Immersed himself in their bodies. In their living, breathing presence.

  Santa had been right. Henry carried solemn responsibilities on broad shoulders. His intensity needed respite. Joy.

  Jay.

  As running water hummed through the bathroom pipes, Henry pressed his thumbs against her back. “I ought to check on our guest.”

  “Let me.” The words escaped without planning, but she wouldn’t retract the offer. �
��Give us girl time.”

  Drops of terror squeaked through her heart valves. Building a friendship with Emma would take hard work and diplomacy. Bring on the former, the more the better, but the latter she’d have to tiptoe through without a schematic.

  “You’re certain? You needn’t rush yourself, dearest.” All intent eyes and even lips, he studied her from behind his inscrutable dom-face. “You’ve already proven yourself capable of exquisite compassion, a regal mosaic.”

  If he hadn’t started sketches yet, he had to be planning them. Picturing in his mind’s eye images less tied to her physical world of engineering than to his metaphorical one of shapes and colors imbued with meaning.

  “I want to.”

  He supported her weight with warm, sturdy muscles. He supported her heart with graceful prodding toward growth. Getting to know Emma better, she’d support Henry in subtle ways of her own.

  “I need to.”

  Accepting Emma’s friendship wouldn’t diminish her share of Henry’s love and attention. The freer he felt to take care of his obligations without strategizing responses for her unhappiness, the more energy he’d have to devote to her and Jay. To showing them his love.

  “Besides, that’ll give you boys some quality time.”

  In his sleep, Jay curled vulnerability and trust around him like a blanket. His unlined face and parted lips invited kisses. His dark lashes rested against tanned cheeks. No wonder Henry took every opportunity to wake him slowly.

  “I bet he’d love to return the favor you gave him last night.” An unexpected outpouring of dominant giving. One she’d never tire of watching.

  “Peace.” Henry pecked her lips. “You’ve convinced me, sweet minx.”

  “I’m an excellent arguer.” But now she’d have to tear herself away from her two musky men. Fuck. She’d better hustle through a washcloth bath, because no way in hell would she greet Emma with a dusting of sex on her skin. “I just talk until you give in.”

  His hum held a note of amusement.

  “I do.”

  “If you like.” He swatted her ass at quarter-strength, a solid, comforting claim. “Or I, in my patient wisdom, allow you to speak until you find yourself at the place we would have arrived all along.” His chuckle jostled her. “Your journey is spectacular, and I quite prefer the scenic route.”