Healing the Wounds

by M. Q. Barber

  He hummed along to the music as he worked. The melody floated and bounced, light and springy, a confidence booster. His contentment steadied her.

  “Favorite song?” Not the question she meant to ask. A warm-up.

  “Haydn. One of the London symphonies.” His sidelong glance and slight smile prompted hers. He always said he couldn’t help if she wouldn’t ask.

  “Henry?” She cursed her tentative tone. Jay’s reassurances and Henry’s forceful desire Saturday night should’ve been enough for her.

  He finished moving the bacon pieces to a plate to drain. “Yes?” The weight of his stare dropped across her shoulders.

  She cut the final cross and set the knife down. “What’s ‘fair chalk’?”

  “What’s fair—ah. I see.” He gathered the onions and slid them into the pan with the bacon grease and butter, settling them and adjusting the heat. “Sverchok, you mean. Has this question weighed on your mind all this time?”

  Two days was practically light speed for her. She’d waited so she’d only embarrass herself in front of Henry and not Jay. Waited until her quietly obsessive two-day search online for a word she couldn’t pronounce, let alone spell, in a language she didn’t know, turned up nothing.

  “Share with me, sweet girl.” He reached out and tipped her chin up. “You’ve taken the first step by asking the question—for which I’m so very proud of you. Will you take another step for me? Tell me what you fear?”

  She couldn’t say no, not when he coaxed her with his tender rumble. Not when he looked at her with patience and confidence, as if he knew she’d come to the correct decision.

  “It sounded affectionate.” She winced, ashamed to sound like a jealous child. “Loving.”

  “It is.” He faced her and stroked her upper arms. He wouldn’t hide the truth. He might welcome the chance to shepherd her through this.

  “I was afraid.” To still be worried about how she measured up alongside Emma, about what Emma meant to Henry, was silly. Childish. “That you might”—his calm gave her courage—“love her. That you loved her first.” She squirmed, uneasiness seeping through in a whisper. “More than me.”

  “My brave Alice.” He stepped forward, slid his arms around her back, and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for telling me what’s worrying you. You know how important your feelings are to me, don’t you?”

  “I know, Henry.” She didn’t know why exactly, and her anxiety hung in hope of a fuller answer.

  “Alice.” He splayed one hand flat against her back and brushed her hair off her neck with the other. “I am thirty-nine years old. My adult life began many years before I met you. I cannot change that at this late date—nor would I choose to.”

  She flinched, stung.

  He raised the hand at her neck and cupped her cheek. “Those years, those events, those people shaped me into the man I am. The man who loves you.”

  Tears pricked her eyes. He loved her. She knew.

  “When I look into my future and imagine the shape of my life five, ten, even twenty years from now, it is a life with you and with Jay. It is many happy years together. It is—” He shook his head and hugged her. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Forgive me.”

  Twenty years? She had trouble imagining her life in five years, let alone twenty. But the comforting press of his hands overrode the panic in her chest, the thumping of her heart. I don’t—I could—I’ll still want this.

  “You have nothing to fear from Emma. The affection I have for her does not compare to the love between us.” He held her head in his hands and stared into her eyes. “Emma has never shared my bed, dearest. She is a good friend, almost a sister, but she has never been a lover, nor have I truly desired her to be.”

  He kissed her, the kind of kiss that made her eager to forget dinner and beg him to take her to bed. But he stepped back to stir the onions and add beef stock and move them to the plate with the bacon chunks. Mushrooms and more butter took their place in the pan. He stirred the melting butter, covered the pan, and lowered the heat. “Come here, please.”

  He tucked her into him, her back to his chest as they stood together in front of the stove. He sighed, a soft sound in her ear. “It’s a complex relationship to describe only because it comes with customs unfamiliar to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry.” She sank into his strength. “I don’t mean to be difficult.”

  “You’re not being difficult. You’re being honest.” He nuzzled her ear. “It’s quite attractive.”

  Mmm. Even the suggestion of his arousal ignited hers.

  “Perhaps an illustration would suffice, so long as you understand it is merely that—hypothetical—as our family has enough to address without adding to it, hmm?”

  “Hypothesis only. I can follow that.” She hoped. She wanted Henry and Jay. Staying with them meant understanding this.

  “Good girl.” He kissed her temple and released her. “I’ve work to finish at the stove. Set the table, please, while I think on this, and then we’ll talk.”

  She nodded her acceptance and set the places. Henry at the head of the table, always. Jay at the foot. Her own seat at Henry’s right hand. She’d said yes to him at this table. Been taken across it with slow, powerful thrusts. Sat in Henry’s lap in that chair and received oral sex for the first time from Jay’s well-trained tongue. She couldn’t walk anywhere in the apartment without arousing the memory of Henry’s skilled attention. His love.

  He moved like a dancer, handling multiple tasks at the stove with ease. His phone buzzed on the counter. Checking the display, he smiled. Finally he turned down the heat, leaving the pan’s lid crooked at an angle, and came around the kitchen island to sit in his chair at the table.

  “Lovely work, Alice. Sit with me. We’ve time. The bourguignon will be fine to simmer until Jay arrives in half an hour.” He pulled her into his lap, sideways, a position guaranteed to tease her memory and make her melt. “I’m certain he’ll be quite hungry.”

  She shuddered at his low tone. A blush warmed her cheeks. “Not fair, Henry.”

  “Entirely fair, Alice,” he countered. “But it’s story time, now.”

  “I’m ready to listen.” With an open mind.

  “Excellent. Then let’s begin.” He cradled her back, squeezing once. “Suppose our first visit to the club had gone well, and we began attending regularly. Suppose we meet a young dominant whose scenes we find appealing. A bit younger than you, but showing promise. We begin seeking him out on our visits. Complimenting his skills and offering advice, as appropriate.”

  She tried to picture it, to understand the story he was telling her and why. “We see potential. It’s attractive.”

  “Precisely. He’s a college student with a strong sense for crafting a scene, but he could be more refined. His submissives could be better satisfied—and I tell him so.”

  “That seems like it would be a blow to his ego.” An aspiring dominant wouldn’t appreciate that, would he? She had no idea. Dominants were individuals. No two alike.

  Henry chuckled. “He takes it well, perhaps because I offer to demonstrate with my lovely Alice, the light in my eyes, how safe and relaxed and euphoric an experience it can be.”

  “Me? He’d be—”

  “Observing only.” He draped his arm across her lap and stroked along the outside of her thigh. “Hypothetically speaking. But he would, naturally, be taken with you at first. A bit of a crush.”

  Was that how Henry had met Emma and her husband? The question stuck in her throat. “Just a crush, though?”

  “Misplaced affection. Because of how beautifully you respond to me, hmm? Because of the harmony that flows between us in a scene. He desires that for himself. Not with you, my lovely Alice, but with his own perfect match.” He kissed her cheek. “And we offer to train him to that end.”

  “A new puppy. Like Jay.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. Shit. Please don’t let him think—

  “Oh, my dear sweet girl.” Henry’s shoulde
rs shook, and he laughed harder. “First Jay is your hare, and now he’s your puppy, is he?” He squeezed her tight. “You ought to tell him so. He’d greatly enjoy knowing you feel such ownership and affection. But to return to our scenario, our young dominant isn’t so exuberant as a puppy, but he has a friend who is. Thick as thieves, the pair of them.”

  Henry and William. How they’d come to know Victor and Emma. A practiced couple taking the young men under their wing.

  “We spend several months working closely with them to perfect their skills. Overseeing their scenes. Providing feedback, both mine as a dominant and yours as a submissive. Demonstrating technique and the more”—he dropped his voice to a low drawl—“elusive, ephemeral pieces of the puzzle.”

  Wrapped in the seductive cocoon of his body heat, his scent, and his deep whispers, she floated in a hazy fog of agreement. Every step more reasonable than it should be, letting him lead, eager to see the final picture as he fed her each irregular idea and guided her fingers around curving, slick edges. He’d undoubtedly rubbed away the rough spots for her, presented her with the tantalizing image of completion, but—

  “Showing them an idealized example of love in our own affection for each other.”

  These pieces he gave her to explore, they were pieces of him. Curled in his lap, seduced as she was, she held him captive, the shape of his soul coming together in her hands. She clung tight to the pieces, the abstraction manifesting in dawning understanding.

  “The boys—they aren’t in love with us. But we’re the strongest example in their lives of what it can look like.” The way she’d taken cues from Jay and Henry’s relationship. But for her, it truly had been love. Still was.

  “An example, yes. Both inside and outside the club.”

  “Outside how?” Her heart and her head begged for hard data, specs to define his closeness to Victor and Emma.

  “Dinners in our home, perhaps. An example of a more domestic, long-term relationship. The sort to which these young men might aspire.” He slipped the hand on her thigh under her shirt and stroked her skin.

  Muscles she hadn’t realized she’d tensed relaxed.

  “When we host, their position is in flux. Dominant, yes, but in our home, you have power of your own. The freedom to talk back, to tease them, to chide them, to mother them. Your role in their lives is a large one. In some ways, your behavior will guide the way they approach submissives for the rest of their lives.”

  “I didn’t know. That’s so—” Her lungs seized, throat throttling shut. So much influence. Emma had filled that role for him. She’d hold that piece of him until the day he died. “How could anyone compete with that? Ever?”

  Henry cuddled her closer, his nose rubbing her cheek as he cradled her to his chest. “Because there’s a distance as well. These young dominants are not your sexual partners—I’d never allow it, and you wouldn’t desire it—but they worship you nonetheless. They are in awe of the ideal you represent, a key element in the whole we make up together. What they want is not you, dear girl, but their own perfect match as you are mine.”

  Twice now he’d said so, and the message began sinking in. He didn’t want Emma. He wants me.

  “Now, if these boys came to you over the years for advice, sat at your table, built their own little kingdoms and proudly showed you their toys—if I were dead and buried twenty years from now, and you alone—tell me, would you be surprised if those boys still showed some measure of devotion? If they honored our longstanding friendship by watching over you?”

  No. They’d be family. She’d have a responsibility to them, as well. Something almost parental, but not. Sisterly. The way she checked up on Olivia.

  “Those boys might, when they find their perfect matches, have trouble explaining what you are to them, my dear.” His voice softened into…not a plea, because surely Henry would never plead, but something asking for her understanding. Needing her understanding. “Translating their own roles as son and brother and friend and protector into some easy shorthand, some simple way to define their continuing affection for you. Even though what they feel for you is not romantic love, it is love, nonetheless.”

  He loved Emma. That truth wouldn’t change. But it wasn’t the same way he loved her and Jay. Their connection didn’t threaten her.

  “Without Emma’s example nearly twenty years ago, without Victor’s tutelage, I would not have become the man worthy of your trust and devotion, Alice.”

  She turned in his lap, pressing her chest to his and worming her arms around his back, clinging to him in a tight hug.

  He squeezed her in return. “And I’m so very glad, sweet girl, that I am that man for you.”

  “I love you, Henry.” She whispered the truth in his ear. “And I know how much you love me. It’s just so new. Feeling it. Admitting it. Accepting it.”

  He massaged her back with gentle hands. “You’ve jumped in with such courage. When you come to me with your fears, I will do my utmost to help you address them.”

  They sat cradled together, Alice reluctant to move, Henry humming along with the radio. “Now, as to your question—no, I haven’t forgotten—sverchok means ‘cricket,’ nothing more.”

  She had to laugh. He might not have forgotten, but she had. She’d let him distract her. But an important distraction.

  Henry told her another story, one that had her laughing harder as he explained how he and William had transformed a Russian proverb Victor had often used to gently chastise Emma for speaking out of turn into the opposite—a pet name praising her for being a model of submission and the voice of conscience in their ears.

  Jay’s bike tick-tick-ticked on the hardwood. Their teasing laughter and kisses must’ve drowned out the door opening.

  “Welcome home, my boy.” Henry spoke over her head.

  No sooner had the bike gone up on its hooks than Jay, sweaty biking gear and all, rounded the table and dropped to his knees at Henry’s feet.

  “Did I miss dinner?” He pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh below the edge of her shorts. “Because I’m starving, and I see something I want to eat.”

  She pulled her legs closed, giggling at the wide-eyed pout Jay sent her way. “And I think my sweaty puppy needs a bath first.”

  His pout dissolved into a beaming smile. “Your puppy?” He flopped backward, belly up, at their feet. “Do I get a tummy rub?”

  Chalk another one up for Henry’s win column. Far from offended, Jay loved the idea of playing her puppy.

  “After dinner,” Henry answered him. “Go and take your shower and change. We’ll have food on the table in fifteen minutes, and you and Alice may play afterward.”

  * * * *

  Jay’s animated discussion carried them through dinner, a welcome break from the intensity that dominated her talks with Henry. She loved the intensity and the lightness both, the way the scales tipped and righted themselves.

  A balance her life had been missing before Henry and Jay.

  They cleared the table together. When she reached for the last of the dishes, Jay reached for her, insisting he needed something to carry, too. He hoisted her at the waist. She giggled the whole way across the kitchen to the sink and flicked water at him while she rinsed dishes and he loaded the dishwasher.

  Henry watched them with a speculative eye. Impossible to guess his thoughts, but he was definitely thinking. The dishwasher clicked shut. “All finished?” Henry beckoned them over and bestowed kisses on their cheeks. “I’ve another task for you, then.”

  Under his direction, she and Jay pushed back the living room furniture and moved various knickknacks. Well. Fine art pieces, aka fancy knickknacks.

  Jay hadn’t lost his overabundance of energy. He rocked heel-toe beside her as they stood and waited for Henry’s judgment.

  “Nicely done, thank you.” Henry tipped his head. “I promised you a bit of playtime after dinner, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Henry.” Jay tapped his fingers against his thighs.

/>   She nodded.

  “Your play boundary is the living room rug. Stepping outside it will pause the game.”

  Her heart pounded. A pause option dangled the probability of intense play.

  “Clothes will stay on.”

  How was that playtime? Jay’s ants-in-the-pants routine begged for clothes-off action.

  “The six pillows in the living room are the only acceptable weapons.” Henry gestured toward the space. “The game begins in five seconds. Perhaps you’d best arm yourselves, hmm?”

  “Pillow fight,” Jay shouted, glee exploding as he bounded to the couch and snatched up a throw pillow.

  Shit. No way she’d let him win without even competing. She raced to catch up, grabbing a pillow from the chair and stepping onto the rug as Henry called, “One.”

  “Begin.”

  They circled each other, pillows up. She lobbed hers at Jay’s midsection to distract him and picked up a second.

  He walloped her across the back. Almost. The gentlest pillow fight “attack” she’d experienced in her life.

  She spared a glance for Henry, watching from the sideline. Her inattention earned her another attack, as gentle as the one before while Jay bounced around her, and told her nothing. Focused and intent, Henry displayed the slightest hint of a smile.

  Catching the side of Jay’s head, she pulled a laugh from him. He returned fire with a pillow swat at her ass. She battered his legs, a buffet of blows to his knees, and he responded with a flurry across her arms and shoulders.

  Henry had said six legal pillows. Throw pillows accounted for four. She dove for the floor pillow. Larger. Greater heft. She swung as she spun, giggling all the while, and slammed the pillow into Jay’s side.

  He oomphed. Tugging her wrist, he tangled her up as he rolled and tumbled.

  Henry lurched, but stopped at the edge of the rug.

  She and Jay rolled again.

  The pillows fell from their hands.

  She squirmed.

  He grunted.

  They landed Jay on his back with her straddling his hips. God, he was hot and hard between her thighs. Grinning at her with that sweet Jay-smirk and gleaming eyes. Impossible to resist.