Finding Their Balance (19 page)

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.

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.”

In a light slap, he created a waterfall of suede tails tickling her shoulder.

Back twitching, she pushed her breasts into the sheets. Her tingling fingers, at the end of arms splayed wide, curled and relaxed.

“Good girl.” A second slap, to her opposite shoulder, fell as gentle as the last. “Let yourself go with the feeling. Raw emotion, open and vulnerable.” The flogger swished in a teasing zigzag. “Thinking has no place here and now, not for you.”

Thwack!

Moan escaping, she squirmed and danced from the pattern change, the unexpected burn on her ass cheek. Her cry mingled with the snappy echo, the sound of
please, sir, may I have another
.

Though she hadn’t spoken, Henry obliged in his slow, steady rhythm. Flogging her more with heavy drag and thudding fall than stinging tails, he wielded her suede as an extension of his hands. Nothing to fear or fight existed in such a natural evolution of his deep massage. This touch—his touch—was love.

Nothing had been ruined. The night at the club hadn’t left a permanent mark. That night, like last night, had been a single, discrete imperfection. Her responses to pleasurable pain remained her own. Her truth.

Spilling joyful tears and uncontrolled giggles, she soared with goddamn effervescence. Shook up and fizzing, she tingled to the tips of her fingers and toes. She would follow Henry’s lead, and she’d offer Jay her hand to help him farther down the path. Imperfect love was real. And they could reach perfection together.

As Henry brushed her outer thigh, her oversensitive skin goosebumped. “Are you with me, Alice?”

“Always with you.” Throat dry, body humming, she nodded and struggled to produce words. “Happy. Harder. More?”

A growl. Happy-sexy growl.

She cascaded in instinctive, shivering reaction. Henry growling from across the room—over the phone, across the continent, even—would clench her muscles in the hope of squeezing his cock.

“You’ll have your more, my little temptress.” Suede tails rained over her shoulders in quick succession. “And I’ll have mine.”

Her giggling euphoria deepened into a moan as he delivered. Her body throbbed, a growing chorus of pleasure-pain, each nerve ending raising in harmony and all praising Henry in every
thud
against her skin. With his voice he became the low rumble of the timpani, a vibration she registered not in her eardrums but in the pulse of her sex.

White bliss erupted behind her eyelids. Her loud cries marked an affirmation, a promise—a wordless challenge urging Jay to come with her from his lonely bed in northern New Hampshire. Floating in lazy-daze land, where time never intruded and all places converged, reaching Jay became reasonable. Rational.

“Jay came, too,” she mumbled. Henry ought to know, in case her overeager desire had fouled his plans for the night. “S’okay?”

A chuckle dotted his groan as he kissed the notches of her spine. “That’s fine, my sweet. No doubt he did. You’re superb at sharing with each other.”