Finding Their Balance (20 page)

The bed rippled. Her flogger lay fanned out beside her.

Tugging, Henry lifted her backward. Her body followed with agreeable unconcern. Everything about her grew soft and pliant in lazy-daze land. Nudging between her legs, parting her lips, Henry demonstrated everything about him stayed firm and demanding.

With his welcome invasion, he unbalanced her. Bracing for his thrusts would’ve required controlling her own body, and just now more than slumping and sighing taxed her skills. But Henry didn’t require her help.

“My beautiful girl.” Hands splayed over her ass, he caressed where the flogger had landed. Reddened her skin, certainly. Blossoming into bruising reminders, possibly. “Such an exquisite peak.”

Pumping with growing force, he rocked her forward. Neat trick, how he’d gotten her knees to hold her up.

“It’s left you so open for me.” In constant motion, he skimmed her thighs, her hips, her ass. “This delightful laxity in your muscles. All of your tension has drained away, hasn’t it?”

Tension existed no more than time or thinking did. “Mm-hmm. All gone.”

“Good girl.” Steadying her with a deep thrust, he rubbed slick fingers above their joining and pushed one inside.

Her ass tightened, but not to shove him out. Wrapped around him, twice-filled, she clenched in newfound pleasure.

“That’s it, my lovely Alice.” Stiff and unmoving, he hummed approval. “It’s easier without distracting thoughts, isn’t it?”

She scraped together focus for a tentative backward push. “Easy,” she echoed, as he met her thrust. “Smooth.” She giggled. Awkward attempts had raised her suspicion she’d never catch up to Jay and his beautiful acceptance, his effortless taking of not just Henry’s finger but toys of varying sizes and Henry’s cock. Her frustration had held her back. But now when Henry retreated, she pulled him in, eager to seek out fullness again. As she rolled her hips, her muscles stretched to accept him.

“Good girl,” he repeated. “Beautiful instincts.” Voice low and strained, he clamped her hip in his other hand. “But not so quick.” Following the curve of her pelvis down and under, he cupped her sex. “Not without you.”

He grazed her clitoris.

Swollen and sensitive, she shuddered and buried her whine in the sheets. Pushing back, she demanded more.

“Easy, my sweet.” He crooned in his soft baritone. Touch firming, he thrust his cock deep and fingered her ass in a steady rhythm.

She tumbled beyond the ability to separate sensations, to identify and quantify. Only Henry remained, and he was everywhere. Everything.

With his deft hands and hard cock, he brought heat, motion, and a blur of pleasure. As they sprinted to the finish, his heavy breaths overtook her own, his grunting exhalations more than a match for her high-pitched moans. Shoving her across the line first, Henry followed in the same second. Thunder from the timpani. His rolling growl filled the room.

Rippling with aftershocks, she held him fast as he handled cleanup. The cooling drag of a baby wipe swept away excess lube once he’d cleaned his hand. He stretched over her, and the trash can liner rustled.

At her command, her mouth moved with sluggish obedience. “Two points?”

Lying down, he rolled them onto their sides. “Two spectacular points, driving up the inside lane and encountering no defenders.” Behind her, still connected, he wiggled gently. “Practically a free throw.”

“Helps to be on the same team,” she teased. Either he actually understood basketball, or he’d picked up the lingo watching Jay. A birthday surprise Jay had enjoyed almost as much as the night before it. “Don’t wanna keep you from scoring.”

Turning her in his arms, he caused her whimper with his departing cock. He nuzzled their noses. “Open your eyes, Alice.”

Obedience automatic, she blinked and cleared her vision.

Loving green eyes waited on her. “Every player wins on my court.” He kissed her with unhurried thoroughness. With love.

She yawned afterward, unable to stop herself.

Henry chuckled. “Take your well-deserved rest. I’ll wake you as needed.” Rolling her once more, he ordered her to stay on her stomach. Cool, arnica-coated fingers soon canvassed her back.

She dozed through aftercare, following his directions with half-lidded eyes, drinking juice at his patient insistence. She snuggled close when finally he pulled the sheet over them both. Adrift in contentment, she wandered through stray thoughts—a tender mental goodnight to Jay first among them—until sleep took her.

* * * *

Alice’s nagging bladder urged her out of Henry’s embrace Saturday morning. His chest hair tickled her cheek. Cocooned in the covers, the lingering scents of sex and sleep swept into her lungs as she pushed free and rolled to the mattress’s edge.

Henry snatched her wrist. “Straight back to bed afterward.” With heavy, suckling kisses, he teased her palm. “I’ve plans for our morning.”

Fingers trailing, he let her slip away. The arousal of anticipation promised she’d make her escape brief.

Tender but not sore, her ass smarted less than the absence of Jay’s toothbrush in the filigreed holder. She followed Henry’s advice, breathing deep and accepting her disappointment without judgment. Feel and release. Better the momentary sting than the unreachable, incurable ache.

As she rubbed her ass, her reflection smirked. Sure, the emotional philosophy contradicted her physical desire for the flogger’s bone-deep
thud
over the crop’s sharp
thwip.
Didn’t mean the strategy wouldn’t work for her. Henry’s idea-presentation techniques raised her capacity for adapting to most anything.

Like the towel-draped pillow greeting her from the center of the otherwise empty bed when she returned. For weeks, the pillow had belonged to Jay. A soft platform for her demonstration model as Henry guided her and their submissive lover reveled in the attention.

Toes curling, she plucked at the soft fiber rug. “Jay’s not here.”

“No, he isn’t, is he?” Henry, standing nude beside the special dresser, closed a drawer with a near-silent bump. “But you are.” He turned, and metal glinted through his fingers. “And class is in session.”

Test day, more like. But he’d thrilled her with his touch last night. Relaxed her, filled her, and showed her pleasures only he delivered. “For me?”

“Jay has homework to keep him in the proper mindset this weekend.” He nodded toward the bare sheet and its waiting centerpiece. His thickening cock nodded, too. “Did you imagine your tutoring would be less thorough and demanding than his?”

Not for a moment.

Stepping to the bed, touching the warm nest where they’d lain, rattled her with an intoxicating mix of excitement and trepidation. The solid rock of his authority settled in her mental sweet spot, his anchored calm freeing her to float weightless. “May I, Henry?”

He scanned her in stillness, motion limited to the steady downward drift of his gaze and the slow upward curve of his lips. “On your stomach, please.”

As she crawled into position with shuffling knees and swaying breasts, she envisioned herself an instrument to bring them both pleasure, a tool molded for his grip.

“Hips centered on your pedestal.” He rolled out his beautiful baritone lush and low, vibrating against aroused flesh. “I’ve something I wish to admire.”

Settling on her stomach propped her ass in the air and brought shivering awareness of her nudity. She lay open, exposed. Behind her, Henry admired and assessed with mossy green eyes and a keen mind that missed nothing. Her constant and variable both, unexpected joys delivered with steady hands.

“Such tempting sights you present.” Gripping her by the ankles, he drew her legs straight and together. “In uncounted positions.” The bed dipped with his weight. “And because you’ve been such a good girl at your lessons”—solid and strong, he straddled her legs—“we’ll soon have many more positions to try, won’t we?”

The shudder started in her shoulders and coursed to her toes. “Yes, Henry. Please.”

With one hand creating a gap, he slipped something cool and hard between her thighs. A bottle. Lube.

“Hold tight, sweet girl. Keep this warm.” Pushing her legs together by flexing his own, he sent energy flowing like a pulse between them. As he leaned down, he tickled her with the heat of his body and the hair on his chest. “I’ll have use for it later.”

Stretching, she arched into him. “Promise?”

He kissed her cheek. “Hold out your hand, Alice.”

She offered up her palm. Kisses or cuffs, she’d love whatever he gave.

Gleaming silver landed with a hefty smack. A plug like some of Jay’s but smaller, a smooth metal bulb at one end and an elliptical handle at the other.

“I promise.” He traced the sleek, curving slope. “You won’t be permitted to play with your new toy without it.”

“All mine?” As she stroked her toy, she sank into thick, wet desire.

“All yours.” Clenching his hand, he wrapped hers around the metal. “Feel the shape of pleasures to come.”

God, when he put it that way, the echo reshaped the thumping muscles between her legs.

“Share your warmth as you are with the lubrication.” Henry slid back on his knees and kneaded her shoulders. “Temperature play is a game for another day.”

Delicious Henry-promises. She’d call them teases, except they never were. He delivered every goddamn time.

She caressed her toy with the same thorough attention Henry gave her. Memorizing the angles and curves, she mapped her expectations on steel he’d chosen for her alone.

With his broad hands, he spanned the dip in her spine and crested the slope of her ass. “Your cheeks are delightfully pink.” Breath flowing over the object of his praise, he chased the whisper with his lips. The gentle pressure sparked the pleasure-pain of awareness where her suede had left an impression. “A hint of color. Increased blood flow.”

Wet warmth—oh God, he tongued her slow and firm around the underside of her ass, along the crease at the top of her thigh. As her mouth fell open, her moan pushed forward to urge him on.

“Not overmuch for my sweet girl, though, hmm?” He scraped his teeth, light and teasing.

“No, Henry.” Shivering and nuzzling the silk sheet under her head, she rocked into the rougher nap of the towel beneath her hips. Delicious contrast. “Just right. You’re always”—amazing, sensational, powerful enough to be worth her surrender—“just right.”

“Such gentle, flowing curves you have.” Cupping her ass, squeezing faintly, he joined his promise of safety and self-restraint with the surety of his complete control. “Round and full as a woman ought to be.”

Praise tickled as he woke her base instinct to be pleasing to this man, to have her femininity recognized and appreciated.

He traced the cleft between her cheeks and parted her, ghosting across muscles she struggled to relax for him. Not as easy as last night, when she’d been spaced out from her flogging.

Skirting her outer lips, he rubbed on either side. “Here, too. Full and heavy.” As he tugged her lips, he swept between. “Rich with passion. Guarding sweet treasures.”

Demanding as a cat, she pushed up for more petting.

He pinched.

She jerked.

“Easy, dearest.” He drummed the back of her thigh. “You’ll dislodge the bottle you’re warming with your lovely flesh.” Kissing, he followed the line his fingers had set out. “Such an infraction would delay our game. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Never. His waiting games were hard enough without her adding to the anticipation. “No, Henry. I want your claim on me. In me.”

Humming, he nuzzled up her spine to the back of her neck. “And you’ll have it. You are always mine, Alice.” He rocked against her, his cock hot as iron tipped into a mold and hard as the finished piece tipped out. “However I choose to claim you.”

With energy crackling beneath her skin, she shuddered and danced in his grasp. An aching pleasure, belonging. Long desired, finally and fully obtained, hers without question.

Arm extended, he curled her hand in his. The hair on his forearms darkened him against her paleness, both vivid against the navy blue sheet and missing only Jay’s deep summer tan alongside. Henry stroked her fingers. “Open for me.”

His low murmur shot straight from her ears to her wet center. Somehow she’d traded her pussy for a muscle car’s engine, all power, vibration, and revving need. As she unclenched her fist, the metal weighed heavy in her palm.

“Good girl.” He plucked the plug from her as if grasping a feather. “Wearing this will remind you to always be so—open and available for my pleasure.” Slipping away, he dragged the metal over her back. “We’ll train your body to awareness of its responsibilities.”

Awareness, hell. She purred and fluttered with more than simple awareness. She’d attuned to him on a molecular level, as if their atoms comingled, electrons flying between them without regard for boundaries of the flesh.

The metal handle sank between the top of her cheeks, the bulb a weight resting at the base of her spine. Part of her nervous system waiting to be plugged in. Rolling her hips brought tremors, tiny shifts of the curving metal wobbling in place.

Henry growled. “Your curiosity is an incessant delight.” Sliding past her opening, he stroked deeper down her legs. “And how do you find your toy, Alice?”

“Weighty. Thick.” Making her hungry and desperate to have her fill. Not merely the toy, but him. The fullness of his cock.

In a slow spiral, he twisted the lube bottle free of her thighs.

“Round. Blunt.” Saliva deserted her, left her parched and licking to call it back. “I want to feel it, Henry. Please.”

Wet heat drizzled against her ass. Lube, trickling down, set her shivering. Her skin heightened every contact as if he’d flogged her this morning, too, as if she hung in the infinite moment between one strike and the next. The kiss of lightning.

Oh God, he swept the streams with his fingertips and redirected them to his desires. Back and forth he went, crossing and recrossing the place she no longer feared he’d tread. Hoped for, yes. Begged for.

Sheets rustled, the scratch of his legs against her smooth ones faint beneath her harsh breaths and his humming pleasure. She ached to spread herself and offer him a wider view, more room to maneuver, anything to urge him to sate the never-ending need building and pushing at her.