Finding Their Balance (10 page)

His amused hum startled her from her stare.

“I—you said to think about it, and I did. I talked over the options with my ob/gyn.” She raised her left arm. “So, here I am.”

Stiff and silent, he watched her with darkening eyes. God, why wasn’t he saying anything?

“It’s good for three years. An easy swap with my pill.” Her shirt hid the tiny insertion site. Duh. She dropped her arm. “It started working, uh, immediately.”

“Immediately.” Inhaling through his teeth, he stepped nearer. “You’ve arranged this”—another step—“to come home to me early”—a third, their chests almost touching—“and offer this gift?”

Infinite distance yawned in the sliver between them. The momentary pinch in her upper arm faded beneath the anticipation she’d nurtured since she’d known today she might finally feel him flesh to flesh. “Please.”

“My sweet Alice.” He gripped her waist, lifting her even as his lips completed the circuit with her own. He navigated the hall with her clinging to his hips. “This is the secret you’ve been keeping from me for nearly three weeks.”

“You knew the whole time?” She’d called the day after Memorial Day. Their talk on the deck at Santa’s cabin had started her down this road.

“I suspected. You forget—understanding your inner workings is my responsibility.” Lips soft against her ear, he kneaded her ass in both hands. “As with a great many things about you, it’s a pleasurable privilege indeed.”

“So this is another example”—she nibbled his neck—“of you waiting”—tasted the strong slope of his shoulder—“for me to come to you?”

Henry jammed her back to the wall beside the bedroom door. Thrusting, he drove her clothes between wet lips eager to part for him.

She bucked and moaned for more.

Solid and all-encompassing, he leaned in. “I can be an exceptionally patient man, Alice.”

Her body tried to flex, an involuntary shudder, but his weight pinned her.

“Perhaps we ought to see how patient
you
can be.”

“Today?” Her voice came out an octave too high. He could make a game of testing her. She might’ve teased her way into not getting him inside her.

“Mmm.” He swayed and nudged as he inhaled along her jaw. “No, not today.” His sucking kisses throbbed below her ear. “Even my patience will meet its limits today.”

“Even yours?” Her chest pushed forward as his retreated in equal measure. If his patience had limits, she’d caused them. Pleased him by switching to long-term birth control and coming home to him. Pleased him by wanting him inside without barriers.

“You’ve never entrusted this privilege to another.” He rumbled in low tones thick as polymer resin, sealing out other sounds. “Being your first is quite stimulating.” He lifted her from the wall. “But not so much so I can’t manage better than the hallway.”

Her thrumming body dubbed the hallway perfectly reasonable, but then she’d thought of little else for hours. As he sat on the bed with her gathered in his lap, he left her at a loss. He hadn’t issued a command. She curled her fingers in thin cotton linen. His shirt buttons rolled like river stones under her thumbs.

“It’s all right, Alice.” Leisurely kissing her mouth, her throat, the upper slopes of her breasts, he slipped off her blouse with unhurried attention. “Undress me if the urge takes you.”

Permission blanketed her with comforting weight. She pushed his shirt wide, baring his chest, long before he finished unbuttoning hers.

Stroking his solid flesh and crinkling hair, she shoved aside the mental voice demanding to know when she’d grown accustomed to waiting for permission. The pre-Henry Alice would’ve clung to control, and now she craved his.

Her blouse slid to the floor, bra following after. Supporting her back in spread hands, Henry bent over her and claimed her breast.

With his heated mouth, he set her squirming against his cock. The moment sparked with strange intimacy, as if she’d never done this. Absurd. She’d lost count of their sexual escapades, and the last time had been less than two days ago.

He rolled, sprawling her on her back, the comforter soft and floaty beneath. Knowing for weeks, he might have something special waiting. The dresser between the windows—

“No games, my beautiful girl.” Hand warm on her cheek, he turned her to face him and kissed her forehead. “Some things deserve to be appreciated on their own.”

Her eyes stung. Regardless of the trappings, their love was special. To Henry, she was special. Her voice failed.

“I love you, Alice,” he whispered. “I think you know, but as I thoroughly enjoy saying the words, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my utterances.”

He skimmed her with deft hands, gathering her remaining clothes with the unhurried precision he’d used on her blouse. Standing silent at the foot of the bed, he roamed her nudity with his gaze alone. He folded his pants over his arm once and again, digging into rebellious fabric refusing to take a crease.

With the jerk of his cock, belated understanding jolted her. His imposed distance and deliberate movements guarded against ending their pleasure too quickly.

She breathed deep, a failed attempt at calm. He might be able to control himself, but she couldn’t equal the feat. Anticipation made her clench, kept her lips wet and plump, set her clit jumping.

“An experience to be savored.” Pushing her up the bed, he spread her knees. “I want all of your attention.” With a finger-stroke, he sent her hips upward, chasing a firmer touch. “You know the feel of my fingers?”

Her answer straddled the line between a moan and a “yes.”

He parted her lips and teased her entrance. Her muscles contracted.

“You feel me circling? How slick you are, how your body yearns to pull me in?” He thrust.

She ground against the heel of his hand.

“Focus. When I do this—”

Unf, fuck, a miniquake rippled down her fault lines.

“—you feel my knuckles shift and bend, don’t you? Curving and bumping tight walls.”

Every inch. Rocking, she met his strokes.

“Your exquisite flesh grips no matter how I move.” He brought her close but never edged far enough to send her over. “Your body strives to lock us together, to surround and hold me.”

If she held him locked to her, inside her, he equaled her strength with his unceasing gaze.

“Squeeze for me, Alice. Make me feel you.”

She poured her tremors into one focused clench.

Eyelids fluttering, he sucked in a gratifyingly shaky breath and exhaled a hum. “Exactly so.”

His voice had sunk deep and low. Hearing him demanded concentration, faded all else to nothing. The bedrock of his voice and the slide of his fingers consumed her.

“Give me your hand.” He guided her to his cock and controlled her movement, a wisp over his heat, over soft skin and firm pressure beneath. “Nothing between us. Not ever again.”

In his grasp, she traced the underside of his cock. Taut and thick, he possessed infinitesimal ridges and furrows outlined for her.

“From now on you’ll feel me just as you feel my fingers inside you.”

She circled the curved flare below the head, the smoother, tighter skin. For her, please God. Please Henry.

“A snug fit, flesh to flesh, nothing to hide texture and heat from us both.” He teased her to the edge and slipped free as she whimpered. Tongue wide and flat, he lapped her from his fingers and sucked them clean. “Nothing to diminish our pleasure in each other.” He lowered himself over her.

Arching, she welcomed the prickling softness of his chest hair brushing her nipples. She burned where they touched, yet she craved the inferno. His cock grazed her inner thigh, and she raised her knees.

“Soon.” He parted her lips with his cock, rubbing up and across her clit.

Panting, focused on a single point of contact, she abandoned attempts at control and writhed unashamed.

“Squeeze for me.” Green depths commanded obedience. “Again.”

Her motion might have been voluntary or the conditioned response of her body to his authority. Clenching her muscles, she smothered aching emptiness. Her whimper turned pleading. “Now?”

“Now.”

His deep thrust carried confirmation, swift and hard and unlike any time before. Because this moment
was
different or because he’d made it seem so, she didn’t know. They were utterly naked to each other, a feast for an unrealized hunger swarming her. He overwhelmed her senses with his groaning pleasure, and she quaked in orgasm with him buried deep.

Vision blurred, ears buzzing, she blinked to awareness as her hips slowed their uncontrolled dance. Her fingers and toes tingled. Her scalp, too, where he’d curled his hand in her hair. His breath gusted hot and harsh against her neck. She ducked her chin, and he entwined their tongues.

He held his cock motionless until their mouths broke apart. No, not entirely. He hadn’t thrust, but he twitched. The way his cock jumped when she palmed him just right. She contracted.

Henry hissed a curse between clenched teeth. “You’re determined to make me come quickly, my little minx.”

“S’only fair.” She floated, lighter than air and so powerful. As if she could control him as effortlessly as he controlled her, with a single word, a single movement. “You made me come with one thrust.” As she pecked his cheek, her giggles spilled out. “New record.”

“A record I’m pleased to have you hold.” Nuzzling, he dotted her face with seemingly random kisses. “Not one I’d care to emulate.”

“But I want to feel you,” she whispered, gripping tight to hear his response, a low rumble on the cusp of breaking. “All that power dammed up behind your self-restraint, pouring into me.” With the right incentive, shaping truth like he did, she might find his release valve. “I want to feel you the way I do when you’re in my mouth, when nothing’s between us and your cock swells against my tongue and the warm rush—”

His groan drowned her out. He bucked in short thrusts, hard and pounding. With her need sated, nothing distracted her from his passion, fucking beautiful and powerful, each sensation as intense as the first. She hadn’t imagined the intimacy. No trick of words or anticipation had created this hyperawareness.

Never cresting, her wave of pleasure shook her all the same. She urged him on as they crashed in a tangle of greedy hands and needy moans. Driving forward, he pinned her to the mattress under his full weight, his cock buried. A scalding pulse of heat sent tremors cascading to the ends of her world. As her head fell back, he closed his mouth over her throat. His growl vibrated against her skin.

They lay entangled, breathing in the quiet, the air rich with the tang of sweat and sex. He rubbed circles on her hip. When he raised his head, she fought a throaty whine and tensing muscles. Cleanup and cuddling appealed, but the moment of loss when he left her body always stung.

Cradling her tight, he rolled onto his side without pulling out. “We’ve no need to rush, my sweet girl.” He hummed a light melody and caressed her lower back. “Nothing to fret over, to check and discard. Only the two of us, our bodies joined.”

She burrowed into the curve of his neck and relaxed. So focused on getting him inside, naked, she’d neglected to consider the aftereffects. No condom meant no hasty departure.

“I like it.” Lying in his arms, she embraced the novelty of his cock softening inside her. His satisfaction and his body’s slow retreat were her accomplishment. “I like feeling you. I like not rushing to separate.”

He nipped her ear. “I’m rather fond of it myself.”

Biology eventually conquered them. His cock slipped free, and her sigh followed. He nudged her to turn over. Resettling her in the shelter of his body, he draped an arm over her hip.

“You’ve many lovely qualities inside and out.” Stroking her breasts and belly, he tweaked her nipple. “But my favorite may be your forthright honesty.”

An honest woman would’ve included Henry in her deliberation. “But I kept a secret—okay, tried to keep one—from you for weeks.”

Chuckling, he tickled her ear. “You investigated the matter, I’m certain. Consulted expert information to determine the efficacy, safety, reliability and so forth of the options.”

“Of course.” Important decisions deserved a methodical approach.

He kissed her shoulder blade. “As did I, before I made the suggestion.”

The faulty light bulb in her head flickered on. He wouldn’t have recommended anything he thought would be unsafe for her. He applied care when introducing anything new to their bed.

“You took what time you needed to complete your investigation”—he transferred his kisses to her neck—“and evaluate your findings.”

“I, well—” The gulf between artist and engineer narrowed. Different reasons and perspectives, but she and Henry operated with the same thoroughness and clarity of purpose. “Yes.”

“When you grew confident in your understanding, you made your decision.” He swept low, combing her short curls, and lower still, cupping her sex. “Did you call for an appointment then, Alice?”

“Yeah.” The heel of his hand formed a perfect pressure point for rocking. Her lazy post-orgasm contentment shifted toward renewed arousal.

“And booked the first opening your schedule accommodated.” He traced the seam of her lips, sticky and slow to part.

“Uh-huh.” Were they having a conversation? She’d lost track, and the blame lay squarely on him and his probing fingers.

“And that was today.”

“Mm-hmm.” The excitement of coming home. The nightstand clock swore less than sixty minutes had passed since she’d slipped off her shoes.

“After which, you came straight to me. Direct in your desire, telling me what you’d done and what you needed from me, unable to wait for the end of your workday or to hold your tongue until suppertime. Tell me, dearest”—calm, reasonable conversation descended into seductive tones—“wherein lies the dishonesty?”

His thrust superseded her answer. Curling his fingers inside her, he drew out a moan.

She shuddered into amused certainty. “You don’t want a washcloth?”

“Cleanup would be premature.” He used his hold to push their bodies together. “Seeing as how I intend to feel you around me at least once more this afternoon.” His growing interest in another round prodded her backside. “I don’t expect a cloth will prove adequate.”