Finding Their Balance (30 page)

He intended to teach her what Jay understood instinctively. To let go of thought and embrace movement. To follow the feather.

“You’re making the shift from thinking to experiencing.”

A kind of hyperaware subspace. None of the decisions hers.

“You live in this moment.”

The feather drifted away. If the pattern held, the tease would land at her back.

“Anticipate the next too quickly—”

He circled her navel, and she flew back two steps.

“—and you miss enjoying this one.”

A tingling mass of sensation, she focused on the long signal in the noise.

“If you are always chasing, you are never feeling.”

Only Henry mattered. If she followed where he led, the rest would fall away.

“Feel the glide in your body.” With feathery touches, he prodded her calves. “Your exquisite muscles melting into new shapes and forms, the confluence of flowing curves.”

So soothing, his voice. So gentle, his touch. Shedding the confusion, the worry, the guesswork, she floated into act-without-thinking escape. “We had to get naked for a dancing lesson?” Not that she minded, but needling Henry came with its own joys. Growly, possessive joys.

“We mustn’t allow anything to interfere with the signals.” His dry amusement accompanied a feather stroke on her back.

She flowed forward. His guidance was native, not an alien here.

“Nor with the beautiful sights.” He hummed, soft and lilting. “Do you imagine how I’m looking at you now, Alice?” Using the feather, he sent her left and back. “Can you envision my hunger and approval?”

Hell yes. His flashing green eyes greeted her in her dreams. Picturing them required no more than the suggestion.

“Your nude form before me, rapt and attentive to my every cue? My voice has guided you for months, but here, in our dance studio, I need only my touch.”

Cradling her, he placed his fingertips where feathers would have fallen. He laid her left hand down gently, his shirt crisp and his shoulder broad, and folded her right hand in his. The slight tug at her clasped hand, the solid pressure at her back, and her own shifting weight made each move memorable. Repeatable. Predictably glorious.

“Good girl. You needn’t see your partner. Only feel the direction he wishes to move.”

A hush fell between them. The music guided Henry, and he guided her. She didn’t stumble, not once.

Bringing them to a stop, he clasped her cheeks and traced the bottom of the blindfold. “You see so clearly in darkness, dearest.” As he raised the shield from her eyes, he kissed her. His lips offered pressure to sink into rather than run from. He waved Jay up from the couch. “Let’s begin again, shall we?”

* * * *

When the stack of Sunday breakfast waffles had dwindled to two, Alice stabbed the top one and hoisted it over to her plate. No sense waiting ’til she finished hers, or Jay’d claim both.

Eyeing her half-eaten waffle and her new, untouched waffle, he pinched the serving plate and dragged the lone survivor to his end of the table.

She pointed her tongue at him.

Henry crossed his fork and knife on his empty plate. “I’d like to discuss a change in our routine for this coming weekend.”

As if anything had been routine lately, with the classes at the club and Jay’s birthday. Yesterday had been as close to normal as they got. Maybe he’d take them out and show off their new dancing skills. With toys.

“Is it a good—” Jay popped his head up. “Ohhh. ’Cause July.” Dropping his attention back to his plate, he dredged crumbled bacon in his syrup-pond waffle. “Okay.”

“July?” Visions of a summer arts retreat replaced the sexy-times movie playing in her head. First Jay, now Henry. Shit, she should hightail it to a continuing ed conference, disappear for a few days and see how they liked it.

“Saturday will be a difficult anniversary for a close friend.” Henry nudged his fork into a straighter alignment. “I’ve traditionally provided support in helping her through it.”

His close female friends could be counted on a single finger. “Emma.”

“Yes.”

“So you want to take her out to dinner or something?” God, let that be it. Henry wore his neutral face, impossible to read, which meant he was busy reading her. “That’s nice of you. Gentlemanly. Jay and I can scrounge up our own for one evening, right, Jay?”

Mouth full of food, Jay glanced her way with puppy eyes.

Shit.

“In previous years, I’ve prepared a meal for her at her home.”

An anniversary dinner. She’d gotten one last year, splayed beneath him across the table. She closed her teeth on her tongue. Fuck, that hurt. “Oh.”

Jay had accepted this state of affairs for years. Henry wouldn’t be the man she loved if he didn’t take care of the people in his life. One dinner. No sex.

“Because you and Will attended dinners there all the time.” Acceptance. Nothing to it.

“Yes. My presence is a familiar comfort for her.” Laying his hand on the table, he patted his impeccably folded napkin. “I’ve also stayed to be certain she would be all right.”

Her churning stomach no longer held room for the food on her plate. “Stayed the night, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Henry, thoughtful and solicitous, smiling as he asked Emma to fetch him the tarragon. Henry, kind and considerate, draping a blanket over her shoulders before he lit a fire in her fireplace. Because of course she’d have a fireplace. That she’d want lit. In July. Henry, tender and sweet, cradling Emma to his chest as he carried her to her bed. Where he’d stay. All night.

The waffle begged to be fork-shredded. Irrational fears should drown as easily in syrup. She unstuck her mouth. “I know you’re not asking my permission.”

“No.” Hands folded, he extended his fingers like crossbeams in a saddle notch and tapped his thumbs together. “But I am opening the subject for discussion, because I recognize this might be a more difficult issue for you than it is for Jay.”

“It might.” Swallowing hard didn’t alleviate her dryness. “Might be a pistachio for me.”

Jay’s fork screeched across his plate.

“I don’t know if—” Sometimes being the submissive sucked. Henry would do this with her blessing or without. “If I can have this conversation without being your equal.”

Jay would. Emma would. Individual molds for individual people, Henry would say. She could only be herself and hope he understood.

“You are always my equal, even when the final decisions are mine.” Eyes pinched, he covered her hand. “Share with me the root of the difficulty, my dear. Allow me to help you.”

Safewording wouldn’t change anything. He’d remain bent on doing this, and she’d hate every second, and they’d argue just as hard. Shaking him off, she shoved back her too-confining chair.

“So say Santa’s wife is out of town, and he’s had a lousy string of weeks. He’s lonely and depressed, and a club temp isn’t gonna deliver human connection.” She paced in bare feet across the floor they’d danced on yesterday. “And I say to you, ‘Hey, I’ll go sleep at Santa’s for the night. It’s just cuddling and emotional support.’ Are you gonna say, ‘Hell yeah, go for it’?”

“I trust you both.” He spoke softly, but the hand she’d rejected curled into a fist.

“Not what I asked, and you know it.” This ran deeper than trust, or parallel, but it growled with a possessive stirring unaffected by trustworthiness. “I trust you, too. And even if I don’t know Emma well, I trust you enough for both of you.” The damn answers never came easy, not with emotions involved. He’d opened her to the truth. All those times she’d severed love from the equation hadn’t stopped feelings from existing. Hiding kept her from admitting and working through them. “You want me to do this, but could you? Could you smile and drop me off at his house and pick me up the next morning and never once have a twinge of discomfort?”

In his silence, the blood rushing past her ears thundered with doubts. She should’ve said nothing. Kept the peace. Stopped using logic as a weapon.

He rapped his knuckles. “No.”

She sidled up to her chair. Under her hands, the wood top rail rose and fell in a smooth wave.

“This night is a ritual, Alice. I cannot pass such a sacred trust off to another, and I cannot ignore the anniversary and leave her alone.” Like a draft horse straining for that first inch of ground in a pulling contest, he leaned in, bowed his head, and exhaled in a whoosh. “He was my friend and mentor for fifteen years. Their boy was my godson. I, too, need to honor and remember them.”

The chair anchored her wobbly arms. “Emma had a son?”

“Thomas.” He hummed, the notes falling flat as a grimace twisted his lips. “Victor drove up to collect him from summer camp. Their joke of the season had been how strange it felt to play spontaneously at home for the first time since his birth.”

Syrup soured with bile in her throat.

“Even now, I doubt she’s forgiven herself for enjoying that freedom.”

“They both died?” She hushed her voice to match his, a whispering echo in a vault he’d never opened to her before.

“An evening thunderstorm.” Rubbing his fingers, he drew shapes on the table. Or erased them. “A tree across the road. The car—” His fingers stilled. He shook his head. “So I listen to her stories, and she listens to mine.”

He could tell those stories to her. To her and Jay. They’d listen. “You—”

But not remember.

When he reminisced with Emma, they bonded over shared experiences. The love and the laughter and the grief that followed.

“I what, dearest?”

God, he had the softest eyes. Not always. He did flinty and hard with the toughest minerals. But just now, she drowned in him the way she drowned in Jay. Henry trusted her with his vulnerability.

“You should be with Emma.” One night. She and Jay had him three hundred and sixty-four nights out of the year. He deserved this. Someday, they’d all toast the memory of the boy who’d died too young and the man who’d helped make Henry what he was. But she’d leave this tradition to Henry and Emma. “So you can remember the people you both loved and respected.”

Inhaling deep and slow, he leaned back in his chair. As he exhaled, he released the tension in her, too. “I see two people I love and respect in front of me, sweet girl.”

Jay returned to cutting his waffle. “How come you don’t bring Emma here? Maybe staying in the house with the reminders makes it worse. Sometimes talking about stuff somewhere else helps. Or with someone else. Like it’s okay to. You don’t have to lock it all away like you’re ashamed to be sad or scared.”

Jesus Christ. She and Henry needed to learn to shut the fuck up and let Jay solve the world’s problems.

“What?” Stopping his fork at his mouth, Jay glanced down. “Did I get syrup on my shirt? I can take it off.”

“You may remove your shirt if you like.” As faint, lilting wonder lifted his voice, Henry stared unblinking at Jay. “But you are perfect as you are.”

Shrugging, Jay popped waffle into his mouth. Two seconds, three seconds—his fork clanged on the plate and he wrestled with the bottom hem of his shirt.

Henry turned his gaze on her. “Alice, would that—”

“Yes.” Oh hell yes. Have them both here instead of some nebulous otherwhere.

“You’re certain you’d prefer another woman here, on your territory? You’d be displaced for the evening.”

Like Mom and Dad’s dinner parties. Hustled off to bed early with Ollie, the two of them creeping down the hall to see what was so funny that adults had to sit around a table of beer bottles and cards and laugh so loud all night. Now she had a nobler purpose, choosing to stay away and not eavesdrop. “I’m sure.”

“Alice and I can go on a date.” Slinging an arm around his chair back, Jay comically puffed out his bare chest. “I’ll take her out on the town for a night she’ll never forget.”

She snorted. “Arcade-style virtual reality kayaking is not unforgettable.”

“Think of the pizza.” He mimed scooping up a slice and biting down. “All dripping with gooey cheese.”

“You ate a hundred waffles. How can you be hungry for pizza?”

“I wouldn’t be if I had that waffle trapped on your plate.”

She scooted the plate down the table and dropped a firm kiss on his syrup-sticky lips. “All yours.”

With a swipe behind her knees, he dropped her in his lap. “
All
mine?”

She campaigned to tweak his nipple.

“Thank you both.”

Play paused for Henry’s smile.

Fully dressed, Henry teased her with the tips of the apron strings. Nubby, knotted ends dragged over her naked back. Cousin to her suede, a shudder-worthy reminder of the power he wielded for her pleasure.

“These tails are much too long.” He stroked downward in a feathery fingerslide on the path of the bow tie dangling from her waist. The ends swung below her ass. “We’ll have to try again.”

With gentle pulls, he unknotted the thin ties against her back. Thin like the strong ropes in the suspension they’d watched with Santa, sliding along nerve endings and folds of memory. Raising her tingling nipples and cascading goose bumps to her elbows, where her forearms bathed in hot, soapy water. No dishwasher on this Friday night. They’d work by hand, she and Jay.

Looping the apron around her waist, Henry passed across her pubic bone in a fleeting promise. Playtime had begun with trading dishes for clothes. The clothes, unwanted, lay folded on the table. Stacked in the sink, the dishes sat ready to hand.

“All right, Alice.” Henry’s wraparound bow girdled her hips and settled in the small of her back. “You’re properly attired for your position.” He scooped up the tails, his knuckles weighty and warm, and let them fall. They bounced against her ass and rolled, dangling along the inner curve of her cheeks. “You may begin.”

Fuck, the dishes. The washing she’d been assigned before Henry stole her breath with his apron play. Blinking away blurry distraction, she refocused on the white foam embracing her wrists. A cup, low and round, fell prey to her questing fingers. She pulled the mug above the suds and sponged inside and out.

“How convenient. This accessory leaves you”—Henry slipped through the open apron sides and cupped her breasts—“exquisitely accessible.”