Crossing the Lines (23 page)

“You shouldn’t have to take care of me like that. It’s not your job. I’m not, this is, this whole thing…” She waved her arm between them and toward Jay, who watched her with undisguised shock. “It’s just sex
.
That’s all it is, right? I can’t expect you to hold my fucking hair back while I vomit because I go out and drink too much. Or take me to bed for a hard fuck because I get all worked up grinding against some stranger on the dance floor.”

Henry’s face formed an impenetrable mask. He turned away as though she sickened him.

“Yes. It’s simply sex, Alice.” Shoulders stiff with tension, he spoke with polite, cold indifference. “If you’ve satisfied your need for it, give me your safeword and go.”

No. No-no-no. Please don’t send me away. I’m sorry, Henry. I’ll remember it’s just sex. I won’t try to make anything more of it. Please.

“Nothing? No safeword? Are you certain, Alice?”

“Y-yes.” She managed a shaky whisper as panic beat at her.

“Then take off your clothes. We’ve wasted enough time this evening on your emotional issues, haven’t we? When all you require here is a good hard fuck?”

Her fingers shook as she gripped the edge of her sweater and hauled it over her head. She fumbled at the clasp of her bra.

Henry glanced at her over his shoulder. “Jay. Help Alice with her clothes. This is my time, and she’s shown enough disrespect for it this evening.”

Jay knelt in front of her, eyes wide as he unhooked her bra and slid the straps off her shoulders. Shoes and socks next, everything set neatly to the side. Her arms rested alongside her thighs, useless, as he reached for the front of her slacks.

“Quickly, Jay. Alice is waiting for her good hard fuck, and she won’t be getting it if she’s still wearing her pants.”

Jay hesitated as he slipped the button and touched the zipper. He whispered to her, his voice urgent and pleading. “Don’t do this. Use your safeword. Please. He doesn’t want this and neither do you.”

“Jay.” Henry’s sharp tone hadn’t softened. “Alice is an adult. She knows perfectly well that she may use her safeword at any time. Your sympathy is not required. She’s here for sex, nothing more.”

“Henry—”

“The pants, Jay.” Henry turned with a blank expression. Either he didn’t care about her, or he was doing a damn fine job of pretending not to. “Alice. Tell me your safeword.”

“Pistachio.”

“Do you wish to use your safeword now?”

Jay wrestled her pants down her legs and laid trembling hands on her hips, the top band of her underwear at his fingertips.

“No, Henry.”

“You want this.”

“Yes.”

“Whatever I choose to give you.”

“Yes.”

“Was that what you wanted last night, Alice?”

“Yes.”

She pressed her back to the couch cushion as Jay lifted her hips and pulled off her underwear. His eyes pleaded with her to stop this.

“Bring those to me, Jay. Alice won’t be needing them again.”

Jay stood and turned away, her underwear dangling from his hand. He clenched and unclenched, again and again. She ached to reassure him. Henry would only be giving her what she asked for. He’d given her soft words and kisses when called for, and now he’d give her hard and angry and taking. Because she needed it so bad. Because she wanted him to claim the right. To call her his.

Jay handed her underwear to Henry. She kept her thighs together, her nudity a discomfiting imbalance. Neither Jay nor Henry had removed a single stitch of clothing.

“Jay, pull back the table, please. I don’t want anything interrupting my view.”

Henry settled himself in the chair across from her, leaning back, his legs spread, knees wide. He raised her underwear to his face, inhaling, watching her over them.

“You’re hiding from me, Alice. Spread your legs. You haven’t the right to deny me what’s mine unless you speak your safeword. Do you want to do that now?”

“No, Henry.” A shudder rolled through her as she followed his instructions. Put herself on display for him. Spread her legs and waited. He wasn’t in a hurry to fuck her. The knowledge oddly calmed her.

He wasn’t angry or impulsive, no matter how his actions appeared, no matter how his words sounded. Henry was still Henry. He’d take care of her. He would’ve taken care of her last night if she’d come to him as she should have. Her fear and dread lifted.

“You denied me last night, Alice. You’ve said you went out and found another man to arouse you—”

“No! That wasn’t, he didn’t, I was, I was thinking about you.” That the contract allowed her to pick up a stranger and give herself to him if she wanted didn’t matter. Proving to Henry that she belonged to him and him alone mattered now. Even if she didn’t always want to want that. Even if wanting it terrified her.

“Were you? Tell me.”

“He asked me to dance. I…” Nerves seized her throat and dried her mouth. “I pretended he was Jay, that you’d told him to get me wet for you. So I could imagine you were watching.”

She was whispering by the end of her confession, heat in her face and a mixture of shame and relief in her gut at telling Henry the truth.

“Yet you came home alone.”

“Yes.”

“Needing relief.”

“Yes.”

“Knowing I have told you to come to me
at any time
if you need something from me.”

“…yes.”

“Yet you chose to deny me that. Tell me, did you deny yourself? Or did you touch yourself?”

“I touched myself.”

“Still thinking of me? Of Jay?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you ought to be punished for that, Alice. Taking for yourself what should have been given to us.” Henry cast his gaze left.

Jay stood by the coffee table, uncertainty writ across his features.

“Jay.”

“I’m not…I can’t, Henry.” A shamed whisper. He sounded broken.

“No, I know, my boy. I wouldn’t ask it of you.” Henry stretched out his hand. “Come here, Jay.”

Rather than making Jay kneel by his feet, as he’d done many times before, he pulled Jay into his lap. Curling an arm around him, Henry kissed him. A slow, romantic kiss deepening the longer it went on.

Her muscles pulsed with desire, and jealousy twanged in her chest. If Henry wanted to punish her, he couldn’t have picked a better method.

Breaking off the kiss, he snuggled Jay closer and stroked his hair.

She waited, alone and silent. The space between them, no more than six feet, seemed a vast gulf.

“Touch yourself, Alice. Show me what you were doing last night when you should have been in my bed.”

Oh God.

“I used my vibrator last night.” Dissuasion. Evasion.

“You’ll have to work harder tonight with your fingers, won’t you?”

Tactical failure. Her hand hovered over her stomach. He really meant to make her show him this.

“You came home from the club. You lay in your bed, aroused. Imagining something more arousing than a solo session. Did you come to me in your fantasies, Alice?”

Her stomach muscles jumped as her fingers met skin.

“I used my key,” she whispered.

“You wanted to slip inside unnoticed, didn’t you? To be a naughty girl, climbing into my bed. Thinking I wouldn’t know you were there, perhaps? That you might get away with something?”

Her fingers slid down, into her curls, curving around her sex. He knew her so well. Showing him this engendered no shame.

“I wanted to watch you. To touch you. But I knew…” She parted her lips, finding the slickness his voice inspired.

“Knew what, Alice?”

“You’d know I was there, even if you pretended you didn’t.”

“You know you can’t hide from me. Not the sound of your breaths, coming faster, calling attention to your lovely breasts. Not the sweet scent of you, open and needy, as you are now.”

She pushed a single finger inside, pumping. Added a second, a poor imitation of the fullness when his cock parted her.

“And what did you do to me, Alice, as I lay in my bed last night?”

“I pulled off the sheet to look at you.” She unleashed her free hand in ceaseless motion, cupping and squeezing and tugging at her nipples as the need struck her. “And I touched you.”

“With your hands?” His casual, curious tone held a hint of awareness. He didn’t need to ask. He likely did so just to make her say the words.

Jay had relaxed into his embrace, Henry’s hand sliding up and down his back in steady, soothing sweeps. They both watched her, Henry her eyes and Jay her fingers.

“With my mouth, first. I wanted…” She squirmed, a touch of embarrassment leaking through. Sliding her thumb across her clit and rolling her hips gave her the confidence she needed. “I wanted to feel you in my mouth, to feel you getting hard for me.”

“You wanted to be in control.”

Her admission came in silent agreement, the words too much. She’d wanted to prove she could have him, could make him want her and force him to accept her at any time, not only during the hours he’d allotted her. That if she came to him outside those hours it was not a burden on him but her right to do so.

“And were you, Alice? For how long?”

“Only until you were hard.” Her fingers moved faster, dipping inside and slipping back to circle her clit, the pressure firmer, her hips rocking. “Then you, you pinned me down and fucked me. Told me I belonged to you. That I was gonna come for you.”

Oh God. Thinking about it now, his voice saying the words, her fingers in frantic motion against her clit, she teetered on the edge.

“You are. You’re going to come for me now. Show me. Show me you know you belong to me, Alice. Come for me.”

Her back arched. Her eyes slammed shut. The next brush of her finger sent her over the edge, a half sob of his name pouring from her mouth.

Shuddering, she drew out her pleasure with her fingers.

Hands gripped behind her knees. Henry pulled her body down, twisting her until she lay on her back, her ass raised over the arm of the couch. He threw her legs over his shoulders as he pushed her hand aside and entered her.

He thrust hard, deep, not checking her readiness or asking how she wanted it or whether she did at all. She thrust back at him, reaching for his hips, desperate to pull him deeper.

Stroking her thighs where they pressed against his chest, he paused to grip her wrists. “Take these, please, Jay. Enjoy yourself.”

Her arms were pulled over her head and stretched along the couch cushions. Jay licked her fingers, closing his mouth over them one at a time, sucking with enthusiasm.

A hard, abrupt thrust called her attention back to Henry. He held her legs tight to his chest.

“Was that gasp a request for more, Alice? Can you take more? Can you take everything I have to give you?”

“Yes. Yes, Henry, I can take it. Please. Please.”

He bent forward, forcing her hips to tilt further, her body leveraged above her head, above her shoulders, and her vision filled by his looming form. She might black out from the intensity, but no fucking way would she stop this now.

“Was this what you wanted, Alice? What you needed so badly last night?”

With her knees nearly over his shoulders and his hips snapping against hers in a punishing rhythm, getting the breath to answer him proved impossible. Only a thin whine emerged, a wordless plea for more.

When she came, she couldn’t manage even that.

A soundless scream shaped her mouth. Her body shook. Henry thrust through her release and beyond, coming with a bellowing roar that set her off again.

She lay dazed and happy as he kissed her calves, twined around his neck.

He released her thighs. She’d have bruises across the tops in the morning. He’d given her what she’d asked for. Claimed her. Marked her.