Crossing the Lines (37 page)

The one who’d taunted Jay and landed her in this position. He stood a foot away, stroking the bulge in his pants. She shuddered and dropped her head, a fresh round of sobs clogging her throat as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“She’s delicious in pain, Henry. I bet you don’t take her to the edge nearly often enough to showcase it.”

“Leave off, Cal. She’s had her punishment for her misdeed.”

“She hasn’t apologized yet. I can think of a dozen ways for her to do it. You don’t even have to move her. Be a good boy and pull her up by her hair, would you? I’ll fuck her mouth while she quivers in your lap.”

She was quivering, that was true. She couldn’t seem to stop.

Henry’s legs tensed on hers. His hands tightened on her back and thighs. He drew his spanking hand back, and fear rippled through her. Would he hit her again, or let this stranger—
no. He wouldn’t. He promised.

He leaned into her. The stinging pain didn’t materialize.

“No, Jay. I have a task for you.” Henry rubbed her back. “We’re leaving, my boy. You’ll carry Alice to the car. Pick her up now, please. Gently.”

Her panties were pulled up. Her body was rolled away from Henry’s lap, turned over and deposited in Jay’s arms. He cradled her to his chest, his grip firm around her back and beneath her knees. She tried to focus on his touch, a distraction from her throbbing discomfort.

“If you persist in this behavior, Cal, you may be assured I will push for your expulsion from this establishment.” Henry stood. He glanced at her, at Jay, and his lips formed a hard line. “Permanently, this time.”

“Your punishment
,
if it can even be called that, is barely adequate.” Cal stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You’re not the only one with friends on the board, Henry.”

She doubted anyone beyond their tight circle—herself, Jay, Henry and William—could hear him now.

“I could have fucked him in the hall. He wouldn’t have stopped me. I could have taken him back upstairs, and the girl too, and they both would have learned their place. If they offend me again, the board’s censure won’t deter me, Henry. I’ll be convincingly remorseful, of course, but the marks will be on them. And every time you touch them, they’ll remember me.”

The silence frightened her. Henry, her patient, calm Henry, radiated rage and revulsion under thin control. So still he seemed a sculpture. The barest hint of a flare in his nostrils. A trace of narrowing in his eyes, skin pulling tight beneath them. Even so provoked, he’d prize self-mastery. She lacked a reference point for an uncontrolled Henry. What he might do. The tension thickened.

William guffawed. A hearty, forced, loud laughter that turned heads. As if Cal had been making a joke and not threatening her safety and Jay’s. “Cal, let it go. The girl’s been punished for whatever imagined slight you fabricated. Really, on her first night out in public? Henry’s hardly going to bring his lovelies for a return visit if you put her off the entire idea the way you did the boy. He won’t let you fuck either of them. He’s already said they’d both be collared if he didn’t dislike the way it breaks the aesthetic beauty of the neckline.”

Henry said
what
? She struggled to control her breathing. Collared. Both of them, not just Jay. A definite, unmistakable claim.

Had he said that to keep from being bothered about borrowing them, or had he meant it? Maybe she wasn’t crazy to love him, even if he’d physically abused her in public.

Not abuse. She could’ve stopped it. Maybe she wouldn’t have been allowed back, and maybe he’d have been embarrassed, but she could’ve done it. One word, and he would’ve stopped.

“If his pets aren’t ready to be out in public, he should keep them home.” Would that man never shut his mouth? Every time he spoke, Jay tensed.

She turned her face further into Jay’s chest and nuzzled him. She would’ve placed kisses against his skin, but they might count as sexual contact. She wasn’t about to break another rule. Not tonight.

“Otherwise, they should accept the consequences of their misbehavior.”

Henry ignored him. “Jay. To the elevator, my boy. We’re going.”

Jay’s shoulder made a woodsy-scented pillow as they left. Jackass Cal wasn’t following. William provided a sturdy bulwark, penning Cal in the way the jackass had done to her and Jay. She found a grim satisfaction in it. Santa practiced more than comedy. If it weren’t for the stinging pain, she’d ask Henry if she could sit on Santa’s lap and thank him.

They rode the elevator to the first floor. Henry rattled off instructions about their coats to Jay.

Would it be wrong to ask Santa to hold a man down so she could cut off his balls?

She giggled as Henry tucked her coat around her. Frowny-face Henry. Tight lips. Pinched eyes under lowered brows. Maybe because he wouldn’t get to ask Santa for anything? He didn’t have to worry. She’d ask for two presents. She couldn’t stop giggling long enough to get the words out.

Henry said something, and Jay picked her up again. The stars outside blurred, the world spinning too quickly and faster-than-light travel dangling a nanosecond away.

Henry used his spanking hand on the car door. Open sesame. The same hand that often brought her to orgasm in his bed. Made her dinner. Dried her tears and cradled her on special nights. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Not now. Not when she was scattered and shattered and her mind shouted at her in a million voices and her ass throbbed with pain and everything circled back to the same point of confusion.

I love Henry.

He hurt me.

But I love him.

“Jay, you need to let go. Put Alice in the car, please.”

Jay folded himself around her, ducking to lower her into the seat. He clasped her with care, eyes wide and fearful. When the seat brushed her ass, she gritted her teeth and forced the cry in her throat to come out as a hiss of air. She twisted her body to avoid more contact.

Jay’s hands shook as he let go. He sobbed, and words poured from him even before he’d backed his head and shoulders out of the car. “I’m so sorry, Henry, it was all my fault. I heard his voice and I froze. It was like it was happening again, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, if Alice hadn’t stopped him, God, I would’ve let him ’cause I couldn’t move, and she, he would’ve hurt her, Henry, he wanted to, I heard it in his—”

“Jay.” Henry sounded sharper than a diamond-tipped carbide drill bit carving with precision. “Alice needs you. Focus, Jay. Alice needs you to help her. You can help her now, Jay.”

Curled in the backseat, she started at the hard tone, the utter lack of sympathy in his voice. He wouldn’t blame Jay, would he? She was the one who’d fucked up, missed finding a better way to handle things. The right answer refused to appear. How she could’ve gotten Jay moving and kept them both safe. And Jay couldn’t do anything about it now.

“I can help her. I can help her.” Jay calmed, his voice evening out with each repetition. “I can. Tell me what to do, Henry.”

“Get in the car, Jay. Sit with Alice. Dry her tears. Tell her about your bike trip to the state park. I don’t believe she’s heard about it yet, and I’m certain she wants to. Right now, Jay.”

Who cared about a fucking bike trip? That jackass in the club had been the one who’d abused Jay, who’d betrayed his trust, and now Henry shut him out and denied him comfort. He had to see how broken Jay was. Hell, even she saw it, and she had Grand Canyon sized cracks herself.

Sliding into the backseat beside her, Jay raised her head and shoulders into his lap. He used a handkerchief that had to be Henry’s to wipe tears and snot from her face.

His hands were gentle, tender. He watched her with such intensity, the broken bits of his emotions hiding around the edges.

“It was Sunday,” he started, as Henry got in the front seat and pulled the car away from the curb. “I went up with my mountain bike early. Still dark. The sun was coming up when I finished my pre-ride checks. You should come sometime. I have that old mountain bike in storage that I haven’t used in…years…it’s…”

Losing focus, he hovered on the edge of a breakdown. Rattled herself, she huddled closer, as if touch might fix him. He stroked her hair like a beloved pet’s fur.

“The sunrise, Jay.” Henry’s stern command flowed from the front seat. “Tell Alice about the colors.”

“Yes, Henry.”

Jay had never sounded so subdued and submissive, not even the first night Henry had flogged her, when panic had seemed poised to drive him from the room. Of course, he’d never lost it this completely in front of her, either. Tonight had been so much worse.

“I rode up the mountain, and the sun came to greet me. It was…”

She tuned out his voice, because his eerie, even tone, so unlike the enthusiastic chatterbox he’d been before they’d seen that man, deepened the pain and she’d run out of space to hold any more. She should’ve hit that fucker. Knocked him down and kicked the shit out of him while Jay watched.

She vibrated with anger, her whole body a blazing wire of rage.

“…and my tire got stuck in the—Alice?” Jay lost his monotone. Her name was a panicked squeak. “Henry? She’s shaking, I don’t know what to do. What should I, what should I do?”

Fuck. I’m scaring him.

She reached for his hand, for the arm curled comfortingly around her waist, and squeezed.

“M’fine.” Her voice sung out raw and unconvincing.

The car slowed. Henry changed lanes to the right. Pulling over?

She spoke through the burn in her throat the sobs had left behind. “M’fine, Henry. Just home. Please?”

She struggled to sit up. Jay didn’t want to let her go and sitting hurt, but she needed to make Henry understand she was fine but Jay wasn’t.

The light reflecting on the windshield turned red. The car stopped. She leaned forward, her weight on her elbows on the front seats. Jay steadied her as she placed her mouth at Henry’s ear.

“I just wanna be home. Worry about Jay. He’s the one who needs you, and you won’t even tell him it’s okay.”

Henry’s eyes briefly closed. “Now is not the time, Alice. Please be patient. Be patient, and stay with him.”

What, it wasn’t convenient for Jay to be needy now?
That’s cold, Henry. Really fucking cold.

She said nothing. Fighting with Henry wouldn’t help Jay.

The light turned green, and she returned to Jay’s lap before Henry had to tell her to sit back. She rolled to press her face into Jay’s stomach. Wrapping her arm around his back, she hoped and prayed and gave a mute cheer when he mindlessly stroked her hair. He’d interacted, if only on autopilot.

They rode the rest of the way home in silence, without even music to accompany their thoughts.

When Henry put the car in park and turned off the engine, she scrambled out without waiting. No way would she let Jay carry her up three flights of stairs. Her ass hurt, sure, but she wasn’t an invalid or a child.

He sat motionless in the backseat. She reached in and tugged on his hand.

“Jay? We’re home. Time to get out.”

No response. Henry came around their door and gently pushed her aside.

“Jay. Out of the car now, my boy. I want you upstairs in less than three minutes, am I understood?”

Jay didn’t speak, but the command in Henry’s tone got him moving. He swung his legs out and stood so quickly that Henry grabbed Jay’s head to keep him from striking the top of the doorframe. Henry herded them both into the building and up the stairs, his hand a repeated faint pressure on her back. One she welcomed, especially when it prodded her past her own apartment door.

Not that she expected he’d abandon her, but Jay’s neediness screamed right now, too, and Henry hadn’t done a damn thing but order him around. She wouldn’t leave Jay alone to deal with this when Henry offered only silence and anger. Where had his tenderness gone? Where was the devoted man she loved?

Henry hustled them into the apartment and shucked his coat before pulling Jay’s down his arms and off. She left hers lay on the floor because Henry had and he was already prodding them down the hall.

“Bedroom. Quickly, please.”

She paused beside his bed, horribly off-balance. The night hadn’t gone as she’d expected, and now Henry was…whatever he was. Her fault for asking to go at all. If she hadn’t been so damned curious, they wouldn’t have been at the club, and Jay wouldn’t have run into his abuser, and Henry wouldn’t have had to discipline her.