Healing the Wounds (23 page)

If denying her pajamas had been a calculated part of his strategy, she’d better get a bigger chessboard to play with Henry. “Is that why you started extending our time? Letting me spend the night?”

“Aside from the two of us simply desiring your company?” He squeezed her waist in a half hug. “Certainly. The more I was able to increase your attachment to us without speaking of it, the more your comfort level grew.”

“Lowering my defenses.” He’d waged a sneaky little war under her nose. No—under her clothes. She snickered.

“Parents of newborns are encouraged to spend time holding their offspring skin to skin.”

She pushed at his shoulder, a teasing shove. “I know you’re not calling me an infant.”

Henry chuckled. “No, dearest, certainly not. But you are a new member of our family. The more Jay and I snuggle against your bare skin, the more the chemicals in our bodies attune to each other.” He inhaled at her neck. “Recognize our bond with you and wish to spend even more time deepening it.”

“So I was right all along.” An unexpected victory. “Love is just addictive substances changing my brain structure, and you’re my dealer.”

“If it helps you to think of it in such a way.” He kissed her neck. “Though I would never say love is ‘just’ anything.”

“For me it’s home.” Jay wriggled until she made room for him to lie with his head cradled at her neck. “Wherever I am, I know where home is. And that’s you and Henry.”

Christ, he’d make her cry. She closed her eyes tight. Jay made the most intimate complexities easy to explain in two words. It’s home. Simple, and somehow everything.

“Exactly right, my boy. So it is.”

Jay’s happy little sigh tickled her skin. He slung his arm over her alongside Henry’s. Sleep came courtesy of all-natural, chemically induced contentment. Who needed pajamas when they had love?

“Alllllice. My sweet girl.” Henry’s breath warmed her ear.

She grunted into the pillow. It felt early. Opening her eyes to check the time would take too much effort, but it felt early.

“I thought we might enjoy the sunrise.”

Was he joking? That would make it, what, five o’clock? On a Sunday morning. Was this really something she needed to be awake for?

“Sleeping,” she mumbled. “Take Jay.”

A hard cock pressed into the small of her back. “I’m taking
you
, my dear.”

She squirmed, her hips pressing back of their own accord. A sexy wake-up call appealed, so long as she didn’t have to move too much. Or open her eyes.

A chuckle rolled from across the room.

“Not this time, Alice.” Jay sounded awake. Like, awake-awake, not just-rolled-out-of-bed awake. “I’m on my own this morning.”

She cracked open an eyelid. One of the lamps brightened the room. Somewhere behind her, thankfully, not the one in front of her face.

Jay had donned biking gear, tight little shorts and one of his sweat-wicking T-shirts. Damn. Sorry she’d slept through him dressing.

He stepped closer to the bed and tapped the nightstand twice with his palm. “But I left you all the gear you’ll need.”

She tipped her head back. Her brain took a moment to interpret the dark outline beside his hand. Binoculars. She snorted. Figured he hadn’t been kidding. “Bird-watching?”

“Bird-watching,” Jay confirmed. “Have fun with that. I’ll be flying down hills.”

“And crawling back up them,” she grumbled at him. Teasing him was too enjoyable to pass up. “So have fun with that.”

“I will.” Bending down, he kissed her cheek and Henry’s. “See you both later.”

“Don’t forget to grab your bag from the kitchen. I’ve packed high-energy snacks for you.” Henry leaned over her shoulder to kiss Jay more thoroughly. “Be safe. Call if you run into trouble.”

Jay promised to bike safely, be back around lunchtime, and call if he’d be late. And then he was gone, wide-awake and eager and out the door. At five in the morning. He’d grown up rural, even more than she had. He might miss biking less-traveled roads, even with all the hours he spent roaming city streets.

Henry descended on her shoulder, nipping and biting with gentle tugs. Parts of her were definitely waking up.

“Are we really going bird-watching?”

“Mmm.” He sucked at the cord of muscle running up toward her neck. “We’re really going outside, Alice. What you watch while we’re there is entirely your choice.” He rolled away, and his feet thudded against the floor. “Best bring the binoculars in case you want them, though.”

A drawer opened, and a zipper, and the sliding doors to the deck. Footsteps faded and returned. The lamp switched off, leaving the room bathed in pale predawn light.

The binoculars landed beside her chest. “Hold these, my dear.”

She’d hardly gotten her fingers around the strap when she was scooped up, blanket and all. He carried her out, pausing to let her tug the screen door closed behind them. A few minutes’ work had them settled in a deck chair, the binoculars on the table beside them along with Henry’s cellphone and a sketch pad and pencils.

Yesterday they’d gone inside and played in bed with Jay. Henry obviously had something else in mind today. Being naked and in his lap boded well. Except Henry had thrown on a robe. Soft and warm as it was, it wasn’t
him
. She’d much rather touch skin to skin, especially if she was going to be woken up and dragged outside so early on a non-workday.

Yawning, she rested her face near his neck. He tucked the blanket around her shoulders with care before slipping his arms beneath.

“It’s all right to sleep, Alice, though I do hope you’ll enjoy this.” He clasped her waist in a gentle squeeze. “Perhaps such an early arousal on vacation is a bit much to ask of my sleeping beauty after a late night.” His voice vibrated in her ear. “Do you see the light beginning its journey?”

The deck faced south-southeast, out over the lake. The edge of the sun invisible yet, but its effects made its presence known—the lightening sky, the orange-and-purple tint, the calls of birds in the morning mist.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Predictable,” Henry murmured.

A boring word, yet he’d said it with approval. The way she might when a materials test returned the result she’d expected—the proper tolerance for heat or weight or other stresses the design demanded—and a project could move forward.

“Predictable?”

“Mm-hmm. Predictable. Sunrise. Predictable in its timing. In its path.” His stroke across her stomach lengthened, his palm running up and over her breast, and she shivered. “We know where and when it will occur every day. It keeps no secrets. It spills its light across the earth with a steady hand.”

He swept down again, not stopping at her stomach but rolling over the top of her thigh. She parted her legs in answer to his unspoken demand.

“Fingers first, Alice.” He stroked the inside of her thigh.

She clutched fistfuls of his robe.

“The smallest rays of light, tentative tendrils creeping across the landscape, outlining what they find there.”

His touch matched his words, slow and light, tracing the outline of her sex, the outer lips as they swelled, the inner concealing the slickness building within. Jesus. She’d never look at sunrise the same way.

“And all the while, the sun is rising. Its reach is growing. Steady and patient.” He nuzzled her neck with soft kisses. “It knows time is on its side.”

Henry, her sun, imposing his will on the land below. Mmm. The sweet compulsion and confidence she loved. “Because the sun knows it always wins. Every day the landscape submits.”

He tapped her clitoris, and her hips jumped. “This isn’t about winning, my dear girl. Not like that.”

Returning to soothing strokes, he teased the seam of her lips and parted her with slow attention. “The sun offers light and warmth, and the earth responds with a welcoming embrace. The flowers turn to greet the day, their petals opening.”

He added more pressure, opening her, eagerness seizing her as he circled her entrance with a single finger. “Their nectar sweetly flowing.”

He thrust. One hand held her hips down as the other moved. He pumped steadily, quick to add a second finger. “Watch the lake, sweet girl. When the sun crests the horizon, the water ripples and shines like colored glass.”

She turned obedient eyes toward the lake, though her mind fell prey to Henry’s fingers within her and his hard cock pressing from the other side, his robe between them.

He abandoned her hips for her stomach, sliding over the curl-covered curve that led to fiery bliss. He rubbed her clitoris with lazy strokes while his fingers inside her increased their speed. She whimpered at the contrast.

The sun reached its tipping point, a broad curve almost too much to watch, at the southeastern end of the lake. The light spread across the water, burning away the morning mist, leaving shining reflections to sparkle and dance.

“Oh! It’s beautiful, Henry.” Her words emerged in a breathy rasp, her mouth too dry and her breath too short for anything else.

“Beautiful. Predictable. The sun spills itself out across land and water every morning. Always the same. And never the same.” He spoke directly into her ear, a hushed, urgent rumble, as he drew her closer to climax. “A unique beauty each and every time. A fresh palette of colors. The earth stretches, and wakes, and breathes—”

Tension tightened her limbs. Her breath stopped in the split second between need and fulfillment. His fingers pushed her forward, made her body wake for him. Her cries rivaled the birds. Her hips rocked with more speed than the waves lapping at the lakeshore. Unfettered exuberance rippled as if she were what Henry named her, a landscape of natural, wild beauty.

She trembled with aftershocks.

Resting his hands on her thighs, he pressed his lips above her ear. “And begins every day with a glorious climax stirring everything touched by the sun’s heat.” His quiet chuckle tickled. “Good morning, Alice.”

“Henry?” Jumbled thoughts coalesced. The sunrise this morning. The way he made every moment special, memorable.

“Yes, my sweet girl?”

His words and his touch stirred something deeper than lust. Nothing before had come close to the intensity of her life with Henry and Jay.
I was sleeping. And now I’m not.

“Thank you for waking me up.” She managed a shaky, intimate whisper.

His hum told her she’d pleased him, though long moments passed before he spoke. “I find great joy in it, Alice. Thank you for trusting me enough to allow it.”

She twisted sideways and pressed kisses to his neck.

He patted her thigh and encouraged her to turn fully, helping her shuffle and wiggle and slide until she’d settled herself straddling his hips. The heat of his erection radiated between her legs. Her movements had dislodged his robe. The knotted belt served no purpose, not with the fabric gaping. She nudged her hips forward, her weight on his cock drawing a sharp breath from Henry.

“Can I have this, too?” She teased with her smile, folding her arms across his chest.

“There are condoms in the pockets of my robe, Alice.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I certainly wasn’t saving them for anyone else.”

Score. She quested for a condom. If it necessitated shifting her weight while she dug for the pockets, and if that meant she rocked against his erection, well that was hardly her fault, was it?

She smirked.

The blanket slipped down her back as she sat up.

He
smirked.

But she found a condom all too quickly, and he allowed her to unroll it over him herself, his hand holding his cock steady at the base. They’d been skin to skin a moment ago. And when he’d slid between her thighs yesterday in the shower. Henry. Not latex.

Even the thrill of being on top, of watching her body accept him as she sank onto his cock, didn’t silence the voice in her head. This power belonged to her. She sat flush against him, tightening and releasing muscles to enjoy his thickness buried inside her. Feeling him bare would be negotiable, wouldn’t it? Surely he wanted to forgo condoms, too.

He watched her with narrowed eyes, though that might be the sun. Her body blocked a slice of the light. She might have a halo, her outline backlit by the rising sun. Maybe he allowed her to ride him for the aesthetic high.

His reason for granting her power remained irrelevant to her pursuit. The important things numbered two. One, she had him pinned under her. Two, she intended to give up condoms for good.

Steadying her weight with her hands on his shoulders, she rose and sank. Henry cupped her ass. She repeated the motion and touched her tongue to her lips.

“Henry, you know I’m consistent about taking my birth control pills.” Ease into it, nice and slow. Like a lazy morning fuck in a deck chair. “And we’ve been monogamous for months. Most of a year.”

“Polyamorous.”

“What?” His quick response hadn’t been in her script.

“The word you want is polyamorous. A closed, faithful poly relationship. A triad, if you like.” Gripping her ass tight, he interrupted her rhythm with a sharp upward thrust.

Fuck, he was fantastic and thick and—no. Focus. Get to the point before he fucked her brains out.

“Okay. Polyamorous. Whatever we’re calling it, I have the pregnancy issue covered and there’s no threat of disease. So, I want—” God that felt good. She rocked harder, grinding her pelvis down and relishing the pressure against her clit. “I want us to stop using condoms.”

He spread his hands wide, lifting her ass and letting her slide down his cock from her own weight. Unhurried, he slipped fingers beneath her and stroked her sex from behind. “You’ve given the practical reasons why condoms are unnecessary, but I have yet to hear why you wish to eliminate them.”

“Don’t you?” She’d assumed he’d jump at the chance. Every other guy had pressured her to give them up, and she’d refused every time. But Henry had never been like every other guy.

“Ah—that isn’t the issue, Alice. Tell me why you desire this change.” He brushed her with a fluttering touch where their bodies joined. Rubbing, back and forth, spreading her slick lubrication.