Playing the Game (32 page)

He leaned in and nuzzled her cheek. “You’re quite capable of taking it, Alice. Think of the flogger, hmm? Perhaps you lost count of how many times you enjoyed its touch.” His hand stroked down her back, following the path where he’d dragged the suede over her skin. “Not to worry. I’ll keep the count. You need only enjoy it. This is simply…more personal.”

His hand moved again, clasping hers and Jay’s together on the counter. “The touch of my hand. And if at any time you feel you are not as capable as I believe you to be, you have your word. Say it now, Alice, so I know you remember it.”

“Pistachio.” The word popped to her lips on instinct. Maybe he’d been right about that training thing.

“Jay?”

“Tilt-A-Whirl.” His voice was steadier than she’d expected, but the touch of Henry’s hand might be enough to calm his nerves, too.

“Lovely, both of you.” Henry smiled at them as he released their hands and returned to a less intimate distance. “Have you finished your snack, Alice?” A loaded question, a question that asked if she was ready for her spanking.

“Yes, Henry.” She couldn’t eliminate the trepidation, or the excitement, from her tone. Henry’s eyes and smile told her he’d heard both.

He lowered her feet to the floor, kissed her cheek and handed her the washcloth. “Go on and take this to the bathroom. Five minutes, no more, and then I want you waiting for me at the foot of the bed. Just stand quietly and wait, dearest.”

She left the kitchen with a single glance back. Would Jay get special instructions? He’d been so nervous and upset last time, with the flogging toys, and she still didn’t know why. Would Henry’s hand make it easier or more difficult for him to watch? Or would he not watch at all?

Her mind flitted from question to question as she hung the washcloth. Used the bathroom. Washed her hands and stared at herself in the mirror.

“Henry wouldn’t offer it as a birthday gift if he didn’t think I’d enjoy it. He was careful with Jay last time. He has everything under control. All I have to do is…surrender. Trust.” She breathed slowly, in and out. “Trust Henry.”

Turning off the light, she left the bathroom behind, and her confusion and fear with it. If there was pain, it would be good pain. If she needed Henry to stop, Henry would stop. And if not…if not, it would be amazing.

She walked to the foot of the bed and waited, naked, hands clasped behind her back, feet spread, head bowed. Closing her eyes, she imagined the smack of Henry’s hand. Silently counted to thirty, welcoming the growing wetness as her body responded, resisting the urge to press her thighs together to ease the ache. She breathed in the scent of her own arousal, heavy in the air around her.

“Lovely.” Henry’s voice, soft, pleased. He stood in the doorway at the edge of her field of vision, Jay behind him. “My beautiful birthday girl, ready and waiting for me.”

Henry crossed the room and Jay followed, a pace behind Henry’s right shoulder. A commanding pair. Even Jay had his shoulders squared, his back straight. Imitating Henry, and standing so close that the aura of Henry’s authority washed over him, too. This wasn’t play. This was serious business. She ducked her head and gazed at the bedspread, her lips parting as she breathed.

A quiet hum of approval came from behind her. A hand rested between her shoulder blades, at the edge of her hair.

“Such delightful instincts.” Henry slipped his fingers under her hair and stroked the back of her neck. “Do you know why you bowed your head, Alice?”

“It felt right. Respectful.” He hadn’t told her to move, but he didn’t seem displeased, either.

“Good girl.” He was silent a moment, his face beside hers, close enough to feel the warmth of his cheek but not the touch of his skin. “Tell me what you’re visualizing right now, Alice.”

“Our last Friday.” The thud of the flogger against her ass and shoulders. The drag of the suede down her back. Her thighs twitched.

The hand on her neck trailed down her spine and lower still, until it covered the right side of her ass, lifting and massaging.

“You enjoyed it when I bent you over this bed and flogged you, didn’t you, Alice? You’re anticipating something like that again?”

“Yes, Henry.” God yes. She’d never been in that place before, where even the simplest thought was too much to hold. Where not only her body but her mind had been satisfied and silent.

“A birthday deserves something more personal, more intimate, wouldn’t you agree?”

She agreed it did. With his breath washing over her ear and his hand rubbing circles on her ass, she’d agree to almost anything.

Henry turned his head. A signal to Jay, from the rustling on the carpet behind her.

“Flogging is a lovely bit of fun, but it allows a distance, and I’ll not have that space between us on this night.” His right hand slid up from her ass and around to her hip, and his left hand matched it. He stepped in closer. The soft wool of his pants teased her skin.

“Though I’ll allow
this
space, for now.”

His hips swayed. She shivered as the fabric moved.

“Because you enjoy it, don’t you, Alice? You have since the first night I touched you.” His hands tightened on her hips. “Facedown across the dinner table, your beautiful hips rattling dishes when you came.”

She moaned, remembering that first thrust. The first time she’d had confidence a lover could give what he’d promised, the pleasure she’d always had to find herself.

“Tell me, Alice. Tell me what it is about the pants that you enjoy so well.”

“You’re dressed. And I’m…exposed. Vulnerable.” More than that, but she couldn’t put into words what it did to her insides to be naked and at his mercy while he was buttoned up, hidden away, so thoroughly in charge.

“And do you like feeling exposed? Vulnerable?”

“I…not before.”

“Before?” His right hand moved to her stomach, fingers stroking the curls above her sex.

“Not before…you.”

“And now?”

“It scares me. But…” Was it wrong to want that excitement? The false sense of danger?

“But you like this fear? You enjoy it, crave it? Perhaps it heightens the experience for you?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, and Henry’s fingers dipped lower, brushing her labia. A reward for her honesty? “It’s a good fear. I know you’re in control. I’m safe.”

“All this from the brush of my clothes on your skin, sweet girl?”

“Yes.”

His fingers stroked her. His hips swayed, and she shuddered.

“Such beautiful thoughts deserve a reward, Alice. And that’s why I’ll allow you this space, this thin layer of wool. Because it isn’t a distance in your mind.” His lips grazed her ear. “It brings you closer to me.”

She wanted to beg him to be closer still, to forget the spanking and fuck her now. No, to fuck her now and spank her afterward and fuck her again. Yes. That might be enough to sate the desire she had for him, the tugging, thumping riot of need between her legs.

Withdrawing his hands to her hips, he turned the two of them to face the room rather than the bed. Jay, whose presence she’d forgotten as Henry’s voice wrapped around her, had kept busy. The bench, the one Henry had against the wall, had been moved into the middle of the open space. Room for two, three if they were exceptionally close. On one end lay Henry’s silk tie. Jay placed a few condoms beside it.

“Thank you, my boy. Well done. Come here, please.” Henry’s hand rose from her right hip, and his left stroked over her skin. He guided Jay to them, drawing him in until she stood snuggled between the men, her nipples brushing Jay’s chest.

Henry raised his hand to Jay’s cheek and kissed him. Their lips moved together inches from her own, Henry’s soft murmur and Jay’s groan rising in the air. Henry ended the kiss with a tug at Jay’s lower lip. “Share with Alice, my boy, and then you may make your choice.”

A choice? What choice was Jay–

He kissed her, firm and determined, and she committed herself to returning the kiss with equal attention. She let him end it. Jay stared into her eyes before turning away. A close study revealed no choice she could discern. He went to the end of the bench and knelt in his waiting pose, a motion he never failed to make graceful.

“Thank you, Jay.” Henry’s voice was soft. Tender. Loving.

Jay looked at them both with a calm, serious expression, though his fingers rubbed repeatedly against the tops of his knees.

His head was a short distance from the tie, the cornflower-blue tie with its festive confetti and balloon pattern, and the smattering of condoms. The square packets stood out like a promise, a guarantee, that Henry would be inside her soon. The tie fed her fantasies. Would he bind her wrists again? Drape her across the bench and spank her while she couldn’t use her hands to protect herself? She curled her toes and resisted the eager whine in her throat.

She jumped when Henry pinched her nipples. He soothed them after, laid his fingers flat and circled her skin. Jay fixated on her breasts, his lips parting.

“You’re giving Jay a beautiful view, Alice.” She tilted her head toward Henry’s voice in her left ear, and he traced the outer curve with his nose. His fingers never stopped their teasing, rolling across her nipples. “Your breasts fascinate him. The way they bounce when you ride him. The way they swell in his mouth. He cannot look without desiring you, dearest.”

What suffused her was neither shame nor embarrassment but the hope he’d see whatever he needed in her. She watched Jay watching her until he raised his eyes and met her gaze. Lustful. Tender? Hopeful? Desire and something else, though she knew not what.

Henry surprised her, stepping away, his hands leaving her breasts. Drawing her forward, he seated himself on the bench and left her to stand before him, her legs between his knees.

“You see desire in his eyes when he looks at you, don’t you, Alice? Feel it in his stare?”

“Yes, Henry.” Jay made his desire obvious on their Fridays, usually from the moment she walked in the door. He was either incapable of or uninterested in concealment. The same way he was about most things. What he felt or thought always visible on the surface.

Henry caressed her sides, his hands sweeping up from her thighs, slipping toward her back as they reached breast height.

“You believe, perhaps, that I am not so taken, because you cannot always see my desire.”

Alice shifted her weight, uneasy as a scolded child despite his forgiving tone. “Yes.”

He lunged forward and locked his mouth around her right breast. Sucked hard, almost painfully, and she whimpered. Her legs trembled. He bit her gently before he let go.

“Sit.” A demand, his hands tugging her into his lap without pause.

She found herself sitting on his right thigh, soft wool beneath her ass. The command in his voice replayed in her ears, and a flood of wetness between her thighs waited for his entrance.

Henry picked up the tie. “Jay showed exceptional focus tonight, Alice, and I believe you are capable of the same. I want you listening to my voice. Feel my touch and listen to my voice. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Henry.” Her eyes remained fixed on the tie. Her hands rested on her knees, awaiting a request to present them.

“I’m going to help you with your focus, my dear.”

He moved the tie closer, but not to her hands. The darkness as he bound her eyes wasn’t complete, not like it had been the night of their concert in the “park” of his living room. But she could no longer see Jay, kneeling beside the bench, or Henry’s eyes, intent on hers. She could, if she strained, glimpse her own stomach and thighs while looking almost cross-eyed down the side of her nose.

“Not too tight?”

“No, Henry.”

“Good. I can look my fill now, but you won’t see my desire. Does that negate its very existence?” Her left hand was lifted, pulled toward him and pressed against soft wool and…She squirmed on his thigh, her hand surrounded by his, both squeezing his hard cock. “You cannot see, but you can feel, can you not?”

She nodded, her answer a whispered yes, her throat choked with need and anticipation.

“Then listen, and feel, and understand I
will
fuck you before the night is over, my lovely girl.”

Every nerve in her body tingled at the thought.
Yes. Yes yes yes.

She let herself be guided by his hands as Henry lowered her across his lap. His right leg pressed against the backs of her thighs, and he ordered her hands to the floor. His left arm lay atop her back like a weighted saddle pad. But his right hand received the lion’s share of her attention. The hand circling the top of her ass and sliding down to caress her cheeks.