Playing the Game (20 page)

“It’ll get even better,” he whispered. “Just wait’ll Henry gets you in bed.”

Wait’ll Henry…holy shit.
What did Jay know that she didn’t? Or was he just talking from personal experience? “Did he–”

“Both behaving, I see.”

She almost panicked and pulled away, as if she’d been caught in bed with a married man. Henry might be fine with sharing his lover with her, but only when and how he allowed. She doubted the sharing included his plans for future nights.

But Jay’s body hadn’t tightened at all, and he hadn’t tried to escape her arms. He lay utterly relaxed and snuggly, as if sex and secrets were the last thing on his mind despite their conversation and their position.

Take two orgasms and call me in the morning?

“Are you having a nice cuddle, my dears?”

“Yes, Henry,” Jay answered, and she echoed him.

“Lovely. If you’ll indulge me a moment, we’ll have more time for cuddling afterward.”

Alice and Jay unwound their arms and rolled onto their backs. She bit her tongue to stop her mouth from dropping open.

Henry had stripped to his boxers. Not naked, true, but he displayed more skin than she’d seen from him yet. And he wasn’t hard when he settled on the bed. The boxers wouldn’t have been able to hide that from her.

He hadn’t been gone long enough to take care of things himself, but she hadn’t heard him while she and Jay were playing. Surely he hadn’t spent three hours watching them and not touching himself. That was insane. Torture.

Maybe he got pre-playtime action from Jay every night they were together. Like he’d said the first night, when he took her over the table. Asking a man how many blowjobs he’d gotten from his lover today seemed a sure way to get kicked out of his bed early.

She stared at Henry’s chest, unashamedly opening her legs for him when he asked, enjoying the warmth and care with which he applied the washcloth. Henry had more hair and less defined musculature than Jay, but his chest wasn’t wooly and his stomach wasn’t flabby. He was just…male. Wide shoulders. A smattering of brown hair trailing down. Narrow waist. A criminally satisfying cock hidden under those boxers.

She didn’t bother to shift her body or close her legs once Henry finished bathing her to his satisfaction. He patted her gently, kissed her knee and moved to attend to Jay.

Jay stretched like a sleepy puppy while Henry gave him the same careful treatment.

Henry patted Jay’s hip when he’d finished.

“Under the covers, both of you, and we’ll cuddle a while longer tonight.” Henry left the room with the washcloth in hand.

Jay scrambled for the sheets, dragging them up and over their bodies, leaving the bondage straps dangling against the side of the bed. Did they stay on the bed all the time? Would Henry tuck them under the mattress in the morning? Not that she’d be there to find out. Once Henry had dissected her experience of the night, he’d thank her for spending the evening with them, and kiss her, and send her home. He’d done it every time so far, getting her home at midnight as the contract promised.

She shifted on her side as Jay snuggled up to her. Curving his body around her back, he dropped his left arm across her waist. His hand stroked her stomach, and his breath warmed the back of her neck. Falling asleep like this would be so easy.

All she needed was Henry’s neck to cradle her face. His scent in her nose. His chest against hers, bare skin to bare skin. She blinked as the bed dipped and he was there in front of her, settling on his side, mere inches away. She nearly missed his question, caught up in tracing the exact slope of his collarbone with her eyes.

“Restraint is a pleasurable experience for you, isn’t it, Alice?”

He’d pinned her hands or her legs in assorted ways on previous nights. His grip had felt more intimate than the cuffs tonight, but…not being able to touch Jay. Having to trust he’d get the job done. And the pull of the cuffs against her skin every time she forgot. Yeah, restraint was pretty fucking pleasurable. Hell, even the way their bodies boxed her between them now was a comfort.

“It makes me nervous at first. But it feels…better…during.”

“Merely nervous, Alice?” Henry’s right hand settled on her hip, alongside Jay’s arm, his thumb moving in slow strokes that treated them both as one.

She’d known the joy of heart-stopping panic tonight, of panic heightening her senses and connecting her to Jay. No, nervous didn’t cover it.

“Frightened,” she clarified. “When I forgot. But in a good way. Like a roller coaster.”

“A roller coaster?” His voice coaxed her, his smile a silent prod to make her speak the words. To make them real.

“Excited. Knowing something’s coming and I can’t stop it, but it’ll be a rush and it won’t hurt. The safety features will protect me. Only I’m not thinking about them when the car’s zipping down the hills and banking around the curves.”

“You enjoy that feeling, don’t you, Alice? That forgetting?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t going to be embarrassed about that. Not with Jay nestled behind her and Henry looking into her eyes with understanding. “I was pulling against the cuffs, but sometimes I forgot I could open them myself. And that was more exciting than when I remembered I could stop things.”

Henry squeezed her hip. His lips grazed her cheek before he leaned back to study her face. “Lovely. You felt safe allowing yourself to forget?”

She nodded, frowning. She didn’t think of herself as
that
girl. She was the responsible one, the designated baby sitter in the group when she’d gone out with her girlfriends in college. “It felt…liberating?” Could that even be right?

Jay nodded and wiggled in agreement at her back. “It does for me, when Henry’s in charge.”

Because you’re like a puppy, you ridiculously adorable man.
She didn’t say it, though. The way he wore his vulnerability so openly in private was one of her favorite things about Jay. She refused to dampen his enthusiasm. Liberation in surrender was just more difficult for her to accept than it was for him, she supposed.

“From the moment you signed our contract, Alice, the ultimate responsibility for your safety during our time together lay with me. It’s appropriate for you to feel a sense of freedom in that.” Henry kissed her, slow and gentle, and did the same to Jay. He studied them both afterward as she stifled a yawn. Exhaustion had crept up on her. “Perhaps a lighter topic is in order now, hmm?”

Jay’s words came in a rush beside her ear. “Did you mean it, Alice? Was I the first tongue between your legs? Not just for tonight?”

She laughed. “You’ve been waiting to ask that this whole time, haven’t you?”

“Not the whole time.”

“You were, yeah.” Her smile at Henry was a touch sly. “It let me check off an extra line on my contract questions the next day.”

Henry shook his head. “I admit, my dear, that was not a revelation I expected this evening. You surprised me.” Shaking his head again, he returned her smile. “Delightful.”

He caressed her side, his hand following her arm down to her waist, dropping to her hip and thigh. “As Jay chose the first topic, perhaps you’d care to choose a second?”

“First times. How you lost your virginity. You both got to hear mine.” Not that she’d feel slighted if they didn’t share. She just wanted to know. Had their first times been with men or women? Had they been older or younger than she was her first time? Had theirs been calculated decisions like hers?

“I was sixteen,” Jay blurted. “She was a college friend of my sister’s.”

She raised an eyebrow. This had better not be some setup for a letters to
Penthouse
joke. “Was it good?”

Jay snorted. “I thought it was fantastic. She might not have thought so, since I came after all of four thrusts. But that didn’t stop her from coming to visit my sister Nat pretty much every week that summer. She always managed to get there when Nat was out, and we’d walk down by the creek to where the grass made a soft bed. I did eventually satisfy her, too, but the first time? Hell no. She got herself off with her fingers after I was done.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “That was pretty hot, too.”

She waited for Henry’s answer.

Jay leaned in.

“Wait, you don’t know, either?”

Jay shook his head against hers. “Not even a hint.”

Four years together, and Henry had never told the story? It was either extremely good or excruciatingly bad.

Henry gave an elegant shrug. “A class trip to Paris, my dears. With a classmate, on the balcony of my hotel room. As I recall, she was quite impressed with the view, the flowers, the room service dinner, and the outcome.” His lips quirked. “Though my wallet was rather poorer for the experience. I had to pay my roommate to stay out of the room all night and hold his tongue lest the chaperones investigate.”

They drifted from topic to topic, the choice rotating among the three of them. At some point, she’d missed half of Jay’s story about smashing a kayak and somehow escaping with minor injuries. If Henry had answered the question about getting drunk for the first time, she’d missed that, too. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open. But that was okay.

She was still Henry’s responsibility. She could nap. He’d wake her and get her home safe when it was time.

Chapter 7

Alice woke to the murmur of low voices and the patter of rain on the windows. No shifting mattress, no other bodies in the bed, but still-warm sheets. Henry’s bed. They’d let her stay?

That was a first. If she counted the night Henry had taken her so decisively across the dining room table, last night had been their sixth Friday together. Either Henry had exercised his contract option to extend her playtime into Saturday, or she’d fallen asleep and been too difficult to wake. Not worth the trouble, maybe, and Henry and Jay indifferent to her presence? Shit, that would be embarrassing. A walk of shame.

She cracked open an eyelid.

Henry stood by the window, naked, looking out through the glass. He spoke in a hushed tone, the sort he might expect wouldn’t disturb a sleeping partner. Was she obligated to tell him she was awake?

“Not today. The rain would be a bit of a bother, my boy. Though it’s a fine idea.”

Speaking to Jay, though she couldn’t see him from where she lay. Henry would notice her wakefulness eventually. Until then, she wasn’t about to move for the world. Not when she had such a beautiful and rare view. Henry watched her all the time in their games, but she’d never had such an opportunity to study him.

Most often he used his voice rather than his body to excite her. He wielded it with precision, blindfolding her or staying behind her. Painting with words in her ears that lit up the pleasure centers in her brain with anticipation.

Her one complaint, one confusion, about the past two and a half months was that Henry hadn’t fucked her. Not since that first night.

He often brought her to orgasm with his hands, and God, that was wonderful. His beautifully long fingers stroked and teased and drew out her pleasure until she begged. But he tasted her only by licking his fingers clean or demanding a kiss from Jay after he’d gone down on her. He didn’t fuck her, not even when she squirmed against his erection and wished she dared ask for it.

He’d made it clear his orgasms weren’t her concern. Maybe that first night had been a test and she’d failed. Maybe his interest in her was limited to providing a regular female sex partner for Jay, to keep him from straying. Jay had fucked her on almost every one of their Fridays, following whatever instructions Henry had given him for the night.

She never went home unsatisfied, but she feared she’d never feel Henry’s cock again. The memory of that first thrust, his thick girth and slow, steady, deliberate pace, was enough to make her wet no matter where she was or what she was supposed to be concentrating on.

Like it was doing now, she admitted, as her eyes drank in the planes of Henry’s back and her mind begged him to turn and face her. She refused to squirm, though her clit thumped out a demanding rhythm. If Henry knew she was awake, he probably wouldn’t allow her to watch him like this.

But Jay had that right. He moved into view, partially hiding Henry’s body from her when he laid a hand between the older man’s shoulder blades. For one terrible moment, she blazed with jealousy before reason returned.

Henry and Jay had a relationship. A lengthy one. Years of being together, even if they didn’t make it obvious in public, and even if they dated other people. The day might come for her, too, when she could approach a nude Henry and touch him without seeking permission. But she didn’t want those complications. Did she?