Page 149 of Season of Gifts

“Ask,” she whispered, forcing her voice as deep as it would go, trying to mimic his intonation.

He hummed his pleasure as he kissed her temple, her cheek, the ticklish spot on her earlobe.“I’m becoming predictable, am I?”

Twisting, she kissed him lightly on the lips.“Predictable isn’t a bad thing after the rattling we had.”

“No, it is not.”His mouth hovered at hers, the two of them sharing the same air.“Ask your question, my love.”

“I don’t have to ask.”She nuzzled his lips, brushing the corners, stringing moments of closeness like links on the chain of the necklace he’d given her this morning.The metal dangled between her breasts, a hidden touch beneath her shirt.“She was your first.The girl on the class trip.”

A hotel balcony in Paris, he’d told her and Jay.So much more romantic than her own first time.

“She was.”

She kissed him for the honesty.Henry didn’t have a list of actions he earned rewards for, but maybe he should.Openness and emotional vulnerability—that could go on a list for both of them.

“You were dating?”Anyone gazing at the picture would’ve assumed the girl to be with Will—though her bare feet rested against Henry’s calf.“Senior year?”

“After a fashion.”Henry pulled back and cupped her chin.Dragging his thumb across her mouth, he smiled as she caught and held him in her teeth.“Like you, she was adventurous.She held strong opinions about the entertainment she desired, and in myself and Will she found like-minded partners.”

Heat fluttered in her belly.Last night they’d put Jay in the middle—he’d needed and deserved every iota of their combined attention.But once they went home, she’d ask for her turn.She released Henry’s thumb.“I should thank her for giving you up.”

“She was a lovely creature, and we enjoyed our time together.However.”He tightened his fingers around her chin and laid his other hand at her throat.

The weight of his hand poured waves of peace through her.The tide rushed out to her toes and filled her with assurances she hadn’t consciously been seeking but reveled in all the same.She was his; he was hers.

He fingered the chain he’d clasped around her this morning.“I would not trade even a moment of where I am now for another day with her.The memories are sweeter with distance, and my present life with you and Jay is a gift indeed.My feelings for you run far deeper, for all that these last few weeks may have given you a less favorable impression.”

“You’re you again.”Her body thrummed with the rebalanced equation of the promises they’d made to one another.

He released her, dropping his hands to his knees and leaving the ghost of his touch behind.Flashes of color came and went outside the front window, Jay and the boys darting through the snow.Henry ignored the album.But there he was, seventeen, and already so confident.

The girl had full lips and a smattering of freckles.Her uniform skirt flirted with her thighs; her white blouse hugged her throat.Plenty of grown women wore similar outfits at the club.Alice laced her fingers through his.“Was she your first submissive?”

Pulling his gaze from the window, he raised an eyebrow at her.“Not formally, no.”He puffed air through his nose, a nearly silent laugh.“None of us knew what we were doing at the time.”

Somehow he’d cut a path from there to here.To the place where he knew her and Jay better than they knew themselves.He’d gone missing for a few days and still found his way back to that quiet command and confidence.If he could transform, so could she.“But you played together?”

Henry shifted toward her, his knee pressing into hers as he studied her face.His deep green eyes peered into her soul, an interrogation that set her heart racing.

“This persistence of yours doesn’t carry the flavor of jealousy.”He glanced at the photo and back at her, lightly shaking his head.“Will you share with me what you’re feeling, dearest?I’m afraid I am not a mind reader at any time, and even less so of late.”

“But you are.It feels like you are.And I’m…” Always guessing, never certain.People didn’t resolve themselves for her the way equations did.“I don’t feel that way, even when Jay tells me he loved what I did.I’m asking—” The words stuck in her throat, a confession of failure in a month with too many of them.“How long did it take you to be confident?Like…” Those fleeting moments when she was soaring, held aloft by Jay’s pure delight.“Like you’d finished training.Gotten the PhD.”

Henry’s eyes flared wider, and his lips curved in a smile.He brushed his thumb across hers.“This is the fear that was bedeviling you so in the days before I left.You weren’t yet ready to discuss it with me.”

“Yes.”In the weeks since, she’d dominated Jay by herself more than once.Even planned a little in advance, more than she needed to for his usual room checks.But the fear kept returning.“It’s different now, but it’s still there.That fear.”

“I am not surprised.You had questions and doubts.”He slipped his fingers through her hair, tickling her neckline as he pushed back the soft waves.“And I stranded you in the deep end by leaving.I should like to say it was an entirely noble choice, that I had faith in you that you do not yet have in yourself.”His eyes briefly shut as he grimaced.So much emotion in his expression was rare; she’d been granted a glimpse behind the dominant mask.“I do; you’ve done splendidly, Alice.But truthfully, my fear for Mother was so all-consuming that I failed to give thought to how you would cope.I simply trusted that you would.”

And she’d trusted that he would.But he’d been drowning just as much as Jay had, and she’d been missing the clues to put the puzzle together.Trusting Henry to know what he needed and speak up, she’d focused on Jay, at least until work had dragged her away.“They say necessity is the mother of invention.So I invented things.But sometimes I feel like an imposter.”

“During your scenes?”His voice was light, airy, but his eyes sharpened.

“Not during.”Then, she could focus.“Before, when I’m planning and I don’t know how it will go.After, when I don’t know what I might have gotten wrong or forgotten.”

His soothing hum vibrated against her nerves.“And during?How do you feel then?”

“Aroused?”She laughed at the stern, unimpressed deadpan he shot her.That was a given.And not what he was asking.

---