Page 181 of Season of Gifts

Henry’s zipper had grown bothersome, an impediment to free movement, damming up his energy behind it.“How many fingers, Jay?”

“Two.”Jay raised index and middle slightly, their wet sheen glistening in the light.

“Give her three.”Three fingers and one weighted plug would well prepare her for the pleasure he envisioned.

Jay thrust slowly.The heel of his hand flexed into her clitoris on his backstrokes.His fingers disappeared between Alice’s legs, there and gone, again and again.Her erratic shaking spread from her hands to her ribs, tremors rippling down through her stomach and thighs.Her breath came in short hitches.

“Time for a taste, my boy.Fingers out.”

Oh the daggers Alice stared.So cruelly he’d snatched orgasm from her.

“Turn, sweet girl.Face our husband.Offer him the sugar decorating your rosy skin.”

Alice thrust her chest forward.Jay bent and sucked a line up to her collarbone, meeting a mote of darkening flesh.He kissed lightly atop the forming bruise.

“Yes, you’ve marked her well for us, haven’t you?”

Splaying his fingers, Jay curled his tongue around one and added the taste of Alice to the sugar sweetening his mouth.He chased that meal with a second line of sugar and a second finger.His cock bobbed against Alice’s stomach, drizzling her with his eagerness to serve.The final line of sugar led Jay to Alice’s collar.He pressed his mouth to the initials at her throat, then sucked clean his third finger.

“Set the bowl aside, please, Jay.”

Alice’s unsteady grip would falter soon if he didn’t.Freed of the burden, she flexed her fingers and clenched them tight, white knuckles against the stunning pink blush coloring her from cheeks to breasts.

“Alice.”Henry called her name softly, and she turned her head at lightning speed, her eyes razor-sharp.

Jay laid the bowl on the side table in ghostly silence, his feet having never left the sheets.

Henry crooked his finger and gestured Jay to him.Leaning forward, he raised his hand to Jay’s face and lifted his chin between thumb and forefinger.Henry mouthed a kiss and tilted Jay’s face toward Alice.He captured her gaze, shards of hazel possessive and predatory.Now, yes.Now she craved escalation at the edge of her self-control.“Tell me, dearest.What urge takes hold of you?”

Curled open, her fingers resembled talons.“I want to devour him.I want to ride him into the floor.”

Jay trembled, his cock leaping.A thin tenor whine of longing escaped.

Henry stroked Jay’s strong jaw back to his ear.Down his neck, fingering the collar as he passed.Alice breathed deep in her belly, rhythmic expansion rounding her stomach and lifting her breasts.

Pushing gently on Jay’s shoulder blade, Henry sent him to her.“Show me.”

Arms outstretched, Alice claimed Jay in a fierce hold as he stepped near.Fingers threaded in his hair, she clasped both sides of his head and kissed him.Her teeth flashed, nipping at his lips, demanding control.Jay gave ground willingly, in sweet whimpers, in hands tucked behind him, not daring to touch what hadn’t been granted him.

Elemental forces swirled together in a clash worthy of the gods they were.Where Alice grew like fire, pouring out heat, Jay absorbed like earth, pulling the energy into himself and reflecting it back at her.She dragged her hands down the back of his skull and kneaded his neck.The kiss went on, the two of them taking quick sips of air without parting.

Alice braced her hands atop Jay’s shoulders.“Down, boy.Finish what you started.No stopping this time.”

Jay sank to his knees before her.His fingers sliding between her thighs became a scent, a sound.Alice draped one leg across Jay’s shoulder, balancing with her hands woven through his hair.“More.Give me your mouth and fingers both.Serve me.”

“Always, Mistress.”Shuddering, Jay spoke in an awed whisper.Firelight lit his face as he gazed up at her.A man receiving knighthood might gaze so, his heart exposed, his loyalty honored, his courage rewarded.Jay bent his head to his task, covering Alice with his mouth as his fingers thrust.

Alice rocked against him, rolling her hips toward his cheeks, crooning encouragement.“Just like that, right there, right there, keep going.”

The fire silhouetted the peaks of her breasts and the dangling waves of her hair.Radiantly powerful, she towered above their husband, clinging to his back with one leg, her heel digging into his muscles.Kneeling, one hand yet limned in light behind his back, Jay served her with his entire focus, his cock hard and waiting.

Alice’s back bowed.An arc of the moon she was, a crescent resting on a sculpted athlete, the young man with his face upturned to her beauty.A delicate, precarious position.

Her knee wobbled; she clenched Jay more tightly to her.Orgasm might send her toppling.Such fun, standing— weighing the competing imperatives of keeping one’s balance while urgently desiring to come.

But Henry had seen enough for now.His churning heartbeat had desires of its own.

Finishing the work Alice had begun, he slipped free of his shirt and rose from the sofa.He dragged his belt slowly from its loops, itsshurring glide a ghostly touch against a body attuned for action.On another night he might create a makeshift binding; Alice in particular responded enthusiastically to surprises.But tonight’s enjoyment did not depend upon impressing his partners with his creativity or overwhelming them with flashy shows of dominance.Tonight, he gave them merely himself—their husband, enraptured by their beauty and the tender astonishment that their love had survived challenges that might have shredded other hearts.

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